Saturday, May 31, 2008

Button Selection

DD chose the bottom button to go on her sweater. Sheila is right, the sweater will probably fit her for 3 years, so she will have time to switch out the buttons.


(clickety click to embiggen)

Friday, May 30, 2008

Button Stash

First Emmy gets a yarn stash, and now Maggie has a button stash!


Sheila came through with a gorgeous selection of buttons which she made special for Maggie's sweater. Thanks Sheila!


The sweater is a little roomy and Sheila knew that Maggie will be wearing it for years, so she sent an assortment. Maggie can switch them out over time as her mood suits.


This one is my favorite, and the first one that will be sewn on, tonight, I promise!


A heartfelt thank you, dearest friend, for the beautiful buttons made full of love!

ps - see you in 20 days!

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Knitting Pictures

The sun is out so I did a photo shoot of the dog with my sock in progress. His winker was in all of the pictures. Don't you hate those male dogs? (not really, he can't help it, that's what I get for telling him to SIT!) This is the only one I could crop for this family friendly blog.


I have also cast on for a new project - the Victorian Shoulderette by Sivia Harding. I have knit this shawl before in handspun, this time I am using Brooks Farm Four Play, a wonderful silk/merino blend which is one of my all time favorite yarns.


I also took the opportunity to snap a shoot of DD in her new cardigan. DD is always up for a good photo shoot, and this time the theme was "where's my button?"






No pressure :-)

Friday, May 23, 2008

Blink and you'll miss it

We had about 3 days of warm weather last week, enough to be inspired to go down to the local farmer's market. My kid came back looking like this:

He's ready for the sun to come back out! (Aren't we all?)

I've been knitting on a sweater for my daughter, it's a Sirdar pattern and I used the recommended yarn. Of course I could not follow the pattern as written, because it is a raglan design knit in pieces. I modified the pattern to be knit back and forth in one piece, from the bottom up. I knit the body to the armholes, knit the sleeves from the bottom up, and joined the sleeves and decreased along the raglan lines. This approach reminded me of a lopi sweater I knit many years ago, with the exception that lopi sweaters decrease evenly around the yoke and this one decreased along the raglan. I have a green sweater that I have been knitting for myself with a modified pattern, which I think I will now rip back and attach the raglan sleeves in the same manner that this purple sweater was knit.



I'm still looking for the perfect button for this sweater, a dear friend is on a quest to make one for me, and Maggie is thrilled to have a custom made button! Stay tuned for a button report.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Sock Shelter

OK, not really shelter for socks, but you know, pictures about socks and shelter.

Here's a photo of how I spent the gray, rainy winter of 2008:

The blue socks (Fleece Artist Merino) and blue and gold socks (Blue Moon STR lightweight) are for DS1 who has feet as long as mine.
The orange ones (Blue Moon STR lightweight color Cockarel) are for DS#2 who still has much smaller feet, thank goodness! This winter he was called "the good son" bccause of that.
The brown socks are my Monkey socks knit from Shibui yarn in the Bark colorway purchased at vyt. That Cookie A sure knows how to design a fun sock pattern!

Yesterday Teddy had a cub scout camp out, and they learned how to build shelters. This is Teddy's version that he built in our backyard.


The green stuff will help keep the water out, you know.


Bagel's checking it out for dog bone hiding potential.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Radio Silence Broken

Well hello, and welcome back to the Knitting for Sanity blog. I can't believe that this is the first post of 2008. I mean, it is May already! Where did the time go? It seems that radio silence has struck many knit bloggers; I don't know if we have all been wrapped up in Ravelry, or just busy with every day living or maybe even actually knitting. I, for one, know that the tv writer's strike put a huge damper on my knitting time. I took up reading for a few months instead.

There is lots to catch up on now that I know better how to operate my camera and get the pictures off of the card. I'll start with the most recent and maybe work my way back, in my spare time.

The first weekend in May is always the annual Maryland sheep and wool festival. I was fortunate enough to be able to go again this year, sans kids, and spent a lovely whirlwind weekend at the show visiting with Mom and good friends Sheila and Michael. They had a booth across from the souvenir sales again ... it looked fabulous!



I really enjoyed spending the weekend with Mom, it was truely a girlfriends' kind of weekend! Here's Mom just warming up at the Brooks Farm booth

And here she is getting high on wool fumes at Tess's Designer Yarns:


It was a real treat not only to see Mom, Sheila and Michael, but also to visit with my best friend and her adorable little niece:


I also had a few minutes to hug and chat with Caroline and her adorable daughter:

Caroline, Sheila and I all met on an on-line chat group called FiberTraditions. We see each other a couple of times a year at best, but email helps us stay in close contact. Caroline entered several items in the competition, her bee fields shawl won a blue ribbon! Hooray for Caroline!


There were many amazing things to see at the show, I took a picture of this felted dinosaur head to show my kids:


This is the most amazing shawl, spindle spun to a cobweb weight:
I wish I had asked the woman if she has a blog so I could link to her, the shawl was stunning.

In the evenings we got to relax, veg, and knit in a local hotel room. Sheila had left her knitting in the van back in Oregon, so Mom set her up with an emergency knitting kit. One of my secret pals some years back sent me a bag with a red cross and emergency sock knitting supplies inside. I gifted it with new supplies to Mom when she was moving and now it was her turn to pay it forward. Sheila is a magic loop kind of girl, so here she is trying hard to work with dpns. I call this shot, "Sheila on double points". Original, 'eh?


I have lots of photos to share of Mom's new house, but will save those for another post. This one has already taken me all day to write. Here's one final shot of my stash from MSW.