Tour de Fleece and Shout Out

There's a new button over in the sidebar, yep, I signed up for the Tour de Fleece. This is my first year entering the race, and I am off to a late start. However I feel confident in my ability to earn The Maillot Jaune (Yellow Jersey). My goal is to ply the red/gold wool silk I purchased at OFFF last year, and was just re-inspired to spin up at BSG. This is an attainable goal if I set the proper amount of time aside. Priorities!

I'd like to make a shout out to my friend Kerry, who when properly motivated by promises of chocolate, STR, and cashmere, has finished her koigu sweater over the 4th of July weekend. Doesn't it look great? Well done, Kerry!

Tres Amigas

Is my Spanish right?


clickety click to embiggen



clickety click to embiggen

Black Sheep Gathering 2008

Every one has already posted their photos, I am always the last to share. Friday afternoon Barb and I headed down to the rim of Drain for what has become an annual pilgrimage to artist heaven. At least what I envision artist heaven to look like. It is a place to relax and unwind...



to commune with nature...


to find hidden inspiration...


to see the beauty in the every day...


to leave it with the goddess to handle...


There was spinning...

from OFFF 2007, merino silk, dyepots


BSG 2008, merino silk


MSW 2008, merino silk

I really enjoyed the spinning time, even if I am slouching.


Barb made a feeble attempt at entering the ugly sock contest, but Autumn declared that nothing ugly would ever grace her head.


Someone had to work...


Thank you Sheila and Michael for a wonderful, rejuvenating weekend! See you next year?

Dye Day

Sam, Kim and I have been planning a dye day for some time now. There was a brief spot of limited precipitation, so although it was about 40* out, we dyed.

Sam had some shetland that she has been itching to color. In it goes, into a warm brown dye bath from Judith McJenzie McCuin's Miracle Dyes.

And here it is coming out of the pot.

It was then layered with a beautiful mahogony cushings dye. Click the picture to see the final product.

Sam's contemplating knitting Harriet from One Fine Fleece after seeing how gorgeous Kim's Harriet was progressing.

Kim has a gazillion pounds of alpaca locks. I didn't get photos of each of her marvelous creations, but doesn't this one just make you want to say, "MINE"?!!


I skeined and dyed a bunch of pale pink commercial yarn into more vivid colors using Cushings dyes. Not sure what they will become yet.

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.


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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!

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.

Stormy weather

We survived our first windstorm of the season last night. We had high winds for sure, but not a lot of blown trees around our neck of the woods. They all came down last year when we were without power for 8 days. I was just getting ready to head out and do some errands today when I heard it pouring on the roof. The rain is coming down in buckets and we even had thunder. Wow, we never get thunderstorms in the PNWet. Usually, it's just gray and drizzly. So I will stay in for now and treat my dear readers to some photos. That is, if there are any dear readers left.

First up, we have "Where's the Bagel?" Bagel is the most understanding, composed model, as long as the USPS man is not at the door. Aside - thanks Mom - he LOVES it!
All knitting pictures in this post are clickety click to embiggen. This hat is the Utopia pattern from smarieknits. She's got some great hat and scarf patterns on her yahoo group if you are ever looking for ideas. This hat, once the daog hairs are picked out, is a gift for a lucky recipient this Christmas. Someone with a really cold head ;-)

Man, it's pouring buckets!

Next on the list of items to show is my progress on the Sonnet cardigan. I started this in a different color combination and there was just too much contrast. Lucky for me, Stitches East happened and SSJ (super shopper Jackie) was able to find me this decadent tonal blue to go with the blue/brown variegated. I cast on immediately when the yarn arrived and have been stockinetting ever since. Progress is smooth.

And finally, I picked back up the "A Cardigan for Arwen" while I was waiting for the new Sonnet yarn. Progress is exceptionally slow. I don't enjoy the cable which has a cable crossing every right side row. I'm more of a lazy cabler, the utopia hat had a cable crossing every 6th row! .

What else is going on? Barb and I are planning to meet at Village Yarn and Tea for a Louet trunk show tonight. Sam, will we be seeing you there?

This weekend will be filled with hopefully a trip to the pumpkin patch, weather permitting. If the weather does not cooperate, well, we have gone to the mud patch before to get pumpkins. I think the kids actually prefer it. Birthday parties, girl scout campfires, and a spin in at Kelsey Creek. I think DH has some time scheduled for diving or at least a class as well. Busy times.

I leave you with a picture of the cutest turtle ever, and yes, I am biased.

True Blue(berry) Friends

When faced with reality, only true friends will help you out:



Barb is even letting me test out her new lazy kate. I am truely blessed to have wonderful, supportive friends.


Now, on to the plying:


Yummy blueberry yarn:

Doggie Heaven On Earth

Bagel experienced a new kind of ecstasy when "I Don't Feel Like Blogging Anymore" Barb brought over HER fleece for a little demo in fleece washing. Please note this is HER fleece, not mine. Kim brought her lovely children over to distract play with mine, and to discipline the dog.

Barb: First you lay it out, and look for any second cuts or VM, and you pick those out.

Bagel: First you lay it out, take a gentle sniff, and then dive in!

Bagel: When you find a particularly smelly part, you roll around in it.

Kim: No more sheep for you, bad boy.

The fleece was a small 3 pounds, so we divided it into two laundry bags.

And gently dipped it into a steamy bath of hot water and Kookabura wool scour.

We wanted to test whether the wool scour worked any better than plain old Dawn dishwashing detergent, so we filled a second tub with hot steamy water and added two big squirts of Dawn.

Jen: I knew there was a reason we've moved this tub from house to house to house to house.
After about a half hour, we gently raised the fleece out of the water, and let it drain. Refilled the tubs with soapy/Kookabura wash, and repeated.

After two washes, we did a rinse in the laundry tub and then tried to spin the fleece in the washer. This is where Jen realized she needs a new wash machine, as this one cannot spin without a rinse cycle, which is what you need to do when it comes to fleece spinning.
At this point we abandonded all hope, left the fleece in a tub for Barb to take home and spin, and we moved on to the next experiment - Mike's Hard Lime drink. Oh, and someone got a lesson in drum carding.

What A Day! Thanks Barb and Kim for a fun afternoon!

New Girl on the Block

There's a new girl on the block, and she's working on her first blog post even as we speak. Give her a few minutes, and then check out Musings from the Palm Room.