Tour de Fleece update

The Tour de Fleece 2008 is complete. My goal to finish spinning, plying, and washing this roving purchased at OFFF 2007 has been obtained. The colors are stunning and the final yarn is in stash awaiting the perfect project.

Big Socks

Finally, a photo of the huge socks I knit for DH who gets cold feet when he goes scuba diving during the winter in Puget Sound. Yarn - STR Heavyweight, one of the Raven colorways.

Blooming washcloths

Look what's growing in my garden:



Head on:


Pattern: Knitted Lacy Round Dishcloth (ravelry link)

Lucy socks

Well, really, socks for DS#1 in Socks That Rock Lightweight, colorway Lucy. Saving for holiday gift.

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 :-)

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.

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.

Holiday Knitting

It's done!

Short Row Rib from Magknits, 3 years in the making. Gift for our first au pair who now lives in Sweden. Yarn - Kipparoo Farms Lustre Spun, 2 skeins variegated for the scarf, one skein solid for hat.


Prime Rib (Mistake Rib over a prime number of stitches); Knitty's Calorimetry. Gift for MIL. Yarn - 2 skeins Malibrigo Worsted in Crished Grapes.


Cable hat and fingerless mitts for DD. One skein of superwash from Brooks Farm, purchased at Stitches West. (Yarn was in stash for less than a year - this must be a new record!)


Cable hat for DS's Teacher. One skein of superwash from Brooks Farm, purchased at Stitches West. Same stash record as above.

Good yarn day

I literally snipped the yarn on the final bind off of the Short Row Rib Magknits scarf when the dog started bugling. I opened the door to not one but TWO boxes of yummy goodness. 10 skeins of O-wool from last week's Threadbear sale and 3 skeins of fabulous hand-dyed goodness from Spritely Goods. I am resisting the temptation to cast on tonight, for I have just a wee bit of holiday knitting left to do. Pictures of the scarf to follow once it is fringed, washed and blocked.

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.

The Month of August

Whew - what a whirlwind! The month of August just flew by. Here are a couple pictures to show the events. You can also view Mom's blog to see more about what we did when she visited us in Seattle.

The month started with a very cold birthday party:


Then there was the intro to T-Ball:


And some fires that needed putting out:


Evidently some knitting was accomplished in between the TBall and the cold swimming:



Then there was the trip to Sweden which warrants it's own blog post. Suffice it to say that we met Pippi Longstocking:


And her horse:


And some wild cats:




And then finally, the day all parents have been waiting for since about mid-July - the first day back to school:



WooHoo!

Summer in Seattle

Blink and you will miss it.


The Shetland Triangle shawl, in it's unblocked glory.

I am waiting for my blocking kit from knitpicks to arrive.

MSW - the recovery

You may have noticed that I did not post about MSW - Day 3 (Sunday). As it turns out, I left my camera back in WA and was using Mom and Sheila's cameras. Since they need their own blog fodder, I decided to wait until I got home to post about day 3.

Day 3 started off a little quieter. Everyone knew their setup jobs, so we did not need to arrive as early as Saturday. When we got there, the barn doors were locked, so we would not have been able to set up early anyway. Once the doors opened, we quickly set up and started showing the product. I expected the crowd to be small, but it was amazingly steady and busy all day. So busy that I did not recognize some friends that stopped by. This makes me sad to find out after the fact.

I did break away from the "work" a few times during the day on Sunday. Mostly I was too tired to focus on additional shopping. I walked through all the barns a second time, but the only addition to my stash was a pound of alpaca/wool from the Barefoot Spinner.

Now, what you have all been waiting for, on to the goodies:

A wood hat/vase/thingamajig that Sheila gifted to me. So silly! Progress on the Shetland Traingle shawl, mostly knit on the flights home, and a new set of glass knitting needles in Brilliant Blue, size 7. Also notice the glass stitch markers, purchased from Sheila, but made by my good friend Barb.


A close up of the shawl, along with another set of glass knitting needles in the Spring Luster colorway, size 6. These are the most perfect lace knitting needles. The joins are just about perfect, the yarn slips right over the join and up onto the needles, making these the best needles for lace knitting.



The big picture. The roving in front, from left to right: 1 pound Blueberry wool/mohair blend from Persimmon Tree Farm, purchased by Mom with the promise that I will spin it for her to knit with. Half pound Lichen from Tintagel Farm, wool/mohair blend. One pound yellow/red alpaca/merino blend from The Barefoot Spinner. Moving up the table, the pink bag is from the souvenir stand - it is backpack style. Not shown is a pink hooded cardigan with the MSW logo for me, 3 kids sweatshirts, and a series of gifts for friends that I cannot disclose just yet.


Close up of two skeins of wool/mohair yarn (dark blue and brown) from Persimmon Tree Farm - destined to be a scarf and hat. Two skeins of wool/mohair blend from Tintagel Farm, destined to be another scarf. And a close up of the wood thing!


Gorgeous glass buttons from the Ernst duo. The set of smaller buttons is made from a glass called unobtainium. I know this, because the same buttons were unobtainable at Stitches West - they all sold out!

I had a lovely, quiet day on Monday, sitting around my childhood home, catching up with Mom, Sheila and Michael. I left for the airport around 4pm and arrived home in Seattle at 11:30pm (which is actually 2:30am). Back to work the next morning, early to bed that evening. My body is almost back on schedule now.

Tuesday morning I had to be at my best right away as there were tea parties to attend! The kids put on a little show and serve tea to their mother's every year at preschool. Here are my two little chickadees.



You can see that DD dressed up right away in her W&S finery complete with lamb ears. What a good girl she is!