Fellow Needleworkers of Magical Things

‘Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house of needle arts…

we were getting our gifts together, wrapping, mailing and making new starts.

Ethel’s poncho ready for mailing

You can see here that Ethel crocheted a scalloped edge around the knitted poncho. Beautiful!

Ethel’s Christmas hat ready for mailing

These knitted things have been whisked away into the postal service, but she is not finished yet! There’s a dog bed for Murphy and another hat, this one with a jaunty little brim on it. See free Red Heart pattern here.

cable newsboy hat with brim, almost finished

Lois came in wearing a pink seed-stitch derby with a ribbon hat band.

Lois and derby hat

Lois working on a shawl for the shoulders

I still worked on the white shawl. Making progress: trying to do 4 rows of pattern a day at the very least. DH, who always wants to know what and how and when, calculated that it will take me 36 days to finish at the rate I’ve been going. Thirty-six days is doable, in my opinion. Don’t want to get in a rush, now. HOLD ON, I forgot to tell him that I decrease 8 stitches every 3rd round. He might need to revise his calculation, although the number of rows per day may not change, given how busy I’ve been. I thought I had about 800 yards in this humongous skein of Sensations yarn from JoAnn Fabric, but having lost the sleeve describing the yarn, I consulted my yarn database, and the skein was 615 yards. Worried that I might run out before I get up to the neckline, I went to JoAnn’s to get some more but alas! Our local JoAnn’s is moving to another location, although it won’t be finalized until February. But the merchandise in the store was, as Uncle Si might say, “he GONE.” There was scarcely a skein on the shelf. This was the only thing I could find that might serve as a stop-gap in case I run short.

White Vanna White yarn

I love Vanna White, but this lone skein, one of just a few stragglers left on the bare shelves in the store, looks ratty, battered and worn. If I still come up short and Ethel talks me out of using the ratty replacement, I can go to the Joann’s in the next town south and hope they have a comparable skein. That’s the downside of yarn hoarding; by the time you get to whittling down the stash, the dye-lots you bought in the bygone days are history.

Happy week before Christmas, fellow needle-workers of magical things!

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Pre-Christmas Knitty Gritty

A pretty big crowd (for us!) showed up at Wednesday Night Knitting. Possible reason? Right before Christmas, during the busy season, needlework can be a haven.

Ethel made progress on the pretty poncho.

marble yarn poncho

We were happy to have newcomer Sarah included: she wants to learn to knit. She would like to knit a drink coaster for a first project, and she’s well on her way. Having lots of first-hand knowledge of the local dance scene in the area, she told us that there are opportunities to do country dancing, in this college town, for interested folks over the age of nineteen!

Lois worked on baby hats. She knits with another group, providing baby hats for a local hospital and chemo caps for people who’ve been undergoing cancer treatment therapy.

Lois’s pink baby hat

Lois with 2nd baby hat

Newcomer Kerrie with crochet hat and flowers

Kerrie does crochet “by ear” or rather, by sight: she sees something and tries to re-create it. She came to seek some advice from our resident esteemed instructor, Ethel, on crocheting flowers. She showed us these cool knight-in-shining-armor helmets she crocheted!

Kerrie’s crocheted helmets

I worked on a knitted shawl: free pattern Bamboozle Cable Capelet by Dawn Leeseman for Crystal Palace Yarns. So far, so good…

Shawl, a work in progress

Amber worked on the Sirdar sweater some more; it’s looking fabulous! “I’m just knitting and purling,” she said modestly…;-).

detail of diamond-pattern yoke on Amber’s Sirdar sweater

Amber let us know that another group will be featured at Gallery Protocol on 6th Street starting tomorrow: In All Kinds of Weather. Check it out if you get a chance!

Ethel showed some interesting cable formations on a hat she started with the part-milk yarn. Yes, she assured us, milk can be an ingredient in yarn! Check out this post by Knit be Nimble for a good write-up about it!

Ethel’s cable hat brim from the part-milk yarn

Ethel showed us the somewhat discernible differences between the two yarns she bought, and told us what she would like to do to successfully meld the two different, but extremely similar yarns, together in a garment.

Ethel’s two different yarns

Can you tell the difference?

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Santa, Take Note, at Knitting!

Discovery: It is December 4th and our Christmas knitting is in the coulda, shoulda, woulda state of being. Except for Ethel, she’s been very, very good this year, so Santa, take note!

Ethel got some holiday knitting done; check it out!

Ethel’s gnomes

Ethel’s knitted Christmas bauble

I managed to wind my skein of felted wool yarn into a ball…I have started a few things but it just doesn’t feel right, so I am back to a ball…Any suggestions on what to make with it?

the fruit of my labors so far

Ethel showed off some beaded Christmas earrings she made from a kit she got at Avalon Bead Shop.

bead kit from Gifts of Avalon

crystal Christmas tree earrings

Amber worked on the Sirdar sweater again, and it’s looking beautiful.

working on the sweater

I finished the woolly owl hat I started a few weeks ago.

finished intarsia owl hat from last year’s Simply Knitting

Ethel’s new project: a poncho

Ethel worked on a poncho for a grandchild, in James C. Brett Marble Chunky, a blue and green self-striping machine washable yarn. And she’s already lined up a new project, a knitted billed hat.

Ethel’s next project

a present for me

Following a wonderful week of Thanksgiving partying with well-loved folks I don't get to see very often, I've been feasting my eyes on the new, reissued Alice Starmore book Tudor Roses. Visions of sugarplums are dancing in my head…

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Chilly weather yarning

It was an excellent session at Wednesday Night Knitting: Tina made mad progress on her cable-loomed project.

Tina and super-long cable-knit scarf on loom

As you can see, the project is coming along well.

Ethel and poncho

Ethel worked on the poncho, in a warm 30% wool charcoal gray chunky yarn. Lois continued working on some fingerless gloves in a luscious mauve mohair.

Glove in progress

And I continued the scrunchie handwarmers from Designer One Skein Wonders.

scrunchie handwarmer, in progress

DH and I took a little mini-vacation last weekend, and checked out the local yarnies.

Four Purls in Winter Haven, Florida

Four Purls is a warm and wonderful shop we visited on the first Saturday in January. I snagged some interesting fiber, things I haven’t seen at my regular haunts. The shop is in the downtown area where lots of quaint antique stores and fashionable-looking eateries abound. I was invited in to see and feel to my heart’s content, by some friendly lasses (one of whom I’d met at the 2011 Florida Fiber In), and as I meandered around the perimeter shelves overflowing with color and tactile wonderment, oohing and ahhing to myself at the lusciousness of their wares, a group of women, young and middle-aged, were chatting and knitting in the center lounge area amid comfy, colorful and eclectic chairs and cushions. Love!
I also had to pay a visit to Yarn Basket to get some more of that pink tweed Kathmandu yarn. Sigh, Elsa had one skein left! That shop was also having a group knit-along when I showed up. Saturday seems like an odd time to group knit, to me–Wednesday seems juuuust right.

Stash snaggle from Winter Haven

In case you wanted to know, the stash includes, clockwise from top left, Juniper Moon Findley 50% merino, 50% silk in Serendipity (pink); the Queensland Collection Kathmandu DK merino, silk, cashmere blend; Cascade Yarns Dolly (black cotton, acrylic, nylon with “taggies”); Sprinkles gray white and black acrylic; Noro Silk Garden Sock Yarn; Berocco Remix, the green yarn made of 100% recycled fibers in a nylon, cotton, acrylic, silk and linen blend; and in the middle a skein of grey Maggi Knits Irish MK Collection cotton-linen blend.

We were here, somewhere between Tampa and Orlando...

DH looked aside and said, "You think that might be a BAR?"

The scenery is magnificent. Did you know that oranges grow on trees? Millions, billions of them! They grow on trees, in the dead of winter! Amazing.

Mile after mile of trees ornamented with juicy oranges!

Mother Nature might surprise us with a few chilly days in January. We are running around central Fl with scarves around our necks but flip-flops on our feet!

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