Crazier than the average day, with Knitting

Wednesday was a little crazy. Make that a big crazy. I had the twins, and it was their first night of the stay, so they were running around a lot. But it was all fun.Ethel showed us some great new cheap needles she’d bought at Tuesday Morning. Yes, I did finally finish my socks. But I couldn’t show them to my fellow knitters because they were in the dirty clothes. Here’s a pic. I am on ravelry.com as jenyjenny, too, making socks with Sock-it-to-me 2013 forum.

Noro socks done

Ethel and size 8’s

Ethel continued working on her hat from last week.

Lois came by and we didn’t do too much except catch up with what’s been going on in our hectic summers. Lois said she has been sort of tapering off with knitting for now. I also feel that knitting is not the #1 thing right now, since it’s sweltering outside.

I did manage to make another right-angle weave beaded bracelet in anticipation of football season.

right angle weave gator bracelet

Ethel and hat

DH had a few guys over and they were out in the shop woodworking and talking about, you know….wood. It’s amazing how often wood comes up in a conversation, and how many people we know who would like to learn woodworking if they only had a chance.

Here is the picture of Lois’s bowl from a prior post. I captioned it beech, but I’m not so sure, maybe she said aspen? The bowl was made by her relatives, a couple who got into woodturning together, and used the wood from a tree in their front yard to make the bowl. Marvelous to get a gift of a hand-turned bowl! Some day I will make a bowl on the lathe.  But maybe for the time being I need to do a couple more nostepinder for practice.

end of day tired

We broke it up early, and by the end of the day we were all tired! What have you been up to this         summer?

Lois with beech wood bowl

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The Last Little Knitting of May

Wednesday Night Knitting met for the last May meeting of the year. I can barely believe summer is almost here!

Ethel with her Navajo woven rug

Ethel brought her Navajo woven rug to show us. She took a class once upon a time and learned this art, and she even made the wooden loom that she used for weaving.

Her next project is going to be this hat.

cable hat pattern

This is a project to match a scarf she made a long time back, and our LYS, Yarnworks, was miraculously stocked with more of that same yarn.

winding the yarn with her nostepinde

She loves the orange stripey yarn, and if it hadn’t already been earmarked for a matching hat/scarf set, she considered it for a new Alan Dart project, the kitties in the May issue of Simply Knitting.

May Simply Knitting

We compared the May and April issues of this magazine, mainly to see the eyebrows of the cover model, whether they were as black and pointy in both cover photos.

April issue

Here is the same cover model, in an April pattern called Park Life

another jumper pattern, same model

The eyebrows don’t look as dark and straight in the two inner photos. Maybe they were enhanced for the cover photos, what do you think? I always had very black eyebrows and as a child, wanted to crawl under the table when people (especially boys) asked if I was wearing “eye makeup.”

Silk Garden sock

Here’s a pic of what I’ve been up to, one half of the pair of April alternative socks on ravelry’s Sock-it-to-me 2013 club.

another view of the sock

I was going to go ahead and start of the May sock, since there’s only 2 days left in May, but I know if I don’t make the mate for this one, will I ever?

Lois and Ethel hatching a feather-and-fan plot

Lois has a feather-and-fan project in mind, and is trying to get the math straight for it. You know how a stitch pattern will say something like “12 stitches, plus…” or “a multiple of…”

What’s your next project?

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Knitting Patriotic and other projects

After a short vacay, Wednesday Night Knitting resumed last night and we knit ourselves back in our groooves. Yeah!

Ethel brought her fancy new Nikon camera –maybe she will also take up blogging? Or perhaps photography as an art form in itself? The possibilities are endless.

She also brought the finished bag.

Ethel and Entrelac knit bag

How gorgeous it turned out, felted Noro with its I-cord strap and silky fabric lining!

She showed us her new afghan from knitted cotton squares.

Ethel’s afghan WIP

Now is the perfect time to get some patriotic crafting plans underway, with Independence Day soon. And Flag Day even sooner. Flag Day always slips by unheralded, then I redouble my efforts so as to have something red, white, and blue for July 4 (in my mind, anyway–in reality, I’m a patriotic holiday deadbeat slacker; I really just like to hang around like a beached whale or go to someone else’s party).

Ethel said knitting the individual squares, with double-pointed-needles, is already getting to be a drag…but she does get through one right quick! And she is experimenting with the self-striping sugar and cream, to see if the stripe pattern will work out ok, rather than change colors from separate balls to have complete control over where the stripes in each square begin and end.

a granny square, not exactly; it’s knit

As you can see from the pic, this project has Vanna White’s name all over it. We’ve been watching her show on TV a lot lately –it’s College Week on Wheel of Fortune—and DH is really impressed at how Vanna White turns over those letters so purposefully when the students guess a correct letter. As an engineer, he knows that modern technology can provide for the letters to just turn themselves over, but not as magnificently as Vanna White can get the job done. Vanna White, Knitter, Designer, Television Star, Diva!

Lois worked on more beautiful hats.

Lois with blue velvet ribbon-trimmed hat

Satin ribbon-trimmed hat

Lois has been knitting in another club at the Atrium, making lots of hats for people who’ve been going through chemotherapy.

bebe sweater in progress

I thought I was ready to start assembling the parts to the baby sweater for #18 grandchild, but alas, I discovered I’d knitted two left fronts. Grrr. Am I ever not going to be a knitting idiot? Never mind, a few rip-its and re-do’s and it was fixed. I bought this as a kit; it included buttons, yarn and a pattern for a wrap sweater in 3 baby sizes; I think it was this Cotton Kisses; a very soft, slubby Plymouth yarn with a silky strand.

Woke up this morning and the girl cats were at each other’s throats.

Pauly

Stella

They were hissing, biting each other in the neck, wind-milling, and whipping around the house growling like a train whistle.

DH: “Stella, shame on you! That’s your sister Pauly. Even if she is evil and a harlot…”

To get the full effect, go to Itunes and listen to Sharrie Williams singing “Jealousy, it is a bad disease…”

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Hot buttered knitting

Attendance was slim at Wednesday Night Knitting:  Ethel and myself. We did have low-stress fun talking and comparing projects, however.

First, she presented me with a beautiful portrait of my cat. So thrilled! I told Grayzie he can go ahead and kick the bucket, now that he’s been immortalized on paper! [just kidding, of course!]

portrait of Grayzie, by Ethel

700 feet (yards?) of jewel-toned yarn for a fall project

Then she showed her recent fiber acquisitions, the Aztec fall colors blend and the purple Key West Karibbean Kotton she got from Yarnworks, our local fiber haven.

drapey cotton yarn

And she brought out some other projects she’s been working on.

panels for a future felted purse from Noro Kureyon

entrelac panel

scarf from Plymouth Flower yarn

I finished my diagonal scarf in the citrus-colored Flower , and then made one for a doll [because the cats wouldn’t have it].

She thinks she's being punished

Doll and scarf from Flower yarn

The 100% nylon Flower yarn sure snagged on my dry cuticles as I worked with it. I decided to slather on some unrefined shea butter I picked up at the Quilt Expo, brand name Karique. When I came across a booth that displayed two huge dishes piled high with mounds of unrefined shea butter, I had to ask, “why are you selling this at a quilt show?” They told me that according to the many marvelous properties of raw shea butter (sounds like vegetarian snake oil, eh?), you can load up your hands and sew without worrying that it will stain or soak into your fabric. And then they proved it by inviting me to apply a generous blob and then wipe my hands on a clean white cloth. Gaw-lee, it was true, the thick paste, so emollient on my hands, didn’t transfer to the fabric at all. I suppose I don’t mind if my hands are anointed with vegetable fat while I work as long as I’m not greasing up the project. Rather exotic, I must say!

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Getting the knitting mojo back

Wednesday Night Knitting: nothing new for me! Ethel worked on a new stitch given to her by a clerk at Yarnworks, when she went in there to buy some Noro.

Earth tone Noro

Check out the beautiful lacy stitch scarf she is making from the Noro Silk Garden yarn.

new stitch

Lois cast on to the magic loop.

Lois and magic loop

She had a solid purple skein and a variegated purple, gray and pink skein of bamboo, nylon and wool blend sock yarn to work on several things at the same time.

I spent last weekend at the Original Sewing and Quilting Expo in Lakeland, and I’m happy to report that there were some booths that featured yarn this year. Vogue Fabrics had a bin full of wool and silk roving at reasonable prices.
Sew & Quilt Shop in Bunnell had a booth that featured fabric, notions, long-arm quilting, and lots of ruffle yarn! Lots of people stopped in to be shown how to knit a Make & Take ruffle scarf! And Some Art Fabric, a Georgia store, had a big rack of “repurposed” yarn for sale, although I couldn’t find any yarn on their web site. I walked past a booth where people were felting wool roving onto silk scarves for Make & Take projects.

Wool roving and silk scarf kit

Take note, Sewing and Quilting Expo’s, knitters are fitting right into the fabric and fiber mix!

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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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Veni, Vidi, Knitty

Wednesday Night Knitting group did not meet due to complications of SUMMER!
I’m wondering like mad what everyone else in the group has been doing this week, but I finished the hat in Noro Silk Garden and here is Noele to model it!

The pattern is from One Skein Wonders but I think I didn’t follow it well because it doesn’t look anything like the picture in the book. And I haven’t decided whether I want to add the suggested single crochet edging and the French knots on the crown.

Noro Silk Garden is a luscious fiber to work with, and vibrant! Found it at Yarnworks.

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