Tasty!

Orange sherbert?

Cantaloupe smoothie?

Conan O'Brien's hair?

I still can't find quite the right description of this cute little batt that I made from materials from the MKG picnic last Sunday.   Angela Radzyuk from All for Love of Yarn brought 50 bags of carded fleece and her drum carder and we all dove in and made up little batts from them. I ended up making mine at home because I was helping run the other drum carders but I didn't see a bad combination the whole day. Mine started out as a plain orange roving which I mixed with golden silk and some brown/green angelica. Beautiful! Now, I just need to spin it up . . .

Hello!

On the way home this morning, I ran across this fellow.

My own fence was yarn bombed! With a cute little knitted lion!

I've left it in place for the time being.

My own knitting is getting larger and larger. The Hans sweater is too big carry around any more so I've taken to spreading out over the living room sofa and watching old episodes of Enterprise with Youngest Child. 

I'm working on the first series of yoke designs right now. 

Up close, the little rows of stitch markers are keeping track of all the decreases on the sleeves .

I'm not at all happy knitting sleeves one at a time any one. I've been spoiled by two-at-a-time sock knitting!

Tomorrow, I'll be spending the afternoon discussing knitting and eating goodies at the Minnesota Knitters' Guild's Spring Tea. If you're in town, come join us!

Sunday, Feb.26 at 1-4 p.m. at the Minnesota Textile Center.

Our featured speaker. Angela Radzyuk from All for Love of Yarn will be demonstrating how she blends colors and fibers. This to be a hands on kind of deal - we will have drum carders and fleece samples on hand and with five drum carders, there won’t be long lines … more time for eating and knitting!

One down, four* to go

I finished up Oldest Daughter's Drapey Tam (really called the Simon Tam) - the Berroco Ultra Alpaca and the Rowan Kidsilk Haze made for a wonderfully soft hat.

The ribbing is pretty but - a little odd. You build in new ribs as you increase the stitches (to make the tam shape) but then you quickly begin removing those stitches as you decrease. So there are some wedge shaped sections that I didn't expect.

Unfortunately, I didn't have anyone to try on the hat for me - Youngest Daughter being off at college and all.

So I got Youngest Child out of bed (he wasn't sleeping - just reading!) and bribed him with a glass of water to model for me.

It still didn't work for me. So, back to the drawing board.

My version of Jack McBrayer wearing a tam.

See the amazing resemblance?

Photo http://www.buddytv.com

And finally, making its first appearance since 2010, I actually cut off the extra weft from my Cotton Dish Towel and sewed up the edges to make it actually usable. This has been hanging around my sewing room for ages.

I do not like weaving with cotton - it sucked the moisture out of my hands, even just handling the woven material. Good for a towel, I suppose.

I had a hard time getting the cut yarn tails to stay woven in, though. My favorite part? The reversible pattern.

AND never one to forget the Saturday Seven -

Four sweaters, a wool skirt, a terrible throw pillow and a brain quest set. I really, really tried to find a use for these but nothing worked out. The pillow was no good for sleeping with, the skirt was un-alterable, the sweaters either didn't fit or were quite old and Youngest Child - no longer in second grade. Off it all goes to SJTE's Huge Sale.

* The other four? This is the year of finishing up my darn UFOs - the Turn of the Glass cardigan, the Lopi Challenge Sweater, the Sailor's Delight Socks and the must-finish-before-I-die River Grass Gansey.

So, so true.

This is why I can't even read the emails from Webs, let alone visit the store.

The life we lead

So, last Sunday, we had a babysitter. So we went to the movies. You know what was on last Sunday, right? That big football extravaganza?

Well, we were the only people in our movie theatre.

So I didn't feel the least bit odd putting on my knitting light and really, really knitting at the movies! I did turn out the light once I started getting into the plot of the movie. The knitting? My Sailor's Delight socks.

P.S. The movie was "Haywire" - a fantastic Steven Soderbergh film. This movie, however, was shot by Mr. Daisy on his phone.

Mid week clean-out!

Fern lace mohair shrug

My, oh, my!

I finished this beauty late on Tuesday - just in time to be a January entry into Knittymama's Monthly Apparel group. Yes, I know she is aiming at sewing an item a month but I had to wade through my craft room first to make that happen.

And I worked toward that goal today - by cleaning out my yarn closet. An airing of the stash, almost!

The files in the back remain from when my sewing/guest room was my husband's home office. Someday, he promises that he will remove them. The tubs, bags and rolls of batting are mine. This made it all look much more reasonable!

Until you look more closely and see that I have anywhere from 3 - 12 skeins of any yarn. Sigh. Time to power through all this stash. I did weed out some yarn to take to the Minnesota Knitters' Guild's Great Guild Getaway in March.  There has been a very fun auction/yarn exchange the past few years at this retreat and I'm sure my extra yarn could brighten up someone else's day.

Now, on to finishing up that Turn of the Glass!