Busy, Busy, Busy

Sorry, that it has been such a long time since there was a blog post.  Tom and I are helping take care of several of our grandkids. This should come to an end soon. We have also traveled to Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan in the last two months. I’ll try to post pictures soon.

We are also having a detached garage built on our property. The contractor is letting (?!) us do some of the work. We finished shingling the roof on Saturday. It only took us 7 days! I’ll try to post some pictures of that too!

Until next time . . . . 

Molasses Sweater

Just when I think I am making progress on my Locke Street Cardigan by Glenna C in Baby Alpaca DK, I take out the measuring tape and measure. Only 5 inches. Yikes!!

Each row is taking 20 minutes to knit because of all the cabling and the DK yarn knitted on size US 5 needles. I have been using Addi Lace Clicks. They are so slippery that the stitches keep falling off the needles. Also the join is so rough, that the stitches are getting hung up on it. Not the greatest knitting experience. I have made a vow to myself to knit two rows a day, because I really want to finish this sweater. It is so pretty. But . . .

The sweater is creeping. Soooooo..... While visiting our son and his family in Pennsylvania, I dragged Tom to the Knitter’s Edge in Bethlehem. What a knitting nirvana!  So many yarns, so many books, so many needles, great displays, and lovely, friendly, helpful people working at the store. I could have stayed all day.  I bought new bamboo needles for the Locke Street Cardigan. We’ll see if these work better and . . .

. . . . . I bought a sweater’s quantity of worsted weight cotton yarn in a warm beige to make a summer pullover. I searched Ravelry and found a fun, quick, neck down beach sweater. In five hours, I am to the sleeve separation.  Yippeee!

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah  . . . . . I knit two rows of the Locke St also.

Until next time . . . . .

A Little Enabling

Watching the Shearing

Sheared Sheep

Spinning Demonstration

Rabbit Farm from Tom's Parent's Hometown, Swedesboro, NJ

Great Salesman

Weaving Demonstration

Sweater's Worth of Natural Alpaca

Jeweltone Sportsweight Alpaca

Natural Alpaca Fingering

Warm Alpaca Socks

A finished object!

Nerwin Baby Sweater Set

 Until next time . . . .

Carolina Fiber Festival

We went on an adventure yesterday. We packed snacks and a lunch into the car and headed four hours north to the Carolina Fiber Festival. Since my husband, Tom, is not a fiber fan, I knew he was going along just to spend time with me. What a sweetheart!

We arrived about 11 am. There were three medium size buildings and several tents outside with vendors and demonstrations. There were animal pens with several different types of sheep. No alpaca this time. 

We enjoyed the sheep herding by border collies and the sheep shearing. So much that I forgot to take pictures of it.

We left the fairgrounds and went back to the car to eat lunch.  Several people commented as they went to their cars that they wish they had thought of bringing a lunch. Since I have to eat gluten free and since we prefer to eat low carb, there was not much we could eat at the festival. It had been years since we had had a picnic. The weather, the food and company were all great. We decided that we should do this more often.

I’ll post pictures soon of our purchases and some of the sights. 

Until next time . . . . 

Yellow Haze

When you look out your windows this time of year, everything is surrounded by a yellow haze. Living in the south, we have a lot of pine trees, especially Loblolly Pines. During March and April of each year, we get bombarded by pine pollen. It gets in your eyes and your nose and your mouth. On your clothes ... on your cars ... on everything!

Unfortunately, even our brains seem to be in a yellow haze. It becomes difficult to knit complicated patterns. It becomes hard to concentrate on anything. Or so it seems. Maybe the real problem is the yellow haze makes it hard to read a chart. Maybe it has warmed up enough that you don’t want to stay inside, but the air is too thick to go outside. A dilemma.

Until next time . . . . 

Inch by Inch

The last couple weeks have seen little knitting and even less weaving. I am dealing with kidney stones as a result of a drug side effect. It has been quite painful. The only position that is even remotely comfortable is standing and/or walking. Hard to sleep that way.  I think the sinus infection would have been easier to live with.

I did finish the second sleeve of the Locke Street Cardigan by Glenna C. The pattern is actually pretty easy, but it is cabled on size US 5 (3.75mm) needles. So it is knitting up slowly. I am knitting the sweater out of Baby Alpaca DK by Plymouth Yarns in a beautiful dark green.

Of course, it would have been faster if I actually knit on it in a consistent manner. I started the sweater on March 13, 2012, with both sleeves on one needle. I remembered very quickly why I hate knitting projects two at a time. Tangled yarn and interminably slow!

On February 16 of this year, I pulled the project out of hibernation. The first sleeve was finished in about 4 days. The second sleeve was finished on March 13, 2013. Can you believe it? A year to knit two sleeves! Yikes!

I have cast on the body of the sweater. Instead of knitting the back and two fronts separately, I have cast on all 225 stitches and have 1-3/4 inches of the 1 x 1 ribbing completed. Still have another half inch to go. Then I will pull out every stitch marker I own and begin the cables. Haven’t worked on it in 4 days because of the pain. Hope to get back to it soon. Going to doctor tomorrow morning.

I tried to convince myself to speed up the knitting by making the back plain stockinette, but it didn’t work. The arguing with myself wasn’t pretty. So, I am going to continue as the pattern is written. It is such a beautiful sweater that I don’t think I would be happy with a plain back. Now after I finish the hundred-million cables and crossed stitches, we will see. Maybe my happiness could have been bought with a few thousand stockinette stitches. Hmmmmm.

Until next time. . . . . .

A New Toy

Christmas brought a new toy to our home. Under the tree was a wonderful surprise - A Baby Wolfe - a floor loom that is!  A loom already lives in our home. About a year ago, I received a Schacht 10 inch Cricket Loom, sometimes called a knitter’s loom. I have had fun with it making scarves and spa cloths. It’s great for small projects and for traveling. 

Tartan Scarf on Cricket Loom

My husband, Tom, noticed how much fun I was having with it, when I wasn’t knitting or babysitting our grandchildren. He also noticed that there were times that I was quite frustrated when I wanted to do more than plain weave and it took so much hand manipulating of the yarns.

During show and tell at our local TKGA guild meeting, I showed my finished knitted projects and some of my weaving projects. I mentioned some of my frustrations. One of the members, Barb, a knitter as well as a weaver, noted that one of the other members of the guild, Jean, was looking to sell her floor loom. I contacted her and she sold us her Baby Wolfe with a few accessories.  

The new year started with me reading weaving books and watching several DVDs. I have a fairly large stash of yarn. Many of the skeins were purchased before I became a yarn snob. There is a good amount of acrylic and dishcloth cotton.  I also have a few cones of cotton yarn from my days of machine knitting. 

I opened Peggy Osterkamp’s book Weaving for Beginners  and warped the sampler on the loom with some sports weight acrylic in (horrors) pink and white. I hate pink. Why was it in my stash?  I thought this would be a great way to get rid of it. 

Boy, there is a lot to learn to use the floor loom as compared with the Cricket. For one, weaving is such a small part of the finished product and I am all about the finished product. 

While watching Marilyn Van der Hoogt’s DVD Warping Your Loom she comments that if you can learn to love winding the warp, sleying the reed, threading the heddles, tying up the treadles and tying the warp to the beams, then you will love all the parts of weaving. 

So heeding Marilyn’s advice, I put on some easy jazz music and started dressing the loom. I had my second warp on the Baby Wolfe - dishtowels using dish cotton. The are finished. I’ll post pictures soon.

Until next time . . . .