Tea for Two

I finally finished the sweater I'm knitting for my Mum for the holidays. Stacie's going to help me out with the (loads!) of seaming and blocking that's required. As soon as it's complete, I'll definitely post pics.

In the meantime, I'm continuing my quest to bust stash. This little tea cozy (or, is it cosy?) pattern is from the second "Stitch n' Bitch" book. It actually fits our teapot perfectly and was a good use of scraps I had in my vast yarn collection. I think, though, my cozy/cosy might look a tad sporty with these stripes.

I'm in desperate need of another yarn review with you ladies. I've been diligently knitting from stash (for the most part) this year, but still. . .SO. . . MUCH. . . YARN.

Chi-town

Hi all! I went to Chicago for a few days this week. My friend, Don, moved there a year ago and I've been meaning to visit and the time finally came. He had warned me that it was cold, but I thought living in Boston would've prepared me. It didn't! It was in the 20s, but I swear it felt about 20 degrees colder. Bitter bitter cold!

I did a lot of sight seeing (Millennium Park, architecture boat tour, all the 'hoods) and even got to go see a taping of "Oprah." It was so fun and just great to get away for a few days. Oprah was actually kind of amazing--she looked great! She enthused about Obama! Suze Orman was on the show and now I don't want to spend any money at all.

My only knitting related news from the trip is that I did go to Nina knitting boutique in Wicker Park (which, by the way, is an awesome part of town--cool shoppes, restaurants, etc.). It was a lovely boutique and early on a Saturday morning it was buzzing with excited knitters, which was fun.

You can see all my pics here.

Spoils of Rhinebeck

It really was amazing.

In addition to the great conversations with Simone and Brianna on the trip down, I was really lucky to meet and/or hang out with severely awesome peeps, including the folks from Spunky Eclectic, numerous cool Canadians, MickeyO from Hudson Valley Sheep & Wool Co., Sean and Stephen from Sean's Soapbox and Hizknits (respectively) and of course the fabulous family of Mistress njstacie, who were kind enough to let me stay and brought my considerable haul back into the Boston area.

Rhinebeck the Fair turned out to be a quite traditional fall festival (with the addition of insane-o fiberaddicts). Then Ravelry.com threw a most excellent party on Saturday night and the next day, Lesley of the Dolin clan treated us to a tour of a friend's beautiful home restoration AND some delicious squash and apple soup.

SO, while the people were the true heart of the experience, the fiber was pretty fantabulous as well. To whit:


4 oz of gorgeously dyed cormo from Foxhill Farms, in process.


Icelandic and Shetland batts from Hudson Valley.

I was instructed by my spinning guru, njstacie, to pick out 2 oz of stuff I wanted to try and go for the gold with the stuff I knew I liked. So here are some bits - Lamb and Llama on the top and Corriedale on the bottom. Ironjohn showed me how to spin the Corriedale on Stacie's spindle on Saturday night. You can see by how much is left over how great a drop-spindler I am.


Gorgeous lace-weight icelandic that Seanie gave me. SO nice of him since I very much coveted it but was trying to be controlled in my yarn purchases.

George McFly's favorite merino/angora blend from Delly's Delights Farm.

The yarn I couldn't resist. 1 cone of from Bartlett's and 2 skeins of a natural dyed spun mohair/wool blend.

A good time had by all. And I think the gods are still with me, as I went to the Goodwill in Davis Square recently and got all these great books for less that $10!



I'm praying the luck holds through Tuesday!

A Tale of Two Shawls

A co-worker of mine had surgery last week and I wanted to knit something comforting. The Simple Yet Effective shawl was on my Rav queue for a while.

So, I picked up some Noro Silk Garden Light. When I picked it up I tried to push through to see all the colors. I know that Noro always has a few surprises, but boy was I surprised when these skeins had this bright pink and acid green/yellow colors. I kept knitting because I know all the colors are intentional and critical in the Noro yarns. I kept knitting; I love the pattern. After I finished I realized that I didn't like the pink and acid green colors. . . the more I looked at it, the more I hated it. Like, really hated it.

I ended up turning right around and re-knitting this pattern in Hempwol in this great tweedy green. I'd been wanting to use this yarn for a while and this seemed like the perfect chance. I just knew it would turn out to be more satisfying. No surprises with the Hempwol, but I'm so much happier with this shawl.

The pattern is great because it's simple and sort of hypnotic. Good to knit while watching TV. If anyone wants a new wave shawl, let me know!

Rhinebeck - NY Sheep & Wool (or, Wind it up!)

So, last weekend Briana, Alayne and I drove out to the lovely Hudson Valley to take in the NY Sheep & Wool festival in Rhinebeck. We met up with Stacie, too. So many sheep, rabbits, goats! I wasn't really sure what to expect in the event, but it really was like a cross between a 4H show and a craft/yarn/wool fair. We arrived just in time for the Ravelry meet up, but I know I didn't really meet too many people.

There was really so much to take in. We took a few spins through the several of the buildings. It was incredibly overwhelming. I'm actually glad that I don't spin because then I would have had even more to take in. I've been so good this year with not buying any yarn. (full disclosure: OK, so I did break down a couple times this year. . .during a visit to Purl Soho and at the Woolcott sale, but honestly that's a huge improvement over my yarn intake of previous years!). I'll have to photograph my newly acquired stash. . . as soon as I borrow Stacie's ballwinder and wind up all the yarn! I got some gorgeous charcoal grey alpaca for the apple-picking capelet which will be my next big project. I've also decided to start taking on some colorwork mittens. These are totally inspiring.

Stacie correctly predicted that I would fall in love with all the bunnies at the show (how did I not take any photos of them?), but Briana made a little friend, too. He was so in love!

We saw lots of FO showing off, which was actually fun. Definitely the pattern of the day was the February Lady Sweater. That one is, of course, on my gigantic Ravelry queue!

Briana and I had an exciting (well, exciting to us anyway) celebrity sighting: Jim Jarmusch. What was he doing there?!?

Finished!

There's no good reason at all why this project took so long--I'm embarrassed to say it's been over 3 years since I began this project!--but finally FINALLY this baby sweater is complete! Knitting knit, seams sewn, and ends woven in. Whew!

This is a baby sweater from Debbie Bliss's Baby Knits for Beginners. The pattern actually calls for two pockets on the front, but 1) I can't be bothered to knit more for this sweater and 2) pockets? Seriously? What is a baby going to put into these pockets? Nothing useful--that's what I think.

It's been so long since I started this sweater that I cannot even remember who I knit it for in the first place. Luckily, there's been a million babies cropping up, so no problem finding a recipient.

I have to thank Stacie profusely for helping me go through my stash and UFOs way back in January. This was among them and even though it's August, I'm just so pleased to have completed it. Also, Stacie/Dr. Knitting actually sewed many of my seams. Boy oh boy do I hate sewing seams.

TNNANANANA

Whew.

TNNA is a LOT of stuff to take in, and they didn't let us take any pictures on the floor. BUT so many fabulous things we bought. Full of inspiration, I came right home and cleaned out my stash in preparation.

And people were really cool. I got to rub elbows with the Ravelry folks Jess and Casey, Franklin of Panopticon, Teva Durham, Stephanie the Yarn Harlot, Erin of Imperial Stock Ranch, Lily Chin, Anya Safir (daughter of Jade Sapphire and a supa cool Brooklynite) and many many other lovely people - including Mr. Snub Nose at the front desk of our hotel, who kindly explained the lack of drugstores downtown.

Some small snapshots of last weekend:
Proof that there are Starbucks everywhere, even Ohio. Bicycles are very popular in Columbus. YAY Columbus!

Here is Sean at an outdoor cafe. See that map? Those are all booths! Much iced coffee and tea was consumed while trying to figure out what to focus on.

If anyone is in Columbus, I highly highly recommend hitting up the Burgundy Room for dinner. Sean and I did two different "flights" - here is mine. It started with an Apple-Celery salad, then Portabello mushroom ravioli, then an Almond Beet puree that tasted a lot like a Hillel sandwich with the water crackers provided. Plus accompanying wines. So delicious, we had no room for dessert. Which was too bad because apparently Jeni's ice cream is world famous.

It was entirely overwhelming, but also completely wonderful to see so many fiber-lovers all gathered together from so many different places and paradigms all so happy to see each other and the merch. Oh, and did I mention Teva Durham had heard of this blog? Hey now!