Knittinggarden

...in the middle of nowhere with a ton of unpacked boxes, but it sure is pretty.

It's that time of the year when it's only natural to think about how the past year went and how things might be different in the new year.  I am making more changes than usual and am gradually altering my thinking towards embracing the new and not feeling as if I'm being dragged kicking and screaming from my usual routine.  Even though this has been coming for awhile and is good, all change is stressful and, especially as I get older, hard to embrace. About a year and a half ago, we started designing a house that would be built on a small lake on property that has been in my family since the 1940s.  To accomplish that, I had to kick out the deadbeat renters who were there, get the design going, and get the little shacks on the property torn down.  There also were a couple of huge fir trees that unfortunately had to go.  Somewhere around last January, the site was ready and the construction commenced. I had been trying to spend several months a year in Pa...

My sock yarn blankie is done!  I started the project in October of 2008 and finished the edging in November of 2013.  Not the speediest of knitting, but it wasn't continuous, either.  I had been reading about a scrap blanket in a blog and thought that it would be fun to make one. Mine ended up 15 squares high by 16 squares wide. It started with scraps from one of the first skeins of sock yarn I bought and made into socks. It progressed in fits and starts.  My original plan was to use my own scraps from socks I had made and then take 5 gram lengths from new skeins to make the blanket.  The large squares were all to be Wollmeise.  Then I joined a group on Ravelry dedicated to this blanket pattern, which quickly became a swapping group.  You would join a swap, buy a skein of yarn, divide it into about twenty mini skeins, and send it off to a "Swap Mom".  She would repackage all the yarn that came in and send everyone back an envelope with tw...

It was a dark and stormy night..... really!   A shot rang out    sorry, getting carried away.  But it was a dark and stormy night here in the desert of southern California.  DH and I were tucked up snugly in our little condo in the heart of the small, gated community we call home here.  There was some activity in the green belt outside and we looked out.  Our neighbors were in the middle of digging a hole to plant a small lime tree.  Now there's an HOA here, with all the annoying rules.  You're not really supposed to dig up the lawn and plant stuff, but the President is the neighbor whose husband was digging the hole, she's a master gardener, and so there are liberties taken occasionally. We laughed about their little plan to add a tree to the community, and went back to what we were doing; listening to the wind howl and watching tv.  And I was, of course, knitting. A while later, I heard the sound of water gurgling.  We have a sm...

This story starts about six months ago, when I attended the Hansen miniSpinner retreat in Port Townsend, WA.  It was a wonderful experience, and I brought home some roving that I purchased at Taylored Fibers ; some beautiful CVM/Merino/Silk.  I had asked Barry about CVM because I wanted to try it.  I had bought a little bit of it previously and it was awful to spin - lumpy and kind of sticky.  Barry told me that it was probably not very good quality and he kindly searched around until he located a quantity of this nice blend.  I bought three bumps; about 21 ounces. I started spinning it soon after I got back home and after a few months, I had it finished.  I decided to 3-ply it to try to make the fabric look tweedy, and also because it was spinning fairly thin.  When I finished, I was delighted with the yarn.  The judges at the Evergreen State Fair were, too, as I received an award for Class Runner Up for one of the skeins. ...

Lately the highlight of my year is the day I go to the County Fair and see what ribbons I've won for my knitting and spinning.  Today was the day and I'm excited!  I only entered two items into the knitting division; a sweater and a shawl, and they both were awarded blue ribbons.  That's great, but everyone who meets a certain set of standards gets blue.  Now I'm after the special rosettes! My spinning hasn't ever won any rosettes, so I was thrilled to find three this year.  I made an infinity cowl from some Southern Cross Fibre Polwarth/Cashmere/Silk.  This spun beautifully and made a wonderful, soft, squishy yarn.  I used all but a tiny bit for the cowl and loved it when I had a chance to wear it last spring.  Here's the yarn and the finished cowl. And here's how it looks now.  Creative award, baby! The second item is a shawl.  I spun this yarn a couple of years ago and tried three times to make it into a shawl b...

Think of it: virtual yarn and knitting.  No stash storage problems!  Naaah, somehow it just wouldn't be the same.

I finished knitting some things!  I know that doesn't seem like a very big accomplishment, but these days my knitting time is limited, although my knitting plans are as ambitious as ever. A month or so ago I wrote about a cotton sunhat that I was trying to make for my great-niece.  I attempted to crochet it multiple times with no success.  I gave up, then looked for a knitted pattern.  This I also failed to make several times; it came out looking way too small.  Undaunted, I went to larger needles and cast on a bigger size, and at last had a hat that looked like it would fit a three year old.  I hope I was right.  I didn't have a model close by to try it on. A larger accomplishment was my cotton mitred square blanket.  I started these squares about two years ago, knitting them one at a time as I sat in the sun.  I planned to make a big blanket out of them, but was in no rush to finish.  Then, inspiration struck.  My niece...

Celebrating the accomplishments of children is an exhilarating experience.  When those accomplishments make the children happy and closer to attaining their passion in life, it's even better. Our three kids were brought together as a family when the boys were eight years old and their sister was five.  Times weren't always totally smooth, but the first day of school photo each year showed their love for each other.  This is one of the first years. Through the awkward times, the afros and the braces, they always smiled from the edge of the driveway, adding Buddy to the mix when he came along. We ran out of first days of school when the boys left for college, but still managed to get photos from time to time.  Here they are singing a favorite song from childhood at the rehearsal dinner before the Princess' wedding. They do all clean up nicely! The kids are grown now and all working.  That's what I wanted to talk about.  We a...