Knittinggarden

We have some dwarf fruit trees in our yard and they usually have a moderate amount of fruit on them.  The cherry tree - birds eat them all; the pear tree - a few small pears that don't get ripe; the apple tree - if I don't put little socks on the apples they usually have apple maggots; the yellow plums - there's usually quite a few of those but they're small and don't get much attention; the little old Italian Prune tree - I love these and pick and eat as many as I can.  This year?  Lots of everything.  I've brought in some pears to try to ripen them up and picked some apples to see what shape they're in.  The Italian prunes aren't quite ripe, but it looks like I'll get some. The yellow plums are amazing.  There are so many plums on this little tree I don't know how it stands up.  I've been picking them and giving them away for a couple of weeks and today it still looked like no one had picked any.  So I found a local food bank to give a bu...

The Evergreen State Fair started yesterday here in Washington.  For the past few years (2 or 3?) I have entered knitting and spinning into the needle arts competition.  I love to go and look at everyone's work and it's cool to win ribbons, too.  Even though it's a point system like school (90% is blue ribbon, 80% is red, etc., so there might be a bunch of blue ribbons in your category) it's still very fun to see your work adorned with ribbons.  However, it's best to see your work adorned with "special" ribbons - the big, colorful rosettes - and I only have one of them, for "presentation".  And I don't know what that really means. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I drove out to the fairgrounds to turn in my entries.  I entered a Pi shawl made from Wollmeise lace and my Earth and Sky shawl, also made from Wollmeise, into the knitting category.  My plan always is to enter my sock yarn blanket and really wow them (big rosette, yeah!) but somehow ...

I know I've been MIA these last two months. and I'll have a lot to catch up on at some point.  Aside from the Tour de Fleece, which I participated in and spun every day during, my attention has been taken up with the wedding of the Princess.  Yes, my little girl was married last Sunday, July 29th.  It was a spectacular event down to the smallest detail and was amazingly beautiful and fun.  My introverted personality was tested as I had a houseful of people for ten days, hosted a rehearsal dinner for 40 or so people, and then hosted the wedding.  I was lucky enough to have great help and was able to enjoy myself all the way through to the "after party" planned by one of the bridesmaids that continued after the wedding at our house into the wee hours with many young people and a big bottle of tequila.  Who says knitters don't know how to have fun? Professional photos aren't available yet but a few of the kids have provided iPhone photos.  You can get a...

I've been working on spinning a braid of Juliespins Rambouillet for the last week or so and am really enjoying it.  In fact, I thought it was merino since it's so soft and lovely and drafts so beautifully.  I've never spun "Rambo" before but now will probably do so again.  The colorway is Stormy and the date on the tag is 6/09, so I've had it for awhile. As I was spinning along, I realized that all the projects I'm currently working on are being knit from my handspun.  I guess I've come a long way from a time when I decided I'd never be a spinner...how things change!  I thought it might be fun to document these three projects.  (Also, I'm still in the desert, where it's been about 114 degrees F the last couple of days, so I can't think of anything better to do than sit inside and knit, photograph knitting, and write about it.  When I do actually venture out to the pool and sit in the sun (or more likely, shade) I work on the s...

I am back in the desert, where it's unseasonably warm this year.  Last year I stayed home during May and it was cold and rainy in Seattle and very nice here.  So this year I decided to reverse that.  Of course it's sunny and lovely in Seattle and in the 100s here this time.  It's supposed to be down to 91 in a few days and I'm actually looking forward to that as a nice cool day! I arrived here on May 5th and got right back into my routine of going to the gym and sitting by the pool.  Yes, it's a tough life but someone's got to do it!  I finished my Professoressa Cardigan right before I came down and luckily didn't run out of yarn, so avoided cannibalizing my MIL's scarf that I retrieved from her just in case.  She was so nice about giving it back that I think I'll knit her a nice lacy scarf out of some Wollmeise as a reward.  I am happy with the way the sweater came out, but I won't be wearing it any time soon since it's fairly heavy even t...

Here we are, halfway through April and I've been neglecting my blog.  I got back to Seattle at the end of March and was busy with family for about a week.  The kids and DH came home for Passover and we had a lovely gathering.  Everyone left on Easter Sunday and it seems as if I've been trying to catch up ever since. On the crafting front, I spun a fun project on my new spinning wheel.  I guess I never reported on the Madrona Fiber Arts festival here, but I went to it in the middle of February and had a great time as usual.  I bought a little fiber and some yarn as a gift, but my big purchase was this:   I had been pretty sure that I wanted one of these little gems and when I went and saw them in person, I was sure.  It's a HansenCrafts miniSpinner and they're made right here in Washington.  I met Kevin Hansen, the developer and craftsman, and he told me just why I needed one of these babies.  I agreed with him and here we are.  ...

My March in the desert is going well; beautiful weather and lots of knitting time.  I still haven't gotten over the feeling that I have to be outside in the sunshine all the time.  Unlike at home in Seattle, there will probably be more sunshine tomorrow if I miss a bit of it today!  In fact, here my goal is to avoid exposing my pale skin to too much sun.  Sunscreen, sunscreen! My knitting is coming along nicely.  I finished the shawl that I wanted to wear to the wedding and it worked out very nicely.  It came out big but it wraps around nicely and it's very pretty.  The color is hard to capture (even though I took the photography class and learned a lot, one of the things I learned is that my camera won't do all the things that I might want it to. New camera?  Someday...)  Anyway, the deep purple of this shawl is gorgeous and I wish i could get a true representation of it. I also made another Herbivore shawl/scarf out of Handmaiden C...

I've been working on this blanket since the middle of September.  Now, that's not nearly as long as it took me to finish the Neverending Blanket , and at the end of that tale, I mentioned that I needed to learn to crochet.  I figured that crochet was supposed to be faster than knitting, so that was the way to go. afghans for Afghans  announced a new campaign and they needed wool clothing and blankets for children.  Aha, I thought!  I recently learned to crochet, I have bucketloads of worsted weight wool, and I'll make a blanket.  No, I'll make two! Needless to say, crochet (for me) was indeed faster, but not as much as I thought it would be.  I started a log cabin crocheted blanket at home and a striped single crochet blanket in the desert.  I learned that they required a lot more yarn than I was expecting and indeed took longer than I thought.  Maybe I'm just slow at crochet or maybe I was being unrealistic in my expectations (me?) ...

I was shown this disturbing video by my daughter.  It was sent to her by the (responsible) house and dog-sitter we had staying at our home during my absence.  I decided maybe I was paying her too much. Thank heavens Buddy was okay when I got home to check on him.  It was smart of him to duck and cover at the last minute, wasn't it? See?  He's fine! Disclaimer:  No animals were actually hurt during the filming of this video.

There's a group on Ravelry  called Sock Knitters Anonymous and they have challenges each month.  Every so often they have a mystery sock and I've knitted them several times.  You get one clue a week, usually three or four total, and at the end of the time, you have socks.  I like to knit the mystery socks two at a time so there's more chance they'll be finished. The ones for January were designed by Carrie Sullivan (irishgirlieknits) and had a flower pattern. The first clue was the cuff: The second clue was the leg: The third clue went over the heel and down the foot: The fourth clue finished them: This is the first time I've made socks that had a lace pattern down the heel flap, so it was interesting. I needed some semi-solid sock yarn, so I found a pretty ball in my stash  that was dyed and given to me a few years ago by my kind twin, Cathy.  Thanks again!  The yarn, which is Knitpicks Gloss, has a lot of subtle variat...

The Princess turns 21 today.  She lives in Vegas, so I'm sure it wasn't hard to find something to do to celebrate!  The first legal trip into the casino happened after midnight last night.   I must sound like a broken record, but I can't believe my baby is all grown up. I met this tiny girl with all the black hair on a Monday morning in late January, 1991.  She grew into a beautiful little lady with huge brown eyes and gorgeous dark curls.  She was bright, funny, and opinionated from day one.  Our Mother-Daughter trips mostly involved shopping, but here's an adventure that I'll always remember.  The coming year will bring college graduation and possibly marriage.  We look forward to welcoming Prince Charming into the family and seeing what the next chapter will bring. We wish you health, happiness, and love in the coming days, months, and years.  You are our Princess and we love you immensely. ...

It doesn't take much to impress me, but look at the size of the lemon I picked off one of the trees in our complex today.  It's as big as my hand! The lemons and grapefruits are ripe and delicious, but the oranges are still sour.  I have trouble getting a good orange here; either they're dried out from last year, or not ripe yet.  My quest for the perfect orange from a tree continues... In other news, I finished spinning a pretty skein of yarn.  I had a batt from Butterfly Girl Designs that was merino, bamboo, and firestar that had been languishing in my fiber stash for quite awhile.  I brought some of my stash and a spinning wheel down here to the desert (can't live in a place without a selection of yarn and fiber, ya know) and started spinning this pretty batt the last time I was here.  It was only 3.2 ounces, so I wasn't sure how much yardage I'd get.  I didn't split it before starting, so I decided to just spin the whole thing and see...