Friday, September 29, 2006

Thelma and Louise with knitting needles

The Husband thinks I need an intervention before I cross over to the wrong side of the law!


For the love of Pete, please stop, before you give us law-abiding compulsive knitters a bad name!

Thursday, September 21, 2006

It's no Rhinebeck

This past weekend I and the kidlets(had to take them, the husband was working, no babysitter) attended A Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs, Ohio(charming little town). I had an o.k. time, it would have been better had I not had to drag the kidlets along. They were relatively well behaved, until the tractor ride melt-down by Thing Two.

There were sheep shearing demos...

sheepshear1

sheepshear2

There was also a sheep herding dog demo(sorry I didn't get pics) that the kidlets enjoyed. The dogs 'herded' ducks into a wading pool, through a tunnel and over a bridge.

There were also a few alpacas and angora bunnies. And this cute little Shetland sheep.
shetlandsheep
I liked that many of the vendors in attendance were 'locals'. They all had beautiful yarn, but there was a greater preponderance of roving. Too bad I don't know how to spin. The alpaca fleece from Cupola Alpaca Farm was heavenly. They are having an open house this weekend for anyone interested in starting their own alpaca herd. I'd love to start one, but I'm not sure Brunnhilde would be able to behave herself.

Look what she did to my $15 10.5 Addis.
brunnaddi

addi


Amazing that she managed to knaw them in half with out damaging the sweater or dropping a stitch. Stupid mutt. Well, in her defense, I did leave my knitting in her chair.
machoodie
I was using the Addis on the daughter's hoodie. Luckily I had come to the part where you divide for the armholes and work back and forth so I was able to switch to straights. This is the sweater that I had finished the front and back and decided it was going to be too big. I also decided that I'd rather do it in the round, so I plugged her measurements and the gauge into the Sweater Wizard, and Bob's your uncle, I got a new pattern. No pesky math. I love Sweater Wizard. It's the older version, but I got it on ebay for way less than it would have cost if it were the current version.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Think Pink

The gang at Soulful Knitting Ministries have started a pink ribbon challenge for knitters and crocheters. They are asking for handknit or crochet pink scarves to be donated to the American Cancer Society to let victims of breast cancer that the prayers and good wishes of all the women that made scarves are with them.

You can find more information here.

This is a great opportunity to use up that "leftover" pink yarn in your stash. You know the ones I'm talking about. It's leftover from the sweater that you made your daughter years ago that you can't bring yourself to get rid of because it's YARN dadgummit!

I will have to go buy some yarn, although I do have some pink yarn that I just found at my Dad's house from a project I started 20 some odd years ago that I forgot about(see previous post). I don't think it will make a good scarf for someone going through chemo. I know when my Mom went through chemo her skin was a bit more sensitive.

This is a disease that will eventually touch all of us in some way. I pray that it doesn't, but someone you know will have a fight with breast cancer. Both of my grandmothers, an aunt, and my mother had/have breast cancer. Maybe, I've bettered your odds of not having to deal with this insidious desease. Obviously, this is something I feel strongly about.

I urge you to spend a weekend making up a scarf to let these brave, fantastic, beautiful women know that there are total strangers wishing them all the best, and giving them a hug via scarf.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Stuff


O.k., go ahead, admit it. Those of you that have moved out of your parent's house still have stuff there. I'll admit it, I've been out for almost 13 years and I still have stuff there. But, it's not always a bad thing.

We are in the process of cleaning out my grandparent's house, and oh my Lawd, honey, did they have a lot of stuff! The piece of property that my grandparents lived on has been in the family for several generations, and no one threw anything away! You never know when someone might need that broken tea cup. One a positive note, there are beautiful, old photographs and even lithographs of family ancestors, along with their furniture, quilts, and Bibles dating back to the latter 19th century.

But as this is a big job, and I'm going to have to do it all again sometime in the future(very long in to the future, I hope) at my parent's house, I decided to get a jump on it now and start getting my stuff out of my old room that I didn't deem worthy enough to go with me when I moved out.

So I was digging through my old closet and found a red plastic bag buried at the bottom from a LYS! With great excitement I ripped it open and found this.
pinkchloe
I was like Christmas in, er, September! I had been working on a cropped, short sleeve sweater, and I had the back nearly complete. Plus, I found the missing no.5 needle! I can't believe that I had forgotten about this.

I've done it! My stash(stuff) has finally gotten so large that it's possible to forget about some of it only to rediscover it years(years, people) later. Insert evil laughter here.