Fleece Festival and more

Woodstock...

getting ready for a little weekend away from home,

to spend some time visiting our son,

to do a little shopping at the Fleece Festival happening in Woodstock, Ontario.

 

The hours of driving are left to hubby while I'll happily knit beside him.

 

Car knitting is definitely one of my favorite things to do.

I'll bring projects that don't require too much concentration, so that I can take in the scenery and chat away with hubby. (More on this at the end of this post.)

Speaking of scenery, I was blown away by the beautiful sunrise earlier this week.

 

 The Muskoka chairs are still out on the deck so I bundled up and enjoyed the sunrise with coffee in hand.

And yesterday, sun and rain with a bit of freezing rain thrown in gave a bright rainbow against the dark clouds.
Even at my age, rainbows are still magical.

Still knitting away on my beaded shawl. It's slow going but progress is being made. I only knit one hour or so at a time on the shawl because it demands quite a bit of concentration.
I now have 15 of the pattern repeats done with only 8 more to go. Then I'll pick up close to 300 stitches to knit the top part.

 

Christmas craft show season is coming soon. I've only signed up for one show this year. I've been adding some handspun hand dyed bulky merino yarns accessories to the bins of stuff I'll bring.

This hat is a quick knit and fits great.

Big fat stitches are a nice change to the beaded lace weight knitting.

This hat with earflaps and tassels is made in hand dyed, handspun merino/silk yarn.

I'll be knitting more of these in the car this weekend along with the cowl I've hinted at a few weeks ago.

What is your knitting all about this week? 

A few FOs and some spinning

I've been busy with all sorts of things. It's starting to wind down a bit...phew!
Have you noticed that our evenings are getting shorter? A sure sign of the end of summer.
So I've been doing most of my knitting and spinning in the evenings.

This first knit has been finished for a while and I've had the chance to wear it often.
What do you get when you mix

garter stitch

with stripes

and lace?

This shawl is a winning recipe. It has the right amount of casual feel and enough lace to make it feel dressy.

(blocking on a double bed...it's big!!)

 

Pattern is Cameo. I like the size. Lots of comfort there. I like to carry a shawl with me when we go to restaurants or other places where they keep the air conditioners on frigid!

 

 The colourways are Blue Jeans and Limette. Both my hand dyed yarns.

 

 I like that it's asymmetrical. Larger on one side, where the lace edge is.

 

 A crescent shape shawl called Unleaving in 100% home grown, home dyed alpaca!

 

 This pattern also has lots of garter stitch with a lace edge.

 

Can you see that alpaca halo? mmm

Took me only a week to knit it. You only need to memorize the 18 stitches for the lace edge, the rest is garter stitch.

 

After several weeks of no spinning, I'm so happy to be back at it.

It's been one year since I brought my spinning wheel home. If I was the kind of person to have regrets in life...I would wish that I had started spinning many many years ago!

What a great creative outlet.

These are the yarns spun this week.

All three are Bulky yarn, navajo plied (3 plies).

I love spinning this weight.

 

 

You've no doubt noticed that the purple/pink yarn in the back is a huge ball! It's actually 3 four ounce tops spun together. The other two are 4 ounces of superwash merino each.

I could not wind it on my Jumbo ball winder...just too much yarn so I wound it by hand on my gadget...what is it called again?

 Secret knitting

I had to start knitting with my bulky yarns and I've been working on a pattern...had to be something that required no more than 60-70 meters of bulky yarn...almost ready to reveal the results!

 

A trip to the Kitchener-Waterloo area is planned this weekend to visit our son...really it's to be visiting sonny boy.

It happens to be the K-W Knitter's Fair too...just a coincidence (hihihi)!!

I'll be spending a few hours in the booth of my LYS on saturday to help out and the rest of the time wandering about to explore the many vendors.

It will be the perfect place to find the right beads for a shawl that I'd like to knit.

I also just received my Spin-off magazine...it will make great reading for the trip.

Should be another great weekend!

Enjoy yours!

 

FO shawl

This post was written a few months ago and I never got around to publishing it.

I saw this hand dyed yarn of Etsy and bought it right away. The colours are bright and fun.

As of today, on Ravelry, the Travelling woman shawl is on 7177 project pages! It might be one of the most popular patterns around! It was a free pattern when it first came out.

Now it's part of a whole series of Travelling pattens.

It turned out to be a small shawl. I could have repeated Chart A once more.

Pattern: Traveling Woman
Yarn: 100% Superwash Merino Wool in fingering weight from Lola Doodle's Etsy shop
Colour: An Evening in Tucson

FO my Citron shawl

Noro yarns are revered by lots of knitters. I must admit that the colours are stunning. When I saw this yarn in my local yarn store, I immediately knew I wanted to make something for myself with it.

The Citron pattern is very easy to knit.

 

Some rows are very long to knit...the rushing parts have a few hundreds stitches near the end. But it does add to the charm of this little shawl. I say little because it measures only 14 inches in length. Long enough to wrap around my neck under a coat but not long enough to wear alone over my shoulders. If I could have found a second skein, I would have made this one a little longer.

The only problem I have with this shawl, is that it's really not soft. It seems that Nora yarns will soften when washed but this one did not get much softer.

Pattern: Citron

Needles: 3.5mm

Yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn

Méli-mélo

Méli-mélo is a french expression meaning a mish mash of things. For example, the french version of the snack mix of Bits and Bites is Méli-mélo.

This post has a bit of everything, hence the name of Méli-mélo as title.

I don't think I've talked about my dogs much. We have Golden retrievers. The best breed there is. Very gentle and people friendly. We actually have a few of them. We are involved in Obedience, Agility and Conformation shows with our dogs. We take them with us everywhere.

Here is Anouk (Tibsen Tiger Lily). She probably feels that she's attached to my hip because she always follows me around...everywhere I go, she's there.

She actually sleeps with her toy under her chin but tonight she still had it in her mouth and fell asleep that way.

Anouk became a Champion very easily. Lots of fun when that works out ! It's a lot of work, time and money to show a dog.

On another post, I'll talk to you about Bjorne and the others.

I've completed one Christmas gift for bébé O. It's Plain vest from Pickles website. It looks like it will fit her with room to grow.  Still looking for the right buttons to add the finishing touch.

I have a matching hat made as well. I'll be back with pics after Christmas.

My Shawl collared cowl from Never Not Knitting is done as well...well, not quite done, since I have buttons left to find and sew on.

I love it. I made it with 100% alpaca hand painted yarn I picked up from Norma from Misty Alpacas. The yarn is bulky and a super fast knit.
The colour is called Autumn Rose, a blend of pinks and golds. So nice and super soft.

And this last picture is for Norma! See what I have on top of our cookstove?

Loving the blues!

Blue...one of my all time favorite colors.

These beautiful yarns are all handdyed by Karen Lawrence.

Bought at Sheepstings yarn shop last spring. Unfortunately, Sheepstrings is now closed but Karen says on her website that she will pursue with her dyeing and designing, which is great news because she does such a fantasting job!

Just before the shop closed last spring, I purchased a kit from her. The kit has 4 different types of yarns all dyed in several shades of blue. The yarns have wonderful names like Algonquin Dew, Tanglewood, Muskoka Forest Vine and Rainbow worsted. The kit is to make a wonderful shrawl (shrug + shawl)

Karen had two made up samples in her store and once I saw the samples, I could not resist.

I started the shrawl right away on #12 mm needles. I was halfway done and concluded that there was no way that the shrawl would fit me. It was much too short. I put it away to ponder on the next step. I put it away for almost 9 months!

I took it out again last month and decided to take it apart and start over on #15mm needles. But I could not find # 15mm anywhere in town.

I had a conference in Ottawa and hubby came with me. Guess what he did when I was in conference all day?? He went to a yarn shop downtown and purchased a #15mm circular needle for me! I was so impressed!

So as soon as I got home I had it on the needles again. It took only a week to complete. I only need to do sleeve seams and I will have pictures of it to show you.

Banana soft wrap

I knitted a wonderful easy project late last winter. It has been in my armoire since then. I guess that with the cool weather coming in, I got thinking that I should not let it sit there any longer.

I finally got around to blocking the mohair/acrylic blend triangular shawl this weekend. I blocked it on the bed in the guest room. With the fan on and the open window, it dryed very quickly.

Such a great project knitted on large needles in a stockinette stitch. Simple, light and airy is the result. The color is really a light banana yellow.

I have decided that I will put this shawl in my Etsy shop. (I own quite a few shawls allready!)

You can see it here. It would make a great Christmas gift for that special someone.