Knit, Knit, Knit

I'm memorized by the shapes made by a ball of felted tweed as it is slowly knit up.




















































Thanks to the long weekend about 7 inches of the tangled yoke body knitted. Whoopee! The alpine strawberries also in the picture have started to ripen. So tasty, definitely the best money ever spent on seedlings.

Springtime at the back yard

My in-laws back yard that is, which had many beautiful picture opportunities.

























Iris that were transplanted to a new location and bloomed spectacularly this year.

















The wine grapes just starting out as tiny green buds.

























Trumpy all finished up and lounging around in the herb garden. He was a great success with all the adults who thought he was cute and fun to play with. Ironically the only child there this weekend didn't look at him twice. :) One ball of cashsoft was enough to knit the head, body, two legs, and one arm. It does take "two" balls but not much of the second, knitting one up would work if you had a ball and a half laying around somewhere (I do in blue). The only part of the pattern that confused me was knitting the second ear. I reversed the directions purling where the first ear was knitted and vice versa. This worked fine and I felt pretty proud of myself until later when it hit me that the directions could be followed exactly if the back of Trumpy's head was facing me instead of the front. Doh, not so smart after all!
























Here's take two of the Tangled yoke sleeve in a much better width for my preferences. Right now the husband is calling it my falconers sleeve which amuses both of us. Oddly I can't put this sleeve down even though the tiny needles make progress slow. It might be the felted tweed who's flecks of white, black and blue make it very interesting to look at. Hopefully the infatuation will continue through the long slog of knitting the body. Crossing fingers that the knitting goddesses will smile on me. :)

Holy Tangled Yoke Batman!

Way back in the fall a certain knitter was not immune to Tangled Yoke mania. But then there was the matter of not getting gauge until size 5's were downsized to size 2's, ick. Finally my brain said "Hey sleeves on size twos are like a pair of big socks, you can do that right?" Sure when you put it that way..... no problem.
So what is going on with this sleeve? Why is it soooo frecken wide? Notice 5th DPN inserted at the width I would expect in a cardigan. I've pinched out over an inch. Looking at ravelry pages no one is commenting "My sleeves are unseeingly wide at the bottom," and I double checked that the stitch gauge is pretty good, maybe 1/8 off. Oh well knitting sometimes goes astray. All this is getting ripped out and the new sleeve is going to be 3's because "I said so!"

One more photo for my sister.... Nanny Nanny boo boo these socks aren't for you! Lily of the Valley by Jeanie Townsend in Hazel knits Shady Verdant. (But I might be persuaded to knit some green socks if certain amounts of chocolate find their way into my stomach..... and cookies are provided for Frog.)

Wool Stuffing, I love you

My loopy ewe swap project is about 3/4 of the way done, but it witnessed a stress induced freak out and now our relationship is a bit awkward. We agreed to take a small break. (I was also cheating on it with a little elephant, maybe it found out.)
Now that one Ysolda pattern has been completed, I'm addicted and purchased Elijah. If the addiction hadn't already happened this pattern totally would have done it. It is soooo much fun. The only reason knitting stopped last week was lack of stuffing. Too lazy to get in the car I ordered some wool stuffing from Joy's Waldorf Dolls. They have some interesting info on their site about using sheep that have been grazed on pesticide free ranges and they also gave me an unexpected 30% off my order. The wool stuffing comes in something like a batt. I unrolled the sheet and hugged it and it is wonderful stuff. Soft to the touch and lofty, if you hold it to your nose it faintly smells of sheep. (in a good way) So far my elephant Trumpy is feeling nice and squishy stuffed with wool. I just have to be careful about giving him away to people who might want to wash him. Felted insides might not be so good.

Purple and green seem to be all around me even in the back yard. Our Indigo plant, which has been getting bigger for three years but not flowering, finally has buds! Looking around our tiny "garden" it seems like all the native plants have purple flowers. Maybe my husband (the plant purchaser) has some sort of purple fixation he hasn't told me about. :)

The plant purchaser saw the post and commented that he was going for a color scheme. I should have known, he does work as planner.

The Spoils

PBS is showing Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy...swoon. His haughty good looks are distracting me but it seems wrong to talk about MDSW without flashing some yarn. Some birthday money was burning a hole in my pocket so I might have gone a bit over board.
















Still River Mill's Silver and Gold - 50% Merino/50% Tussah Silk. I might try one of Anne Hanson's beautiful shawls or go slowly crazy knitting a fingering weight sweater.
















Brooks Farm 100% Mohair fingering weight
















Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair in Balsam
















Sock yarn, sock yarn, sock yarn :)
On the left Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Sun River, Koigu in some bright blue, on top of that a combination of fawn alpaca and regular sock yarn in Bertrice from The Flock Bransonas, and on the right Spirit Trail Fiberworks in "Special" colorway.

It was a good day.

Andddd we're back

Wheewwwwww, so glad that the last 3 weeks are finally over. My husband's grandmother did pass away. The funeral was very simple and touching with all the grandchildren saying a little something about her. It was a good way to remember her and I think she would have liked it.

So a lot has gone on since the last post, I finished socks, visited Maryland sheep and wool, bought lots of stuff, and fought with my loopy ewe swap project. The swap project shall remain a secret but let's just say the yarn wants to be something other than what I was knitting. Ripping out a couple inches of knitting sucks, but it had to be done.

Thought I'd talk a bit about Maryland Sheep and Wool since it was my first fiber festival. Signed up to take the Rosie's Yarn Cellar bus down there but I had no idea where that store is. Shamroxann from Ravelry was very generous, meeting me at the train station and leading us to our destination. The trip was fun, knitting on my sock and listening to the girls behind me talk about their kids. The bus driver was a bit slow getting the bus parked and all of us were almost shouting, "Park it already! We've got yarn to buy!" (I'm sure the drivers thought we were crazy but they were very nice) Some of the outdoor food stands were cool looking, and for some reason I though my husband would be impressed so I snapped a few pics. Here's a pic of the crazy long line to buy Socks that Rock from The Fold both. The line actually is longer than it appears wrapping around the front of a tent with a folk band in it. At least they got to listen to music while they waited. I swooped by The Fold booth at the end of the day and picked up one of the raven colorways with no waiting. That's going to turn into some blackish socks for my mother. Round about this time I found the green mountain spinnery booth and wanted to get a sweaters worth of yarn. The booth was packed and I was waiting for someone to vacate the area so I could get in. But that never happened and I learned the main rule of festival, "The meek shall not get any yarn." I put aside my manners and started pushing like the rest of the customers and walked out with 8 skeins of their balsam color, very tasty. So that's how most of the festival went, find the booth you wanted, squeeze into it with 30-40 other people and then grab what you could and get out of there. Much more sock yarn was bought even though it wasn't planned. It can't helped that it's my crack of choice. All that aggressiveness tired me out so I finished up my day with a visit to the show booth. These mittens make me want to knit mittens. Or steal these but someone probably would have noticed. :) My favorite animal was also a prize winner. Not as cute as my frog of course but he looks very zen. He's a special award winner so he is smiling about being chosen.

The only downer about the festival was that I totally missed getting any ravelry swag. When I made it to the rabbit building the meet up was pretty much over and everyone was packing up. One of the other girls on the bus told me that they had run out of buttons almost immediately so that made me feel better. Guess I'll have to wait for another event to snag a button.