September Recap

I can't believe what a slacker I've been in the blogging department lately. UGH! I finally am here and getting something written about what I've been doing though.
So, here we go.
On September 18 it was Worldwide Spin in Public day. Spinners all around the world went out to public places and spun to bring attention to their craft. That it's still done, that it's amazing and fun and you get to make yarn. I did too!
My knitting/spinning group actually set up ours as a coffee crawl. We started on one side of our city and moved from coffee shop to coffee shop across town (at intervals in case anyone needed to meet up with us at some point, we did have a plan) and brought lots of attention to our group and to spinning.
We spun at the coffee shop in our library, at the coffee shop in the mall, all over and we had a blast!
Here's a taste of our group:

This was also our lunch stop so most people got some food too.

I love how people brought all different sizes and styles of wheels and how rapt the attention of the kids was. Although the people in the mall stared at us skeptically most of the time.

I'm also participating in Sock Sniper this year and my target received her socks so I can finally post the picture I took.

It's really awful actually but I had forgotten to take one so I snapped a quick pic in the car with my cell phone before I dropped them in the mail. They turned out very nice and I'm so happy my target received them, likes them and they fit. Bang bang.

Now, I'm off to knit a baby sweater for a friend from church who is so close to having her baby. Tour de Sock begins tomorrow too so I may have to dig out some yarn to wind.

The Wisconsin Adventures of William

As you know, earlier this year, William traveled to Shepherd's Harvest Festival with me and had a little fun. He met some sheep

and in general had a pretty fun time.

Then we decided to go to Wisconsin for the Sheep & Wool festival again and he started bugging me to go along. He's a pesky little traveler and wanted to see all kinds of things. Luckily we drove into Madison and while looking for a certain yarn shop so Wool Princess could get the one more skein of yarn she needed to finish a sweater, we saw all kinds of things.

The capital. Pretty cool building with carvings on the top like greek figures. We even drove across a lake.

This is apparently a natural lake that they created a road across.

There was lots more too. Like all the places where you can rent bikes near this lake. It was a pretty cool trip and eventually we did find the yarn store.

We headed back to Jefferson and William even got to shop at the Piggly Wiggly.

Not every little knitted doll can say that.

Placated, we headed back to camp and I wisely left the little guy in the tent while we did a little shopping.

Overall, it was a great trip despite the 7 1/2 hours in the car each way. It didn't rain this year and we had wonderful weather for sleeping in a tent. I can't wait to do it all again!

Pretty in Green

Have you ever knit something that made you question your sanity? Then, when it was finished, did you step back and look at it and think; Wow, how did I do that? This project was one of those for me.

It started simply enough, with The Loopy Ewe's final camp project. (May I just add that I love how this picture looks like it's blowing in the breeze, which is totally was. I love it!)

The goal was to knit something using at least 800 yards of yarn.

My biggest struggle is always to choose a pattern and the yarn to go with it. I finally settled on Dream in Color Baby which is laceweight in Happy Forest. It looked like a lovely deep rich green, almost a forest green on my monitor. When it arrived it was lighter and brighter. A bit of a shock but I loved it. I ordered two skeins since the very generous 700 yards/skein would not be enough for this project. I knew I had been wanting to knit a larger version of the Gail shawl ever since I finished my lovely little shawlette version. I set to work and started out quickly and it was going very well. Until. Well, it got huge.

The rows were over 500 stitches apiece at the end there and it took some focus and fortitude to knit or purl through one. I found that with this yarn I couldn't just zone out on the purl rows either because the flat nature of it on the needle made it too easy to cross a yarn over with a neighboring stitch without meaning to. I had to pay attention all the time. I had blocked a small portion of it on the needles when I first started to check that I was liking the gauge and I measured it and determined that I would knit 15 repeats of the chart. That should mean it would be 60 inches wide. Well my friends, it grew.

It's bigger. I still love it, although it's bigger than planned and I can't wait to show it to absolutely everyone I know.

I apologize now. You will definitely get sick of having it thrust in your face. I just can't seem to help it though. My husband is already sick of looking at it.

I wore it to Knit & Crochet night last night and wove in the ends (after blocking so they would have less chance of coming out) and just loved the feel of it around my shoulders.

My emotions with this project definitely ran the gamut from: Oh, no big deal, I'll whip this out no problem. At the start to: What the h*&% was I thinking? When those rows got so long and now. Now my friends, I can't believe it.

I cannot believe that this lovely, amazing, epic green shawl, dripped from my needles, that I created this with some sticks and a large ball of string. It's somewhat awe-inspiring. It makes me feel like I can tackle the world.

At least the world of knitting.

I promise to tell you more about Wisconsin later this week but I felt like this shawl deserved it's own post. It definitely deserves it's own veneration in my book. Thanks for bearing with me while I waxed poetic about it.

All Packed

I'm starting to feel a little like a nomad. I didn't even put my suitcase away from my trip down to my parents' house and now I'm ready to head out the door again. This time I'm heading to Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival. You may remember that I went last year too. I'm going again with my same lovely friend WoolPrincess. We are camping again and it's going to be a great fun, fibery time again.

What's different this year? Well, we have a bigger tent, I'm packing a second sleeping bag, I don't wanna be cold again and I have a special little travelling companion.

You may recall that earlier this year I knit a Prince William doll for our local paper's story on the Royal wedding. This spring he travelled with me to Shepherd's Harvest Festival and got to meet some sheep.

Okay, for some reason blogger absolutely refuses to upload this picture so you will have to wait and see it another time.

He's coming along again and I can't wait to see the trouble he gets into this time.

I'm Not Disappeared, I'm Still Here

I have been so busy lately that I completely forgot to blog.

I promise I will return very soon with your regularly scheduled blog posts.

(hint: a baby sweater made it off the needles and the green shawl is getting close!)