Last Sunday I loaded up my car with my spinning wheel and fiber and headed out to Harveyville for our January Spinsters gathering. Nikol was the host with the most providing a wonderful setting for spinning, laughing and coffee. I missed the last get together and we didn’t meet in December and I was beginning to have Spinsters withdrawl! I missed seeing everyone so much — I love catching up with everyone and hearing all about their lives.

Since Nikol has umpteen carders, she invited us all to bring 2-4 ounces of fiber so we could make crazy batts!! Yipee!! We did that two years ago during one our meetings at Harveyville and had great fun with it. I almost forgot to bring any fiber and Grasshopper luckily reminded me just as I was stepping out the door. I would have been so sad if I had shown up empty handed!

We put out the empty baskets and divided up our fiber so that everyone got a taste of each others fiber. That orange fiber was such an amazing color and there was also a green that made me smile — it ended up being a nice range of colors.

Grasshopper turning away at the carder. Nikol had four carding stations set up so no one had to wait very long for their turn.

Voila! Here’s my finished batt.

February 5th is the fourth annual World Nutella Day!  If you go to the World Nutella Day website there are recipes, stories and more information than you could ever use on the delectable chocolate hazelnut spread.  I’ve never liked peanut butter and my family thinks that I’m an alien from another planet because of that fact (well, maybe for a few other reasons as well).  But Nutella, that’s an entirely different story.  When my nephew came home from spending a semester studying in Vienna, he was addicted to Nutella, carrying a spoon and a jar of the stuff everywhere he went.  With that kind of devotion I just had to try it to and loved it.  Nutella was created in the 1940’s by an Italian named Pietro Ferro in response to the shortage of chocolate due to WWII.  There were plenty of hazelnuts, so they were used to extend the chocolate and the yummy spread was originally called “pasta gianduja”.  It’s great on toast and bagels, but I have to admit that I like to eat it right out of the jar.

So here’s to World Nutella Day!  Enjoy!

Also, if you want to try making your own homemade Nutella, here’s a fabulous recipe!

I’ve admired the sock pattern “Shur’tugal” by Alice Yu for sometime now and finally knit them this past January.  The pattern is a free download that can be obtained on Ravelry or on Alice’s website “Socktopus” in the left sidebar.  She’s a Canadian expat living in the UK and she has an online store (also called Socktopus) specializing in artisan sock yarns.

I used Dreams in Colors Smooshy sock yarn in the dark blue colorway of “Midnight Watch” using US1.5/2.5mm needles.  I have friends that are constantly raving about Smooshy, so I just had to try it for myself.  The dyeing is such that all the colors are semi-solids, with subtle color variations that will not overpower the knit pattern in socks, even the most delicate pattern.  I have to say that since Smooshy is spun with Merino wool, they are smooshy soft on the feet.

The charted pattern is medium is difficulty and knit up very quickly — I think I set myself a new speed record and knit this pair of socks in two week flat.  The diamond pattern is created by either knitting a right or left twist, but no cable needle is involved.  The twist is made by knitting two stitches together but leaving them on the needle, then going between the two stitches and knitting the second stitch, then pulling both new stitches off the needle.  Very nifty.  It does make me cranky that my old eyes don’t see tiny print the way they did in my whipper-snapper years.  You can see in the picture below that I enlarged the pattern chart up around 200%!  Well, you do what you’ve got to do.

While I was knitting these in the evening, Louis would come over and lay his furry little head on my lap.  **sigh**   It just doesn’t get much better than that . . .

Thank you Sugaroni for taking the first two pictures!

During the swap and shop evening at the Fall 2008 Yarn School, my friend Grasshopper was selling several of her “not so favorite” fibers that she had dyed. One in particular caught my eye — it was BFL (or as another friend calls it: biffle) in shades of blue with greens and magenta — oh, baby, those are my colors!! Grasshopper said she liked it “okay”, but she wasn’t crazy about it and would probably never spin it. Enough said. I snatched it up! It spun like a dream and I made approximately 590 yards of 2-ply worsted weight yarn.

Now the hunt was on for pattern — it would need to be a shrug or short sweater since I had limited yardage. I settled on a pattern from the Drops website, a short jacket with short leaves (pattern 117-43) that is knit side to side in garter stitch with short rows for shaping and absolutely NO seams.

Drops is a Norwegian company that produces lovely yarn and has hundreds of free patterns available on their website. The patterns are originally written in Norwegian and the majority of them have been translated into English. Because the instructions have been translated, they can sometimes be a bit quirky in their phrasing and I had to reread them MANY times to make sure that I understood everything correctly. A few times I know I was cocking my head to the side the way Louis does when he doesn’t understand what I’m asking him to do! All that said, the pattern is very clever in its use of short rows to create its shaping and I’m really pleased with the outcome.

By the time I was ready to cast off, I only had about two feet of my handspun left so I use some Harrisville Highland yarn in a teal/blue colorway to cast off and then used the same yarn to add a single crochet edging. Since the yarn was handspun and the garment was knit side to side, the edges ended up not being consistently even, so the crochet edging totally evened things up, plus it tied together with the cast-off edges.

I’m so glad that Grasshopper didn’t want that fiber because I feel like I scored big time!!

Thanks to Sugaroni for taking the pictures!

Oh, my, I saw these on Christien Meindertsma’s website and my mouth just flew open and then I got a big grin on my face!  I love these giant garter stitch cushions that are called urchin pouf’s.  I so want to see these being made — wait, what am I saying?!  I want to try making these!

As you can see, the needle size is definitely off the charts.  Meindertsma is a young Dutch designer that has an innovative and humorous approach to knitting.  She has a product line called FLOCKS, that as the website says is “a knitwearbrand in the broadest sense of the word.”  She was also a part of an exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum called “Design for a Living World” that highlighted items made from sustainable materials from around the globe.  Go to YouTube and you can hear her thoughts on her work.

(photos from Dezeen and Christien Meindertsma)

It has been snowing and bone chillingly cold this holiday and that’s made it difficult to get out and do much of anything. Luckily the gym we go to is only about two miles from our house and I’ve bundled up and gotten there most days so I won’t dissolve into a total glob. But I have to admit that I love this time of year when it comes to knitting and crocheting. One of my favorite things to do is curl up with a good movie, Sam & Louis tucked in tightly beside me and a great knitting project. The Gaia Shawlette/Shoulder Hug by Anne Carroll Gilmour was knit in just that situation.

Gaia is available as a free down-load both on Ravelry and on the Wildwest Woolies website. The pattern is very easy and consists of stockinette, reverse stockinette and 2tog/YO, making the shawlette reversible.

I used US #5/3.75mm 24″ circular needles and Araucania Ranco Multy fingering weight yarn in colorway *318. The shawlette took almost the entire 376 yards

I still get a bit excited when I finish a project like this because I know that the tiny, wrinkled piece that comes off the needles is going to bloom into a light and airy garment.

Several years ago I invested in a blocking board that I ordered from Webs (this is a thick 3/4″ board with a preprinted grid on it making it so much easier to wet block garments) and then last fall I invested in a set of lace blocking wires. The blocking wires help to make the edges of the lace straight and consistent. I also pinned the picot edged points and this also opened up the YO’s.

I didn’t wet block this shawlette fiercely, but I stretched it enough to fully open up the simple lace patterning. The finished size is a width of 52″ and 35″ to the middle point.

Long before I ever dreamed that I would be spinning and dyeing fiber, I had (and still have) a family friend named Donna that raised sheep. Donna (as a little fyi, she was also my 8th grade softball coach and her husband worked with my father for some thirty years) invited me to her yearly sheep shearing party and being the admitted knitting addict, I thought this sounded like great fun. It was so cold out in her barn, but the hired shearer was quick and accurate with the sheep and the barn was filled with fiber enthusiasts. Over in one corner was the skirting table where women were taking the newly shorn fleeces and nimbly pulling off the veggie matter, mud and sheep “stuff”. I was amazed at the color and feel of the fleeces — under the outer, bleached coat was this rich, lanolin filled wool with such a beautiful crimp to it. Oh, and did I say there were two new little lambs in the barn too? I was in heaven!!! From time to time I would slip into the house for either a bowl of chili or a mug of hot chocolate and warm up a bit, but then it was back to the barn. As a fleece would come off a sheep, someone in the group would claim it, it would get skirted, weighted, priced and then bagged. The owner of Ozark Carding Mill was there and most of the fleeces were sent with her to be processed. Being caught up in it all I bought the fleeces of two young sheep of a moorit (brownish/black) coloring. I talked to women in the group and found someone that would spin my fiber, after it came back from processing, into a worsted 3-ply yarn. Not being a spinner at the time, I had no idea what I was asking! If someone asked me to spin a consistent 3-ply worsted yarn now that I do spin, I would absolutely faint!! But, my hired spinner (I’m embarrassed to say that so much time has passed that I can no longer remember her name, but she was a saint!), took on the task and gave me the loveliest yarn.

I ended up with enough yarn to make two afghans, one for myself and one for my parents 50th wedding anniversary present. The pattern is called “Endearing” (#15) from an old Leisure Arts book titled “Big Book of Quick Knit Afghans“. It was knit using US#15/10mm 36″ circular needles holding two strands of yarn together. The finished measurements are 58″x80″.

Because it was knit holding two strands of yarn on such big needles, it was a fast project and the pattern work stands out against the natural brown color of the yarn.

Everytime I use this afghan it brings back fond memories and a smile to my face because this was my first exposure to the world of sheep and fiber. Hmmm, I had no idea what the future held for me!!

I hope everyone has had a day full of family, friends, food and hope!

I know we have certainly enjoyed ours!

I’m warm inside with my husband and dogs and it’s snowing outside.  We just had warm apple crisp topped with ice cream and there are candles in the fireplace so I’m feeling very cozy and blessed.  I hope everyone else’s Christmas Eve is just as nice.

I painted this piece in gouache and Prism color on Winsdor & Newton watercolor paper.

The previous afghan I crocheted took me three years to complete. I didn’t work on it everyday, every week or even every month, but still, it took three years. **sigh** I had piles of yarn left over and I thought about throwing it all in a box and dropping it of at the nearest senior center. But then I decided to make another afghan, only this time it was going to be one giant square — no sewing endless squares together and weaving in the ends because I would crochet the ends in as I went. I was on a mission to prove to myself (and anyone else that was interested) that I wasn’t a total, horrible, miserable slug of a lazy crocheter! So I took on this challenge on December 6th and finished it December 20th! Woo! Hoo! Done in two weeks!

This was a great project to eat up all the left over yarn. I resolved when I started that I would NOT buy ANY yarn for this afghan, that when I ran out of a color I would just switch to a color in the same family, I mean I had a gigantic storage tub running over with several rainbows worth of colors. Grumble, best laid plans. By the time I got to the last three rows, the rounds chewed up massive amounts of yarn and I had to buy two skeins of yarn, one gold and one dark brown. I admit it, I had to pout for a couple of hours about that one, but, when all is said and done, I had only a measley little pile of yarn left — mission accomplished!

The pattern is the basic Granny Afghan crochet pattern that has been around forever and has been published and passed down in books and memories for decades. I found that many patterns used a set of three double crochets, but after some experimentation, I liked the way four triple crochets looked. I finished the edges with four rounds of single crochet and then final fifth round of a picot edging. The finished piece measure 70″x70″.

There are so many sources for this pattern and here are just a few: Basic Granny Square, Old Granny Afghan, and How to Make a Granny Square.

Okay, so while I was taking pictures to post, I turned my back for a second and Louis decided to curl up with my newly finished afghan. He can’t claim both of my afghans! (can he?)