I've Got News...

I've been anticipating this next week for months. It is filled with huge plannings, endless worries and a rush of excitement.

I start my vacation tomorrow and for the next 7 days I will be visited by family and I can't wait to see them. My dearest daughter will turn the ripe old age of 5 this weekend and the following week she'll be off to kindergarten. Someone please give me a glass of wine... or two.



In the knitting department I've been making my way along on the Faery Ring. It is growing very nicely. I'm almost to the point where I bind off for armholes. Note To Self: Look for button while at Stitches.

The Tapestry Cowl is done...yes, I did it. I bound off all 220 stitches kitchener style. I think I deserve a metal, or at least a cookie. My finished object post will be coming soon. With all that has been going on I haven't had time to block it and knowing how humid it's been I don't know how long it will take to dry.



The newest project on the needles is Willoughby, designed by Jared Flood. His newest patterns have just been released and you can purchase them individually or in one sweet book, which I chose to do. This was my find when we had our field trip last week to Wool and Company out in Geneva, IL.

I'm still up in the air about the real heft of the yarn. I was looking for something with a little more body to it and I just don't know if this yarn will work.

In Other Knitting Related News...

Nana's Knitting Shop has there September Class schedule up and if you scroll down you'll see a class on Two Socks on Two Circs Toe Up! Guess who's teaching the class?

Oh yeah baby, it's me! I can hardly believe it myself, but hell it's starting to hit and I've got to step-up my game if I'm to have everything ready in time.

So, if your interested in learning socks toe-up, two-at-time and you happen to be free on Saturday mornings, sign-up!

A Little Obsessed

Do you see?
How lovely can it be?
A warm mitten for me?

The other night I was reading Thomas The Train Rhyme stories to Miss Mac and now sometimes I get stuck in rhyming things. Does this happen to anyone else?

Anywho... I started the Postwar Mittens Class at Nana's Knitting Shop and became so deeply in love that I could not put it down.

I also have to show off Little Hunter who is quickly turning 3 months old. He reminds me of when Eric was little and how the facial expressions could just about make you tinkle in your panties.

Exploring Color Options

If you haven't see the Twist Collective online magazine...go take a look. When I saw the winter series, what popped out most for me was the Postwar Mittens.

So I was completely thrilled to see that Nana’s Knitting Shop was scheduling a class for this pattern. After begging to be allowed into an already filled class I went off to pick out my colors. It was a bit hard, but this is what I came up with:



After getting several "Great Pick" comments I took it home and then started to ponder if I had chosen the right set. My geeky-ness will now seep in and show you how concerned I am about these color choices.

I drew up a quick sample of the chart needed to plug in my colors and this is the result of the main color selection with dominate green:



Not bad, but what if we flip colors for a dominate brown:



Then I was thinking the yellow was not being used enough, so how about this:



Yuck! Definitely not that one. Now my concern at first are for the powerful contrast of the brown against the green. What if I went with a darker green instead:



Then of course I had to flip that and see:



Then I realized that the picking of the darker green was actually more like the original colors in the pattern. That isn't really what I wanted to do, not that I don't like it, it's just that I want my own version, see?

What do you think? Should I have the green or brown be the dominate color?

Psychotic Santa Strikes

No one can ever say that Nana’s Knitting Shop can't throw one hell of a party. Thanks ladies, what a blast!

I had intended to do perhaps 2 or 3 different ornament designs... yeah, well we all can't be like Georgian right? So I set my sights on a little Santa. The pattern is not difficult and in a matter of hours I had him stuffed and hanging on the tree.



The pattern had brought back memories of my childhood during the holidays. Each year that we pulled out the decorations, my sister and I would play with Mr. & Mrs. Clause. They were handcrafted ornaments that eventually showed the true well loved nature of small children.

So, do you think that Mr. Clause will be lonely on the tree? I might have to modify the pattern in order to get Mrs. Clause.

In other knitting news, I helped Tangled with a photo shoot of her Avalon



I'm so thrilled to have helped out. I truly believe such a lovely item should be showcased to the best of our abilities. It was fun.... cold, but fun.

From Celtic to Japanese

I have to first confess that I have a Chick Crush. I'm smitten for Melissa Leapman. Go ahead and laugh. sigh. She is just adorable, funny and super witty... come on now. She wrote Cables Untangled. On top of that she also has a new book coming out... Continuous Cables and I got to peek inside. I'm telling you right now... go. pre-order this sucker and have that cable needle ready and waiting.

Her class was Celtic Cables was Saturday afternoon and the only bad part was the cold classroom, but a quick run to the cafe saved my fingers. ML was totally prepared with handouts, charts and a sarcastic New York attitude that left me a little gitty. I was pleased to see that her class was based off of her new book and how she pops a celtic knot right in the middle of no where.

My homework consisted of swatches which we then worked these fabulous charts and learned some serious increases and decreases to make the cables work.



You could hear from all over the classroom... this is too cool... awesome... and a couple of swear words thrown in because of a difficult decrease. Overall I loved the class and would highly recommend her as a teacher.

Saturday then turned into Sunday and there was Japanese Short-Rows with Susanna Hansson. I took her Beaded Wrist Warmers class last year and knew she would teach me something great again. I don't think I'll ever wrap my stitches again, in fact I've turned Japanese... ha, I'm bad, I know... couldn't resist.



Here is the results from creating two swatches, making short-rows then binding them together. More or less an example of shoulder shaping... but I'm thinking heals on socks. Her class was very detailed and planned out, with plenty of time to do the work.

What a great combination of classes for my third year at Stitches Midwest. This just gets me super pumped for next year. I also loved the new location. Free parking, less walking, better cafeteria food. The only thing about next year is that it's later in the year.. September 10 - 13. Which could be looked at as good or bad since my birthday is the 14th;) I think I should start saving now!

Stitches Midwest 2007

Oh, where do I begin.

Let me start off with...OH MY GOD, IT WAS COMPLETELY WICKED!!!!

Now that That's out of the way I can begin to tell you HOW COMPLETELY WICKED Stitches Midwest really is. Last year was my first year and I walked away stunned, exhausted, thrilled and seriously wanting more. Took a class last year so I knew I needed to again this year. I'm a self-taught knitter, so when I take a class I always walk away with more knowledge.

This year we beefed it up a bit with two classes, two days of market and a hotel room. We couldn't have planned it out any better....and we knew we were going to have a blast when Superman and Batman showed up.



Sorry if it's blurry, but you know those Hero types...always on the go;)

Market opened at 10am and boy we where there with bells on. I didn't want to miss a thing and I'll tell you, I got to see each and every booth! First purchase of the day was this:



It's a small independent company: Hand Painted Knitting Yarns and their first expo, that paints some fabulous superwash wool. The greens, oranges and burgundy really grabbed me...just had to have;) I do think just for marketing sake, they should consider naming their company something else..just saying.

We then got crazy at WEBS... talk about deals. There website is awesome and so is the booth. Got a great deal on Valley Yarns Colrain (Merino/Tencel blend) to make my Kepler Sweater. I wont even go into how much my partner in crime when away with, but I'll just say we had to dump at the hotel room.




This is the Kepler pattern:


Next was The Fold...okay, can I just say...I love you Toni!! Your the Superwoman of fiber!! I contacted Toni right before the event and I'm sure she was surrounded by lists of things to pack and I requested she pull out a Socks That Rock Lagoon colorway and save it for me. I've been coveting this yarn or over 7 months. I could just see her trailer ready packed to rim and she's digging to find that one skein just for me.



And I couldn't walk away without some roving. Blue Moon Fiber has Sheep 2 Shoe which is 8.5 oz of superwash merino top for spinning...yum!



Also at her booth I found some really cool new sock yarn just out. MacKintosh Yarns and get this...the colorway is Half Blood Prince. How awesome is that! They had some other memorable Harry Potter character names...just Wicked!



From there we hit the Shelridge Farms booth.



Picked up some sock yarn in the Pumpkin colorway...I'm thinking some cables would look lovely and then I can have matching cable sweater and socks;)

And all this was before my amazing class with Susanna Hansson, Off the Beaded Cuff. What a great teacher and what a way to introduce beads into your projects. I can't say enough good things about her. I love walking away saying to myself...I didn't know that and now I do. Wow.

Here is what the class had done by then end:



I continued to work on this through out the night...in the hotel room, at dinner, at the bar that night. And my Sunday this is what I had:



Ignore the first row of beads...missed one completely then forgot to stop adding them ...what fun!

SECOND DAY

First off...getting up at 6:30 is no fun. But Hell I had a class with Nancy Bush!!!! Her class was COMPLETELY and TOTALLY WICKED and I got over my fear of cutting...now what did I do with that sweater? just kidding;)

This is a sample of a steek set up for the adding of sleeves. Even though the class was only a lecture, she had so many samples of how the technique would work. She even let us snip a section of a steek off this sample:


Gorgeous isn't it. This is another example she had:

It's a baby cartigan with steeks...you can see the pattern of the sweater to the left and right. The middle section will get cut and flipped back. What a cool class, highly recommend this to knitters interested in sweater making.

Back to the Market we go.... will this post ever end you say? Oh, come on it's not that bad is it?

Picked up some lovely Quartette, which is a Merino and Cashmere sock yarn. Discounted to 6 bucks at the JoJoLand International booth.



And last but not least was the Aussi Sock yarn in Oak Moss colorway and Plum Rose colorway. Bought at the Have Ewe Any Wool booth.



What I time we had. Thanks Knitterary for being my Stitches buddy...it was awesome. Now it's Save, Save, Save for next year!!!

Knitting Update

Okay...so I know your probably all bored with my ranting of spontaneous moments...lets talk knitting.

Kool-Aid Mac Sweater (KAMS) has made HUGE progress. These are all the pieces and now time for seaming. Which I don't mind so much. I've read about other knitters and their hate for seaming, but I'm kinda fond of the finishing techniques. I might not be very good at them, but something about knowing your on the tail end of a finished project.



The next steps will be to seam the fronts to the back, then the sleeves, continue to knit the hood, pick up stitches on the front to create button holes....see still a lot to do, but it will go very quickly now.

My other quick thing was homework for my Stitches Class on Saturday. I'm taking the Susanna Hansson Off the Cuff Beaded Wrist Warmers class and for homework I needed to do a gauge swatch on sock weight yarn and also pick up beads.

This is a sample picture of what the class will make:



I knew I had tons of sock yarn in my stash, but when I went looking...none of them where screaming at me...plus most of my yarn was variegated and I really wanted a solid color. Quick trip to Loopy Yarns during lunch and along with a quick trip to Beads Galore and More has given me this:



I found a good match on the green, but wasn't sure if I really should have picked up a contrasting bead. So, with the bead bin stating 50% off ...I got both. I really like the orange-gold looking beads and once I get the hang of adding beads to items, I can always us the others for another project. Heck you never know...I will most likely use both colors;) Funk-O-Licious.

With the Stitches Market being less then 42 hours away...my stomach is all a flutter and I can concentrate on anything. sigh. I don't know if I'll be up to posting tomorrow, but I can't forget to say Good Luck to Aleta who is participating in the Susan G Komen 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk this weekend. I don't think I would ever feel right complaining about walking again...gosh, 60 miles...your awesome, but a little nuts too;) If anyone has a few bucks to spare, she's still looking or funds to make her goal. Kisses and Cookies Aleta!