Blog

Today I took our little tree out to the pasture to share with the sheeps, as is our tradition.

Esther found it lip-smackin’ good-

But man, she really needs a trim on those bangs!
Poor messy, soggy girl.

Everything here is pretty soggy- but at least it’s not frozen.

Another year-end tradition of mine is to do sweater (and other knitwear) maintenance.

I’ve gotten a start with mending a worn-through elbow on an old (pre-blog) sweater that has seen a lot of use over the years

and washing and de-pilling The Man’s favorite hat-

My go-to tool for de-pilling is something I got from my mom a few years back. One of those things I never would have thought to buy for myself, but as it turns out, is really handy- the Gleener

So tomorrow I’ll see what all else in the cedar chest requires some upkeep.
Washing, de-pilling, mending- or maybe just a quick steaming, to keep the knits looking their best!

Hope everyone is having a lovely Christmas!

I’ve been meaning to blog for a couple of days now but we’ve had power and internet outages that kept me offline for a while.

Power issues started Thursday, with the arrival of a big wind storm.
We had a fairly large tree come down at the front of our property-

Our neighbor across the street had already started chopping it up before The Man got home- in order to get the road cleared.

It wasn’t too tall, but big enough to do some damage to the power and telephone lines on the other side of the street.

With the help of some other folks down the road we got most of it hauled away by the time it got really dark (and started raining).

But there were an awful lot of other trees on power lines and such throughout the area, and we didn’t get power back until late Friday night.

Then internet went out on Sunday afternoon (right before the Hawks v. Chiefs!!!) Geez.
So we listened on the radio. Which was actually kind of nice- and provided me some good spinning time

We watched the condensed game later, once internet was restored. I think I even enjoyed it more the second time, seeing as how I already knew we were going to win 😉

Also wanted to share the progress I’ve made on the new vest I started in Florida (“Cut, Flip and Carry On”)

I’m about 5 inches in now, and no further drama, thank goodness.
Really like how it’s coming along.

Wishing you all Fleece on Earth, and Good Wool to Men!

Sorry to have missed y’all last week-
I was away in Florida- where hisbiscuses (hibisci?) are blooming

and cranes are chillin’ on golf courses, looking for handouts

The hardest part of packing for a trip, of course, is the knitting.
Since I was going to be gone for almost a week, I figured I better take more than one project.

The first I finished up shortly after arrival

because these hats kind of just fall off the needles anymore 😉
The light gray is angora- it’s going to be really toasty!

And then once I’d settled in, I cast on for a more substantial garment- another shawl collared vest.
The color scheme for this one is a little more adventurous than the original though- blended singles against natural cream (Esther) starting with a blue-based multi, transitioning through pinks and reds to arrive at orange.

So I’d gotten the cast on done, placed markers for the side panels and the front steek, and established the circle motif.
It was all going swimmingly, and I was about an inch and a half in by Friday morning when I realized that something was very wrong.

I had apparently not been careful enough when joining to work in the round, and was knitting a twisted sweater.
Ugh.

If this had been plain old stockinette stitch or some such thing I might have just ripped it out and started over.
But I hate ripping out.
Especially stranded colorwork.

But then it occurred to me- this is going to get steeked in the end- soooooooo

I just did a little partial pre-steek

Cut, Flip and Carry On.

And any evidence of this rookie mistake will be hidden in the front edge facings.
Pretty sneaky, eh?

And suddenly I feel rather behind on all things holiday-related 🙂

Anyway, I just wanted to thank everyone who came out to the Bow Market Holiday Festival on Saturday.

It was a great time, and very busy! Seems that the move to Edison Elementary gave the event a real boost.

Since I ran out of printed copies of the knitting patterns I had available, I wanted to make sure to provide the links here:

Stranded Colorwork Hat which knits up kinda like this

And Garter Stitch Hat which looks pretty much like this

Next up: WSU Country Living Expo, January 26 at Stanwood High School!