Busy with Mom

My parents came to visit us for 10 days. We had a great visit with them. Dad and I went out in boat. We went to Muskrat Falls. We barbecued. Had lots of other good food to eat (fish and brewis - yummy!) And there was crafting. Mom and I crafted that is. Of course there was knitting - there is always knitting where I'm concerned. But there were other things too.

First up the knitting. We knitted dish cloths - your basic, run of the mill, garter stitch dish cloths. Can you believe that I have never knit one before now? I think its because THAT'S ALL that my mother knits. She usually gives me a big old bundle of these every year for Christmas. These are the only thing I use to wash dishes. I don't have a dishwasher. I'm not a fan of doing dishes (who is?), but I love these. I have come to expect these from my mother every year. So, I don't knit them myself. Also, I'm not a fan of the dish cloth cotton.

These are knit with knitpicks new organic cotton. Its hard to see in the pictures, but the colour is a really nice caramel colour. This cotton is actually grown that way. No dyes. Nice.

















I have quite the large yarn stash. I live and breath knitting and would gladly quit my day job, if I could somehow make the same sort of living as a knitter. So, it really tortures me to know that my mother only knits dishcloths. This is the same woman who taught me to knit. She is able to knit other things. In fact, I recall a bright green Phentex pullover that she made my sister (and I secretly wanted). She also recalled several hooded sweaters that she made for us growing up. I came up with a plan to get her back into knitting things other than dishcloths. She really liked that drop stitch scarf that I made her out of my handspun for Christmas last year, but she didn't think she would be able to make it. I assured her it was quite easy and that she would have no trouble making that scarf. So, I gave some handspun 100% alpaca yarn right off the bobbin. Here it is in all its glory.

















I ususally have a lot of trouble parting with my handspun, but not this time. Its for my mom - she is worth it. She just better not try to knit a dishcloth out of it.

When my parents visited us two years ago Mom and Jenna (my neice) and I went to yard sales. I have no idea why we did as I normally do not go to yard sales. But we did score some nice things back then, so we decided to give it another go. The few times that I do go yard saling, I am always on the look out for 100% wool sweaters; either to felt or shred down into reuseable yarn. I made some great finds at the yard sales we went to this past Saturday. I washed and felted them right away. This is what I made out of it.















The pattern is from Betz White's first book 'Warm Fuzzies'. (I really want to buy her second book soon). I made these more or less to show off to my mom my mad needle felting skills. Not really, since the flowers are very easy needle felting, but I did want to show her what needle felting was and how it could be used.

And then we did some painting. Rock painting. This is craft that my Mom is into. My sister too I think. Mom actually painted 3 houses, but I must have forgotten to 'document' them. I'm going to be in trouble for that.































Not bad for 10 days. And, I was still processing that dirty fleece in between all of that. But thats another blog post. Next time, I'm taking time off work.