Its not so bad

I cannot figure out why this post is placed in 2015. This post was originally written on November 2012. 

Anyone that knows me, knows that I am an optimist. Yes, the glass is always half full and yes things could have been worse. I've put off writing this post until I was in such a frame of mind whereby I didn't sound sorry for myself.
You see, we had a house fire! A bad one. It seems my beautiful house is condemned. We are now living in an apartment over the pharmacy where I work. Things could be worse....I could be totally homeless!
My tenants too, are without a home and I feel so bad for them. They didn't have insurance. See, things could definitely be worse.
The fire started in the day - when no one was home - not even my little dog Spencer! If it had been in the night time, if Amy had been home (it started outside her bedroom door!) I shudder to contemplate how worse things would have been then.
The first firefighter on the scene was our son in law, Blair. Because he knew the layout of the house, he was able to get the fire out quick enough so that the house didn't burn to the ground. I am now able to sort through the belongings and list the contents of our home for the insurance. The adjuster tells me this is much harder to do from memory. Again, something to be grateful for.
I'm handwashing some of my more precious skeins by hand to try to get the soot and smell of smoke off of them. I've bought more Soak this past week than I have in my entire knitting career! Others, I'm replacing as I need them. Because, they are replaceable!! The things that we lost in the fire are only material things. And this fire has made me realize (I kind of knew this anyway) what a wonderful community we live in and what wonderful friends and family we have.
This weekend, we are moving out of the drugstore apartment and into a mini home - complete with craft room! I'll try to post some pictures when we get more settled. Until then, I'll have to show off pictures of my recently completed Gemini!

Knit with Classic Elite yarn Classic Silk that I purchase years ago from Webs. This yarn has been languishing in my stash forever. This little sweater was a quick easy knit. Great first sweater, if you've never knit a sweater before. If I were to knit this again, I would start the neckline with 4 rows of garter stitch first because as written the neckline has a tendency to roll. I avoided this, by crocheting a single crochet edge entirely around the neckline. It works, but I think the garter stitch would work better. I've already worn this sweater a couple of times and I must admit to liking it a lot. Kind of surprising given the colour of the sweater. Its definitely not something I would normally chose. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I bought it years ago.

Mystery Revealed.

So, for the second consecutive year, I've taken part in Stephen West's mystery knitalong. Like last year's KAL this year was also a shawl. Unlike last years KAL, each clue this time was very unique. Don't get me wrong, I love last year's shawl and its one of my favorites to wear. But each clue was more or less a variation upon the last. This shawl had some very different clues that utilized a lot of different techniques. The result is stunning!!! And even though pink is not something I would not normally chose, I think I will wear this lots too.

The yarn is from esty seller Kelpie Fibers I'm warning you - don't go over there unless you want to buy yarn. It will be seriously hard to resist. I have bought her fiber before, but its the first time buying her yarn and OMG!!! I am so crazy about her yarn. I'm thinking of getting a sweaters worth of the Falkland sock. It practically glowed - the colour was that spectacular. And it is so flipping soft. Again, highly, highly recommend this shop's yarn!!



Thanks to my gorgeous daughter Amy for tolerating me and being my model for this. Turns out the best photo is the one she took of herself. LOL. I'm debating a photography course over on Crafty....hmmmm.....might come in handy. We'll see.

When Knitting Attacks!!

One of my favorite audio podcasts is called the Knitmore Girls. They have great knitting and spinning content. You should give them a listen. They have a segment called "When Knitting Attacks" in which they discuss ways that their knitting has foiled them in the previous week. I couldn't help but think of that segment when I realized what I had done with my latest knitting project. Take a look.......

Yes....that is two right handed mittens. Boy did I ever feel dumb. These are my Ravellenic games mittens. (If you don't know what the Ravellenics are...check it out here)



Thank goodness these are afterthought thumbs so it was a relatively easy fix. I simply hacked off the thumb, kitchenered the hole, and snipped the yarn on the opposite side to get a left handed mitten. Pretty nice, no? Knit with handspun that I finished during the Tour de Fleece. I love them, but suspect they will be gifted to my sister Cindy who expressed an interest in them when I visited home this past weekend. We'll see.

Successful Tour!

Today marks the end of the Tour de Fleece. I finished a 2 ply fractal spin today. I'm very happy with it. Its called Bifrost - a polwarth wool by etsy seller Kelpie Fibers. I love how happy this yarn is. I'm not sure what I'll make out of it, but I'm leaning towards mittens.

And here is a group photo of all the yarns spun during the tour. I'm very happy with the lot of them. I didn't spin as much as I would have liked but things like work kept getting in the way. But work I must, if I want to buy fiber to spin that is.

I didn't really set any concrete goals for myself - other than play with the art yarns a bit. I did manage to spin 3 different art yarns. The first one is the beehives that I already blogged about. I also did a whole Loop! bullseye bump as a super coil.

My bobbin wasn't large enough to hold the whole skein so I thread plied the leftovers. I like that one too!

Overall, I'm happy with my yarns. Look for them in upcoming posts as all of them are screaming to be knit or woven right away!

Afflicted

I've been bitten by the bug that seems to have been going around the knitting community. Yes, I'm talking about the Colour Affection Shawl





The yarn harlot blogged about it. Diane of Knitabulls podcast spoke of it. And its been consistantly in the top 20 of Ravelry's 'Hot Right Now' pattern list since ...well, I'm not sure, but I'd be willing to bet since it was written. Veera V is an established pattern writer. This particular shawl has been well over 4 THOUSAND times on Ravelry!!

Well, who am I to resist. I think its the endless possibilities of colour combos that make this such an appealing knit. I started knitting this on my vacation to Niagara Falls. Kev hand wound the yarn for me. I purchased the three skeins of Mad tosh sock from Lettuce Knits in Toronto.






I thoroughly enjoyed knitting this. There is something soothing about garter stitch stripes. I'm not sure that I will keep this shawl for myself however. I did notice one thing about it when I had just about finished it. The colours, the stripes - the shawl looked very similar to my Daybreak. I love wearing shawls in the winter, but I'm not sure that I need two stripey shawls in the nearly identical blue and yellow colours.

Tour de Fleece!

This is the fourth year that I'll be participating in the Tour de Fleece. This annual event has really helped to improve my spinning by leaps and bounds. Its gotten so that I associate summer with spinning now. I just love it!


I started team Newfoundland and Labrador, and I am the captain! Go me! Lol. I'm happy that spinning is really picking up in this province. We have about a dozen or so participants on our team. I'm also spinning for team Loop (my new favorite etsy store!). One of my goals is to spin through some of my Loop stash. I have 5 of her bumps in my stash and they are all bigger than 5 oz. I also want to try a few art yarn techniques.


I tried spinning some coils/beehives. They actually turned out pretty good as I was spinning them, but when they were pulled through the orifice and onto the bobbin, they sort of came apart. I followed the technique as outlined in the book Spin Art.


So I think my problem is that my orifice is too small. Schact sells a bulky flyer for the sidekick wheel with a larger orifice for the purpose of spinning bulkier art yarns. This is something I may have to invest in.


Here is a close up of some of the neater coils. This was so much fun to spin and its definitely something I'll be trying again. I think next time I will try plying it with a handspun single instead of a commercial yarn. I'm not sure that I like the contrasting colours.

Prior to the tour I finished up spinning half of my cupcake fibers sock kit. Here is the resulting skein. My first official three ply! I say first official because I have spun chain plied yarns which is technically a three ply yarn but not really considered a true three ply yarn since all three plies of the chain ply come from the one single ply. Understand? I'm not sure I do, and I'm a spinner. Lol.

I cannot get through a Tour without being inspired by the many spindle spinners over on Ravelry. I'm always amazed at what people can accomplish on such a simple tour. I had to break out my spindles and give it a whirl. Literally. Lol. Here is a photo of Spencer...looking unbelievably worried. He is such a little neurotic guy. I'd love to know what he is thinking sometime.

And the final photo is of my Loop batt that I've spun so far. I'm not sure what I'll do with this one, but right now I'm leaning towards chain plying it to preserve the colours. This one is called 'Kaleidoscope Eyes' and is a repeatable colourway. This means that lots of other people have this exact same colour. The good thing about this is, that its very easy to get inspired by project photos of this stuff knit up on Ravelry. Diane of Knitabulls podcast fame is currently knitting a gorgeous shawlette called Ruby Slippers in this colourway. I'm tempted to do the exact same thing! But who knows when and where inspiration will strike. I do know this.....all of my Loop batts that I've spun up are currently knit up. I think that says something about this fiber. It doesn't languish in the stash at all. It demands to be seen!

Summer Time!

Summer time around here means birthdays! Starting on June 10th with Kev's. Next up was Nat's on the 17th. And today is Cooper's birthday. One year old already. Isn't he awesome!!! It is kind of surreal how fast this past year went. I cannot tell you what a joy this little boy is. I've been around a lot of babies in my time, but I don't know if I've even seen a happier more content little boy. And he even started walking on Kevin's birthday.


It was so nice, we were out in the back yard with the kids. We put Cooper on the ground (He's been standing on his own for quite some time now) and he just walks over to a soccer ball and tries to KICK IT!!!





Here is a photo of the cake that I made for Kevin. Simple enough, but it looks impressive. There are about 10 kit kat bars on the exterior of that cake and 5 packages of smarties in the center. I probably could have done with more smarties on the center, but it was sweet enough as it was. Blair asked for a cake like this for his birthday too. Which isn't too far away - but before Blair's birthday is Morgan's and after Blair's birthday is Aimee's. See.....the endless parade of birthdays.











And speaking of Blair - I wanted to pummel him just a little when he asked the day before Nat's birthday if I would make her a cake. It was too hot in the house to do any baking, so I went and bought a pre-made angel food cake and came up with this!!! It turned out really well - not too much effort at all.























And lest you all think that I've retired my needles for the summer, fear not. I've been knitting. Lots of shawls again.











The first shawl is handspun from one of my Loop batts. I made this for Charlotte - one of the technicians at the store who just recently moved away. Charlotte has always appreciated my work and always oohs and ahhs appropriately over the handspun, so she was deemed worthy of receiving such a gift.











And the final photo is proof that I've jumped on the band wagon that is the Color Affection shawl. I think the appealing part of this shawl is the picking of the three colours. It is so fun to combine all the different colours to see what the shawl will look like. This one is made of madtosh sock. Its my first time knitting with this yarn and I must say that I'm not disappointed. I love the tight twist on this yarn and colours are gorgeous. Not surprising - the yarn would make great socks!