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Sunday, September 30, 2018

Shouting on Sunday

I know I usually do Silent Sunday...but I didn't post about this on FO Friday!

Presenting....A Sprinkling of Leaves!  A FREE to you pattern courtesy of Knotions.com




I tend to get a little bit "geeky" about knitting, always wonder why/how/what if and this shawl was one of my meandering through "Do the increase rules really need to be followed in a shawl, ALL the time?"

As it turns out...No.

Unlike hard numbers, knitting is pretty flexible!

From the pattern:


Deciding where, and how, to put increases in a shawl is always fun!  Yes, for various shapes there are “rules” that should be followed, but by its very nature, yarn and knitting are flexible so the rules don’t always have to be followed exactly.  This top-down shawl starts with a massive increase of stitches, as is typically found in old-fashioned knit doilies, then throws all the rules out the window and has increases “like a sprinkling of leaves” throughout the body.

 
  On the Knotions site there are links to tutorials including:




How to read a knitting chart
No stitches in a knitting chart
Lace knitting 101
Garter tab
Yarn overs and eyelets
CDD 

The yarn is a gorgeous gradient from Ozifarmer's Market...my bank balance hates every time I so much as type that name because sure as fire I am going to go look and find yet another colorway I can't live without! (And if YOU don't see one you can't live without...message Dawn she is the sweetest person ever and dyes to order!)

I can't wait to see what colors you pick to make your own shawl!

And, although Knotions did professional photography with Edsgar Portrait Studio...TDQ would like you to know that the shawl looks absolutely amazing with a witches hat too!

Sunday, September 23, 2018

Very Quiet







Thursday, September 20, 2018

I was EXHAUSTED...or Wool Gathering.


Gathering of the Wool : A Trip to Wool Gathering, Yellowsprings Ohio.


Ohio…to hear people talk it is flat, dull and so boring that more US Astronauts have hailed from the state than any other, or at least it seems that way! (With the joke being it is so bad that they are driven to leave the entire planet!) But I find it has its own charm, especially mid-September when Wool Gathering happens!
Held at Young’s Diary it hosts over 100 vendors from around the mid-west, and some of the best ice-cream and deep fried cheese curds anywhere around.

Although it has been held for 23 years now, this is only the fourth or fifth year that my children and I have attended.  We look forward to it each year and each have our own role to play as the day unfolds.
The roles start to show during the nearly hour long drive to get there, once the radio station we usually listen to starts to get fainter and more staticy the plotting and planning begins.  “Do you think they will have my favorite shade of green?” muses TOB   He has been looking for exactly the right shade for years now and never found it


The perfect shade is  somewhere between those colorways there.
 

“Will the Weavers Guild be there” ponders TFB...
And of course they were and he and his brother monopolized the demo looms for a while.





Wearing shoes while weaving makes things difficult, but was required out during this trip.





TOB discovered he could angle his feet and use just the outer edges to ensure he was only pressing down the pieces he wanted to.


“Does my make up look alright?” interrupted The Drama Queen (Aka Knitwear Thief, Master-class.) After the laughing from her brothers she explained she was the walking bill-board for a shawl that will be published in Knotions at the end of this month.
 






(this isn’t it, just a demo piece from one of the vendors that she tried on, it had pockets that went from waist to just below the knees!  Finally something with pockets big enough to hold a cell phone, knitting project and your car keys…but sadly it stayed behind when we left.)


I of course was pondering visits with friends, I meet up with some of the dyers who provide yarn support and was supposed to meet a couple of people from Ravelry but timing didn’t work out, and more importantly what I wanted to buy!


We have a system…walk through and look at everything once then stop, watch the sheep shearing 
 



 Sorry, the lighting was really bad in that tent....

Have a snack and then go through again having talked through our purchase plans.



Several of the vendors I have visited with in the past didn’t come this year, but new to me vendors took their places…there was of course lots of yarn to pick from.





 Spindles and Wheels and Looms...oh my!

 Beads and buttons, stuffed toys....there's more!

 Unique scissors...now if I only thought I could hold onto them, scissors seem to mysteriously migrate at my house.
 Blending Boards and Hand Carders...which reminds me I have some fleeces to scour....



Of course our “once more” through the tents ended up becoming four times more through the tents as each of us forgot where a vendor we wanted to revisit was!  But in the end…

We were all satisfied with our purchases and made one final stop…Ice Cream!
 



 One last visit to the sheep and we were all tiredly on our way home!
 My purchases?  I was very restrained some sock yarn...
 1500 yds of lace weight...I have a plan for this...it will be epic or an epic disaster....
 And some yarn to do a test knit for my friend Peggy Jean Kaylor...you can find her patterns on .Ravelry



All that walking and talking and eating of ice cream wore me out!  Once home, I got kicked out of the mom's union for saying that ice cream was our dinner and crashed on the sofa!.

How has your week been?

~M