Friday Night Knitting/Spinning

Normally we meet on Wednesday nights. Due to the holiday, we postponed until Friday night. We were a much smaller group than normal due to that, but we still had fun!

Beth brought her new Fricke S-160-ST spinning wheel and had fun spinning up some of Susan's fiber. Karen is still nursing her left shoulder and not knitting but kept everyone company. Duffy was working on a scarf for the boss to the Civil War game, we'll try to forgive that he's a Duck. Go Beavers! She switched to a lace project by the looks here. Cindy was knitting another Traveling Woman shawl out of her own handspun. It's going to be gorgeous!

Bobbie is going to knit up a  few of the Mikey Cap's for relatives and making notes of the significant modifications she made to the pattern. Sara had made some awesome Bella's mittens and was working on a fingerless pair out of some leftover yarn.

Gail was working on the gorgeous Gail's Gold silk-pygora (yes it is named after her!) from Rainbow Yarns. I love the colors in the Copper that Gail also has. (Sorry, they're updating their stock after SOAR, so you'll have to check back to see the colors Terry comes up with her pygora.) When I can afford some I'll be buying up 8 ounces of this luscious stuff. (It might be a while before that happens - its sells quickly!)

Holly was there too, but she was sitting right next to me and so I couldn't twist the camera right to get a picture of her too.  She came to talk about using hand carders with some alpaca that turned out better than originally thought. She was very sweet and before leaving gave me one of the Tudor Rose designs for my bobbins. I'll put the stickers on them tomorrow.

If you couldn't tell it was a little chilly in there tonight. Not sure if the heater was totally turned off, or like last year, there was cold air blowing out the vents. Since they changed the lighting in the center area, we'll try sitting there next week and see if its less cold.

Gail said her ears were cold - I'd snuggle up to the pygora too!

 
PS: if you're planning on doing any shawl knitting in the future, take a look at this cool spreadsheet that Marnie put together to figuring out stitches and yardage for patterns that increase by four stitches every other row - lots do it this way! Totally geeky and she rocks! Go download your free copy, you know you'll want it. It lets you adjust so if a pattern calls for 400 yards and you only have 350 you know how many rows you'll get.

One Row Karma Scarf

I finished up the One Row Karma Scarf last night. I soaked it in hot water and got a few extra inches out of the soak. It's only 46 inches long so drapes around the neck and a decent length down the chest. It's intended for a teenage girl, so hopefully it will work for her:


Today there was spinning at Panera Bread again. We had three spinners and one knitter. A nice mix. ;^) I plied up the Abstract Fibers BFL in the Shady Glade colorway. Lovely greens and blues. I decided to also n-ply this yarn and I think it came out nicely. It's resting on the bobbin and will come off tomorrow and have a nice hot soak and see how much there is to play with.

I then started in on the last of the Abstract Fibers sample - Superwash Merino in the Autumn colorway. Mine is lacking in the green and so if I wanted to I could call it Sunset another colorway she has that just lacks the green. ;^) The colors are coming out really vivid. I think I'll also n-ply this one.

Before going to the spinning group I had knit one of the Cranes for the Knitnotwar that Knit/Purl is doing for the month. I'm going to use some of my leftover Cascade 220 from the Cascade Lizard Ridge blanket. It's a nice quick easy knit that just needs to be felted. I'm going to use these as a break in between scarf projects. ;^)

I had also started another project that will be nameless until after it is given since the giftee is also known to look at my blog, reading, I'm not sure. So that safe rather than sorry thing. Why am I mentioning it then? Because they use the same needle size as the cranes. I'd started it and then put it on the craft table so it wasn't visible while I was gone. Silly me, I left the needles with the yarn.

I had stopped at Jo-Ann's on my way over to Haggen's to try to find a copy of the Simply Knitting magazine. They were all out of them, or they hadn't yet come in. I did use my 40% off coupon to get a copy of Interweave's Piecework. They had been advertising the Baby Inca Hat. Interesting article on knitting two socks at once - inside each other, I don't think I'm ready for that. No knitting needles meant that I did a lot of socializing - fondling finished projects - knit and spun and looking through the magazine. Rachel had also brought along some 'free yarn' from Debby Accuardi. I picked up a couple of sock yarns:

A sock kit - pattern, yarn and beads:


Tiggywinkleknits also had given me an almost full skein of Paton's Beehive Baby Sport in white so that I can make Ruby the Snowgirl a husband. I'll also make her another friend, since the pattern is a grouping of three. ;^)

Tomorrow there's knitting with the Insomnia group but even better than that, a book signing at Powell's! Patricia Briggs is in town again for her new book Bone Crossed. A Mercy Thompson book out in hard back. I of course have had it on request to be shipped from the SciFi Book Club for a month now. They of course wouldn't ship it out until its release date of the 3rd. Anyone seeing where I'm going with this yet? Yes, the price I have to pay for getting it cheaper (saving $11 off the list price) is that it will probably arrive on my doorstep on Friday. It at least shows that it shipped today where it hadn't yesterday, so more likely arrival is Saturday. I do have a book for her to sign (all the other ones were done last year) and it will be fun to hear her do a reading and the Q&A. Might even get to say hi to another local author - Lili Saintcrow, she often comes to these events too.

More tinies and other stuff

Part two....

Yesterday I made up a second mini-sweater using the Happy Feet I'd bought for these projects, full length sleeves too!

I started another mini-mitten set also out of the Happy Feet but only finished one that afternoon and started the second one at Haggen's. With everything that was going on, I had the ribbing and thumb done before leaving. Finished the set up this afternoon:

Speaking of Haggen's....if you'd like a free project bag, check out their wine section. They are giving away this bag and it's perfect for a skein in one section and your project in the other and room for more:

Tiggywinkleknits shared some of her sock yarn leftovers with me since I haven't done a lot of socks yet. This way I can have a little more variety in my mini projects. The white is really going to come in handy!

I was able to make use of the white from Bobbie in this mini-stocking that was designed by PDXKnitterati. I did make some adaptations to it though:


Susan was also handing out the bookmarks that she has as an advertisement. I think they'll also go in a Phat Fiber Box: The back side has the scarf design that Kathleen created for her.

Speaking of the Phat Fiber Box, Stitchjones, has some Black Cherry Glam Sock yarn as samples in the January Box. Check out the YouTube video of all the samples! Not sure how the box works but signed up to be notified for the next one in February.

Happy New Year!

Last night after Brandon and I picked up supplies for the evening - variety of cheeses (spreadable, gouda, feta, mozzarella), sausage log (had one already) and a sausage rope, couple different crackers and some pop. Luke brought his controller over so he was prepared and then it was preparation of the food stuffs. I cut up the sausage rope into bite sized sections and poured the second bottle of beer that Tammy had given me on top, but first I had a taste. Very good stuff and tasted awesome with the sausage. It simmers for a couple of hours on the burner. I then rinsed off the mozzarella balls and sprinkled some olive oil on top.

With my part done and orders for the boys to finish the preparations I headed over to Haggen's. It had been a couple of weeks since I'd been because of the snow and all. There was just Tiggywinkleknits, PersistentIllusion, KnitForJoy and Toolman. We caught up with looking at baby blankets for the charity, Bobbie had some preemie hats she made during MAX trips.

I picked up my prize from Judy's 'identify the tools' contest. Schaefer Yarns, Anne, Toni Morrison"
She was also working on a very cool Inca style hat for #1Son who is very lucky to be getting such a cool hat.

Just before it was time to head back home and for Cindy to head down to her evening job, Gail and Susan arrived. Susan had a couple of books she was giving away and one came home with me. Amazon has been recommending it to me, so looks like I'll be reading it some time soon. It's Fleece Navidad. (Apparently book #6 in the series and a test of the author that I will not have read the previous books.)

Here's a shot of all the great knitting books that I got as Christmas gifts, received all but one on my list so very thankful! It includes the Knit a Day Calendar too. I'd hoped for the 'Never Not Knitting' one but this has started out nice so far (I'd actually do the first project).


I did get some spinning in on Tuesday. I'm going to weigh the bobbins in their current state and see if they are close in weight before proceeding with the rest of my roving for this project. I should be able to take it with me on Sunday to ply. Both bobbins will have definitely had resting time after being spun and thus be ready for plying.

After a day at the Xbox360, I need some knitting time and I'm ready to knit again. ;^) I'm going to start on the Christmas 2009 Monthly KAL projects for January. Friday, there will be knitting with the Insomnia group, Saturday a trip down to Salem to visit with family and Sunday spinning with the Portland Spinnerati group at the Central Portland Library.

Monday William starts classes again for Winter term at PCC. Luke doesn't have classes again until the 14th at University of Idaho (yea they start classes in the middle of the week - how crazy?!). They'll try to get in as much visiting time as possible around schedules. We've missed not having Luke live with us most weekends. ;^) It's great to be a second mother without all the financial responsibilities. LOL.