Close to my Heart

Disclosure

Like many others, I'm already planning to attend Sock Summit 2011.  One of the things I'm looking forward to, having never attending a fiber event of this magnitude before, is the vendor fair.  In anticpation of this,  I've decided to put myself on a yarn and fiber diet until this event.  While there may be some small exceptions (no firm rules have been made) to my plans to not purchase any new fibery goodness, I have a fairly large stash as it is, and it won't hurt me to use pretty much exclusively stash yarn and fiber until next summer.  I have tons of yarn from which to make such items as socks and small shawls.  I don't have many sweater amounts of yarn, but there are probably two or three sweaters worth in there, as well as a vest or two.  I must admit to not knowing entirely what is in my stash room, and actually squeed when I found a sweaters worth of aran yarn I had forgotten about in today. 

I was however aware that I had this yarn:

I've been combing Ravelry the last week or two, looking for just the right pattern for this yarn.  I swatched for two different sweaters with it today, the second being the one the yarn was happy with.  Swatch is now drying on the kitchen table, and I anticipate casting on in the next day or two.  Stay tuned.

Beginnings

Okay, I'm attempting to get back to the daily picture/blog thing.  I can't promise that every post will be overly interesting, but hopefully I'll once again be able to maintain the daily thing.

2010 is going to be the year that Joe and I will welcome a great niece or nephew into the world.  The new baby is due Canada Day, July 1.  Judging from the way 2009 flew by, there is little time to get going on the knitting because the due date will be here imminently and such a precious baby deserves to have tons of hand crafted items waiting for him or her when upon arrival into this world. I do have some yarn earmarked for baby knitting already in my stash, but felt that a new addition to our extended family warranted an additional purchase, and did so just before Christmas.  The parents to be are opting to not know the gender of their baby ahead of time, therefore neutral colours and patterns are essential.  I figure that buttons and embelishments can be added after baby's arrival, and keeping that in mind, I purchased this Sirdar Snuggly, a lovely functional yarn that I have knit with previously.

This New Year's Day I think it is fitting to cast on the first of many items for Baby W (I will refer to baby using the first letter of the last name from here on in).  Must go decide on a pattern now, so off I go!

Stash diving

I don't have much for you today I'm afraid.  I'm getting ready to be away for almost two weeks.  My Dad is having major surgery on Wednesday, so I'm headed off to be with him and my Mom, then will stay with them until after Christmas to help out around their house.  Surgery is always stressful and I'll be glad when it is over and my Dad is home recuperating.

I did do some stash diving, to pick out some sock yarn to take along with me.  Mindless knitting to get me throught this time.  The stash finalists are

Sweatermaker sock, produced by an awesome local indie dyer.

 Way nicer in person that it looks in the picture.

Koigu.  I don't need to say anything about Koigu

 

And finally some ONline self striping yarn.

 

I think I'm leaning towards the first two, in fact, I think I'm going to go do some winding now.

Ravelympics

The Ravelympics are coming, and since I have tickets to a couple Olympic events (Opening Ceremonies and Ice Dance) as well as the fact that it is being held in my home province of British Columbia, I knew I would have to join in the fun. I wasn't however sure what I should chose for my project.  In case you don't know, the premise of the Ravelympics is that your project is cast on when the Olympic torch is lit, and should be completed by the time the torch is extinguished at the end of the games.  Many people chose a project that will challenge and improve their knitting abilities.  My problem this year is that I needed something portable as I will be traveling to Vancouver twice, and I will also obviously be quite busy, so time intensive projects are not realistic.

While looking around Fun Knits, something jumped out at me:

 

 

This is Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, in the Olympic colourway, available exclusively from Fun Knits.  Shelley tells me she is in the process of designing a scarf specifically knit with this yarn.  It will take into account the colours in this yarn that represent the Olympic rings.  It will be similar to this child's sweater, which I photographed while at Fun Knits:

 

I'm now totally stoked about the Ravelympics!!!!

Oh, and just in case you want to knit Olympic yarn for the Ravelympics yourself, Fun Knits currently just has a few skeins of this yarn remaining, however they are expecting a large order in soon. And they do mail order.  If you do purchase yarn, tell them I sent you.  I'm in no way affiliated with this LYS, just a happy and supportive customer. :)

Just another day here....

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the States.  Here in Canada, we celebrate the second Monday of October, so today was just another work day.  I can however remember last week with fondness.  I was off on a mini vacation, travelled a short ways from home across to Quadra Island, as well as headed south on Vancouver Island.  Through these travels I managed to visit five yarn stores in a four day period.  While some of my purchases last week were for Christmas gifts, I did manage to add to my own stash as well.  Here's the spoils:

As you can see I've been playing with the blog template again.  Typepad has made it easier to personalize some of their templates, so that's what I have done.  I've also cleaned up the rather cluttered sidebar as well as updated my profile that you can access from the top of this page.

Another weekend, another fiber event

October is a great month around here for fiber events.  Following in the trail of last weekend's retreat, this past weekend wasn't once again spent breathing in the fumes of fibery goodness.  Actually, I've had a lovely four day weekend that has been filled with more than just fiber fun.  It started Thursday night with a lovely night with girlfriends, continued Friday with some time at my parent's place, and then culminated Saturday with the Cowichan Fiber Fest (great post showing the event itself here).  This is the second year that I attended, and I think it was even better this year than last year.  It was nice to connect with old fiber friends and meet some new ones too (was great to put faces to the Ravelry names). The lovely autumn day didn't hurt either, the colours were breathtaking and I was constinuously in awe over the beauty.

While I showed some restraint in my purchases at the retreat last weekend, that was not the case this weekend.  There was just so much pretty fiber there that I could not help myself.  Here's what I got:

First, these pretties from Hummingbird Fiber Arts.  The larger one is a BFL/Silk blend.  I've spun this previously from this same vendor,and it's truly glorious.  The smaller package is a merino/silk blend.

 

These fibers are from Twist of Fate:

 

The two on the right are superwash, so are destined to become socks eventually.

I got his cotton for some upcoming weaving projects.  Speaking of which I will soon have a big weaving development to share with you soon.

And finally, this just might be my favourite of all of my purchases.  It's from Qualicum Bay FIbre Works (no website).  I'm dreaming of one day purchasing a fleece and getting it processed at this mill (not into the washng/carding thing myself).  But I digress, check out this lovely blend called Peppermint Ripple, it's 52% alpaca, 32% wool, and 16% dyed silk:

 

It was to be purchased by the ounce, and I took 10 ounces.  No real idea why I went with that amount or what I'm going to do with it.  Maybe something lacy?

Following a yummy lunch of bannock and salmon (thanks to the Cowichan people who were selling their beautiful handknits), still delerious from the fiber fumes, I headed out on the road again.  Once again I was in awe of the beautful autumn colours, and decided I should take some pictues from my moving vehicle (shhhh, don't tell anyone!). 

 

Clearly the beauty loses something in these kind of quick snapped shots, but gives you an idea anyway.  I ventured off the highway a bit too to see if I could get some better shots.  I'll end this blog post with this pretty view:

Something new

I've been back from Vancouver for a few days now, and it's great to be home to Joe and the kitties.  I had a lovely time in Vancouver, and was busy the whole time I was there.  One thing that was clear this time though, is that I'm not a city girl at all, I found that the noise and the busy-ness really bothered me.  The city is a great place to visit, lots to see and do, but it is great to come home to a quieter environment.  I have another week off work still, which will be used as a staycation.  It will be nice and relaxing to stay closer to home, I anticipate lots of time knitting on the patio, sipping an ice tea and listening to my Ipod.

On my last day in Vancouver, I had the pleasure of visiting Sweet Georgia Yarns. I have admired Felicia's work on line for a few years now, and it was lovely to meet her and see her studio in person.  Unfortunately, her stock was a little low, but there was still lots of lovely yarns to admire, and of course some came home with me:

 

The roving on the top is a bamboo blend that I'm really looking forward to spinning up.  The two skeins are sock yarn, however I think much too nice to be stuck on feet, maybe a shawl or something?

While at Sweet Georgia, I found my birthday present from Joe.  My birthday is today, so I am now able to officially use it.  Joe and I often buy are own gifts from each other, however the rule is that we are not allowed to use them to the actual occasion rolls around.

 

I've been wanting a loom for a while now, probably since before I even started spinning, if the truth be known.  I chose this inexpensive starter loom, the Schacht Cricket, as a way to see if weaving is for me or not.  If it is, I will upgrade to something a little bigger and more versatile.  The price of this lovely Schacht loom was very good, and it has received excellent reviews too.  I'm happy to have entered the Schacht fold, I know so many people that rave over their products!

We are currently experiencing a bit of a heat wave, and by the time I cleared off the kitchen table today, I was too hot and tired to set the thing up.  Soon though!  For now I'm grabbing my knitting and heading out to the patio.  Speaking of the patio, check out this dragonfly that Joe found out there this morning:

Vacations are for stash enhancement

Well I managed to manoveur the car safely to my sister's downtown Vancouver condo.  I made one wrong turn that was fairly easily corrected, and had a bit of an incident with the meter in their parking garage (thought it had eaten my credit card but it eventually spit the thing out, phew).  Last night my sister and I attended the fireworks competition.  This was the fifth time I had seen one of the shows, but the best yet.  I wasn't quite sure what to think when the music started and it was music from the Wizard of Oz, however the Canadian team did an awesome job of portraying the story to this music.

Today I met up with Uli for our second lower mainland yarn crawl.  It was great to see Uli again.  We visited four different yarn stores, Knitopia in Langley (no website that I could find), 88 Stitches in Walnut Grove and Three Bags Full and Urban Yarns (and actually a fifth that I won't name as no purchases were made there) in Vancouver.  Uli behaved herself (she is going to Sock Summit so she is understandably saving her money for the vendor market there) however I may just have engaged in a little bit of stash enhancement:

The Long Weekend in Pictures

What a lovely long weekend it has been! The weather for the most part cooperated until mid afternoon Monday.  Saturday found me on a little road trip to two yarn stores in the next town over.  Here's one of the stores I stopped at, outside of which the village's annual market days was taking place.  I had fun poking around.

My purchases for the day:

Yarn for a couple baby gift sweaters as well as a pretty skein of sock yarn. 

Sunday afternoon found the cats and I hanging around on our patio.  While I knit and listened to podcasts, the cats had fun exploring:

Truly a lovely weekend!

Let's make a deal

Among the many things I love about Ravelry, one is the sense of community that exists in many of the groups there.  I have mentioned before that I am active in several groups, and have enjoyed getting to know people from around the world.  In one of these groups, Ravelry member Toadyjoe decided that she really didn't like sock knitting, but loved handmade socks.  She had an extensive selection of sock yarn as well as an extensive knitting library.  She made a proposal for group members to select two skeins of sock yarn, knit her a pair of socks with one skein, and then keep the other skein for them self.  She sweetened the deal even further by including the book of the sock knitter's choice from her library.  I of course had to get in on this deal. 

The yarn I chose to knit socks for Toadyjoe with was a gorgeous merino tencel from Yarn Pirate. After extensive browsing around Ravelry I decided to knit No Purl Monkeys.  I think this was great choice for this yarn, and very enjoyable to knit as well.  I think there will be a pair of No Purl Monkeys for myself in the future. 

Here's the finished socks:

In return I received the book French Girl Knits and this gorgeous Wolllmeise Sock Yarn.

I've always wanted to see what the fuss was about this yarn!  Toadyjoe also included a bonus, a hank of Malabrigo Lace Weight that I didn't think to photograph.

Did anyone notice that I posted two days in a row for the first time in who knows how long?  And I even have a couple more posts planned for the rest of this week.