FALL KNITTING FEVER

*****WARNING******** - if you are not a knitter or lover of wool - you will probably find this post extremely boring.

Must have jinxed myself in the previous post when I said I was sure the fall knitting frenzy would hit me soon as it does every year about this time. Of course I had loads of bad influence from DF Karen who innocently came up to visit me and attend a quilt lecture by Bonnie Blue Quilts Paula Barnes at the Olde Green Cupboard on Saturday night. Karen is going to talk more about the lecture and show some better photos she took of the awesome trunk show Paula brought along with her. I was a very good girl there at the cupboard but I did buy one quilt pattern that Karen said could easily be hand pieced. Yes - I do intend to take a hand piecing class later this year at the OGC by Jo Morton. NO NO NO - I am not going to get into quilting - I AM NOT going to get into quilting - you did hear that didn't you ? I have not paid for that class yet either and I was pretty sure I was going to dismiss the thought of taking that class but of course Karen said it would just further my repertoire/skill level/knowledge and I should take it whether it goes any farther or not. So - I'm back to saying yes I will take the hand piecing class on the Ohio Star later this fall.

OK - on to the yarny stuff - One of the not so LYS is about to start a KAL on a gorgeous new cape pattern in the fall issue of Vogue Knitting. She carries every color of the exact yarn called for in this pattern. It is Highlander by Alpaca with a Twist and in the photo below - it is in the upper left corner - a beautiful color called Tartan Red - WHOOOOO - I was so excited with my choice - the KAL begins on 9/19 - I also purchased a ball of Alpaca Sox by Classic Elite to make a hat also out of the new VK issue - see seperate photo of that project and hat photo. Never tried that yarn before so that will be fun - it was not fun however starting that hat with 12 stitches on size 3 DP needles and starting over 5 times - had DF Karen not been present at the time and I had to restraint myself - I'm sure that project would have gone flying across the room never to be seen again. Looks like I'm on my way now as evidenced below.

Saturday we made a pilgrimage to JoAnn's in the rain and horrendous traffic to get there. I think I would have rather stayed home and beat myself with a stick LOL - There are only 2 JoAnn's locations now in the humongous metropolis that is Jacksonville and one is within a few miles of my house - however because of the obnoxious traffic in the area - I have not gone to that location in probably 10 years or more. I got two nice knitting books - one on sale with the 40% coupon and spent WAY more money than I expected to because again DF Karen HAD to show me some Bethany Lowe Halloween book that had this really cool wreath made out of zillions of cut ribbons - So I bought like 20 spools of various ribbons to make this blasted wreath. Karen sat and cut about 5 spools into the correct length to give me a jump start on that project. We stayed up WAY too late starting new knitting projects - her a great scarf and me - the hat shown above.

Sat evening was the quilt lecture at the OGC - we met DF Kerrie at Bonefish Grill next door to OGC for a delicious dinner before the lecture. We are all into samplers so it was non-stop sampler talk thru the course of the wait and the dinner. Here is a photo of the only quilt pattern I bought from the Bonnie Blue trunk show. She said it was inspired by an antique quilt obviously using scrap fabric - I thought this might work for me and give me some justification to pick up little fat quarters of beautiful fabric that I have absolutely no use for except to stash. Its fairly small in quilt terms anyway - that's my excuse and I'm stickin' to it !

Now as it we did not get into enough trouble Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night - we decided that we would make another drive on sunday to Hanks in Gainesville - another great but "not so LYS" - I've have had some Fisherman's wool on order with them since MAY (yes friends - a previous visit to this shop with DF BI(bad influence) Karen) I bought 2 lovely 500yrd skeins of Lorna's Lace hand dyed Fisherman's wool in Butterscotch in May and after perusing all my knitting books and patterns for a Fisherman's Gansey - I realized that 1000 yrds was not nearly enough - AAACCCKKKK - hence the 3 month wait for more yarn to be ordered, dyed and shipped to Hanks. Of course I could have had them mail the yarn to me for all of about $5 but OOOOOHHHHH NOOOOO - Why not just drive down there and pick up the yarn and see what they had new since May - Well - you will also see in this photo - the other purchases that could not escape my lust for the wool - you see - I don't talk about it much but yarn is my real weakness, my addiction, my crack - - I have more yarn than anything else in my vast stash and more than a lot of shops I have seen - so much so that I am actually going to have to have a big sale in the near future to reduce my stash so I can finish cleaning out my old house which has been for the past year simply a warehouse for my vast yarn and stitching stash.

Again in the upper left is the Highlander Tweed from the Local Needle - upper right is the Butterscotch LL Fisherman's wool, lower left is some lovely Silky Alpaca Lace by Classic Elite and lower right Maron Malibrigo - Malibrigo is Karen's crack - she loves it and is such a BI - I am making a lovely shawl for my mom out of Malibrigo I purchased on the May adventure to Hanks - it is turning out nice so I thought I'd better have some on hand just in case I wanted one too. For those of you who know knitting - Jared Flood is a blogger from NYC -he has done some great design work - I don't actively read his blog (there is not enough hours in the day to read all the blogs of interest) but his patterns have been picked up by Classic Elite Yarns and his new book is extremely hard to come by right now - Hanks had one copy of this book left and I snagged it posthaste. He has a lovely shawl in there called Bridgewater and it uses the gorgeous Silky Alpaca Lace pictured above. Here is my meager start on that project.
OK - is anyone still with me??? I'm doubting it but just in case you are here - you might have a chance to win 3 balls of beautiful lace weight wool from Australia - just mention in your post that you'd like to be entered in the drawing for the lace weight wool and if you mention my crazy post on your blog - I'll enter your name twice - I am finally done rambling about my excellent awesome yarn adventure weekend. The drawing will be held on Labor Day - good luck!