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!

A TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP

This past weekend - DF Carol came to stay with me so she could attend the Fall Festival at the Olde Green Cupboard. She brought this darling BBD pin pillow for me. I was thrilled and soooo impressed with Carol's finishing skills -She said it was a breeze - yeah right - that she followed the directions from the book and it came out perfectly - don't you think so too? It is filled with lavender and rosemary and wool and is just so pretty - and look at the lovely delicate fabric on the back. I love how the dyeing came out - just perfect Carol.

Needless to say - we had a wonderful time with our sampler guild friends. There were lots of people coming thru - mostly quilters but we did try to convert every one we met to stitchers and er - Yep Hookers! I was demo-ing rug hooking for the cupboard instead of stitching.

The following day was rug guild so I had a full weekend of pulling loops and got a lot done on the backround of Merrie. I'm getting so much hooking done lately that I have not been getting much forward progress on my stitching projects.

As soon as it gets 10 degrees cooler - I know the "oh fall is coming" knitting bug will be hitting me. It always does this time of year - when all the fall knitting yarns and magazines come out - WATCH OUT - I'll be heading to the LYS to peruse all the wonderful new wools. I already have joined a SAL for a wonderful challenging cape out of the fall Vogue Knitting mag. It is using a wonderful Alpaca/wool blend which I have been dying to try.

So friends - please drop me a note and let me know you stopped by for a visit. I enjoy every one of you so much.

A IS FOR ANCHOR

I finally have a finish ! I found this little Prairie Schooler piece when I was looking for something else. I bought the PS alphabet series several years ago when it came out. I had high aspirations of stitching them all and displaying them in some type of grouping - what a joke! I had this A about 2/3 finished and had just abandoned it. Feeling the need for a finish - any finish would do so I started working on this last week. WHOOOHOOOO - easy finish and I was able to go with my mom to the framers and picked out a perfect distressed frame - very simple for this little piece. Don't know where I'll put it yet but who cares ! I have a finish albeit a very small one - I'll take anything I can get at this point. I tend to work on medium to large samplers and my finishes are few and FAR between - so this is a little lift for me and now I can get started on the Sail Away SAL I am participating in with Terri, Loraine and some other blogger friends. I'm already a week late getting started so I have to get with it.

No rug hooking progress to report - I have not pulled a loop since the retreat. However I am demo-ing rug hooking at the Olde Green Cupboard on Saturday for their Fall Festival - that should be fun - the store should be packed and our sampler guild will be meeting there that day and also demo-ing stitching for the shop. DF Carol is coming up from central florida to spend the night so she can participate in this event. Mom will be in town for a change so she can come too. Should be a really fun day. Our rug guild meets on sunday so if I get to go on sunday - I will have a full weekend of hooking progress to report on next week.

knitting progress is little to none - I started the hat on the cover of the fall Vogue Knitting mag for a friends birthday - An August birthday no doubt - I don't know why I always set myself up for failure - of course I don't realize at the time I am setting myself up for failure - I always think - oh - I'll work on this for a hour or two every night and more on the weekends and I'll get it done - humpf ! yeah right - so that's how I rationalize and end up starting more new projects. OK - I'm going to quit beating myself up about it - I always say it's the journey that counts and the process of enjoying my one or two hours of sitting with my handwork at night before bed. Whatever I can accomplish is forward progress. I am just thankful I have a comfortable home and eyesight and a healthy mind to continue on my journey to needlework fulfillment.

Summer is still in full swing here in the deep south - I'm sure parents are glad their kids are heading back to school soon - for me it just means that my commute is longer because there is more traffic on the road when school get back in session. Fall is a favorite time of the year but I am trying hard to enjoy each season and not wish my life away - I wish summer was over - I wish fall was here - etc etc - We will still be able to go in the pool for another month or two and I have a little vacation planned to the Smokies in Tenn. over Labor Day. We are really looking forward to that - we've vacationed in that area for 30 years - actually all my life - we much prefer to head north than head south - I have actually not ever been to Key West and have not been to Miami for over 20 years.

I wanted to thank everyone for visiting my blog and commenting. Without your comments - it isn't too interesting to read the blog. Hope you all continue to enjoy the dog days of summer and take many happy stitches.

RETREAT UPDATE

This past weekend was a 3 day rug hooking retreat at the Olde Green Cupboard - a great local quilt and prim shop. A lot the gals that work there and the owner is becoming enthralled with hooking - yes it's easy to get hooked on hooking - We started Friday afternoon and ended Sunday afternoon and it was practically non-stop hooking, eating, laughing, hooking, eating - you get my drift.

I was undecided on my previous post whether I would concentrate on one WIP or work on several - I was a good girl and got right down to work on my Merrie Halloween. I knew friend Jill was working on her Pumpkin Thyme which is the boyfriend of Merrie so it was fun to be at approximately the same spot on both pieces. The same teacher color planned both canvases so while they are both colorful they are different.

Sorry about the duplication of photos but I could not figure out how to get rid of the extra one I did not need - URGHHH

I was running out of the "moldy green" used on her skirt so that was somewhat nerve racking to deal with but I made it with just a few skimpy strands to spare. Here is two photos of my progress. I got a good start on the backround but I'm in the unfortunate predicament of having 4 rugs - 2 of them are large - one is huge and one is a runner that all need backrounds done. URGGHHH - To get this much backround done - I must hook at home - must hook at home - must hook at home - No reason I can't hook some every day at home - I have a wonderful new chair in my wool room - need to show you a photo of my new chair - actually not new but from a consignment shop where I also got my stitching chair in my sun room. Next time I'll try to show you a photo of the chair in my hooking corner.

I think my next focus rug to finish will be my pomgrante runner - It is a do-able finish for this year and I'm not sure Merrie Halloween is - I don't think I could finish her for Halloween - if I hooked exclusively and did not stitch and knit I might could do it. We'll see - I try not to get caught up in a race to the finish line - I like to do things in my own sweet time - I figured out a long time ago - I could not compete with people who crank out projects in a week or a month so I'm real pleased with my retreat progress on Merrie.

Not much to report on with my stitching progress. I actually have done a bit but not enough to show a photo. My knitting progress is even more pitiful - just a few rows here and there of some mindless knitting. All the fall knitting mags will be coming out soon and that will get me going I'm sure.

Oh - one exciting thing - August 5th is the start for the Sail Away SAL - Loraine and Terri have set up a special blog just for this darling SB design. I'm excited and ready to go on that one - I'll have to see how they plan to run the SAL - I'll just have to fit into rotation - I can't work exclusively on anything - so much to stitch - so little time. Cheers!