A White Thanksgiving. Sort of.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you had a wonderful day with family and ate lots of wonderful food!

We've had quite the week here in Corvallis. On Monday night it started snowing and by Tuesday morning we had a whopping 1/2 an inch of snow. Yup. You read that right, 1/2 an inch. Schools were cancelled, people called into work, and people didn't dare go outside. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Sort of. All the schools in the valley were closed and the wait at the tire place was about 7 hours to get snow tires. Sailor thought it was awesome that there was snow covering the back yard. As soon as he went out he started flying around the yard acting crazy.

Sailor attempting to fly away using his ears. 

Attaching the ball 

Sailor stole my glove and then proceeded to run around the yard whipping it about.

The snow actually stayed on the ground until late Wednesday, which is pretty unusual for around here. We took a hike on the trails yesterday with V and Diamond, and the dogs had a great time running through the snow chasing each other. 

I've been spinning a ton for the shop, and just added these beauties:

Merino Silk Singles 

 Blue Faced Leicester spun from roving dyed by Gales Art

Rambouillet, roving dyed by Two if By Hand 

Shetland Singles, roving dyed by Two if by Hand

And of course, there has been knitting. More secret Christmas knitting. :)

Love,

liz :)

More Handspun!

Just a quick post to show off a couple of skeins of handspun that I've recently finished. Both of them have been listed in the shop, but one has already sold! Yay!

The first is something I spun up from fiber bought at Rhinebeck! It's a merino cashmere blend that is amazingly squishy and soft.

I can't even describe to you how squishy and wonderful this skein is! 

Honestly, these skeins are so hard to part with! 

This next one has already sold, but it's one I'm really proud of. It's superwash merino, so again, unbelievably soft!

220 yards of dk-weight superwash merino 

Navajo-plied to keep some of the colors consistent  

squishy, merino goodness

I also listed the skein from my last post in the shop.

I have finished ANOTHER Christmas gift! But...it'll have to wait until after Christmas to make an appearance on the blog. It's killing me not to be able to share all the knitting I've been doing! I've been on a roll, and I'm glad I picked mostly small accessories that have only taken a day or two to complete. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel of Christmas knitting! 

Well....I'm off to either do some spinning or some holiday knitting. 

Love,

liz :)

A wee bit of spinning (and a lot of Christmas knitting...)

I've been getting back into the groove of spinning now that fall is in full swing. I purchased a couple of Moonrover batts from a lovely lady on Ravelry who was destashing them.  You can see them here. I've only spun up half of the mini batts so far, but the resulting yarn is glorious. I spilt the bats by color so that the yarn will be self-striping.

Yarn on the Niddy Noddy. Some of the colors are kind of tweedy, due to the chunks of silk in the batts. 

145 yards of DK weight yarn 

Isn't it fabulous??  

I think it will probably end up in the etsy shop, but it's totally tempting to keep it and knit it up!

I need to decide whether I should spin up the second half of the fiber and sell the 2 skeins as a set or sell them separately. 

Of course, I've been doing loads of Christmas knitting. I have 4 gifts completely done and am working on number 5! Here's a teaser shot:

In black and white as to not give anything away! 

I actually spent a night up in Portland this week with my friend Valerie. Her daughter turned 18 on Wednesday, and was going to a concert with 4 of her friends and then spending the night. We went to make sure the girls stayed out of trouble (mostly just to make sure the concert venue was in a safe part of town). After we dropped the girls off at the concert we took a drive to Happy Knits, so I could show Valerie the ways of snobby yarn. She's just getting back into knitting, and after she finishes the project she's working on she wants to start using nicer yarn (she's knitting with some neon acrylic right now). We had a great dinner at the Bagdad Theater and Pub...I had the Curry Rice Bowl, it was amazing. Thai Curry is always a bit of a risk at a non-Thai place, but it was amazing. And spicy! We spent the rest of the night in the hotel room knitting while waiting for the girls to get back. In the morning we had some birthday cake up on the 6th floor of the hotel, which had a fabulous view of the convention center.

Fun, eh? 

The Portland Hills....Isn't Portland gorgeous?!

Portland is such an awesome city. It's easy to get around by car (or they have fabulous public transportation...and some of it is free), and there are all sorts of fun, eclectic shops. And tons of greenery everywhere. 

Your sweater looks like it's coming along really nicely! Philo appears to approve of knitting time...what a cutie. 

Well, I must try and get some knitting done before it's time to make dinner (Dino BBQ's Potato and Corn Chowder)!

Love,

liz :)

Progress before I switch over to holiday projects...

A few fun things to share with you my friend!

One- I'm now babysitting for two families... Yay cash.  And yay for two year olds who play "[insert rooster noise] good morning!  it's bed time, good night [insert snore noise]!" with me for twenty minutes at a time!  She's pretty magical.  

Two- the weather!  Today was our first "wintery mix" day, complete with snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain.  Henry and I got home from school and after he hurried to finish his math homework, we had a snow ball fight!  And yes, in case you are wondering, I pegged the kid with all my might :)  It's a good thing I have really bad aim...  but it's been a while since I got to play in the "snow."  And let's be honest, the poor kid is from Seattle, he thinks that freezing rain is snow.  So cute!

Three- knitting!  So I've been a bit carried away with the sweater and I'm making some decent progress!  I keep thinking to myself how annoying making the additional 50 stitches per row is, but then I keep thinking about how when I swatch it, it will fit me better than the official size.. so I keep going.  Here is some fun 

I know, right?  Why should I ever get off the couch?!

And here is the current progress- I'm 4 buttons up!

I need to take some pics of the shall.  It's coming along too :)

Okay, off to finish mending some clothes.  Yes, I mend...

love you Liz...  cb

oh and SHOUT OUT TO CINDY KIM!  Love that you are one of our three followers.  I love and miss you lady!  Wish we were closer!

Swap Fun!

One of the groups that I'm a part of on Ravelry is in the midst of a really fun swap. We all filled out a questionnaire about our likes/dislikes and received an e-mail with the person we were supposed to create a package for. It was a fairly small swap, we were each supposed to send a skein of yarn and $10-$15 worth of extras. The packages went out late last week and I received mine on Monday! My package came from Meghann in Massachusetts, and it was amazing!

There were some gorgeous ceramic buttons, a WPI key chain, a kitchener stitch key chain, measuring tape, shawl stick, a lovely skein of Stricken Smitten yarn, some chocolate, and she KNIT ME A KINDLE COVER! 

This yarn is amazing. It's Stricken Smitten- S’marvelous The Mermaid’s Tale. Baby Alpaca/Silk/Cashmere (70/20/10)

The awesome Kindle Cover that Meg knit! 

The yarn is to die for....I think it is destined to be a really fabulous shawl of some kind. But, that will have to wait until all of my Secret Christmas Knitting is done. 

The Secret Christmas Knitting is coming along pretty well. I just finished a 3rd gift today and will be swatching and casting on for the next one very soon, possibly even today. Needless to say, I don't really have any knitting to show off...but hopefully next time I'll have some spinning to show you. I'm in the middle of plying some of the undyed merino/cashmere fiber I bought at Rhinebeck. 

On Monday, Seth and I walked with Valerie and Diamond on one of the local trails and despite having a large amount of evergreen trees around here, there was some fall color in the woods.

Seth and Valerie with the dogs up ahead.

The pups.

Cutie Diamond.

Well, I think that's all the updates for now! Not being able to share all the knitting I've been working on is seriously cramping my blogging material! 

Love,

liz :)

Sample Knitting and Baby Hats...

Since last week was mostly spent making Seth's Halloween costume, I don't have anything too impressive to share. But I do have a few small things...

The shop my Mom helps out at, Knit Wit Kreations, just got a new yarn line in and I offered to whip up a sample that they could hang with the yarn. The yarn is KFI Sweetness, a cotton, merino, nylon blend (50/40/10) that is great for kids knits since it is both machine washable and strong (due to the nylon content). The yarn doesn't have a lot of "give" to it, but it was nice to work with and created a soft but durable fabric.

Pattern: Baby Bolero from KFI Sweetness booklet (no ravelry link)

Yarn: KFI Sweetness (dk weight, 136 yards/ball) - 2 skeins

Modifications: None. However, if I were to knit another bolero, I'd probably pick a seamless pattern. There was quite a lot of seaming, which could be easily avoided by doing raglan sleeves instead of set-in sleeves. The pattern was fairly straight-forward, though and it was an easy knit. 

Apparently, it's been a week of baby knits. A friend from college is due for her baby this week, and she adores knit and crocheted baby hats. I whipped up a newborn size hat (which looks ridiculously small) and two 3-6 month sized hats. 

Pattern(s): Pink hat- Simple Baby Hat by Debbie Bliss (from "Baby Knits for Beginners"), Purple hats- Quick and Easy Baby Hat by Emma Waller (in 2 different sizes)

Yarn: Pink hat- Three Irish Girls Springvale Super Merino is Elsbeth, Purple hats- MadelineTosh DK in Nostalgia 

Modifications: None. I still need to add ribbon in the eyelet holes on the purple hats, but that requires a trip to Jo-Ann's. I'll hopefully add those today and be able to send them out this afternoon or tomorrow.

I also finished a Liesel scarf for Judy, the woman who watched Sailor while we were gone. But the weather was so dark and dreary that I wasn't able to get a good picture of it before Seth brought it to her. 

OH! I also have a brand new sewing machine, a Christmas gift from my Mom (that arrived in a box with SINGER written all over it!)! I'll have to do a post about it once I try it out and figure out all the cool things it can do! 

Love,

liz :)