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 :)

Rose City

Oh, I am long overdue for an update here. I tried blogging both Saturday and Sunday, but our internet has been acting slow and I wasn't able to upload any pictures...but that seems to be fixed. So here we go...


The Portland Rose Festival has been going on for the last few weeks, and everyone has been telling us we need to get up and partake in some of the festivities. So, we headed up to Portland Saturday morning.

Our first stop was the Portland Farmer's Market:

This is my lone Portland Farmer's Market shot. See all those tents in the distance? That's maybe 1/3 of the vendors. The PFM is one seriously impressive farmer's market! Not only are there locally grown fruits, veggies, and meats but there are tons of bakeries and vendors selling hot food for breakfast or lunch. It was hard to choose what to eat for lunch with so many choices, including wood fired pizza (yes, there was a little brick oven set up!). I settled on a sandwich from Pine State Biscuits that had bacon, egg, and cheese on a ridiculously yummy biscuit. It was heaven. Since we were going to be in Portland most of the day, we only bought a few things that could survive being in the hot car while we walked around. Seth picked up some strawberries and we bought some fresh bagels (herb and cheese!) and some cinnamon bread. Now, this is no ordinary cinnamon bread. It's like eating a cinnamon bun. So delicious. And it's whole grain bread rolled in oats. So it's sorta healthy, right? That's my story anyways. So, short story long....the PFM is amazing. Next time we'll bring a big cooler so that we can get fresh fish and meats. Yum!

After we had stuffed ourselves at the farmer's market we dropped our goodies off at the car and saw that the Grand Floral Parade was just a couple of blocks away. Seth isn't one for standing still too long, so we caught a few glimpses of the parade and walked a bit and then caught a few more floats.

After checking out the parade we walked down to the river and watched the Dragon Boat Races. They were way more intense than I ever could have imagined! Each team had a big tent set up at the top of the park where they had food for the rowers and all the teams were stretching and hanging out.

There were races with kids rowing when we first got there and when we left they had just moved on to the women's races.

The weather was perfect this weekend! There were great views of Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens from the highway, but I didn't snap any photos.

I don't have any knitting to show off, but I've been buzzing right along on my Mom's sweater and I'll be taking a class with Jared Flood this weekend at Knit-Purl in Portland. I'm also headed to the Black Sheep Gathering on Friday, which is a local sheep and wool festival. I'm sure I'll have lots of goodies to show off after that!

Love,
liz