What a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood...

What a beautiful day for a Sheep and Wool Festival!!

OH! OH! OH! The sun was out the clouds were many but where fluffy balls of drifting cotton, they had lambs, sheep, dogs, rabbits, and fleece OH MY!

I have a slide show here:

My favorite photo I took while there was this one:

"Innocents"

Stash Acquisition:

• Viscose-8 Oz.
• Tensile- 6 Oz.
• Raw Targee X Salish Lamb, Dk. Brown with Golden tips, 5 Lbs.
• Raw Targee White 3Lbs
• Raw Border Lanchester Lamb, Brown with silver and golden tips, 1 Lb
• 2nd Spinners Control Card (the one I had disappeared)
• 2 Oz. Eucalan w/ Eucalyptus Oil
• Deep Orange and Royal Blue dyes

Well I have the natural colored fleece to spin up yarn for the Secret of the Stole KAL. I plan on spinning the white targee for the Mystery Shawl KAL which I will dye in wonderful shades of green, orange, red and brown for the fall theme of the shawl.

I packed a lunch and brought with me six cans of Diet Pepsi and six bottles of water. Not that I would drink it all...better to bring more just in case or if I want to share. I bought a root-beer float while I was there but that is all I bought from the food vendors. I thought about cheese sticks...but then decided against it since it was 5 sticks for $4.50. It just ain't worth it.

When I started out this morning, I took the wrong highway and had to go four miles in the opposite direction before the next exit so I could turn around. *face-palm* Then when I got to Johnson Creek I forgot where I went last year and the directions of the festival website are vague...at best. So I wasted about 30 minutes trying not to get lost in Johnson Creek...HA!

Here are Lime and Violet's Project cards that they put out some weeks ago helping me to remember how much of what yarn I need:

They came in handy and I actually lost them when I took my camera out of the case (where I had been storing them instead of in my jean pockets) for the first time to take some photos of the sheep. But when I re-walked my photo route, I found them in the gravel, slightly stepped on and ran over, but still intacked!

Thanks so much to the Pleasant Spinners Guild for sending me a weekend pass! I plan on returning tomorrow to spin with them in the Sheep to Shawl Demonstration.

Until next time...

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Kimono Cardigan Wrap Progress

On the Needles Wednesday...on Thursday...

You know if the gave us workers like a week off, THAT would be appreciation worthy of mentioning!! But one day...out of a 365 (minus holidays...for some of us)...is called appreciation? HUMPH! *throws nose up in air, turns a 180, walks away...stumbles over a log that could not be seen because nose was SO far up in the air...does a half roll on ground in half-ass attempt to make the fall look like it was done on purpose...only to accomplish getting severely muddied after the fresh rain we just got.*

OOOOOOOOOOOOOkay then! Comic relief?

Row 98 of 147, 17 inches of 21.

WHEW!

I am gonna need to spin up some more yarn. I am half way through my second skein already! Check out the variegation! I love making my own yarns!!

Until next time...

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The count-down begins...

2! Ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaaaaa!

Two days to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool festival!

And I've got me some spendin monay! YEEEEeeeeeeeee!!! Not to mention, a camera, a shawl, and a packed lunch. Yee-hee-hee! Last year was cold, drizzly, and right down nasty. This year the prediction is lower 70's and sunny! YEeeeeee!!!

Work has been exhausting. The Dispatcher called me twice today...once to see why I wasn't picking up one girl-the reason being they never called to tell me I was to pick her up or gave me paperwork for her rides. Another time to ask if I had been at a school yet...and that they had early outs-which I was unawares of.

WHEW! Lots of dashing off to save stranded children!

Hopefully the rest of week will be less....dashing-like. HA!!

I have most of the routes I had last year, which is fine because I will get the money flowing back in again with a quickness. I have so much to pay off from over the summer. But first...money for festival...then bills. HA!

Have you seen these? They call them Shibori scarves...but to me...it looks like it had radiation poisening and then tried to mate with a close cousin (or a sibling) resulting in a severly deformed and warted offspring.....okay...so that's a bit of red-neck in there. But still! These are appealing? Scarves with WARTS?! If you are the author of the photo, I mean no disrespect for your sense of fashion, artestry, or what you like...I'm just...what's the word....flubbergasted over it?

Who knew warts could be fashionable?

However...I really like the pleated Shibori scarves...OOOoo pretty! In fact Susan is gonna show people at her All Fiber Retreat in November/December (11/30-12-02) how to make them! EEEEEeeee! I am so going! For only $40...I can afford that in the middle of winter for some dyeing fun!

Until next time...

***All content is Copyright year and date of posting, and are the sole property of C4G/CCW unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this website(text, photo's, etc)is strictly prohibited(linking to the post is OK).***

Can you spot the Boo-boo?

Can you spot the Boo-boo?
Originally uploaded by crafting4goddess.

Tee-hee-hee! I am having a little contest with this one on the KAL blog for the Kimono Cardigan Wrap (http://knitsabeautifullife.com/kal/). I didn't exactly follow one of the cable patterns correctly as I didn't see the directions after the pattern. What has turned out is really neato and I do not plan on froggin it (GODDESS FORBID!!) nor do I plan to deviate from my boo-boo. I am on row 45 in this photo.

Until next time...

Making a Counting Rows Bracelet

Here is how to make a memory wire counting rows bracelet.

Materials

Memory Wire

Heavy-Duty Wire cutters (don't use the dainty jewelry wire cutters as they are not hard enough to cut memory wire and you will end up with an uneven edge in your cutters. Ask me how I know this! *face-palm*)

9 pattered beads that are slightly smaller than

10 solid colored beads.

4 size 6 seed beads in coordinating colors to other beads

3 medium decorative beads

Each smaller bead represents a row of knitting. Each larger bead represents 10 rows of knitting. When you are done knitting one row, slide the marker over one small bead. When you reach the 9th bead (9th row) slide the marker back to the beginning of the smaller beads and move one larger bead to the other side of the marker. You are now ready to count row 11 and onward.

Stretch cording that will fit through size 8 seed beads

Size 9 seed beads in coordinating or contrasting color to your larger beads (You will need Approx 12)

One small crimp bead

Crimping pliers

Round Nose jewelry pliers

Flat nose jewelry Pliers

Optional: Big eye needle and regular pliers

1. Make Two: Round one end of some memory wire, slip over wrist and cut the wire just so it overlaps the loop on the other end. DO NOT ROUND THIS END YET. You need it open to slip the beads onto the wire.
2. Slide each of these beads in this order onto BOTH wires: #6 seed bead, medium decorative bead, #6 seed bead. Slide all three down to the loops at the end.
3. String your 9 decorative beads onto one
   wire, then slide the other 10 slightly larger solid colored beads onto the other wire.
4. Slide each of these beads in this order onto BOTH wires: #6 seed bead, medium decorative bead, #6 seed bead. Slide all three down to the other beads.
5. Create a loop on the straight ends of the memory wires.
6. String 10 #8 seed beads, one medium decorative bead, and one crimp bead onto some stretchy cord. Using a big eye needle helps in this task a great deal. Now re-thread the cord back through the beads from the opposite end, pull tight but not too tight and clip the cord with several inches to spare. Thread the loose end through the crimp bead (each end should be poking out in the opposite direction), pull tight and crimp the crimp bead. Trim ends
7. Optional, add medium decorative bead with a split ring as pictured below (I actually thought of this after I had the ring of beads already made...HA!). The decorative beads adds some grabbing power to get the ring of beads up and over the bigger beads. Because fingers are chunky and dry, I found grabbing at just the ring a bit cumbersome. The decorative beads makes it much easier to grasp.
8. Sit back and marvel at your craftiness!!

Until next time...

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EEeeee! Thank you goodies!

The Fiber Frenzy pal I sent goodies to bought me two new lace shawl patterns and sent them via email to me as a thank you giftie!!

YAY! Now I have the Majestic Mountains lace and beaded shawl and Mountain Peaks lace shawl!!

Thanks!!

Until next time...

***All content is Copyright year and date of posting, and are the sole property of C4G/CCW unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this website(text, photo's, etc)is strictly prohibited(linking to the post is OK).***

Kimono Wrap on it's way into my World!

I finally started on the cardigan kimono wrap last night, and after an hour of trying to get the FIRST ROW knit correctly (first row is always the hardest for me) I got about two inches done. Some of the terms in the pattern are not the "conventional" terms for stitches (SKP instead of SSK...but the same thing) and I am dealing with decreasing on my own instead of having directions for each row. You can see I have the pattern written down on the pad of paper in the background. I've noted which row of the cables and lace repeat goes on each right side row of the back peice and also noting which rows to decrease. It says to decrease 2 stitches in established pattern repeats every alternating 4th and 3rd row, 3 times, and on every 4th row once. WHEW!! It took a couple of minutes to wrap my head around that, especially at around 11PM last night! HA!


And one more picture of yarn p0rn before it gets transformed into my first garment. :) I am sure I will need more than that but I have enough now that I can take a brake from spinning and dyeing like a mad woman. Tee-hee-hee! The yarn is OOBER soft when knit up. I am so excited about this thing. My guage is a little off too. I tried the suggested size 8 and I had 3.5 stitches an inch. The guage calls for 5 an inch. So I went down to a size 7 and now I have 4 an inch. I don't want to go down any more sizes of needle because this is creating a tight fabric with such heavy yarn. This is okay though! It will be just a tad bigger and will fit me better since my bust measurement is 42, and it is only patterned out to a size 40. I am sure I will continue to shrink, and this will always fit me-even if oober loose...but my favorite pieces of clothing are oober loose. :)

Until next time...

***All content is Copyright year and date of posting, and are the sole property of C4G/CCW unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this website(text, photo's, etc)is strictly prohibited(linking to the post is OK).***