Happy April and Happy Spring Everyone! Unless of course you are in the southern hemisphere, then happy fall. I hope for those down south who suffered from high temps and fires that it is getting cooler again.
I have been away for a little over a month. I had surgery that was very sucessful and am feeling much better. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers as my family and I went through this time.
I have a lot to share with you guys.
I think it would be best if I went in chronological order. My surgery was at the beginning of March. I had only a couple of days to work on the March baby blanket, but I really loved the colors and the pattern and so I was working on it a lot. Too much in fact. The day before surgery, the tops of my ears were tingling while I was working on the blanket. The yarn I am using to make this blanket is 100% acrylic. As some of you may know I am actually allergic to acrylic... I can handle an hour or so a day, but I was doing more... Way more. Like three hours a day sometimes. Mind you it is only March 4th. So I put it away. The next day was my surgery. Surprisingly I only had a reaction to the tape.
This almost always happens without fail when I go to the doctor, let alone have surgery. So I decided to leave the acrylic for a while. I still haven't pulled it back out and so haven't started the April blanket. This is mostly due to time constraints more than anything. That brings us to Mom's shawl, the cause of the time constraints.
So I am making good progress on Mom's shawl. I am working mostly "free hand", without a chart, except for the edging teeth. I have had to do a couple more repairs. Nothing as large as the last one but still taking time nonetheless. I am still on track to have it completed in time for Mother's Day, now I am just playing yarn chicken. If the yarn chicken wins, it will depend on how far I am as to what I decide to do about salvaging the piece or not. If for some reason I do decide to rip it I will take pictures and share them here before I do. I will also take it in person to my mom and show her as well.
I haven't worked at all on the Franklin Habit KAL, though I can't wait to get back to it.
I have done a few rounds on my 856 and am still enjoying that one very much. It is not a good stage for pictures though.
I have been Portuguese knitting dishcloths for a wedding gift. Here is a picture of them all completed. The wedding was this past Saturday and went well.
I have been working on the baby socks still. I finally have pictures to share of each of the four stages that I work my socks in, in a week. I work on them Monday, Wednesday, Friday and finish them on the weekend. I have found that I have to work two socks at a time on two different sets of needles to keep my motivation going. I finish the same amount of socks in each week, they just don't always match. I tried working two stages on one in the same day and for some reason I just couldn't. Below are the four stages.
The fifth picture is my recently finished pairs. That is the down side, it takes two weeks to get matching pairs of socks. With being sick I have gotten a bit behind too.
The biggest thing that happened this month was the Interweave Yarn Festival in Loveland, Colorado. I had a blast! My husband and I went up on Thursday, the day the market opened. I started shopping immediately. The first thing I bought was a new bag from Front Range Bags. They are hand made in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
It is the bag shown in this picture. I love it! It has a strap attached to the zipper and has 4 inside pockets, one of which zips and 2 outside pockets. The project shown in this picture I will talk about in my next post, sorry.
I also bought mini skeins, finally. This was the first time I bought mini skeins.
These are from Greenwood Fiberworks. Sorry the photo is blurry, I was in a hurry to get these wound at the winding station... This was the first time I saw a finished item at a festival, bought the yarn and needles to make it and started it while still at the festival! I have already finished it and just need to block it. I will detail it in the next post with more pictures.
These are from A Hundred Ravens. The name of the color package is Captain Marvel. I will be making another shawl-et called Crushed using these in this color order starting at the neck with the gold, maybe...
I also bought some others which I don't have pictures of. I also never took pictures of the stitch markers and necklace I bought because they were put straight to work. I will include those in the next post as well.
I did get to meet the new editor of Spin Off magazine, Kate Larson.
I also got to meet my favorite Interweave photographer Joe Coca.
And the creator of Interweave publications, Linda Ligon.
It was also so wonderful to learn about the fiber artists in other parts of the world, who "HAVE" to do the things we love and choose to do. This is a picture of a silk weaving. The lady raised the worms, reeled the silk, dyed it and them wove it, without a pattern and sold the piece so that her child could have a uniform for school. Wow. So thankful I get to, but don't have to. Worlds apart.
The festival was amazing and I can't wait until next year. I will do the keynote dinner and fashion show as always. I plan on taking a class or two next year as well, now that I know my hubby is content flipping channels in the hotel room.
Until next time... fiber on.
