Venus Rising is at the Halfway Point

This is the inside right front and back of the Venus Rising Cardigan. The markers show all of the short row shaping rows. I love the Japanese Short Row technique!

Here is my Venus Rising Cardigan at the halfway point, before having done the provisional knitting in the middle which will be opened up after completeing the left hand side to do the back neck shaping and the front bands.

Now I am off to do a gauge swatch with Noro's Silk Garden Sock yarn. If I can get gauge with it, there may be second Venus Rising in the future. (Cynthia's has a colorway that I absolutley love!)

Venus Rising KAL

I have joined the Venus Rising KAL on Ravelry. It is an ingenious cardigan designed by Lucy Neatby full of interesting knitting techniques. We started on Jan. 15 2010 and people are still joining in.

The cardigan starts at the right sleeve cuff and ends at the left sleeve cuff with lots of fun in between.......short rows, tubular cast on, provisional knitting and grafting!

Maybe a good class project for this summer at Cynthia's Yarn Shop!

Wow, time is flying by! But, the garden is at rest, the wood is all stacked, the leaves have all fallen and been picked up! I'm waiting for the first snow (which is late this year but nobody is complaining) and more time to knit!

Cindy has opened a second store in Petoskey, right on Mitchell Street. It is Cynthia's Too and will be open year 'round with lots of yarn, classes and a place to meet up and sit and knit and a knitting night starting in January!

I have knitted some samples for the new store and have actually spun up some of the romney wool that I bought at the Charlevoix Fiber Arts Festival. "Leo" (aka my spinning wheel) was happy to be back in action. Looking foward to winter (but not all the plowing I will be doing when the real snow comes) and hopefully getting a couple of knitting patterns that have been developing in my brain onto the needles!

Harvesting and Noni Workshop

Harvest time is upon us! I've gotten three rows of potatoes dug, made freezer slaw from one of the Dutch Flathead cabbages (this should be an excellent compliment to our "grown at home" pig) and the blackberries are wonderful this year. Two batches of blackberry freezer jam and two quarts of frozen berries which I plan to take with me when I visit mom. I'm sure she will make me a blackberry pie!
Tomatoes didn't do so well this year, but there are plenty of carrots to dig and winter squash to pick as soon as we get a (shhhh) light frost. Unfortunately Zeke (my 100 pound chocolate lab) ate most of the green beens out of the garden so I only put up two bags in the freezer. And he felt no remorse either!
Also, the wood is all stacked!!!!
AND this is the weekend of the NONI workshop in Mackinaw City. I've got three bags knitted and felted, packed away damp in plastic bags ready for day one....blocking and embellishing! I also found two beautiful brocades at JoAnn Fabrics to use for lining my Hydrangea Bag and my Felted Carpetbag. The other bag, Urban Adventure, I am going to leave unlined for a more organic shape. Should be a fun and very educational workshop!

Fiber Arts Festival in Charlevoix, MI

The Fiber Arts Festival in Charlevoix was wonderful. This is one of the 6 fleeces that I purchased. It is a gray Icelandic fleece from a sheep named Ink. It is now washed and I am awaiting some Alpaca fiber samples which I will blend with it prior to spinning!

I also bought 5 beautiful Romney and Romney X fleeces from Big Hand Farm in Boyne City. The sheep were covered so the VM is minimal and the staple length is 5"-6"! I have one of the fleeces washed and it is a beautiful snowy white with a little luster. I have ordered some Merino top and some Bombyx silk to blend with the Romney. Time to get the dyepots out!

I also bought some yarn from Briar Rose for a couple of projects that I would like to knit. I think I have enough projects to keep me busy for the (shhhh) winter!

But the best find at the festival was a woolpicker!! I have been shopping on the internet for one and decided to wait until after the fiber festival. I was not really expecting to find one but I stopped in a booth shared by 4 women to look at the Icelandic fleece pictured above. As I was standing there talking to one of the ladies, out of the corner of my eye I spotted it sitting in the corner with a price tag on it. As it turned out, it was made by the husband of the lady to whom I was talking. As soon as I touched it, I new it had found a home!

Two at a Time Socks

Here are my first ever "magic loop" socks, and two at a time! It is the Twilight pattern from the book 2-at-time socks by Melissa Morgan Oaks. While I enjoyed having "a pair" of socks at the end of the process, I had a little trouble manipulating the needles, the extra cable and two balls of yarn. I normally knit one sock at a time on two circular needles and during the magic loop process it seemed to me that I was spending a lot of time situating everything so that I could knit rather than actually knitting. However, these are not the first and last pair that I will ever do. I think with more practice I could knit them almost as fast as on two circs!

Hey, I finally got to finish a project! This weekend I'll be off to the Fiber Art Festival at Castle Farms in Charlevoix, Mi. It's sure to be lots of fibery fun!

Too Busy to Knit?

Summer is flying by and there have too many things on the "to do" list and not much time to knit. I've been busy with the flower gardens and the vegetable garden. I bought some new perrenials and the flower gardens are doing well. As for the veggie garden, things that like cold weather are doing great but still behind schedule. We should be eating fresh green beans and new potatoes by now. The green beans are just starting to flower and new potatoes appear to be a couple of weeks away.










I've also been busy stacking wood, as you can see. I've gotten about half of it stacked.......











and the other half is a work in progress! One advantage of a cooler than average summer.










I have been knitting a little bit and almost have a pair of socks finished, which I will post a picture of as soon as they come off the needles!!