Day Two

Last Sunday was our trip to Toronto's Creativ Festival. We had another successful day of yarn shopping. I spent the morning taking classes. One was on steeking and the other was knitting two socks at the same time with one sock inside the other. Both were a lot of fun and I learned something new in each class.














This is what I came home with. Books, needles and NO yarn! There was a lot of yarn that I liked and I was tempted a few times to buy but I didn't. Truly amazing.















After a busy day we stopped for something to eat and discuss what we all bought.















It was one knitter's birthday. What a great way to spend your birthday!

Day One of Two

What a great day we had at the Woodstock Fleece Festival.














Outside there were alpacas, llamas, sheep and goats to look at before heading inside. I am sure that everyone was trying to figure out a way to take the tiny baby alpaca home with them. She was so cute.

Inside, there was so much to choose from. We spent the morning looking at beautiful yarns, rovings, patterns, kits and spinning wheels.

This is all the yarn I came home with.














The red and black skeins are washable wool from Shelridge Farms and this will be knit into a gift. The three balls of Triana each knit up into a wonderfully clever scarf pattern. Two of these will be gifts as well. The top two skeins of varigated yarn are to knit the vest and it will be for me. The yarn is Fleece Artist Scotian Silk 65%wool 35% silk. The varigated yarn in front is what I won as a door prize. It is Fleece Artist BFL Sock yarn.

Now to get ready for tomorrow. The Creative Festival in Toronto!

Finished

One finished project! I think this owl is very cute and mom to be seems to think so as well.

Pattern ~ current issue of Knitsimple.
Needles ~ 3.75mm dpns
Yarn ~ Mission Falls cotton

The current project on the needles is another moebius scarf. I just have to cast off and there will be one more finished project around here!

The yarn sorting has been on hold the last couple of nights but I will be back at it tonight. I am armed with three more totes. Hopefully this will hold the last of it.

Tonight is the Knitting Goddesses guild meeting. It will be a fun night as always!

Owl

Baby gift in progress...

Organizing

This is what I have been doing the last couple of days. In order to get the Christmas knitting in full swing I had to find all of the yarn I needed. This led me to sorting out my stash.















This is what is left after 2 days of sorting. I have found all kinds of interesting things. Some I had forgotten about and some I just didn't know where to find it. So far, I still have not come across the yarn for my son's afghan. I still have a couple of boxes I haven't looked in yet and there is some more yarn upstairs to go through as well. It has to be here somewhere!














My family has made the odd comment about the amount of yarn scattered around the house. My husband commented on the "large selection" that I had and was there any that I didn't like any more. Silly question. Of course there are some (ok, a lot) of odd balls of acrylic that I have been collecting for years that I wouldn't use to make a sweater but I am planning on knitting some cat blankets to donate to the local animal shelter. So no I don't have any balls that I would like to part with. My son rolled his eyes and asked if I was planning on filling the whole house with yarn. Again a silly question. I would never dream of putting yarn in his room or my husband"s closet (they would just through it away) but the rest of the house is fair game!

Even the cat and dog have had their say. This is what is left of a ball of yarn after the two of them have taken it from the dining room to the kitchen and wrapped it a million times around the kitchen chairs and table and then into the living room. Sorting yarn is hard work.

Long Weekend Knitting

I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend and was able to spend time with their family and eat lots of turkey and pumpkin pie!

In between family get togethers, this is what I managed to knit. Two dishcloths for samples of an up coming learn to knit class and I started my second ball of yarn on the shawl. Only a few more inched to go on the shawl!

Last night while reading knitting blogs I found a sweater pattern to knit for a Christmas gift. It is called Abalone. Christmas knitting is starting tonight.

Current Project

This is what I have been working on this week. It is a shawl and it is about half finished. It will take two balls and I am almost finished the first ball. I have already had to pull it out once and restart it when I carelessly pulled my needle out of the stitches. I tried to pick up all of the stitches and thought that I did until I looked closer at it just didn't look right. This is being knit for someone else so I am being very particular; no mistakes allowed in this one!

These two balls came from my stash and even though it is only two balls, it feels good to be using some of the yarn I have had for YEARS.

Yarn - Bernat Matrix
Needle - 5.5mm circular bamboo
Pattern - Cast on 3 sts, *slip first st purlwise, kfb in next st, knit to end*

Super easy pattern, tricky yarn to knit with. I find that I have to watch every stitch so that I don't split the yarn. No TV watching or reading while knitting this.

The Streak Has Been Broken

A few of us knitters entered some things in the Ilderton Fair this past weekend. Some of us won and some of us didn't. As we all know, judging at these fairs is some times a bit frustrating if the judge is not a knitter. It has been a standing joke for a few years now that my knitting doesn't ever win. This year I got lucky! I do truly believe that it isn't about the winning. I think the home crafts are the best part of the fair and it is just fun to be able to display our knitting for people to enjoy looking at.




Of course the animals are the next best thing at the fair. Baby lambs are just so cute!

More Yarn

One of the great things about the cottage is that in the upstairs of the grocery store there is a craft section and they sell yarn. This makes grocery shopping so much more enjoyable!

So, here is my grocery store yarn. The black kroy sock yarn was on sale! The brown kroy was not but I thought it would make good socks for my son. The pink soy yarn was to replace three balls that I had given away to another knitter. Pink is not my colour but I really liked it so I brought it home too. As an added bonus, they were giving away Patons knitting bags when you spent a certain amount on yarn. See, it pays to buy yarn!