Spoils of the Season

My favorite gift this holiday season was a complete surprise! The Farmer traveled to Amsterdam last October. I jokingly suggested that he pick out something fabulous at Stephen & Penelope for me, thinking he could not be bothered to find the shop and pop in to look at yarn. I was mistaken:

Not only did he stop by, he engaged the staff to help him find a shop sample that he liked and then find the yarn and pattern for it! Apparently it took three staff members and an hour of time, to everyone's delight! I will enjoy knitting with these beautiful skeins.

Over the break, we spent a day in Washington DC looking at all the monuments. I had never done this activity in spite of many trips to the area. The afternoon was very enlightening.

In other news, we are celebrating New Years Eve with a cheese plate and chili on a very cold and snowy evening tonight. Here's wishing friends and family a wonderful new year. Happy knitting!

My WIP is Old Enough to Drive

I should be cleaning out my closet. But since I keep a sizeable amount of yarn in there, I keep tripping over a giant bag from the long-closed Stitches and Scones store in Westfield. It's filled with nine fisherman weight skeins of Beaverslide yarn from Wyoming and most of the body of a Elizabeth Zimmermann Tomten Jacket for The Farmer. I started it shortly after moving into my house in 2009. I have re-knit many of the stitches more than once as I try to do the stitch math to make the sweater fit properly. So I decided to try to finish in this break. Tomten is 16. It's time to finish the work and get this piece licensed to wear in public. And then organize the closet... Please wish me luck!

It’s a (Blanket) Theme

It's time to restart the knitting! And I've decided to continue my goal of using up my remaining handspun yarn from Anne Cohee with mindless blankets. I'm already enjoying myself, though the cat is even more amused, as usual!

I've selected the Feather & Fan design. Several students have come to class in sweaters with this design, and I enjoy the vintage look coming back into style.

We are experiencing a snow and ice event today. I hope to knit many cozy rows this afternoon. The next few weeks are going to be wild with concerts, gatherings, and gigs. Cheers to all who are preparing for the winter holidays!

Donations

I put off going to the hair dresser so long that I once again found myself with enough length to donate. I'm excited to contribute hair to organizations who make wigs for children as well as inspire my students to consider doing the same.

I'm also thinking how I am donating my time to other important work outside of teaching. I started clearing some of the invasive honeysuckle again, and hope to find some additional time this weekend. The before and after pictures would be more dramatic if I were closer to the area where the shrubs were removed. Finally, my mind often wanders to all of the people who will be affected if SNAP benefits aren't renewed by tomorrow. I will definitely be giving extra to the food pantries this month. And maybe starting some seeds for winter window lettuce. And donating some of those extra knit hats I have laying around. Sounds like I just made a to-do list for myself! Which is perfect, because I had this thought a few days ago: What if I turn this year around for the last 61 days? How do I optimize my habits so that I can be my best self? Suddenly my mental to-do list is longer yet, so off to bed to prepare for the heavy lifting tomorrow!

Transitions

After many years of talking about it, we finally spent all summer in a different city, Milwaukee. My last Thursday, I visited an up and coming neighborhood called Bay View where i stumbled upon a sweet little used bookstore with resident cats, Fiber Fever yarn store, and an old fashioned habidashery. It also looked like one could eat yummy things here, but time was not on my side.

Bookstore with funny cats!

Handmade hats, new and restored, made on antique equipment.

The souvenir yarn from Fiber Fever yarn store is worsted weight from a Shetland sheep named Flora, who lives on the Rose Boulder Farm in Wisconsin.

I transformed the yarn into a hat using the Mossy Lane Hat pattern two weekends ago on a trip to New Jersey. (I used size 4 & 6 needles.) Its a perfect way to transition from a lovely summer to leaf peeping this fall.

After a long and early cold snap at the end of August and drought conditions, many trees are changing color early and shedding their leaves already. Enjoy the last day of summer, and of course, the delightful return of cool weather in the fall! Happy knitting!

Vanilla Velvet Mini

I finished this mini cowl (Vanilla Velvet pattern by Anne Hanson) a few months ago, but I finally blocked it. I used Shady Grove Alpaca farm yarn, Moonstar Sock with added nylon. When I first got the yarn back from the mill on 2016, my friend Lolita took a look at a few of my sample projects and exclaimed that this was the yarn that would show cables and lace the best. Sadly, it took me 9 years to give it a try. She was right!

I also washed the yarn before I knit the pattern so the yarn would preshrink. When my mom knit the sample socks, they shrank a few sizes after washing. I went down to size 1 needles, thus making the cowl much smaller than I intended. Since I already started knitting, I decided to make a tiny cowl with less pattern repeats. If I make it again, I will select the larger size and knit the recommended pattern repeats.

Two ways to wear: as a cowl and folded under as a turtleneck under a sweater. In spite of the added nylon, I still feel itchy while wearing, so I guess it's not the answer to my alpaca alergy.

The before pictures: I think prewashing the yarn made a big difference in the product, and the blocking was still needed to make the stitches appear smooth and expanded.

Happy Knitting in this early fall weather!

Alpaca Afterword

Recently I received a text from our friends at Big Pine Acre Alpacas who adopted our remaining herd last summer. Our youngest cria, Cherise, had just given birth to a baby boy at the end of June! I suggested some names - Good Lovin’, Cosmic Charlie, maybe Reuben to go with the Cherise - all Grateful Dead song titles, of course. So adorable! But as life sometimes happens, I got another text a few days later that the little guy had suddenly died. Heartbreaking… He looked a bit like his grandma, Peggy-Oh, with that white face!

We also caught up with news about the other animals, and as it turns out, Dark Star didn’t make it through the winter. He was 13.5 years old and lived a good life. No cause of death is known, as with so many other animals we had. He did have all sorts of suspicious bumps on his skin, which maybe contributed. 

He sure was a handsome man, and such a sweetheart. 

Rest easy, Dark Star. Shady Grove Alpacas’ first cria on September 5, 2011, Labor Day, to late winter 2025. 

The inspiration for our logo, he will always be our yarn mascot! ❤️