Knitwith Homespun

Remember the BFF coverups? I’ll refresh your memory:
Now, Bella’s didn’t turn out as nicely mostly because she won’t stop growing. Darn kids and food! What a combination! If only you could stop feeding them all would stay status quo! But no, you have to feed them or they arrest you! But I digress. Bella’s turned out a bit snug so either I will make a new one or she will stretch and this one will fit her (which is what I expect will happen). However, this coverup has been so popular with those who have seen and Catrina’s family that I decided to write up the pattern. If you are interested, please let me know. I may post it for free or put it on Ravelry for just a few dollars. The girls love it for the slit in the side. They feel so grown up with that that they get too excited to wear it. Also, Catrina has a petite Aunt who apparently would like to steel it. She took it at a pool party and tried it on and loves it. She has asked Catrina if she can have it and Catrina said no she could not. I have an out of town guest coming to visit with my father in a couple of weeks. This is my step niece and her mother. She is 5 or 6 now and I think she would love to have a coverup like the big girls so I went and picked some yarn in her favorite colors and I cast on her coverup today. Here are the day-glow colors we chose: It should be done within a couple of days given the fact that I am frogging my shawl! That’s right, it’s over.

This is a shawl I am currently working on. It’s called the Seraphim Shawl and I love it. The link is a Ravelry link and is beautiful. My problem is that I have run out of my yarn. The pattern calls for 800-1000 yards of yarn and my yarn is the proper weight. I am in the middle of the second chart and I have about 50 more rows and two charts left to knit. I was going to use some of my two ply alpaca that I was selling on Etsy to finish but I don’t think that’s enough either. This yarn for the shawl is handspun and I don’t have any fiber left to spin more yarn. The brown alpaca is the same fiber that I spun with the silk alpaca I am using for this shawl. I am seriously considering frogging this shawl and choosing another pattern to use this yarn. I really want a shawl for this yarn and I have really enjoyed knitting it but if I continue with the alpaca and I run I may end up frogging anyway. Does anyone have any other suggestions for me? Any other ideas? Please help me out! I could really use the input!

First practice this summer. Cracks me up.

Spring Forward done!

This time I made a real effort to take a pretty finished object picture.  This is my favorite shot from the bunch.  It’s very very hard to photograph your own foot.  I put a ball where my foot was supposed to go and focused, pushed the button and placed my foot and hoped all went well.  Well, it didn’t go well but I like the result.  This shot has a bit too much lens flare and glare but it makes the photo look misty and magical which I do like.  The focus is a bit off but the depth of field is nice.  Most of the shots were out of focus and yucky but I have a few that show enough detail to do a finished object post.

As I said before, these socks were the easiest thing ever to knit.  It was so fun and quick.  I love the color and the fit.  I went through all the details of these socks in my previous post about them so I won’t bore you with that here.  It took me so long to finish them because I had too many other projects on the needles (who knows about that?).  I will do other finished object posts about that other stuff later.  Here are some of the other shots that are acceptable but not great.

You know I could say that I planned that long pretty piece of grass (weed) between my ankles there but you know I didn’t.

The next item up for discussion is free fiber from Diva Knitting. I got second prize in her 4 year blogiversary contest and received 5 ounces of hand dyed fiber which happens to be in my favorite colors ever! Thanks Cheryl! I believe this is destined to be a self striping single for a pair of socks for me. I never had a fiber tell me so quickly what I should do with it before but this stuff screamed self striping socks for me and noone else! I am very excited and I hope I can get to it soon. Now for the excuses: The photos seem muted but when I was editing them up in Lightroom they were spot on a beautifully saturated with accurate color. I don’t know what happened and I even calibrated my monitor again to see if that would do it. It didn’t. What’s a girl to do. Here’s the beautiful optim:

Every other Friday night I meet with a group of ladies for Craft Night.  Craft night can consist of knitting, spinning, crocheting, weaving, tatting, embroidery, and other assorted boxed crafts.  Sometimes, people don’t even craft, but we frown on that.  There are between 5 and 8 of us typically.  Here are a few of us:

First from the left is Heather sporting her very own handknit beanie.  She found the pattern on Ravelry and made it her very own self.  She is a scientist and can’t handle knitting on the fly or even knitting loosely.  She cracks me up!  Next in the lineup is Stacy.  She is embroidering in this shot but most of the time she crochets at Craft Night and it is always held at her house.  She wants to learn to knit so I think we are going to teach her.  Next in the lineup here is Sandi.  Anyone who has read my blog before knows Sandi.  She is my sister-in-law and she has branched out so much that she currently is working on three projects right now!  Can you believe it!?

Last night was our regular craft night and there is a new yarn store opening up in Costa Mesa called Knit Schtick.  We decided to get together today and go down there when the store opened at 11 and then have lunch across the street at a Peruvian restaurant called Inca Grill.  Well the yarn store doesn’t officially open until tomorrow so this was called a pre-sale.  It really was a lovely store.  There are two large tables set up with about 8 chairs each set up around them to knit at with coasters for your drinks and holders for your patterns if you bring one.  There were two love seats in the front of the store with coffee tables loaded with magazines and books to browse.  Don’t even get me started on the yarns!  They were all beautiful and in some gorgeous colorways.  The owners were not only knowledgeable but they were helpful and wonderfully kind and obliging.  Heather wanted to buy yarn for a sweater and they spent a good 10-15 minutes helping her determine what to buy and how much and they are even going to make a special effort to get her a pattern from a sample in the store.  Don’t get me wrong, this place was packed with people.  When we got there, there was a line out the door waiting to get in!  The place was packed and I don’t think anyone there had any trouble getting their questions answered.  Heather got some beautiful Malibrigo in a brown and purple and gold colorway that is amazing.  She has never made a sweater before so I am very excited for her.

Now, on to what I got!  I never bought Malibrigo before so this is my first skein ever.  Isn’t it so pretty!?

I have no idea what I am going to do with it.  I love how the blue runs into the gold and the purple.  I got the extra skein of just the blue to really pull that out in the project that I make that is yet to be determined.

The prices at Knit Schtick were really quite reasonable.  I wouldn’t think they are high or particularly low but right where you might expect them to be.  I would certainly make the trip down here for any project.

I am open to ideas for this yarn.  I have two skeins of the Mariposa which has the green, brown, tan, blue, and purple and one of the blue totally about 600 yards of worsted.

After we left the store we went and had a lovely lunch.  We then dropped Stacy off at home and dropped by Joghurt for a refreshing treat.  This lovely yogurt place has a Tuesday Morning in the same parking lot so who were we to not go in?  That’s where I found this:

Which I got for $3.99.  Can you even believe it?  So after I got back and I was talking to Stacy on the phone, she wants to go there.  I may end up back there tomorrow!  Well to top off the weekend, I didn’t go through all my mail yesterday and I found this that I still haven’t looked at:

I have never knit anything from this magazine but I surely will.  These are always some of the most beautiful and fashion forward patterns I have ever seen and I love to get it whenever it arrives.  I can’t wait to finish this blog so I can look through this magazine!

There you have it.  All the news that’s fit to print and boring enough to share with you all.  That’s what you get when you don’t blog for a year and a day (or a couple weeks anyway).