Diamond Shawl

Here is my latest knitting pattern!

This shawl was so much fun to design and make. It actually isn't living with me anymore, I did make it as a gift for Cathy, my SIL. Yes, she is the wonderfully talented person who painted my spinning wheel. She had a special # birthday a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to do something special for her.

The pattern is about 75% done. I am still in the final editing stage of it.
I used Garnstudio's Silke-Tweed yarn for this shawl. It is a sport weight yarn and is 52% silk and 48% lambswool. The yarn is wonderful and oh, so soft.

The Girls' Recital

I really enjoy being a Gramma! When our girls were younger and in dance, I was the backstage Mom almost every year, if not every year. I watched them dance from the side. I was able to see them, but I didn't realize what I missed, by not getting to watch from the audience. Five years ago, I watched my first recital from the front. It was Nicole's first recital and Gramma's aren't usually asked to be stage Mom's. :) Then a couple of years ago, Rebekah started dancing again and now I get to see her from the audience too. OH, NO, what if they find out, my daughter is dancing. Will I have to pull backstage Mom duty again. Aaack! Heehee.

Nicole in white in one of her dances.

Claire on the left in her pink and green tutu.
Young dancers are usually looking off to the side to see their teacher's directions.

Nicole holding her 5 year trophy! Congratulations Nicole!

Claire after the recital, with her yellow rose and new pink purse.

As always, we enjoyed the recital and watching them perform after a long year of practice.

A job well done girls!

Painting, again.

One thing about purchasing a fixer-upper home, is you are always busy fixing and upping it. This is the before picture of our hallway, upstairs. If you look closely, you will see in the background a giant gray pail, yep it is paint. We new we would need a lot. You see, the previous owners painted the front hallway BROWN. I am sorry, but for me, milk chocolate brown is not my idea for a hall. It is the same color as the outside of the house. I figure they had some paint left over from painting the outside, meters, windows, bug nests and all, and said, "Oh, let's paint the hallway with it!" So, they did. It takes a good three coats to cover this brown. We have progressed and have the three coats on and we are now ready to start the trim. When it is all done, I will post a finished picture.

On the knitting front. Some of my patterns come out of frustrations that I am having. This one, that is newly finished, is one of those. It is probably the craziest one, I have ever done, but I really like it. It is a duster! The idea came to me while I was dusting at our UPS Store. It is really a great duster, too. I had to show it. The pattern will be for sale in the next couple of weeks, in my etsy shop.

Time Flies!

I hope all of you mom's out there had a good and peaceful Mother's Day! We had a nice one, which started with breakfast at the Corner Bakery restaurant. We beat the lunch and dinner crowd that way. It was great!

It is hard to believe it is May 18 already. I have been busy making items for my etsy site and writing a couple of patterns. If you have noticed, I have added a little area to my blog with my sale items on it. It is actually a link that you can click on to go to see more about the item pictured. I have more coffee sleeves to list this week. They have been a lot of fun to make.

I have enjoyed making the cupcakes too. That pattern is done and listed on etsy now. My friend, Liz, helped me with that one by test knitting it for me. Thanks, Liz!

I have just finished spinning up some wonderful wool that I purchased last September when I was at the spinning retreat in Louisiana. It is a deep rich purple with some green in it. I don't think the colors came out really well on the screen, but it sure is pretty in real life. I have 477 yds of it. Now to figure out what to do with it.

Bicycling and Cupcakes

On Sunday we went bike riding, I think we road for about 4 miles. My thighs hurt on Monday. LOL! The good news is I didn't fall, well and neither did Jeff. :) We had a great ride and made it home safely. The great thing about Texas in the spring is the wildflowers, which some will call weeds. But, thanks to Ladybird Johnson, Texans have learned to let the weeds grow and bloom. The wildflowers are gorgeous and the colors are wonderful. No, I didn't get pictures of them, because I didn't want to take my camera on the bike. But there were oranges, yellows, fuschias, purples and whites. Just think, we don't really get fantastic fall colors, but our spring wildflowers sure are pretty.

I have been working on several new patterns to sell. They are coming along, but the one that is almost ready is my new cupcake. This cupcake is calorie free! I will be selling the cupcakes on etsy, as pin cushions, and they will be filled with sheeps wool. I am really happy with how they turned out. I hope you like them too.

We Saw a Great Play!

Wow! Two weeks have gone by since I last posted. Where does the time go? This past Friday night, we went to our oldest granddaughter's play. It was a lot of fun and she did a good job. The library in their town, likes to put on plays. The children who come to the library are the actors, if they want to participate. The play was about how one boy thinks the library is a boring place to be and wants the other kids to hurry and get their books, so they can go play. Through a series of events, like losing electricity and searching for what is making the strange noises and leaving strange things around the library, the boy and all the other children learn that the library is fun.

It was a cute play and Nicole did a fantastic job!

Along the project line, I have made a woven scarf! A couple of years ago, I received an Ashford Knitters' Loom, which I sell on http://www.terrificfibers.com/ for a present from my hubby. I was so excited, as it was new on the market and I hadn't purchased it yet for my shop. So, I warped it up very quickly and the job WAS really easy to do. The pictures and directions were great! Well, then we decided to buy our store, and then we went away to train to run the store, then we came home and have been busy working in the store and OH Yeah, we moved....... Well, I finally decided that I should finish this scarf and I did. I used commercially made yarn, Ashford Tekapo, for the warp and my handspun, dyed with koolaid, for the weft. The handspun fiber came from a Jacob Sheep. They are so named, as they are spotted sheep and legend has it that they decended from Jacob's flock, in the Old Testament. My friend, Cindy, owns some Jacob sheep and this fiber came from her.

Finished Projects!

This week I decided to actually crochet something! It has been a while since I crocheted a project. And actually, about a year or so ago, I crocheted something and both of my daughters were in shock about it! LOL! They had seen me knitting and crocheting when they were younger, but when I learned how to spin, I decided to mainly knit items. Why? you ask. Welllll......., mainly because I am lazy or I guess we could say smart. Heehee. I had read that it takes more yarn to crochet an item, than to knit it. Since I was planning to use primarily my handspun yarns to make items, I didn't want to have to spin more yarn. The girls apparently took this as a sign, that Mom doesn't crochet anymore. Here you go, a crocheted shawl. I just love it. The pattern came off the Knitting Daily website, as a free pattern from Interweave Press. I had seen some finished pictures of it when I was visiting Ravelry last Sunday. (Ravelry is a large website, of sorts, that knitters and crocheters belong to and can list projects etc, and leave tips.) Ok, back to my story. The gal that had listed the finished shawl picture did leave a hint, "Go and get the corrections, from them when you download the pattern from them." So, I did. It is a good thing I did too, because when I hit print an ENTIRE page of corrections came out for this one shawl. I am serious. I sure am glad that I wasn't the first one making this shawl, I would've probably been in tears and really frustrated. I am glad, though, that the corrections page was there and available. Thank you, Interweave! This pattern was first published by Interweave in their Wrap Style book. If you have that book, there are other corrections listed for it. I know first hand that it is hard to get patterns worded just right and sometimes the directions get messed up. So, it is nice when mistakes happen, that the publishers offer the corrections on their websites. In a perfect world we would never need those pages, but we are not perfect.

My next picture is the great felted mobius basket. I have pictured it before, when showing you the knitting in the magic loop process. It truly was knitted in one piece and notice the twist in the handle. A single twist. When I first saw this basket, at Kate's home, I was truly intrigued. I thought and thought, how could Cat Bordhi have accomplished this? Liking math and being pretty good at it, that is why I like tech editing patterns, I finally bought her book and made one. It was fun to do and now I know. Normally, this basket sits by my computer with my glasses in it. I have a small assignment pad and an old mechanical pencil in the basket, so you can see the size of it. Oh, and so you know, there weren't any corrections needed for this pattern. :)