sheep in the city

Family Reunion Time!

Oh yes, it's that time of year. Family reunion time! We are headed to Kansas City in this big van...it's going to be my sister, her husband and 2 kids, my brother and his wife and their large dog...oh and me. I'm sure that I'll have lots to talk about next week, if we don't all kill each other on the drive across Kansas! See ya!

New bags anyone?!

This is going to be a quick post, but I've been meaning to show off my most recent bag purchases.

*click here to see the inside of the bag*
A new Tepper Jackson bag, purchased at Colorful Yarns. You might remember the one that I purchased last year...still love it, just needed to have a second one! You all can relate, right?

This other bag was shown to me by my blogless friend Kim. She is the queen of finding fun, cool knitting bags. I saw that she had this bag at a knitting group one night and I knew that I had to have one too! So, I went home and promptly bought one on ebay. Do a search for "My Melody Kuromi" if you are interested in finding a similar bag.

Little Snugs!

Finally...something finished to show you! These are the Little Snugs that I made for my niece. But, before she gets to wear them, they get to be a shop sample for a class that I'm teaching this Fall. This promises to be a very fun class! Where is the other boot you ask? Well...it is still in pieces and will be put together over the course of our class. Here is a close-up of the embroidery bit...it's not my finest work, but it will all come out in the felting process!

*the Cherry Coke is for scale*

Yarn used: (MC)Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted in Oatmeal (CC)Berroco Ultra Alpaca in Rose Spice-6233.

Needles: US 7 16" Addi Turbo

Because I just can't stand how cute my niece is, here is a shot of her reaction when she saw the boot:

Fortune

Is this a good fortune, or a bad fortune? I'm just not sure. My friends that were with me the night that I received this in my fortune cookie laughed at how appropriate this was, knowing me like they do. I do have a tendency to get busy...but really, must I even get messages in cookies about it?!

Nothin' but love...

Moving right along...Liam's sweater is now cruising after a little bit of a bumpy start this weekend. I had gauge problems, tangled yarn problems, row counts being off, etc. All of this due to knitter error, not problems with the pattern or design or the yarn manufacturer. I think that I ended up casting on and knitting 4 inches or so about a half a dozen times. Enough that I could have been done with the front and back of the sweater by then, but I decided not to think of it like that or else it would drive me crazy. All is good now though. I had a blast hanging out with some knitting friends on Friday night. We ended up back at my place, where we laughed the night away...it was just what I needed. Thanks girls!

TGIF!

Seriously...thank goodness it's Friday! I am totally going to get my knit on tonight. I have hardly knit all week, and that just feels wrong. I started a new project yesterday, in hopes of forcing myself out of the knitting funk. That's what I tend to do...find some other yarn and pattern that I can get excited about and start knitting. (and I realize that this is why I end up with so many projects, but I'm kind of in denial about that) The pattern that I picked is called the "Hugs and Kisses Hoodie Sweater" and it's from the book Nature Babies by Tara Jon Manning. She is a local knitting guru and this is the first of her designs that I've knit. I was at Colorful Yarns yesterday, where my Mom was subbing for the usual girl who works on Thursdays, and I kept going over to look and feel all the pretty colors of Berroco Comfort that they just got in. It feels so soft, and yet it's 50% nylon, 50% acrylic and totally washable. This sweater is going to be for my nephew Liam and the whole thing only takes 3 skeins. Dude, the whole sweater cost me $17.25 to knit, I love that! (not including the book, obviously. That was a freebie when I went to TNNA last year)

I've been told that I don't post nearly enough pictures of my nephew, so to make up for that fact, here are a few of my recent favorites.

This one is him singing along to the Princess Aurora birthday card that Alice received in the mail. I love that it looks like he is totally belting it out! He loves to sing and dance anytime that he hears music. *

The boy can pack away the Macaroni and Cheese when we visit Sweet Tomatos. What am I saying, he can pack it away anytime that he eats!

Have a great weekend everyone!

*Speaking of dancing...I am thrilled that Sabra won SYTYCD last night! That is definitely who I wanted to win, although in the end I was a much bigger fan of Danny than I was originally. It was such a great season finale. I saved it on my TiVo to watch again this weekend...yes I'm a dork.

Happy Birthday Alice!

Wow! I can hardly believe that my niece is 3 years old today! These are just a few pictures that have been taken in the last few weeks. One of her favorite things lately is to wear dress-up clothes, or at the very least pick out her own outfits. Such a big girl!

As Cinderella. I think this is an outfit that my mom bought her, go figure!

We took Alice to a tea room yesterday...just the girls. She had so much fun eating scones and drinking chocolate milk. They served Devonshire cream, lemon curd, and strawberry jam for the scones and she absolutely loved that!

Silly girl! Happy Birthday Alice!!

The best laid plans...

I'm not sure what happened last weekend, but my plans to seam up my Sienna Cardigan were thwarted. I am telling the truth when I say that it wasn't just me putting off the seaming up. For one thing, I wasn't finished knitting the last piece...oops. Then, the weekend just seemed to fly by and now all of a sudden it's Wednesday evening! Crazy. Guess how much knitting I've done this week. Ummm...maybe 10 rows, and that is probably stretching it. I just haven't felt like knitting. Hopefully this will pass soon. I hate it when I get into a knitting funk. Guess what, Jesse doesn't like it either!

I aim to please...

...so here are some more things to tempt you with! I've been asked by a few people lately where I shop on Etsy. These are just a few of the places that I've been stumbled upon and bought things from.

I bought these necklaces from Ling Glass. She lives in Singapore, and does an amazing job of working with stained glass. Here is a closeup of the green and the pink necklaces. I love how the light flows through them. The biggest problem was just narrowing it down to two necklaces.

Squid Glass is another fun shop that sells amazing glass pendants. My mom and I both picked out necklaces about a month ago. Then we decided to make a custom order...and it should arrive any day! The necklaces that we picked out are all knitting related! I'm super excited. I'll take more pictures after they arrive and share them next week. If you don't see any knitting themed pendants at the moment in her shop, you can start a "conversation" through Etsy (it's like an internal email system) and she'll come up with something brilliant for you!

That's all I've got for today...I've got to save some of my favorite Etsy shops for next week. Tonight at knit group I'm hoping to start seaming up my Sienna Cardigan! Wish me luck!

Warning...stash enhancing ahead!

First let me ask, have you seen the latest Interweave Knits? If you don't already own a copy then you really need to go get one. It's Eunny Jang's first issue as editor of the magazine and so far, I am loving the fresh style that she has brought to my already favorite knitting magazine. With that being said, I found yarn in my stash to make her Tangled Yoke Cardigan. I only needed to buy 3 or 4 more skeins...and my local yarn shop of choice had the same dyelot! Bonus. (or as Jeni would say, Yahtzee!)

That wasn't the only project that I fell in love with though. I've been looking for a reason to pick up some Berroco Peruvia in the color Moonstone, and the Norah Gaughan designed cover sweater gave me the perfect reason. This sweater is knit on size US 10 needles, and I only needed 8 skeins. I'm hoping to start this one as soon as I'm finished with the Sienna Cardigan. It looks like the perfect sweater to wear this Fall! By the way, I'm hoping to have all the knitting done on my Sienna Cardigan this weekend. Wish me luck on seaming this sweater up, that's usually where I start to procrastinate!

Random updates...

I haven't talked about my Mod-on-Mod blanket in a while, so I thought I show a progress picture. I have 10 of the 20 squares complete. For the most part I just pick this one up when I need some mindless stockinette knitting. I still love working with this chunky cotton yarn. It's Araucania Patagonia and Araucania Nature Cotton. The pattern is from the book Yarn Play.

One day at work when I first started my afghan I was bored, so I made up a new color coded page that shows the layout of the afghan. Yes, I'm a knitting nerd and I like to play with markers!

A few weeks ago, RayLynn came out for a quick whirlwind visit to Denver. While she was here, she was able to model her first ever knitted garment! I'm so proud of you RayLynn! Be sure to click on the picture above to see the back of the garment. I love to see the people that I've taught to knit challenging themselves, and I know this was a challenge for her. (there were many phone calls folks) But she stuck with it and finished!

Pattern: "Ginger" from The Summer Tweed Collection
Size: medium
Yarn: 4 skeins of Rowan Summer Tweed in color Angel-526

Welcome back Ariann!

A few weeks ago, my Mom and I decided that we were going to be committed to working on and finishing our Ariann sweaters. We are shooting for getting together once a week and being very intentional about making some serious progress. As many of you know, we both started this sweater back in February when my Dad was undergoing Radiation treatment. After that long month was over...I took a break from Ariann, only to pull her out occasionally and work a row or two, then put her away again. No more! I'm going to work on this sweater a little bit every day. We are both almost at the point where we'll be starting the sleeves. My Dad is still in treatment, he just had his 6th chemo treatment down at MD Anderson in Houston. He travels down there for a day and a half every 3 weeks. The treatment seems to be working, for which we are very grateful, but the effects are cumulative so he's not feeling very well these days. This makes me sad to see him in pain. So I'll work on my Ariann with my Mom and help them out with what I can. Pictures of Alice always cheer us all up though, so here is the latest. In fact, just last night as the whole family gathered at Sweet Tomatos, Alice informed me that "I make Poppie feel better." What a sweetheart!

Etsy...it does a body good!

I have been going a little nuts on Etsy lately...I freely admit this. I love supporting small crafty businesses and Etsy gives me the opportunity to do that.


*click the picture to see the inside...and yes, the sock yarn matches the bag!*

Piddleloop Sewing Team...a team of 2 sisters sewing up some of the cutest little project totes around! Love these girls! I was introduced to Jenn a few years ago when we both participated in a stitchmarker swap. I still use the ones that she sent me! I had her make a custom set for me with the oh-so-cute goldfish fabric. The attention to detail is stellar. She put the cutest ribbon in each of the needle wallets. One is for DPN's and the other is for circulars. I bought them with the thought that I would keep my specific sock needles in them.

Pictured above:
•Goldfish project pouch
•4x6 loose fish
•circular wallet loose fish
•4x6 bagged fish
•sock needle DPN Wallet bagged fish

The icing on the cake though? She sent me a friendship pin. Do you remember them? They were little safety pins that you'd fill with seed beads and put on your shoes? Pink converse high tops in my case! I love it! I'll be sharing more of my Etsy finds in the days and weeks to come. Have a great weekend everyone!

Camp Wannaknitknit- part 3

Kim diligently worked on her Mystery Stole 3 over the course of the weekend. There were a few moments where she definitely wasn't smiling like she is in the picture above! Cynthia and I helped her with a little lifeline problem and saved her from ripping out the whole thing. We just couldn't let her do that! Her Mystery Stole is simply gorgeous, go check it out and you can see her first finished Horcrux sock too. Don't you just love her knitting tee? She is always sporting the greatest knitting shirts. Where does she get them, you ask? Cafe Press. Here's a link to the one that she was wearing.

After a yummy breakfast, and many different forms of caffeine, we were all ready to knit. We'd knit inside for a bit and then when it started warming up we'd head to the porch for awhile. Of course, you can't get a group of knitters together without discussing what knitting projects are coming out in the near future. Have you seen the Interweave Fall preview? I love it! Many of us are planning to knit Eunny Jang's Tangled Yoke Cardigan. I happen to have Classic Elite Classic Silk in my stash that will work for that one...bonus! Using up the stash yarn, gotta love that! I personally am thinking of knitting the Hedgerow Coat by Deborah Newton. So many amazingly talented designers out there...not enough time! My Mom, and Michelle, and I all swatched with some of our Plain & Fancy yarn from Estes. I haven't found the project that I want to knit with that yarn yet, but it sure knits up pretty! This weekend was so much fun, it really has become one of the highlights of my year. Monday morning was here all too quickly...and boy did I wish that I was still knitting with my friends in the mountains. Oh well...back to life!

Camp Wannaknitknit- part 2

Cynthia and Michelle and I went up on Thursday afternoon to get things all ready for the rest of the group. Everyone else was coming up on Friday throughout the day. Now, the gift-bags. I have to say that this year it was definitely a group effort. We had bags made and yarn hand-dyed, it was a little extravagant, but so worth it!

Bags: Colorful Accessories
Yarn: Custom designed and hand-dyed by Hello Yarns
Stitchmarkers: custom made by Hide and Sheep
Highlighter Tape: (works great for lace patterns!)From the Knit Foundry
Mini Sock Blocker key chain kits.

The yarn is absolutely gorgeous.

The sitchmarkers match perfectly! The whole thing just came together so easily. Well...as easy as you can get with three people coming up with color combinations for the yarn! Adrian was a dream to work with and the yarn came packaged with a little magnet and sock pattern. Thank you Adrian for working with us on this little endeavor!

Friday morning before anybody else got up to the cabin, Michelle and Cynthia and I sat around knitting together and catching up with each other. I noticed something funny...and maybe only funny to me, but we were all knitting on projects that matched our clothing.

Me. Michelle. Cynthia. I know that people are attracted to certain colors, but this just cracked me up. After a bit, Michaele arrived, and we all got up and headed into Buena Vista (about 30 or so miles from where we were) to visit Serendipity Yarns. If you are ever in the Buena Vista area, I highly recommend a stop over at this shop.

I worked on a number of different projects that first day. I knit a few rows on Molly Ringwald and then quickly became disenchanted with all that ribbing. I'm so close, and yet it's so much ribbing! I started a Jaywalker sock with some fun Trekking stripey yarn. I haven't knit on such tiny needles in a while. That lasted about an hour. Then it was on to the Sienna Cardigan. I finished the sleeves! I was knitting them both on one needle, which I love because then when you are done you have two completed sleeves, but man does it seem to take forever! I've cast on for the second front of the cardigan and then it's time to block and seam! Yay! This sweater has been languishing for long enough, I am more than ready for an FO around here! That's all for today...but I have more pictures and fun things that I've bought on Etsy to show you, so I'm sure I'll post again tomorrow!