D is for Daffodil

Saturday Sky February 23, 2008

Saturday sky in Ames, Iowa, overlooking the Gateway Convention Center where I spent the weekend teaching at Arnhild's Knitting Camp. www.arnhild.com It's a knitting extravaganza starting Friday evening, continuing Saturday with classes all day and ending with a wonderful banquet, door prizes for everyone, a display of every one's show and tell, and slides of Arnhild's last knitting tour to Norway. My door prize was several skeins of Brown Sheep cotton yarn. Sunday continued with classes and a brunch buffet. The food all weekend was fantastic! The classes were needle felting, creating projects from felted wool, and I taught entrelac. Arnhild had a knitting clinic and a beginning knitting class was held. Oh, Saturday weather was beautiful!

Socks

Yarn: Regia Nation
Needles: Size 1 1/2

I bought the yarn in Green Bay, Wisconsin, thinking they would be good Christmas socks. The rest of the year, they are Italy socks.

Heel developed by Gerdine Strong. It is my favorite heel.

Saturday Sky February 17, 2008

A beautiful winter day for Minnesota. Temperature reached 30 degrees.

Nikki Epstein

Last night Nikki Epstein did a workshop at Amazing Threads. She is one creative woman! Even after spending two days at the Mall of America for the Knit-Out, she was enthusiastic and spent 3 hours teaching us some of the embellishments from her books. Here she is pointing out how embellishments can dress up a plain cape.

Children's Home Society Volunteer Tea

Every year Children's Home Society has a Volunteer Recognition Tea. Because I am the co-chair of the MN Knitters' Guild Service Committee and we donate yarn for their Little Red Stocking program, we are invited.

The food is delicious!

Entertainment was by the Roseville Community Band Brass Ensemble and Woodwind Quintet.

When the program was over, people were able to take yarn to knit or crochet items for Children's Home Society. This year the program has been expanded to be worldwide and year round and is called Cozy Community. In addition to hats and mittens they now can use baby sweaters and blankets.

C is for Cables

C is for Cables. These are on the Midsummer Aran by Chris Blysma. (Still in progress!)

Saturday Sky February 9, 2008

This is a place I make myself go 3 times a week. I hate to exercise-I'd rather be knitting!Wish the picture showed the blowing snow. Skies were grey, snow was falling, and the wind was blowing in gusts up to 40 mph.

Believe it or not, this is the same day. The sky is blue, but the winds are still blowing and the temperature has dropped about 20 degrees during the day. A good day to be inside knitting.

Wavy Scarf

This was a fun knit.Yarn: Great Big Sea by Hand Maiden. 50% Silk, 10% Wool, 20% Seacell. I have no idea what seacell is, but the yarn was soft, had a nice drape and easy to work with.

Pattern: Provided by Hand Maiden Fine yarns from Canada.

Felted Clog Repair

I love my felted clogs-Fiber Trends pattern-and have worn them almost daily for a couple of years. Well, they were wearing thin, needed repair, and had stretched out a little so I figured running through the regular wash couldn't hurt anything. Oh my, the holes appeared. The picture doesn't show the damage very well, but I had 3 holes in the sole of each clog.My plan was to needle felt patches onto the bottoms. Luckily I had some perfectly matching yarn which I don't know if it was left over from the original. I filled the clog with pieces of foam ruibber and used the yarn to fill in the holes and ran strands of yarn criss-cross horizontally, diagonally and vertically across the holes into the surviving good fabric. Just repeated this until the holes were filled.
Wish the picture showed off the repair better. They are a little lumpy, but will be able to wear them a little longer.