MN Knitters Days

The annual MN Knitters Days was held this past weekend at Villa Maria Retreat Center. Apart from lousy food this year, the weekend was great. About 40 knitters gathered Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to hear Candice Eisner Strick and classes on shawls. Of course, that is right up my alley. I had to sit on my hands to avoid starting another shawl which was part of the class. I bit my tongue and did finish another shawl. Here is Candice showing the details of one of her shawls. She has a beautiful one coming out in a book she is writing! No details on the book as of now.The weather was beautiful with fall in all its glory-if we took a break from our knitting to enjoy it.

Mystery Shawl #9

Goddess Knits Mystery Shawl 9, Clue 4 is finished. It's interesting how the colors of the yarn seemed to change, so I checked and did have the same dye lot for all the skeins. Maybe because the rows are longer, the color doesn't pool in such thick stripes. One clue to go!

EZ Shetland Shawl

Finished! A lot of plain garter stitch but the finished product is so soft and drapes so nicely.

Pattern: Elizabeth Zimmermann's Shetland Shawl. Start the center square by casting on 2 stitches, increase every row to desired width, then decrease every row back to 1 stitch. I did the increases with a YO at the beginning of every row and then continued by YO followed by 2, K2 tog on the decrease rows. Then each side is picked up and trapizoids are made and the edging applied.

Yarn: Alpaca and Silk

Needles: I think I used a size 6 and 7 needle for this. I used Knit Picks Harmony interchangeable needles (which I really, really love) and when I was checking the size to get a DPN for the edging it checked as a 7. The needles just didn't feel right after a good share of the border was done and discovered I was using one size 6 and one size 7. You'd never know.

Mason Dixon Knitting

Today was a fun day! The Yarnery sponsored Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne, authors of Mason-Dixon Knitting and their new one Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines. Hopefully, the singers performance will show up on the Yarnery's blog. http://theyarnery.blogspot.com/. (Tuesday-Check out You Tube for The Yarnery Family Singers for all their songs-the one they sang on Sunday and the ones they sang when Stepanie Pearl-McPhee was here.)After some fun songs by the Yarnery singers, both spoke about themselves and how the books developed, showed the actual items from the books and signed books. See their blog for more fun and pictures. www.masondixonknitting.com. The book has some fun patterns I would just love to knit! The things look so much better in person (and on a real person) than in the book.

Scenery

Aren't these interesting clouds? Later in the day I noticed an airplane "coming out" of the clouds leaving a white streak so I think that is what that is from.
The leaves are exceptionally beautiful this year.

To Frog or Not to Frog, Mystery Stole #4

Mystery Stole #4. I hate putting all the beads on this-it's putzy to stop and do it, my yarn splits so I have to fuss with that and its such close work, my eyes blur up after only a short time. Since I'm not enjoying the process I'm tempted to frog, but the pictures I've seen of the stoles further along are beautiful, so after doing 4 rows today I put it back in the basket, still undecided.

Overwhelmed

The last few weeks I've been overwhelmed with my knitting projects! Besides the projects I've had to do for Amazing Threads, I'm addicted to Mystery Shawls/Stoles. My knitting style is a process knitter-I'm all for seeing what this yarn/pattern will look like and once I see enough I'm on to something else. All of my present projects are big ones, so it doesn't look like I'm accomplishing anything. None of this stops me from buying more yarn and starting more projects. These are my recent yarn purchases, some with planned projects I'm itching to start and others for my stash.Valley Yarns 2/14 Alpaca Silk Laceweight purchased from Webs. This will be a shawl someday.

Creamy by Kollage Yarns. 80% Milk (Yes, milk) 20% cotton. I just had to get some. 3 Kittens had the Frosty Peaks Shawl made from it and it was so soft and had such a nice drape.
Last week I was in Door County and visited Nora Ahlen's farm. She raises sheep, trains herding dogs, spins and dyes her own fibers. She had a Danish Tie Shawl made from her sport weight wool with a strand of her angora. It was so soft and cuddly and since I'm always cold this should keep me warm. I'm really itching to start this and I do need a "no think" project as I don't have many "company" projects on needles right now.
All Raveled Up Sock Club Yarn-Yarrnn! This will go in my stash. I'm not real crazy about the dark colors as I'm on a fancy stitch sock kick and this won't work up that well.

Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl

Finished! The details about yarn and needles are in previous posts. Each clue had 4 choices of designs. My choices were: Clue 1, Chart B; Clue 2, Chart B; Clue 3, Chart A; Clue 4, Chart D.I must admit I am not happy with the clue before the edging. The last portion looked more defined in the graph than it does on the picture and the shawl. Maybe my gauge was too loose. I am an experienced lace knitter, but found these patterns harder to follow as the graphs didn't show what the design was going to be and didn't seem to follow a pattern. The design didn't show up until done, which was part of the fun.
I'm still addicted to mystery shawls-still have 2 on needles!

Saturday Sky September 27 Door County

A beautiful fall day in Door County. Having just spent a week at knitting camp in Sister Bay, my sister and I met my daughter in law and her mother for a morning walk in Penninsula State Park.