Happy 4th of July!

I hope ya'll had a wonderful holiday! My family and I went camping for the weekend and got to much sun but I had a wonderful holiday celebrating Americas freedom! The last month I have been working on my spinning and I have done some knitting but the majority of my time has been taken up with spinning. I have spun up a spindle full of the merino silk blend I'm guessing that I spun up about 2 oz. but I'm not sure on the exact amount. I love how the colors have come out in it as I have spun. I am spinning this merino silk in a lace weight and I will ply it together so I have a 2 ply yarn. I have also been spinning on my alpaca roving and I'm spinning that lace weight also. I know that is a lot of work to do 2 lace weight spinning projects at the same time but I am enjoying it so far. I have been spinning the merino silk but now that I have a spindle full I have switched to the alpaca. I will have to let the twist on the merino blend sit awhile so that it can relax, other wise it will tangle up with itself when I go to ply it.  In the knitting area I have knitted some more on my juneberry triangle and I am almost done with the last chart and then I will only have the edging chart left! I am super excited to get it done it looks so fuzzy and warm I almost wish it was cooler out so I can snuggle up with it. But I am enjoying the warm weather. I have finished 2 more reversible and I am working on a third one. I know that is a lot  of reversible toys to make but I still will need to make at least 3 or 4 more. I know a lot of people having babies this year! But I enjoy making them. So far I have made the turtle and frog which is featured in a blog I did a few months ago and I have done the lion/elephant and the sisters. The lion and elephant took me the longest because that one had the most  parts on it so that was a little more time consuming.  But they all turned out adorable and I am very happy about how they have all turned out. Well that's all I haev for now I hop ya'll have a good week.

Knitting,spinning and future projects.

Hello!!

 I know I am not very regular in blogging but I hope to remedy that this year. I recently went to a fiber festival with my mom and we had a good time. This was my moms first fiber festival and I am glad it was on the small side as she got overwhelmed by all the fiber,yarn and animals. I am glad she enjoyed it and she was able to purchase some things. We bought 4 oz of Merino wool blended with Tussah silk. It is a gorgeous black with silver spread though out it.



This is the Tussah Silk Merino Wool blend.



I love the colors if this. I am hoping to spin it a lace weight.

And this is some Mohair I also was able to get at the Fiber festival. I have worked with Mohair before but it was a black and grey color this is the more common natural color.

Here is some Angora that i purchased last year in august the color is called broken torte. It is a white color with some cream and tan spread though out it. I am not sure yet what i am going to use this for but i am enjoying spinning it up, Angora is one of the harder fibers to spin because it comes is locks in stead of a roving.

Here is a partially made reversible from the Itty Bitty Toys book.I am making the sisters reversible. The pink part is the dress for one side of the doll and the periwinkle color is the other side of the dress. I am making this pair of sisters for a lady at my church she is giving it to her granddaughter and I am trying to make it look like the girl and her sister.  I will make sure to post some pictures of the finished project.

These 2 balls of yarn are part of an order i put into Knit Picks. The one on the right is Knit Picks Capra Cashmere Yarn in the Platinum color and the one on the left is Swish Worsted Yarn in the Tidepool heather. The Cashmere blend I will be making the Juneberry Triangle, and the Swish worsted I will be making a pair of leg warmers for my mom for this winter.

Some of you might remember the cross stitch I had talked about a few posts back?? Well it has come along nicely the last couple of months. I finished the first page of the pattern and started on the second. I am very happy with the way it is turning out and I cannot wait to see the finished product! I love cross stitching but back stitching is not my favorite part and the thought of having this huge project done but still have to back stitch it was a little intimidating to I decided that as I finished each page of the pattern I would go through and back stitch as much of that page as I could so that I could save my self time and headaches down the road.

I still have alot to do but I am very happy with the way it looks so far.

And here is my Juneberry Triangle!! I am very excited with my progress. This is a charted knitting pattern and I have never worked a charted pattern before so it was a little intimidating at first but I have a friend who is an experienced knitter and she got me started on this pattern. I have completed the first chart and I am about half way through the second. This pattern has a lot of stitches that I'm not familiar with so it will be a very big learning experience for me. But I am so looking forward to the finished project!

Here is another shot of my angora.

And last but certainly not least here is a picture of the 100% alpaca that was given to me by a friend. I have a little over a pound of it and I plan to leave it the natural color because i think it is beautiful! I am spinning it as thin as I can in hopes of getting a 2 ply lace weight. I am hoping to make a long sleeved shrug for my grandma.

Well that's all I have for now but hope fully I will not allow myself to go so long between posts!

Spring!!

 I might have already had a post labeled spring but spring in the northern U.S has taken its time getting here. I was able to plant some flowers and thought you might like to see some of them. I planted 3 flats of Petunias,inpatient's,dianthus,and one other flower I cant remember the name of. I also planted some 3" potted plants which are Daisy's,Gerber daisy,Marguerite daisy,and carnation.

This is one of the Daisy's.

Another Daisy



Double Petunia



Gerber Daisy the color is a very bright pink. 



This is a Siberian iris that we planted a couple years ago I love the deep purple.



Another Petunia





And another Gerber daisy this one is a bright red.

The Lilacs are finished blooming now other wise I would have taken a picture of them. I love all the flowers in the spring and  I love to work out in the flower garden with my hands. I hope you all are enjoying your spring and the beginning of summer where ever you are in the world. May the Lord bless you this month and throughout the coming year.

Baby toys.

It seems like spring is the time for baby's. I have a couple people I know that are expecting little ones and I thought it would be nice to make the baby's toys that they could use when they were little and when they got a little older.

I had recently ordered a book from knit picks called Itty Bitty Toys and it has wonderful patterns for reversible toys. I really bought the book specifically to make these reversible and I am so glad that I bought it because I have had so much fun knitting up these toys!

The first one I made is the frog and turtle. The turtle is supposed to have a flower on top of its shell but I am giving this toy to a baby boy so I decided to improvise and just put rectangles on his shell.

Here are some pictures of the finished frog and turtle.

These toys were a breeze to knit up and the book has detailed instructions if you are a beginning knitter.

I am currently working on another reversible but it isn't quite finished yet so be sure to check back in a few weeks for another post!

Spring and a bit of lace knitting.

Spring is arriving! I am so happy that the weather is starting to warm up. I was beginning to think that it would never stop snowing! I enjoy the snow but only till about January and then I am ready for the start of warm weather. Well while it has been slowly warming up outside I have been working on my first lace project!! I was given some fingering weight hand spun yarn for my birthday and was contemplating what to make with it when I was invited to a lady's tea and was told that it was going to be formal wear. I was excited because I knew I had the perfect dress the only problem was that the dress is sleeveless. So I decided that the solution was to make a shrug to go with the dress! So I set to work on making a shrug. The pattern I decided to use I got off ravelry  and the pattern is called the reading in bed shrug. It is a pretty simple lace work with the pattern only on the right side. I was glad that the pattern was simple because this was my first lace project. I had a blast knitting it I will tell you that once I got started I couldn't put it down. It was hard for me to put it down and work on other projects and because of that I completed this shrug in about 2 days of just knitting on and off through out the day. The yarn I was using is called violet dawn and it is so pretty.

This is the yarn! :) isn't it lovely?

Here are some pictures of the finished project. I hope you enjoy them.



It has some lovely self striping going on that added some depth to the piece. :)



The lace pattern is called the traveling leaf pattern

And here is the finished work!!!

I hope ya'll are enjoying the beautiful spring weather!!

Chrsitmas!!

Hello again!



I thought ya'll might like to see some of the gifts I gave away and some of the gifts I got. :)

These are some snowflake ornaments I made as gifts

These are wool mitts and in the cable is hand spun angora.

This yarn was given to me. I have plans to make a wrap out of one of them.

This is some marvelous alpaca that I got!! I dont have any idea what to make out of it yet.

Some more lovely alpaca.

And this is Angora!!

I thought you might like to see this little turtle I made for our puppy.

And to leave you with here are some lovely baby booties that I crocheted.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

Recap of 2010

Hello again!!

Its been quite awhile since my last blog, and being rather new to the blogging world I thought you might like to see some of what I did in 2010. I don't have pictures for all of it but I will do my best to tell you about my year. :)

This year was full of firsts for me. I learned alot of things which was awesome because aren't we always learning?  This year i learned how to spin on a drop spindle, I also learned how to make a center pull ball on my nostipinne, and i learned how to cable!I love cabling. I was able to go tom my first fiber festival and i loved it! i wish that i could have bought more but I wasn't able to hopefully this year I will be able to buy more things. One of the most exciting things I learned this year and by far my favorite was learning how to dye my own roving! A marvelous friend of mine who is also the friend who taught me how to knit and spin.:) taught me how to hand paint roving this year. We had a wonderful time doing it. She uses the Greener Shade Dyes which are non toxic and non acidic. I was able to paint 8 ounces of merino wool I split it in half so I could experiment with colors. The colors I used on the first I call shades of green, and the second is blues and teals and greens.  





Aren't the colors lovely?

And here is the other roving I hand painted!! 

I gave this one to my mom she loves green. :)



My mom really loved the roving that I gave her she can't wait to see it spun up. :) That was all I was able to do in the dyeing area but I'm hoping to be able to do more this year. I was able to purchase quite a bit of roving for spinning this last year and I have been busy spinning that up, well some of it. :)


This pattern is called Welcome Spring.



It will eventually have flowers under the bird house. And it will also have more birds.



  I have also been working on some cross stitching. I love cross stitch and this project is quite large. It has taken me over a year to complete almost one page of the pattern. But I haven't been working on it consistently. One of the knitting projects that I finished earlier this year was a wrap for my mom. I gave her the yarn as a mothers day present almost 2 years ago. I got the yarn from knit picks it is their Andean Silk yarn in Jade and Cream. It turned out lovely but unfortunately I don't have a picture of it, but hopefully soon I will.

Well that's all for now 2010 wasn't a very busy year in the knitting world for me but maybe 2011 will be.  I hope you had a marvelous new year.