Sign of the Times

If you build it.....they will come. So with that in mind, we built it, and they are a comin!

Customers that is....to our store! Yup, our once very sad Bloomin Bog sign is now repaired. The winter finally destroyed the 8ft x 4ft sign at the road, so Nick built a "make do" one. And just as we were all getting used to the white greenhouse plastic with the black "Bloomin Bog" graffiti! I do miss that sign. If nothing else, it had character and was certainly a conversation starter with our customers. Many laughs were shared. I'm still suspicious of the spray can control ..... I think I've seen the artist's work around town [laughing].

Staff around our new sign (pictured from left: Ian, Dave, Kim and I)

Our new sign at night (totally awesome....looks like an 8ft plasma tv!)

Knitting progress is slow at this time of year. April through July I basically eat, drink and sleep business. My knitting time is now restricted to the evenings around 11pm, and only if I'm not falling asleep.

I did cast on a pair of socks last week - two at a time on 2.5mm circs. I finally found a great pattern for my hand-dyed sock yarn (from last year's dyeing party). The pattern is called Nutkin by Beth LaPensee. Nutkin is an easy to memorize pattern with dramatic results. Although the pattern includes many YOs, the sock does not appear lacy. Given the bright colours in my yarn, I didn't want the patterning to get lost in the bright variegations - all that effort for nothing ya know?

I really love the pattern so far. The heel calls for short rows - haven't done a sock this way before, so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.....I'm so used to a heel flap and gusset.

Finished the legs and starting the short row heels on my Limozeen Nutkins

I hope to cast on soon for a felted kitty bed (cat pi) by Wendy D. Johnson. I've already dyed my yarn - Cascade Ecological wool. I spoke to my feline recipient, Sandi Pandi, and she loves the colours [phew!].

Dyed Cascade Ecological wool for kitty bed

And now it's 8pm, and I haven't started dinner. No surprises there. Not to worry though - one of my new staff [bless him] is a great cook, and he brought me a fabulous chicken casserole! I just have to warm it up!! Yep, he's scoring BIG brownie points with me [laughing]. His Indian dinner was fantastic, and so was his slow cooker chicken dish! Ooooooo! I'm getting spoiled.....possible sugar daddy you ask? Naaaah!

My Bluebird of Happiness

My bluebird of happiness does not fly. In fact, it doesn't even have wings! Or feathers! And it only has some blue in it [laughing]. But, it is adorable, soft and loves to be petted.

So, to unravel the mystery....towards the end of August last year, I received a lovely little plait of roving from Alana. She brought it back for me as a souvenir from the West Coast of Canada. I’m not quite sure whether it’s Corriedale or BFL, all I really know is that it had lovely 6in long staple length that was great for a beginner spinner like me!

The roving was already dyed beautiful shades or turquoise, grass green and mauve – really pretty. Yes, I should have taken a photo!

I used the Turkish Drop Spindle my Dad made for me for my birthday. Hours and hours later, I had it all spun up – not the most brilliant bit of spinning, but my first true attempt at making yarn. I had piddled around a bit with spinning before, but had never spun more than an ounce.

Once it was spun, I needed something to ply it with. So I chose some bare Louet Corriedale Top Roving I bought from Shall We Knit last year.

Once plied, I had to set the twist in hot water for five minutes and then dry my little skein of happiness!

And here’s the end result:

I call my skein Ozmium (get it??.....ozbambi…..ozmium….) OK…LOL.

Osmium is found in nickel-bearing ores of Sudbury, Ontario. The metal is lustrous, and bluish white – hence the name :-) Get it now?

I’m going to knit a hat from this skein, and since it’s only 134 yards (2.9oz), I will start at the top with some bare yarn, then do as much as I can with my Ozmium, and then the rim can be bare yarn again….or something like that anyway!

It's all fine and dandy to spin, but if you never knit anything from your handspun, then you'll never figure out whether you need to add more or less twist!

Oh and earlier this week, I cut my hair off! What was below my bra strap for the last ten years is now curled on my shoulders. My spring do! I love it – so easy to manage; don’t need to tie it up; no big tangles; faster to wash and dry; no scooping hair out of the drain, and it is light as a feather! It’s quite amazing how much hair weighs!

My next blog post will hopefully have some pictures of Karlia’s backpack. I’m just joining the bottom of the bag to the bag itself, and then I’ll attach the straps. Once that’s all done (hopefully by the end of the day) into the washing machine it’ll go for felting!

Another Birthday - But Not Mine!

Friday, 3rd April was a birthday celebration for my friend, Kata of Odd-ish Creations!

Some time ago, plans were laid to go to Alpaca Acres (Stratford, Ontario) and Shall We Knit (New Hamburg, Ontario) for Kata's birthday. Deb, Will and Kata picked me up around 5pm and off we set!

The day was rainy, windy and c-c-c-cold, but that didn't stop our fun and celebrations.

First stop was Alpaca Acres to catch up with Anne and Dan and their absolutely adorable alpacas:

Of course, I had to buy some yarn - another skein of Madison in a light sport weight @ 188yds:

Kat, Laura and Allie joined us at the alpaca farm, and from there we ventured on to Shall We Knit. Karen was a lovely hostess as always, and supplied us with paper plates, forks and knives and somewhere to do the whole birthday thing. Thanks Karen!

I baked Kata a Hummingbird Cake for her birthday:

And Kata and Will also baked - a Rainbow Cake:

While I was at Shall We Knit, I entered my Shibui Reds into the Ruby Red Sock Competition. Cat Bordhi is going to judge the winner!! PLUS, I'm going to meet her in person on 22nd May! Woo hoo!

What a great day. Happy Birthday Kata :-)

Chocolate, Cake and Yarn Part 2

Well my birthday has really and truly been celebrated this year! My sister's packaged arrived in the mail yesterday. Thanks Sonia !


Sisters are so awesome. Somehow they just instinctively "know" what you're gonna love.


Any my sister outdid herself this year. Not only did I get some exclusive birthday card designs from my adorable niece Emily, but I got a knitting book from Sonia! Whoot!


First the cards:


Now the book:


Classic Elite Knits - 100 Gorgeous Designs for Every Occasion from the studios of Classic Elite Yarns - 2008

This is such a lovely book - it has it all - women's, men's, children's and accessories. The Mosaic Patterned Pullover already has my attention, as does the Seed Stitch Blazer, the Mosaic Cable Pullover, the Wool-Bamboo Cabled Cardigan and the Diamond Yoke Pullover.


I wish I could post links to these beautiful patterns, but there are none on Ravelry. The Mosaic Patterned Pullover is featured on the photo above. It's on the bottom row, far left.

And now for something completely different....

I am finished my Shibui Reds! They are just lovely and fit beautifully.


THE END

Chocolate, Cake and Yarn

My last week has been a truly great one. It took me by surprise, in a really pleasant way.

It all began with an early birthday dinner beautifully prepared by my good friend Roxanne. She slaved in the kitchen all to prepare an awesome Chinese feast. Thanks Roxy :-)

Fraser Family with the Birthday Gal

After dinner we went out to Yuk Yuk's Stand-up Comedy Club. Two hours of laughter - it was great!

Monday the 16th was my birthday. After breakfast I opened the first of my packages - four blocks of cadbury chocolate (Caramello and Turkish Delight) and a totally beautiful pair of ugg boots. Woo hoo!


Genuine Lambswool Uggs

Then I read the umpty birthday emails and birthday cards I'd received. Check out these two - my favourites for sure:

Handmade with love from Karlia and Jaycee

I had lunch with my friend Glenda at the Milestones restaurant in Masonville Mall. It's hard to beat a well made brushetta together with a goat cheese dip, mango salsa and pita bread! And then there's was the birthday dessert (chocolate rum cheesecake) complimentary and adorned with a sparkler! Awww...

Mister W decided to brave the kitchen, to my absolute surprise, and made a great lobster tail and stuffed potato dish! And dessert was a wickedly rich ice-cream cake...mmm....ice-cream cake... A really great meal! Who knew??!?

Mum and Dad phoned me in the evening for the obligatory birthday wishes and to let me know my package would be late. Thus ended my birthday - or so I thought.

Just before bed, Mister W announced that we were going to Sarnia to visit Ewe Are Special so that I could take advantage of their closing down sale! I was ecstatic....and had to ask "OK, who the hell are you, and where is my real husband?" LOL!

I had a blast at Ewe Are Special - 40% off storewide. My bittersweet shopping spree (since I really like Marg, the owner, and she was closing the store due to health and financial reasons) netted me some great bargains:

4 skeins of Noro Cash Iroho, 6 balls of Noro Kureyon, 2 skeins of Araucania Atacama, some sock-shaped point protectors, and three books (the Art of Fairisle, Knitting Ganseys and Slip Stitch Knitting)

On Wednesday a package from my brother and his family arrived. Beautiful aromatherapy body wash, hand cream, body lotion and body scrub. So lovely. Thanks Weisses :-)

Rose Aromatherapy

Another package arrived this week. Yarn I purchased through Ravelry for the Australian Bushfire Appeal. A wonderful Etsy seller donated the proceeds of this yarn to the Victorian Red Cross, and shipping was free!

Hand spun and hand dyed Bushfire skein

Since I've prattled on about my birthday, I figure I'll quickly post some pics of my knitting WIPs.

These are my Shibui Reds, the sock's I'm knitting for the Shall We Knit promotion.

This is going to be a felted backpack for my niece, Karlia.

And now it's been a week since my birthday, and my Mum and Dad's package just arrived. Whoot!! Lots of goodies!

Chocolate, tea-towels, a gorgeous crystal swan, coasters, Billy Tea (yippee), a mini calculator, and a drop spindle

What?? A Turkish Drop Spindle?? YES! My Daddy made it with his own two hands. It's perfect. Absolutely perfect. I LOVE it. He used Australian Myrtle for the whorl, and the spindle is from White Maple. He's so freakin amazing. Thanks Dad [mwah!].

Turkish Drop Spindle

Still waiting on one more package from my sister. She told me hers would be late too. Maybe I'll just do a separate post once hers arrives...

That's it! Wow, what a great birthday week [hehehe].

A Week in Review

Well it's been about a week since I last blogged. In all honesty it feels like so much longer.

Let's see.....on the head cold front [clearing throat], I'm feeling much better, and most of the nose blowing and sniffing is DONE. I've been rewarded for my immune dysfunction with another delightful coldsore [reads... sh*t, bugger!!@@#].

As if my virus wasn't enough! Somehow a virus infected my computer. It was the mega-mother-fukton of all viruses. Can't remember the exact name of the evil trojan, but let's just call it The Evil Replicating Drive-killer (TERD).

Nick's a computer genius, but as fast as he was killing it, it was replicating itself and moving through my C drive faster. It was like a computer game!! Phenomenal. Nick went into DOS and thought he finally had it, but it was always a step ahead. Finally, it lodged itself firmly in the operating program turning off all permission to C drive and declaring with a smirk that C drive no longer existed!

Windows could not be reinstalled. Boots disks were useless. Restore and Backup......useless.

The bloody thing won. TERD = 1: Isa=0. Options??

FORMAT C drive.

And even that failed twice. I was seriously considering buying a new computer.

Finally the computer was restored. By the time I re-installed all my software, entered a gazillion passwords and ids, it was three days of being "off air".

---------------

The only conducive thing to not having a computer, and not being able to work, was that I could KNIT! Yeah!

So I started a bunch of projects and continued with other WIPS.

First off, I'm knitting a pair of red socks for the Ruby Red Sock Competition being run by Shall We Knit. The sock contest is to celebrate the New Hamburg Community Players production of "The Wizard of Oz". I have until the end of April to finish them. The socks are a mish mash of things - the overall pattern is from Koi Fingerless Gloves, by Terry L. Ross, and the heel from More Sensational Knitted Socks, by Charlene Sturch. I'm using some beautiful Chinese Red Shubui sock yarn, and have called my socks "Shibui Reds".

This is where I'm at with them.

When I was at Shall We Knit last month for their annual sale, I picked up some Louet Corriedale Top Roving 1/2lb. In between WIPs I have been practising my drop spindling with my new Asage OrangeTurkish Drop Spindle from Jenkins Woodworking. I'm about two-thirs of the way through the roving now. I will ply the yarn, but before I do it, I want to dye it.

Here's what I have so far.

I dyed some Cascade 220 to start the second of my Ayla backpacks for my niece, Karlia. She loves blue, especially turquoise, so I dyed two skeins semi solid turquoise and two skeins in a bottle green/teal semi solid. The colours reminded me so much of the sea, so I called this project "Cerulean Blue Ayla".

This is the dyed yarn.

Since the colours of this backpack are so sea-like, I thought I should chart a new stranded motif for the bag [instead of the flower]. And so, after some hours, my beautiful seahorse graph was born.

Seahorse graph for Cerulean Blue Ayla.

When I was at the opening for the Little Red Mitten on 15th February, I bought a fantastic book entitled "The Sweater Workshop", by Jacqueline Fee. I've been avidly reading it, and knitting a sampler along the way! The sampler is designed to teach the techniques needed to knit a perfectly constructed well-fitting sweater in-the-round from the top down.

I'm going to blog when I finish the book....I've learned so much - it's awesome!

Here's my sampler so far.

-----------------

My brilliantly talented friend, Kata, made me an amazing stamp that I love, love, LOVE! It all began when I asked her if I could commission her to make me a frog stamp for work. Within hours [cross my heart!] she emailed me with a photo of it! And then she got me some awesome lime coloured ink for stamping! Go check out her Etsy Shop and her blog! You won't be disappointed!

Frog stamp from Kata.

And then there's work! We are open for business again......1st March until 24th December.....seven days a week! BIG SIGH! I've been working flat out on two powerpoint presentations I have to deliver this month. One is to the Forest City Pond Club, and the other is to the London/Fanshawe Horticultural Society.

Next week I will be writing a newsletter, updating the catalogue, hiring staff and all the other usual business stuff.

Righto...off to knit!

Aylaah........You Got Me on My Knees Ayla!

Sniff, sniff, aaah-choo! Oh what a surprise another bloody head cold! I hadn't even gotten over the last one yet! Probably has something to do with those four days last week without house heating!

I've dosed up on Sudafed Super Extra Mega Strength, so hopefully I've get through this post "drip free"! Ewww!

Earlier this month I began knitting a felted backpack, Ayla by Jordana Paige. I used Cascade 220 wool as the pattern suggested, but changed the colours to those that my adorable little niece, Jaycee Mae, would just lerv!

Jaycee Mae with the knitting needles she made

I know I said I'd never do intarsia again...but the flower on Ayla called for intarsia. The knitting itself was pretty boring.....stockinette all the way. I modified it a little - to break the boredome - by spelling Jaycee's name at the top with some stranded work. I also did the last three rows in a little red and white stripe just to add some of the flower colour somewhere else on the bag.

At the end of my knitting my unfelted bag was 20ins tall, 46ins around and 5.5ins deep. The straps were 30ins long.

Unfelted Canary Ayla

The pattern said to sew the base to the body of the backpack, then pick up stitches around the base, stockinette for a few rows, and cast off. The tube that results from this gets wrapped around the sewn edges, making what almost looks like an i-cord. I sped this process up a little by not sewing the base to the body first. I simply picked up the required stitches holding the base and body together.

I put the straps, i-cord tie, backpack and an old pair of jeans into the washing machine for about 10mins - hot wash, and a little detergent.

My resulting felted backpack measured 11ins tall, 39ins around and 4.5ins deep. The straps were 21ins long.

Felted Ayla

After the backpack was fully dry, I had to line it. The instructions for lining the bag could have been better (i.e. adding some sizes of pieces), but I'm a sewer, so it didn't take long to sew the pretty lining. The body piece was 40ins x 11ins, and the base was 11ins x 5ins. Finally, a bit of hand sewing to attach the straps and the lining to the backpack, and I was finished.

End Results

This was a fun project. The backpack turned out awesomely! I love it, and I know Jaycee will love it too.

Now, as they say "one down, two to go"! Next one is for Karlia. Like her Aunty, she loves turquoise!

Little Red Mitten

Family Day - what better day to go on a knitting road trip?

And that's how my lovely day began at 11:30am. Laura and her daughter Ally came to pick me up for a raod trip to the grand opening of Little Red Mitten.

Little Red Mitten is a lovely new yarn store on Talbot Street in St. Thomas (across the street from Jumbo the elephant). Joan and Matt, our lovely hosts, have set up a beautiful little store filled with wonderful knit and crochet goodies!

There are several rooms filled with: yarn, books and patterns, needles & accessories and wool washes.

Amongst the needles are such names as: Addi Turbo, Clover, Takumi and Bryspun. I bought a lovely Addi Turbo Lace Circular, 24" x 2.5mm. The nice thing about this circular is that the cable is pink! Helps enormously when I'm knitting two socks at a time and need to differentiate between the two circs.

There is a great selection of books and patterns in the front room. I had trouble deciding on just one, but in the end came home with The Sweater Workshop, by Jacqueline Fee.

Yarn - and lots of it - filled all the rooms. Brand names such as Diamond Yarn, Noro, Brown Sheep, Zitron Trekking, Fiddlesticks and Briggs & Little. There was more, but I don't remember them all now. Lots of crochet thread too.

I also bought this awesome circular needle storage system. It's called The Circular Solution, and is already half filled! No spot for 2.75mm or 2.00mm circs though....

Here's what mine looks like:

Following our petting at the zoo, we went for lunch at East Side Marios on Fanshawe Park Road.

What a lovely outting. Thanks Laura!