When nature attacks

Just when you thought it was safe around my house. That darn beastie that lives on the lake decided to make himself a salad using my irises!!! He did leave many intact, but many, many, many stalks were left floating in the inlet.

I fished out the ones that had a hint of a root system left and have planted them in a pot to see if they can be salvaged.

So, I either need to leave out some salad dressing, fence off my plants, or put a contract out on that beaver (since the research says that is the only effective course of removal).

I'm trying to be a live and let live kinda girl, but the beast is not paying the bills and I'm so not adopting him. So I'm hoping my handy person will be willing to build me a little fence. Wish me luck!!

Stash!

Two days after Thanksgiving, the LYS had a "Black Saturday" type sale and I went to help out. The downside of that?

I was surrounded by yarn all day that were on sale.



Kidsilk Haze, Chunky Alpaca, Linen, sock yarn,(? like I make socks!), sea silk, and other random skeins of yumminess for some gifts.

Other items of wonderfulness that I received:

My fiber of the month from Spunky Eclectic, 8 oz of Shetland in the Raisin Wannabe colorway:



I got a ZUMA!!!



The straps are smaller than I like normally, but I love how this bag seems to take everything I put into it and still have space for more!!



It is really a great little bag.

I think this post kinda sorta catches me up! More soon, I hope!

Giving Thanks

I have always considered myself lucky that several members of my family live locally. For the most part, Thanksgiving and Christmas have always been a short drive across town - hosted by my grandparents and my parents respectively.

When my grandfather's health began failing, Thanksgiving became just too much for my grandmother. So my mom was good enough to pick it up, which me doing half of the cooking. After my mother's brother died, we began celebrating thanksgiving with her mother up in Tennessee until she moved down here.

Eventually, Thanksgiving became "my holiday" and I somehow managed to cook, but host it at my parents' home (did I mention how great my parents are?). The fact that my work goes a little crazy this time of year made my parents take pity on me.

So two years ago, my mom encountered this beautiful tablecloth and decided to lead a similar craft project with some of her friends. I asked her about the possibility of us doing a tablecloth for me. Essentially a grapevine runs around each side of the table cloth with beaded fruit and flowers. So that meant, I had lots of beaded grapes to do:



My mom was the real champion of this effort and together, we did this:





It truly set the mood for a most wonderful holiday. After lots of frantic cleaning, rearranging, and accepting that the entire house would not be ready for "viewing", I managed to pull together a great meal for my family. I even had an assistant when I pulled out the turkeys that morning:



After lunch we spent the rest of the afternoon on the deck watching the wildlife and catching up. I am truly blessed to have a loving and supportive family.

More rambling ahead!!!

I loved the scribble lace project so much, I started another one that I finished in November:



Needles at the ready, knitterly friends and I took off to see this blogger:





It was a whirlwind trip, heading out at noon, hitting two yarn stores once we were in town, meeting Stephanie, finding a late dinner, and pulling back into town a little after 1 AM. In the middle of her talk, I totally screwed up on the scribble lace and managed to somehow rip back 20 rows and start knitting again. I completely enjoyed the trip and was really glad I decided to go, in spite of the crazy deadlines I was in the middle of.

The scribble lace class was a lot of fun and I hope to do another one sometime. But, to my dismay the large size Addi turbos I recommended for the class have undergone a change!!!!! Until recently the needles are attached with a tube-like thing, which isn't particularly flexible, but is great for keeping the appropriate tension on fine threads. Now, they have changed out the tube for a cable, which makes them like every other needle in the marketplace. Every single one of my students kept tightening up on the fine yarn so that they could not even wedge the stitch back onto the needle!!!

I had a couple more finishes, the fetching fingerless mitts (which I love!) out of Sublime dk and the bounce beret out of Chunky Alpaca(which I don't!!).




I also picked up some 8/2 unmercerized cotton, which I hope to turn into towels for the Weavers Guild towel exchange:



Next up thanksgiving!!!

er, Hi!

So much for taking the week off!

It has been a crazy couple of months. Work demanded even more than I expected, and I found myself climbing yet another learning curve. So here goes a couple of posts to try and "catch up."

The scribble lace project was completed well in advance of my class:



At the end of September, several of my fellow knitters took off to a neighboring town to see an alpaca farm.





So that was September!