Spring's coming!

.....but first we have to get a bit of wet snow out of the way. We have some mixed snow and rain at our house this morning. I did spot some pulmonaria starting to bloom the other day though:



I love the cheery blue of pulmonaria and the freckles on the leaves as the year progresses. (I also have these in white and red - love them!)

The Fibertrends bunny is done - no picture yet, as she needs a nose and some accessories. This is a shop model, so I'll probably dress her with some of the Hana silk around her neck. We have some leftover laceweight too, so I'll see if I'm ambitious enough to make a little shawl.

Okay here's a funny one - I teach knitting. I stress the importance of a gauge swatch. Over and over again. I get the right gauge probably 90% of the time. Guess what I did? Didn't bother to swatch on the hemp6 top. Will be ripping out 7" tomorrow. I was wondering why those rounds were taking so long.

Have a great day!

Go With the Flow

My latest FO is this shell from Fiona Ellis's book "Inspired Cable Knits" she calls it Go With the Flow.

I cast on for this on January 1st and finished at 12:10 am Tuesday Feb. 20. Technically it didn't really take me all of that time to knit it - I took two weeks off to let my right wrist heal a bit and had some other items I worked on at the same time.

Why let my wrist rest you may ask? Well, I do knit quite a bit but the yarn for this was Dale of N*rway Stork. This is a fingering to sport weight yarn, and I worked this on size 1 addi turbos. And although I do knit continental (I pick), the lack of "give" on 100% cotton yarn tends to make my right wrist a bit sore.

Close up of the cables:




and of the lace and cable border:



All in all it was fun, it looks smoother now after a good wet blocking then it did for the photos. I really like the book and have plans to make more from this same book.

Have a great day!

Oops!

Sorry if you saw my previous post, I tried to make links but it turned out they were dead ends. I am really not that computer literate, and I was feeling oh so smart getting pictures in there and what I thought were true links. OOPS! Yep, all those https and the sort have meaning.....So I looked around for some help this morning and I think I get it. As far as I can tell, it works now! I'll post a bit later on my latest finished item......

Thank you, Thank you!

I had such a fun birthday on Tuesday - first my co-workers had a card for me and bought my lunch, then a bit later my at-first-customer now customer-buddy-fellow-grey's-watcher Amy stopped by with her friend Denise and brought these:



Cupcakes! And not just any cupcakes, some of the best vanilla cupcakes I've ever had. I shared them with my co-workers - they loved them too. See the cute box they are sitting on? She found a cupcake holder box at Michaels - so cute! I may have to find some so I could more easily deliver to S at school.

And there was even more loveliness....



A really cute stripey bag, lovely card, cute blue and brown notecards and yarn! This yarn is the peaches and cream yarn used in the Mason-Dixon Knitting book. Amy and I had talked about this yarn a week or so ago, specifically the fiesta colorway - on the left - (although I didn't know the name of it at the time) and she remembered! She's so nice. Anyway, I'm thinking that the fiesta colorway is asking to be the ballband washcloth(s) from the same book, and the rainbow-ish yarn may be hoping to grow up to be a garterlac dishcloth from Criminy Jickets. Thank you so much again Amy!

Also that afternoon, my(our) daughter S, a junior at UW, called to wish me a happy birthday. We are all four planning on going out this weekend, but it was great hearing from her too!

The day was somewhat hectic, but when I got home, my husband had started dinner. We had gone through the cookbook the previous evening to see if there was something that was doable enough for him, and that sounded festive-ish for a birthday. We all three decided that "Ginger Flank Steak with Wasabi Smashed Potatoes and Seared Savoy Cabbage" sounded really good. This was really good - we didn't do the savoy cabbage though - what is a savoy cabbage and where in the heck do you find one? - we had a green salad instead. I picked up "M@rie Ant*nette" at B*bstr on the way home from work and we dined and viewed the evening away.

After the movie, I got to open presents - John M@yer's new CD, and a cake pedestal. I've never had one, I've always used a dinner plate but have really wanted one. This one is nice and simple. Plans are in the works to make a cake over the weekend.

P is now driving, so he went to SurLaTable and got a silicone whisk so we don't scratch our pots and pans. Even more impressive, he did this on his own - I had mentioned I'd like one - without prodding and did the errand a day early!

Other phone calls came from family throughout the day, so I feel celebrated!

Here I am!

Hopefully this will work and I will be live and online today! If not, I'll just tweak some more....

Anyhow, I'm Ellen and I'm a fiber addict. I love to knit, spin, read, travel, grow plants, cook and other sundry hobbies. Oh yeah, and I like to knit!

As time goes on, I'll post what I've been working on, show house projects, family, favorite shows, whatever.

Since this is a first preliminary post I'll keep it short and leave it at hello!