I can make a rainbow too

I ordered this pretty before Christmas...

Then I decided to visit the frog pond...

Then I remembered this cardigan that had been buried in my attic for years, until I dug it up to unravel the yarn (except the fabric had been machine knit and therefore unravelable). But then I got an idea...

I bought this sweater 15 years ago at Martha's Vineyard. It was snug and short then, and still was. 

(What a horrible selfie!)

I wondered...what if I removed the zipper and knit a button band instead?  What if I picked up stitches along the hem and added a ribbed bottom?  It would solve the length problem, and maybe make the cardi a bit bigger.  The question was, what color to make the ribbing and button front?  Look what I have to work with...

If you've noticed a pattern with the yarn and cardi, you're right. I'm prepping for the ravellenic winter games on ravelry!  One of the themes of the games this year is knitting with rainbow dyed yarn, or knitting a rainbow project, as a reaction to the anti-homosexual laws passed in Russia. I dug through the stash and found yarn frogged from a long knitted hat. Then I remembered another hat that never fit right, so I frogged again. 

I'm playing on this team, who is also sponsoring the rainbowlenic games. 

This is a hat for an ongoing rainbow K/CAL in a parenting group (which has an awesome game name, team Putin Out).

My goals for these games will be to finish the hat from the KAL, make another hat with the other unravelled yarn, make a pair of socks with the lollipop yarn, and hopefully rejigger the cardi. Wish me luck!

catching up

it's been a couple of months since i last posted here.  quite a bit has happened.

i went to maryland sheep and wool with my friend kristin and her mom and aunt.  this was my haul.  i see two sweaters, several shawls, two cowls, and the motherlode of wollmeise. 

the verdant gryphon had a codex update, and i bought the devil's dictionary.  at first i was thinking a shrug sweater but i think it really wants to be a shawl.


clearly i lost the april through june pantsdown stashdown.  :/

after many starts and stops and some mixed up skeins, my age of brass and steam shawl is steaming (ha!) ahead...


i'm going to KDO again this fall and am taking a steeks class and a intro to crochet (!!) class.  here is my homework (i still have a seed stitch square to do.  i loathe seed stitch.)


i took a class at a new yarn shop and learned to do a sweet tomato heel.


i signed up to do tour de fleece this year.  i am on team spindler.  clearly i am deluded, becos my spinning sucks, sucks sucks!  i really need a wheel...


black betty came out of hibernation so i stitched up some project bags...


it's canning time again, so i made two kinds of strawberry jam, two kinds of cherry jam, and black forest jam (cherry and chocolate and almond, yum!).  i'm hoping to add some sliced and whole fruit and veggies to my canning, provided i can find a pressure canner.


i got serious about my garden this year and planted three heirloom tomato plants, three roma tomato plants (for sauce!), two pepper plants, two cucumber plants, and a couple of herbs.  i have some dill drying down cellar, picked two huge (albeit green) heirloom tomatoes and downed these little beauties. mother nature has been kind to our garden and has kept our rain barrels full, so we don't have to rely on our public water.  i also shredded irish spring soap to deter the squirrels (still finding holes, the little dirtballs!) and bought slug repellent to chase the slugs away (might be working?)  i also planted my usual variety of flowers and they are flourishing as well.


speaking of rain barrels, i finally painted these after looking at their gaudy blue exteriors for nearly four years.  now they blend in with the scenery.


my mojo wavered quite a bit, so i read.  a lot.  and i have more to go.


the kids keep me hopping.  school has been out for nearly a month, and in that time they attended two bible schools (our church and my parents' church), celebrated the end of school with a trip to chuck e cheese and the book store, and play with the neighbor kid.

the kiddos enjoy visits to the park...


they graduated from preschool (the three year old class, anyway...)


and freddie is obsessed with the movie cars.  we watch it at least once a day, sometimes twice.  the kid can do movie karaoke with it, and i actually have a couple favorite scenes and songs.


the kids are learning to ride bike.  petunia quickly learned and often flies past her brothers.  freddie is more content with his trike.  not to be outdone by the kiddos, the boy is learning to ride too.  they ride up at my parents' house, who live across from a large cemetery, the same one where i learned to ride my bike.  they ride around in circles and sometimes take a tumble, but i'm glad that they are getting exercise.


the boy participated in his second soapbox derby.  he said he didn't care that he didn't place, he enjoyed just doing it.


this summer the boy will be going to church camp.  it's his first time away from home without family.  he's a little nervous, but i think he'll have fun.

prolly the kids' favorite summer activity - playing in our backyard.



we have other activities planned for the summer - visits to knoebels, summer reading at the library, sleeping over at grandparents' homes and a family picnic with hubby's extended family.  before we know it, we will be shopping for notebooks and pencils, new sneakers and jeans, and trading evening play in the yard for settling down for homework and early bedtimes.  there's so much left to do, and i don't want to miss anything!

splurges

i splurged on some goodies for my bday

project bags from slipped stitch studios.  this is a two skein bag in you need a thneed!

sock project bag in doctor who toile.


i happened on a wollmeise update from the loopy ewe and splurged.  i had a hard time picking colors - i could have bought a dozen skeins!


my knit buddy knittingkris gave me these lovely skeins for my bday!  i've always wanted to try plucky knitter - now i can!  (for some reason it feels rare, like wollmeise!)


i love this skein of skein.


so much for the destash.  i just added to it!

a fine prize

last month i learned that i won a prize in the 12 in 12 group on ravelry.  by the luck of the draw (or rather, random number generator) my purple cowl won a prize.

400 yards of beautiful squishy lusciousness.  called "my heart's desire", this is a fingering weight yarn.  its designer, alicia of Purple Goddess Design, also has beautiful stitch markers in her etsy shop, and if memory serves, she designed adorable hats for babies, including a cute beaded cupcake cap (these patterns are available on ravelry).

this yarn is also burning a hole in my stash.  it really wants to be a shawl.  

wollmeise

i bought my first hank of wollmeise a few weeks ago.  FB alert from the loopy ewe FTW!

by the time i got the alert the yarn had been for sale for about an hour and there were only two colors left.  i picked this green becos the other color, chartreuse, i have already (in cephalopod yarn's traveler).

schwefel in german means sulfur.

can't wait to knit with it.  it's already burning a hole in my stash.

why knitters rock

sharon of three irish girls unveiled two new color ways today.  

the giving tree - this colorway was inspired by sandy hook elementary's mascot (the eagle) and their school colors (green and white).   


love wins is "...a gentle rainbow.  a reminder of the innocence of childhood.  and a declarative statement that evil doesn't get to win, love does.


(all images courtesy of threeirishgirls.com)

for each skein of the giving tree and love wins,  sharon will donate a portion of each sale to charities established for the families and community of newtown affected by last week's school shooting.  if you don't knit or crochet but still want to help, there is a "donate" option on the website. her goal is to raise at least $10,000.  i've witnessed how much money was raised for SHARE through the sales of you are my sunshine and glimpse color ways, and i'm betting she'll reach her goal and then some.

not only did sharon design the new limited edition colorways, but she also founded knitters for newtown on ravelry.  the goal of the group - to knit 26 blankets for each mother who lost a child that day.

knitters rock.  

a view of KDO

just a little behind, but here are the goodies i purchased at KDO a few weekends ago.  i thought i did a good job taking the pictures in the early morning but the colors aren't really true to life.  also, i couldn't be bothered to post each yarn linky so feel free to check out my stash page on ravelry!

i got these goodies from yarn-love - from left to right, miss babs yowza! in rainforest, madtosh in poprocks, dic classy in amethyst ink and madtosh in scarlett.  becos i spent *cough*a certain amount*cough* i received a free tote bag!  yarn-love is also where i met with the lovely kristin from a ravelry group we belonged to - i couldn't remember her name, all i could remember was "tabitha's mom"!  it sure is nice to meet up with ravelry peeps in real life!

 

i bought these lovelies from appalachian sock company.  i also got a really cute drop spindle there (somehow i neglected to take a picture of it, will do that one of these days, hopefully in action...)

i bought ty-dy socks from kathy's kreations (she also taught the brioche stitch class i and my knit buddy kristin took friday evening - kathy is a delight and i hope to take another class from her in the future).  i bought the unisono from colonial yarn.  i can't remember from whom i bought the scrumptious fyberspates in purple, but she had a lot of tosh, spud and chloe and other fancy yarns.

i bought this yarn and *roving* from rusty rocks farm.  i'm nowhere near up to spinning nice fiber yet, so it's for my growing fiber stash.


i always buy goodies from the-mannings - malabrigo rios in arco iris and playa (first two pictures), kauni (my second skein, this time in pink) and two hat kits.  the first kit is called chickadee...then during our second (or third?) sweep my knit buddy pointed out the owl tam...and i fell again.  oh well...i need practice on my fair isle knitting.  we also visited the mannings' b&m store and i got some orange and coral roving and a hank of lobster pot yarn in shoreline heather. 

i bought these yarns at sweitzers countryside fibers and gifts.  on the left is kollage yarns milky whey yarn for the galaxy capelet and kollage yarns 1/2 n 1/2 for winchester mitts.

braid of fiber from June Pryce Fiber Arts - another fiber for the vault...

i also bought chiagoo lace needles, adorable owl stitch markers, and some books from the mannings - elizabeth zimmermann's knitting workshop, knitting brioche, 200 fair isle motifs and whimsical little knits 3 (forgot to take a picture of those, doesn't matter).  i try to buy a book for each knitting class i take at KDO, hence the brioche stitch and fair isle books.


i took a picture of this mennonite?amish? lady using a laptop for their yarn sales.  times, they are a-changing...


since kris and i didn't have saturday afternoon classes we drove down to the mannings to look at wheels.  she tested a lendrum (methinks?) and i tried out a kiwi and a ladybug.  ach, now i've been bitten by the spinning bug too!  spindle spinning is fun but i think spinning with a wheel would be a lot easier.  i know what i want for christmas!

KDO was a blast, as usual.  it was a lot more fun sharing it with a knit buddy!  can't wait for next year!