beebonnet report

The Road to Stitches West

I spent a lovely day yesterday driving down from Oregon to Northern California for Stitches West.  This is the pretty part of the drive (when you drop below Sacramento it becomes endless stretches of not much to see).  Now I am ensconced at the hotel here in Santa Clara preparing for my spinning class tomorrow.  We will be "getting the most from a handpainted roving" !

I am rooming with Cookie A., who is a fabulous roommate to have because she brings tangerines with her - mmmmmm....

If you're here at Stitches, I hope we meet up!

a perfect yarn

Handmaiden Seasilk.

how much yarn should I take?

Today was another day of secret knitting.  Although I finished up a big chunk the other day, it seems like there is a steady stream of secret stuff out there for me to do.

But even more importantly, I started packing for Stitches West!  Will you be there?  I am teaching two different spinning classes there, one on Friday and one on Sunday.  In between I'm going to be roaming around scoping out Stitches, because I've never been there before.  I can't wait to breathe all the yarn fumes!  The most important part of my packing, of course, is which projects I'll be taking along. 

You would think I was going off to Siberia for 10 years when you see the way I pack knitting for a trip.  I end up packing a metric ton of yarn because I panic that I might run out of something to knit (in spite of the fact that this has never happened).  I have been known to end up somewhere with a suitcase filled with yarn and no underwear...  I am always so tempted to bring along my entire stash and library of books as well, and this time is no exception.

knock, knock... hello?  Janel?  You're going to a place that will be FILLED with yarn!

So I am trying to be reasonable here.  I have a secret project I need to be working on so that one will go - but it's almost done and I'm sure I'll need more knitting to keep me busy.  I have the Changeling socks I just started, those will go in too, but I think I need something else - something to keep me occupied when I'm tired of knitting on those socks - I think what I need is a lace project!  I've been itching to start on a lace stole so I think a nice long train trip is just the time to do it. 

Since I just organized my stash, I actually know where all my lace and fingering weight yarns are now - so I browsed a bit in my stash and came up with these likely candidates.

Those are from left to right... An angora/silk blend from Dyelots (a local Eugene dyeworks), Handmaiden Seasilk in a luscious creamy color, Ella Rae lace merino (I have 2 skeins of this so it could make something pretty big!) Dicentra Designs (another local Oregon dyeworks) superfine alpaca (you have to feel it to believe it!) and finally AbstractFiber Supersock in a really gorgeous rich brown.  Which one would you take?

spring is springing

As most of North America is digging out from heavy snows, here on the west coast we've been having a very mild winter.  In fact, if you've been watching the Olympics, you know it's causing trouble with keeping enough snow on the ground for the athletes to compete on.  The reasons for this weather pattern have something to do with the fact that it is an el nino year.  If you go to the NOAA website you can see the water temperature in the Pacific that is causing all this warmth.  What that means for us here in Oregon, is that spring is already starting to spring forth!

Today I did a little work in my garden - I'm a baby gardener, I've never really had a decent garden before.  So I am having fun learning stuff about my new climate and the plants that can grow here.  We haven't done any work so far in the garden and it's the first year we've lived in this house so we are still discovering what we even have out there!  I am very excited to see all this budding bursting activity starting, I can't wait to see what spring brings me.  I know I have some hellebores in the garden, in fact I have several different colors and varieties.  They seem to be the first things to bloom, they've all been blooming for several weeks now.

 

And I also have some peonies popping up through the ground.  I know they will bloom later, and I can't wait to see them.  I have a very sentimental love of peonies.

This is some kind of holly in bloom.  I didn't even know holly bloomed, much less that it  had yellow flowers!

  
And see those little nubbins?  Those are some black tulips that I planted.  I can't wait to see those!  I hope the deer don't think they're deer salad instead.

And finally,here is a shot of some of the incredible moss that grows in our yard.  This is growing on a stone in the back yard and it's gotten longer and longer over the year so now it is positively fluffy!

And lest you think I've forgotten about knitting, I haven't.  Here is a shot of the Changeling socks with part of the first cable motif.  I think they're going to look great in this color!

 

Are you a knitting olympian?

Whew, a big marathon of secret knitting is over, and I finally have time for other things.  I'm late to the party with the Ravelympics, but I have been watching the Olympics nevertheless.  I love the Olympics, it always gives me a sense of hope.  Call me sappy, but I think there's something fundamentally admirable about people striving to do and be the best they can.  Sure, I know there's sometimes bad stuff that happens during the Olympics, but overwhelmingly there is good stuff there.

I love to watch both the Summer and Winter Olympics, but I think the Winter games are my favorite because I am a Winter girl.  I love cold weather and I grew up doing a lot of skiing as a kid.  My dad was a big fan of skiing and we spent every winter escaping hot, dusty Los Angeles, for the bracing chill of the ski slopes, the quiet swoosh of skis through powder and the sweet squeaky crunch of dry new snow under your boots.  I learned to ski when I was 3, and never missed a year until I was an adult.  When I was a teenager I had dreams of ski racing, but unfortunately I wasn't really close enough to snow on a regular basis to actually learn to race.  So the Winter games are a vicarious thrill for this snow-loving gal.  Watching them ski the downhill I almost feel myself in their boots, my legs aching and holding on for dear life around the turns.  It's a thrill!  When I grew up I spent a short time on the volunteer ski patrol in the local mountains of Calif.  But life got in the way and now I haven't skied in a long time - it's very expensive - something you don't really think about when you're a kid.

The other thing I love about the Olympics is that I watch the craziest sports that I never see except when the Olympics happens.  Skiing and shooting?  who thought that one up?  And that short track speed skating, that just looks crazy to me.  And shooting down a hill headfirst on a skeleton sled, makes my heart pound just watching it.  Of course I love the ice skating, my dad used to take us to the rink twice a week when I was little.  He was an ice dancer and he could make you feel like you were floating when you skated with him.  I always wanted one of those cute short skating dresses, but I never got one, just my own blue jeans and turtleneck sweaters.  Unlike skiing, I was never really good at skating.

And while I'm watching all this, I am knitting, because, although I'm a little too old and ahem, fluffy, to be a skiing Olympian, I can be, and am, a knitting Olympian!  My first Olympic events have been secret, but I'm happy to say I think I earned a medal with them.  I'm ready to cast on the next one - a pair of socks for me!  I think I deserve a pair of my own socks once in a while.  So I've decided to knit the Changeling pattern from The Enchanted Sole . 

I started off my Olympic warmup for this event with a marathon stash dive.  It seems, ahem, that I have accumulated quite a bit of yarn in my day!  I got a bit sidetracked clearing out some yarns I'll never have time to get to and bagging them up to take to my local knitting group on Monday night.  I hope they like knitting socks!

I wanted a nice cushy yarn that was in a light enough color to show the cables nicely.  I finally settled on a lovely naturally dyed green from A Verb for Keeping Warm.  This color is called "The French Monk's Finest" and the yarn is a superwash merino called "Creating".  I think I purchased this yarn at SOAR this year, but I can't always keep my yarn purchasing straight.

Nope, that is not a miniature bikini top below, those are two completed toes, just waiting for some ice skating to come on TV.  And yes, I do have a very cute ladybug mouse that Mr. Bonnet bought for me one valentine's day long ago.

I'm going for another medal!

Dear blog, I do love you

Dear Blog,

I know it's been a long time since we've spent time together.  It's not that I don't love you, I do!  It's that I've been on a secret mission to get some secret things done.  I've been knitting my fingers to the bone for us, dear blog, for us!  And what would a secret mission be without a secret trip in there and an accomplice?  I spent a week at this location. 

I'd tell you the details, but then I'd have to kill you... and I don't think we want that do we?  And this mysterious person (we'll just call her Asparagus L. although we both know that's not her real name)

 

might have been at my house for a week plotting secret plots with me to rule the knitting world... but I can't speak of that yet.  All will be revealed in due time dear blog, just know that I love you!

P.S.  The olympics have started!

Sole mates kits are sold out

The Sole Mates Sock Club kits are now officially sold out.  If you signed up, I know you won't be disappointed, we have some really cool yarn for this club!  And if you missed out on a kit, you can always join in on the fun by choosing the pattern only option and using your own stash yarn - no yarn in the mail, but it is more economical.

The weather here in Eugene has been rainy and grey, just exactly the way I like it.  I know that sounds really weird, but I grew up in the land of unrelenting sun, where it beats down on your head day in and day out.  It just never agreed with me.  I must be of a more nordic temperament.  And amongst all that drizzle I've been out planting bulbs in my garden.  I hope the deer don't decimate them when they begin to shoot out of the ground.  I know it's probably hopeless, but I'm going to try spraying them with habanero chili water to deter munching.  My neighbor across the meadow bought some lovely shrubs at the nursery because they were deer resistant, only to find a big buck standing in her yard the next morning munching them down to stubs.  About the only thing he left was the tag saying 'deer resistant' !

And in other news, I have no news.  So much secret knitting has been going on around here I have barely anything to report.  However I did choose a name for the beret pattern - the winner is....

Anthera! 

I really like that name and it fits well with the pattern.  So Melissa G., you are the winner of some gorgeous Toki80 yarn and the pattern to knit your own Anthera beret.  Thanks to everyone who submitted an idea, they were all great.  Melissa, please email me at Janellaidman AT gmail (you know the rest) and give me your snail mail address.