beebonnet report

the land of delicious

2012 is off to a good start for me.  I feel like I have already accomplished a lot of goals, and have a good handle on where I'm going this year.  It's a good feeling to be organized and ahead of the game.  One of the reasons for this is that I have cut back on teaching this year.  Except for Stitches West in February, I don't currently plan to teach this year.  I'm taking a little sabbatical in order to concentrate on some other big plans I have in the works.  So, grab me at Stitches West if you plan to attend!

the other reason for this is Miriam, my assistant.  She began working with me halfway through last year, and with her help I've gotten things organized and the workflow flowing.  I don't know what I'd do without her now!  Miriam also doubles as my model, so if you've been admiring all the beautiful model shots lately on my blog - you can thank Miriam!  Not only is she organized and efficient, but she's photogenic too.

I've been working on a lot of deskwork lately and haven't had as much time to sit down and knit, but I finally finished the mitts for the malabrigo set.  I just LOVE this yarn, and it looks great on everyone who tries it on.  It must be made of magic!  So I now have a complete set - and I'm busy writing up the pattern.  The only problem is, I don't have a name for this set - any ideas?  Usually I'm quick with the names, but sometimes they elude me.  You can see the lovely Miriam modeling below.

And I've also gotten into the birdies lately.  As in, watching birdies.  My neighbor next door has a lovely garden and lots of bird feeders.  And I am jealous!  So I have begun my stealthy plot to poach some of the birdies from her yard to mine by putting up feeders of my own.  So far I have sunflower seeds in one, thistle in another and a suet feeder.  But the birdies still seem to be having a party in her yard...  I think it just takes a little time for them to discover my goodies.

And speaking of birdies, a beautiful bird flew into our window last week and stunned itself.  It fell down on the deck with its wings all splayed out, and I was sure it was a goner, or at least had a broken wing.  But we watched it carefully for several hours and it got up, and rested, then eventually flew off.  My friend Joan Schrouder identified it for me as a Varied Thrush.  Now I see them all the time!  (Especially in my neighbor's garden - haha)  Aren't they pretty? 

I hope he finally got rid of the headache.  ouch!

And I'm finally back in the land of delicious.  Last year I signed up for a CSA share from one of my local farms.  If you've never heard of CSA, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and basically you pay money to a local farmer and they give you a share of their harvest each week.  I was really enjoying it last year, but then I had to do a bunch of traveling so I quit for a while.  I finally got around to signing back up, and all I can say is yum!  I love getting my share each week and finding all kinds of things that are new to me.  I never realized how many varieties of kale there are, for example, nor that they all taste different!  This week is delicata squash.... mmmm!  And the fresh eggs are heavenly.  CSA shares are available just about everywhere, so look for a local one near you!  You could be in the land of delicious too.

knitterati - are you in?

My 2012 sock club - Knitterati is off and running!  This time around we're doing 12 patterns - 6 socks and 6 mysteries, with lots of intrigues, games and a mystery story!  The first sock has been released, and the first clue of the mystery has been given.  The yarn portion of the club is currently sold out, but we have a waiting list here in case more spots open up (I'm working on that).  But, even if you don't get the yarn, you can still join the fun by joining the pattern-only option.  That will be available all the way until the end of the year, so if you're not sure you'll like all the patterns you can keep an eye on them and only purchase if you like them.  It can't get much easier than that!

The first non-mystery pattern is Boreal. 

 

 

two-timer

I admit to being a bit fickle when it comes to my knitting.  Last night I spent a glorious couple of hours two-timing on my malabrigo set with my colorwork sweater instead. And just look at what a glow it has this morning!  Quite a bit of progress was made, and I began the shaping for the front of the jacket.  You can't really see it yet.  You can see the design is changing though! 

And this morning I awoke to a lovely dusting of snow.  I know it's not much, but it was enough to make my heart sing.  I love snow. So I gathered up my trusty camera and the new macro lens and set out on a safari to see if I could capture the hidden world of snow.  It's pretty hard to capture on that scale but I did a few interesting shots.  I discovered that every once in a while you'd come across a really fat, dense snowflake, but for the most part they're little crystal ninja stars, all jumbled up.  Now I'm a bit chilled, so it seems like a good time for a cup of tea and some more knitting....Let's see, should I canoodle with the colorwork sweater, the malabrigo mitts or should I go make eyes at my stash and see if I can find a new squeeze?

dreaming of beauty

hand made beauty

The beauty of hand dyed yarn, is that it's hand-dyed.  That means that sometimes your dyelots don't quite match.  I discovered this to be the case as I was cooking along on my mmmmmalabrigo hat.  Even though the skeins looked pretty similar in the shop, when I wound the second ball to go off to knitting group, I discovered that it had a little bit different flavor from the first ball.  This doesn't irritate me when I discover things like this, because, after all, it's the hand-made quality that makes it so beautiful in the first place.

The second ball was a little more on the side of greens and blues, and a little less of the purples.  I wanted to make a matching hat/cowl/mitts set so I decided that I needed to mix up the yarns so they would look integrated instead of like I bought two different yarns.  The hat was halfway done, so I just switched yarns and knit the crown out of the second ball.  The cowl wasn't even started yet, so when I started that one, I switched up the yarns about every 10 rows.  The skeins had the same colors in them, so you would never notice that they are two different yarns unless I told you.  Looks like a matched set, don't you think?  I feel quite pleased, it was worth the tiny bit of extra work weaving in the ends.  Next up, fingerless mitts to go with the hat and cowl, because sometimes you just want to be matchy-matchy.

And look who came to visit today, I think he's a red-breasted sapsucker.  I find it so interesting how neat he is about the holes he drills.  It was hard to capture him on camera.  As soon as I tried to get closer he took off, but this little set of holes is right outside my kitchen window, so I'll keep an eye on it and see if he comes back.  Even if I don't see him I may see that he's added to his tidy little arrays.

And today we've had snow!  Well you can hardly call it snow - just some flurries that don't stick, but we've been rather bereft of winter weather this year, in fact I feel a bit cheated by that, so I'm counting it as SNOW today.  I hope there's plenty more in store for us this year!

Well, I think that brings me to teatime!  I hope wherever you are that you're enjoying a sweet Sunday afternoon too.

 

truly, madly, deeply

I am positively smitten with this yarn.

Exhibit A

I rest my case.

reward

I've been unexpectedly in a deadline knitting frenzy.  I had a project with a deadline, but the yarn arrived late and the deadline got shortened by 1/3 and ended up in the middle of the holidays so I had a last minute crunch trying to get everything done.  Why am I telling you this?  Because I was in such a knitting frenzy that I overused my hands/arms and had to end up icing my right arm and elbow.  Now, I knit a LOT.  Pretty much every single day and sometimes all day and I almost never have hand or arm pain, and that's because usually when I knit, I take breaks, frequently.  I get up and make a cup of tea, or do the dishes, or take a walk (or a nap heheheh) or anything that uses a different set of muscles.  So I was really mad at myself for ending up in pain.  I'm here to tell you that if your hands or arms hurt you should stop - Don't be a dope like me!

But now that the item has been shipped off, and I've taken a day or two to recover, I'm back to knitting form.  I'm pacing myself and I decided to work on something easy, something with fat yarn, big needles and plenty of yummy squish. 

I took a little stash dive and came up with two possibilities, both equally delicious: 

This and this.

The first one is Malabrigo Rios in colorway Piedras, and the second is Textiles a Mano Calafate (polwarth! and silk!) in a beautiful earthy foresty colorway.

In the end I decided on the Malabrigo because I only have the one skein of the Calafate and I want to make something special out of it - I'm just not sure what yet.  The Malabrigo was begging to me to become a hat and cowl set.

It really is enticing!  And I think it's made an auspicious start.

And now that deadline knitting is over, I can get back to my other love, the colorwork sweater.  I've made a little progress.  It would have been more, but I had to rip out an entire star's worth of knitting because I changed colors in the wrong place. This is such a satisfying knit.

I hope whatever is on your needles is equally satsifying and enticing, and that you're taking care of your tools (hands) and not having to ice anything!  Here's to happy and healthy 2012 knitting!

2012 - the year of adventure

At the start of every new year I like to think about goals for the upcoming year.  They're not exactly resolutions, but more like areas I'd like to focus my energy.  2011 was the year of connections for me.  I spent a lot of my time thinking about connections to my home, my family, my community, my friends and the world at large. 

In 2012 my watchword is going to be adventure!  I have a new sock club starting that is all about adventure, and I have some really big projects up my sleeves that I think will bring me lots of adventure.  I also plan to go exploring.  There are so many great things to see and do in Oregon, and someone told me it's good to step. away. from. the. computer once in a while and go to this magical land called the out of doors. I plan to do that a little more often this year.  Adventure is more than going new places though, it's an attitude - a new recipe, a new way of doing things, an untested plan, heck - even the laundry! can be an adventure.  It's all in your attitude.  Well, ok, I'm not really sure how the laundry can be an adventure, but maybe trying that new detergent will help out.  The point is, I want to cultivate an attitude of joy, curiosity, exhilaration, and spontaneity (in a word - adventure) when approaching new things.

And that's it - it's really simple, but, if done right it's much more profound than it sounds.

What's your watchword for 2012?