Second Posting - Sock Homework -Class #2

Yes, I did get my homework done before we took our little trip! Here we have the heel flap completed and I can't wait for the next class!!! I really like the way the Eye of Partridge looks. (These socks are on size 1 needles) And because I love socks so much now, and I'm not happy unless I have at least 5 or 6 projects going... I've started the RPM socks. (These socks are on size 0 needles)

New purchases from the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival Saturday. Yes, I picked up a T-Shirt, my supply is low!

• Blue Moon - Colorway: Nodding Violet - 100% Superwash Merino - Lightweight
• Blue Moon - Colorway: Lucy - 100% Superwash Merino - Lightweight
• Sleeping Dragon Yarns - Hand Painted 100% Merino wool - Colorway: Mallard (400 yards!!)
• FLY - Lace Wing Sock 100% Machine washable Merino Wool - Colorway: Old Country
• FLY - Lace Wing Sock 100% Machine washable Merino Wool - Colorway: Chocolate
• Katia - mississippi 3 print - Made in Spain - 60% cotton & 40% acrylic (very soft faded blue and purple color no. 201) This yarn was on sale and I wanted to see what I could do with it! (you can hardly see it in the picture behind the Chocolate yarn).
• oh and 2 Trekking XXL for the Girlfriend Shrug - Purple, green, yellow, white and blue. (not pictured above)

I'm off now!

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Field Trip

Early Saturday morning 6:00am (early for me!) I jump in my red Honda Element and I'm off for the first stop on my journey to the Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival in Canby, OR.

First stop, pick up Julie, then we are off to Patty 's house, change car's (so Julie and I can knit on our way there - 3 hours!) None of us have ever been to anything like this and we are very excited. All we can think about is sock yarn, and more yarn. (Little do we know what awaits us!) One quick stop at Starbucks somewhere along I-5 in the fog. (we almost get lost trying to get out of there - we were in search of McDonald's for Julie's breakfast, but Burger King will have to do - remember I said it was very foggy!) Back on the road and the fog is lifting and the sun is shining bright!!! Here it is the middle of September and it feels like summer! We are all still Happy Campers! Time for one or two quick pictures before we run in! Directions for the Clackamas County Fairgrounds are excellent and we arrive just before 10:00am. It opened at 9:00am and Julie is a little worried all the yarn might be gone! We quickly park and rush to get across the street to see all the yarn that awaits us! But wait... what is this... Llama's greet us on the way in. Now we see the yarn... but we don't want to buy anything to soon... we may find more yummy yarn, so on we go. Now we are noticing that we are not seeing much yarn... lots of fleeces, and spinning stuff... WE DON'T SPIN!!!! (yet!!)

We investigated every booth and saw lots of cool stuff (I didn't know what a lot of it was, but it looked very cool). We did find Blue Moon Fiber Arts (a very crowded area and I think I should have stayed in there longer and picked up a sock pattern I had my eye on!) Loved the cute little top knitted with shades of blue Bamboo yarn! Loved everything actually. One skein left of Lucy in Lightweight!!! It's mine now! I also picked up Nodding Violet, Lightweight. These were very difficult decisions to make, I loved another colorway: Olive Garden - I think, Julie picked it up and a couple of other very yummy sock yarns.

Lines were long in a few vendor booths, and even longer at the bathrooms, but they were very, very long for the food! I skipped it, and opted for more browsing.

We meet a few very nice people that told us about Magic Loop - knitting two socks at the same time on one very long circular needle. Of course I just walk up and start asking questions, how else will I learn the secrets of all this knitting stuff! I have soooo much to learn and I love to ask people questions. I'll have to google this technique some day soon.

Just before 2:00pm we have spent our limits and looked at most everything twice! Happy with our purchases we head for the car and off to get ice cream! Well, we were in search of Coconut Bliss Non-Dairy Ice Cream - I got this awesome coffee flavor. The ice cream is only available in Oregon and if you can get your hands on it - do so! (Yes, I ate the whole pint - remember I said it was a 3 hour drive!)

Back to Washington - this is a quick shot as you cross I-5 back into Washington, Mt. Hood in the distance. Did I mention the really nice thing about yarn shopping in Oregon is NO TAXES!!!

I picked up a new little project that I think will knit up very quickly and I couldn't wait to get started on it. Here I am just getting started on my Girlfriend Shrug. It's going to be a Christmas present, so I'm not going to say anymore about this for now. (You can check out more of Wendy's cool stuff on her blog... knit and tonic.)

We made one other quick stop at a yarn store in Vancouver, WA and I can't remember the name. Very nice store and very nice people. No purchases for me, I'm staying on my budget... and I have some wonderful yarn coming in from The Yarn Corner later!!!

It was a wonderful day, good yarn, good friends, good weather (85 + degrees) and I was good and tired when I got home just before 8:00pm!

So now I say Good Night, and I'll have more pictures later!

A little humor!

Show and tell will come later this week. Sock class is Thursday and Sharry and Julie and I are soooo excited to get going! We all agreed that we wish we had more needles so we could start our second sock and at least get it up to where we are now on our first. Did that make sense? A must share... The Last Knit I got this little jewel from Lauri's Blog, and I've seen it on a couple of other blogs too. Enjoy your week... Knit on!

Green Gable in Brown, and other weekend stuff

Well it's very difficult to get a decent picture of the progress on my Green Gable sweater. I'm not yet to the point were the sleeves go off on to scrap yarn and I can try it on. About another 20 rounds to go. I've been reading the Green Gable knit along blog and it's been very interesting to see and read all the different things people did to change the pattern. It's very helpful to see how other sweaters have turned out.

I also started a little green sweater for a charity a couple of weeks ago. It's a Lacy Check Cardigan from Classic Elite Yarns. It's supposed to be knit in two colors and have a checked trim, but I decided to simplify and make it all one color... don't you just love this green! It needs to be completed before Christmas! I'm pacing myself on this one.

The big news for the weekend... NO the garage didn't get cleaned... we have shelves in our office now! We made the big trip in to town and didn't find anything at WalMart, so on to Home Depot (let me say every time we go to this place we spend too much money... I don't like this place!) Anyway, we found the shelving stuff and Rick made a wall of shelves in our office. I love it because now I can get all the junk out of the closet. Well, I'll have to be careful not to get it all out at once, Rick would freak if he saw how much junk we have in our closet. He's a bit of a neat freak when it comes to his desk. He works from home and uses his lap top and the desk computer, so I'm sure he will be very happy with all the room now. I'm going to try to organize the stuff this week, slowly putting out more stuff on the shelves.

Just one little complaint for the weekend, I just have to get it off of my chest... Can you see the round ball on a stick next to the monitor? Well that's one of Rick's newest toys... he tried to sell me on what a great thing it is because now I can see and talk to mom at the same time... well, hello... my mom doesn't have one! So a fat lot of good that will do me. Maybe it will be a Christmas present for her, then I can show her what I'm knitting and talk at the same time. Boys and their toys, I swear! Oh, he also got a little one that can be clipped onto our lap tops too! Ok, I've stopped laughing now, because I just remembered how much he paid for all this. So if anyone out there has one of these eyeball camera things and wants to chat let me know. I'm all set up on Yahoo's Messenger thingy. Well I'm off to make dips for work tomorrow (big clearance sale on dips - I always sell off everything from last season and then get started on the current season - I can't believe I'm thinking about Christmas already!) Maybe I'll have time to get a little more knitting done on my GG.

1st Sock

Thursday night was SOCK CLASS!

Yes, I am now making my first pair of socks! I'm so excited. I got home just before 9:00 pm, (in time to tune in Greys Anatomy) and knit for a little bit. The yarn for these yummy socks is Fly Dyed - Hand Dyed Yarns - Monarch - Shades of Teal, Fly Super Sport, 3-ply, Machine washable Merino Wool (I love all things Machine washable). I love this yarn!

The color doesn't show true in this picture. This was the first night after sock class and a little knitting when I got home. (Yes Rick, that's as far as I got!)

This is the second night - Friday. You can see the true color much better here. What a difference a little natural light makes.

Just after this picture I finished my homework (knit to the length I wanted and be ready for the heel), so until next Thursday night (my next sock class) I'm back to my Chocolate Cardigan.

My Cardigan is coming along. I now have the back done and the Left front side. I'm working on the Right side now and should have it completed next week, if all goes well. (Meaning I don't start knitting on some other project!)

I started the Green Gable (in a dark Pine Cone Brown - Cotton Fleece) and I'm just 2 rounds away from finishing the top lacy part. I'm bouncing back and forth because one is easier to tote with me for quick knitting moments. Pictures will follow sometime this weekend - AFTER, we get the garage cleaned up. The garage sale stuff has still not found all new homes, and we must complete this task. Rick is going nuts not having "his" garage clean. And I must admit, I want to start parking in the garage if at all possible.

Knit on!

Here comes the bride...

This is my big day! August 19, 2006 - Roosevelt Beach (just south of Pacific Beach and just 5 miles north of Copalis Beach... One of my very most favorite beaches!) The first couple of pictures are before anyone arrived. I can't thank my brother enough for all he did... I think he must have raked half the beach! He raked inside and around the tents and my aisle way. This is just before the wedding while everyone was getting there. Even the horseback riders were wondering what we were doing!

The happy wedding party! Isn't this the most beautiful day!

The kids had a great time!The happy couple toasts with iced tea!Let them eat cake!!!

It was a good day!

I'm MARRIED! So let's get back to knitting!

So much has happened in my life... I got a year older on the 18th of August, and I got married on the 19th!!

During my stressful moments I took a little time to just do some simple knitting. I started the bag in the Debbie Bliss "Home" book. I didn't realize it was a round bottom bag. Very cool how it worked up. I did change it just a little. The bottom is knitting flat and then you are to knit the whole rest of the bag that way and then sew it all up. I choose to knit it in the round and then sew up just the bottom of the bag. Thus making it a great simple knit in times of stress!!! Just knit, knit, knit, knit - you can't go wrong with this pattern, and I love the way it felted up. Next time I will make the handles just a touch thicker I think. I did purl one extra row before binding off, because it just seemed to thin to be sturdy handles.

These pictures were taken with a tall cone of yarn in the bag to show you how round and tall it is. You can tell by the books that the height is "just right". This is going to be my "Sock Knitting Bag". Yes, I am at last going to learn how to make socks!! I can't wait. Look out Bunni here I come! So now I'm back to working on my chocolate cardigan. I almost finished the back this weekend, while I sitting outside with our boring garage sale. I did meet some very nice people and got lots of strange comments. One man thought I was crocheting a dog!!! Tourists! I swear! The weather is cooler today and I'm getting excited to wear my cardigan so I better get back to knitting. I'll post more pictures later.