First Day of School

The kids are now back in school! Ryan is starting first grade and Gillian is starting fourth grade. (How the heck did that happen?)

They've been *so* excited about going back to school and seeing their friends. It's wonderful!

I had to make them get back out of the car so I could take these pictures—they were already in and waiting to go!

Ryan got his hair wet and spiked it a little:

And Gillian did her own ponytail. (I had to really persuade her to hold still and get the picture-taking over with so that we could get back into the car and GO. LOL!)

They're just a bit excited.


They practically jumped out of the car as soon as I told them they could unbuckle, and they never once looked back:


Happy first day of school! :-)

Fiber Christmas

I still need to blog about our fabulous trip to Idaho, but first I'm going to post about Fiber Christmas in July that was this Friday and Saturday.

I ended up teaching three classes (Magic Loop Socks, Common Knitting Mistakes and How To Fix Them, and Designing Your Own Socks), and I got really good reviews about all of them.

Of course I turned right around and spent almost all of the money I got from the classes. :-) This is my big fiber purchasing opportunity for the year, and as usual I might have gone a bit overboard.

This is alpaca, bamboo, and merino:


They were clearing it out so it was $2 an ounce. I got four ounces of each of the browns, and three ounces of this gorgeous 60% merino/40% bamboo fiber:

These next two I got in a Dirty Santa swap. I've never worked with pencil roving before so it'll be neat!



I fell deeply in love with this fingering-weight yarn, and it'll probably become a double-knit cowl. I just need to decide what other color to put with it, although I'm leaning toward a cream or off-white. We'll see!

I'm not sure what breed this is, but I got it from Kate at Lowder Colors Farm's stand. It's 4 ounces and really soft. It looks fairly long-stapled so it'll be interesting to spin up.


This is something I snatched out of Bridgette's hands as she was going to give it away as a door prize. It's 100% silk and luscious.


I kept wandering by one of the booths and this particular braid yelled my name:

It's merino with "sparkle" although the sparkle didn't show up in the picture. It's not like Angelina or glitz, and it's going to be another interesting spin because I haven't worked with it before.
This braid yelled at me, too, and it's merino and silk. I'm way into browns this year, if you haven't noticed. They're just pulling me. :-)

I bought a few other things but I'm not going to photograph them right now (maybe after Christmas!).

I also want to post some of the websites for some of the vendors, but that'll have to wait until I'm a bit more organized. I'm still recovering from two really, really busy days right after coming home from a busy week in Idaho. :-)

New addition to sidebar: Magic Loop socks

This is a quick update post (I'm once again ridiculously behind in posting, but I'll add a whole bunch later).

A couple of years ago I made up a handout to show my technique for doing two socks at once, top down, using the magic loop method (see tutorials in sidebar).

I'm adding the PDF with my illustrations about how to do the heels on two socks at once. Here's the direct link, or click in the sidebar.

This weekend is Fiber Christmas in July and I'm teaching four classes, so I'm frantically getting ready for that.

That's all for now!

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Happy Independence Day!

Happy (late) Independence Day to my fellow denizens of the U.S.A.!

I slept for most of the day (I've got a sinus infection, I suspect), and Greg took the kids out to buy fireworks. They came back with quite a haul!

Here are the kids, with their chairs in the middle of the cul-de-sac, enjoying the neighborhood display:


That's Greg on the right, lighting a sparkler for Gillian, with Ryan in the background.


They got some of the bigger fireworks, and it was cool to have them right above our heads. I got two neat shots:





I even got a picture of Greg:


This is one of our favorite fireworks. It's a Purple Rain Fountain:


They go for a surprisingly long time. The kids had a great time with sparklers, and with a really long shutter speed I got some fun pictures.


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On the knitting front, I finished a Laminaria shawl and sent it to my dear friend Kathy for her wedding, which was Friday. I don't have any pics of her (yet) but here are some I took before sending it:




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I'm participating in the Tour de Fleece again on Ravelry, and I spun up some beautiful fiber that my Mom and Karen bought for me:




The color isn't *quite* right on this pic, but it's too pretty and shiny to not share:



And here's the final collage I posted on Ravelery:


I hope everyone has had a great weekend!

Quilt Show

It's been a very, very busy month, quilt-wise. The Green Country Quilt Guild's big show was Friday and Saturday, and it was amazing!

I'm proud to say that I got TWO ribbons. Here's the honorable mention:

I managed to finish my Brazilian embroidered wall hanging, although it didn't get anything:

It's finished, though, after nine years, so that's really good.

This quilt got a second place, which I'm absolutely THRILLED about:


And here's another one that didn't get any ribbons (which I expected--there are knots on the back of the quilting where eight to twelve lines of stitching intersect, and I didn't fix them because this is a very well-used quilt).


And just for fun, I put this one in that my Mom pieced and I quilted:

I also put in my All The Same But Different quilt, which (of course) didn't get anything. It's not a pleasing quilt design to me. In fact, it's so unpleasing to me that I didn't bother to take a picture at the show, apparently. LOL!


I took more than 350 pictures at the show, and I've put many of them in my Picasa album, which you can see here.