The 2021 Yarn Crawl Comes to an End

Well, the yarn crawl is over. The all-day Zoom event was a real highlight.

Each of the shops will have their hour available recorded on YouTube. Eventually, they will have their Zoom presentations available, although it may take a few days. Go to this link to watch. The ones that are already loaded will appear in green. In this day and age, all of them have an online business, so you can order from anywhere. Here are the shops with links:

Starlight Knitting Society

For Yarn Sake

Weird Sisters

Northwest Wools

Pearl Fiber Arts

Knotty Lamb

House of A la Mode

Close Knit

The yarn I ordered from Close Knit arrived, in two separate shipments and on two different days.

I cast on the "Russet" for the tea cozy as soon as I finished Charlotte's Dressing Gown. I have this much done.

The "Aubergine" and the "Silver Mist" are for some mittens from this book:

The next day, I received this lusciousness from House of A la Mode:

It's for a special brioche shawl. This one.

I bought some circular needles from Pearl Fiber Arts (size 000, two of them, so I can knit in the round). I also ordered the Kevät  kit from Knotty Lamb, but they were out of them, so I had to preorder for the kits they're having made up.

Here's another view, this time of the back.

It comes in cropped and regular length. DDIL ordered one. I got the cropped, and she got the regular length. I picked these colors:

It will be at least a couple of weeks before the kits will be ready.

Before I cast on the tea cozy, I finished the dressing gown I was making for Charlotte. You may remember from last week that I thought the blue would be enough for the whole thing, based on weight. However, you can see where I ran out of blue. To hide the color change at the bodice, I crocheted a chain stitch around the body using a slightly darker shade of blue Palette (fingering), right at the base of the white and then added some additional trim around the neck to hide my somewhat messy picked-up stitches there. I added the embroidered flower just because, and made a twisted cord bow from the same yarn. Anyway, Charlotte doesn't look too unhappy with it. (That's her Mona Lisa smile.) She is holding her sleep mask.

During the week Johan read to his great-grandmother, who has come to live with his other grandparents....

....and to his class at school.

I'm waiting for an update on Soren's activities. Maybe there will be a photo next week.

Their cousins in Wisconsin had a dance competition over the weekend. They had to go to St. Paul, Minnesota, and stay in a hotel for it. Daphne took Misty along.

Zachary took his Billy along.

I'm glad they both enjoy their dolls. It's so good for their imaginations.

Their parents, as educators, qualified to receive their vaccines this week. I found this online.

We learned from the CDC that people who are fully vaccinated (two weeks past whichever dose is the final one––the second for Pfizer and Moderna, and the only one for Johnson & Johnson) can get together with others who are also fully vaccinated, and they don't have to wear masks. I see a future in which the choir can meet again. Some of us have been vaccinated, but our director doesn't qualify yet. Still, it won't be too long. In the meantime, some of us went to the church one-by-one to have a "professional" recording made of our performance for Palm Sunday.

In the meantime, we had to turn our clocks forward Saturday night.

What's on my needles: The tea cozy.

What's on my sewing machine: Dust.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. Very little progress this week.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Brown Dolls? Pippa has noticed that Mariah's vinyl is brown and wonders why.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still The Black Madonna by Stella Reilly, a little progress made, but it's a long book, and Love Is the Way by Bishop Michael Curry, Chapters 7 and 8. My church's Adult Forum is discussing it, two chapters at a time. Otherwise I would just listen to it until the end, but I wouldn't remember as much of it that way. It's really good.

What's in my wine glass: Trader Joe's Grower's Reserve Zinfandel Paso Robles 2019. I really, really like this one. I wonder if it's because it's from organically grown grapes.

What's my tip of the week: If you need to measure honey using a spoon, dip it in hot water first (or run under the faucet with hot water running) and the honey won't stick as much. If it sticks, use your finger to wipe the honey off it, then you can lick your finger.

Where's my book: Mariah: Stories from the Doll's Storybook is available from Amazon worldwide. Also available from BookBaby and other booksellers. Royalties go to support pediatric cancer research and treatment. The three stories in the book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with few changes. The stories (and links to them) are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post. 

Hare-brained Scheme

It might have been a hare-brained scheme to make four bunnies, but I finished the third boy bunny, this one for Johan.


Here's what he looks like without his little kimono. He's wearing garter-stitch booties and soaker, actually knitted as part of the legs and body.


I made the girl bunny a sweater using the same pattern as the baby kimono, the Ballerina Wrap Cardigan. out of the same Stroll fingering yarn as I used in the dress and tights.

All of the yarn used came from scraps left over from other projects. In fact, the only yarn I bought was the white for the baby bunny and the Cascade Ultra Pima for the boys' outfits and the baby's kimono, so it was an inexpensive project. Now that I have finished knitting the bunnies, there's a KAL for making any of the Little Cotton Rabbits projects for holiday gifts, but you had to CO and finish between November 8, and December 25th. Too late for me, but I'll be happy to watch from the sidelines.

After finishing the last bunny, I got back to hand-quilting my Spring Flowers quilt.


I have the second of the four appliqué blocks partly quilted. I'm quilting around all the appliqué motifs and quilting inside each of the diamond shapes as well as in the ditch on the diamonds. The background will have diagonal quilting lines from corner to corner, except for the strips of partial LeMoyne stars heading in the N-S-E-W directions, where the quilting goes orthogonally (horizontal and vertical) from the center to the border. I finished that quilting first, so I don't make a mistake and accidentally quilt on the diagonal where it's supposed to be horizontal or vertical, if that makes sense.

Common Threads met this week at Margareth's.


Evidence of Margareth's weaving were found everywhere. She showed us some new projects, but I can't show them, because she plans on entering them in a show. After the show, I'll bless you with a small, mini-Margareth-weavings show. That will be in January. However, Karan was willing to show off her shawl.


Margareth was working on a hat, made from two strands of yarn held together:


Lynda had finished this baby sweater, similar to another one she made earlier. Here's the front:


Here's the back. I like the sheep in the middle, watching where Baby has been.


She used the fiber from her angora bunny for the sheep.

In other news this week, the oven in our gas stove went out, so we had the appliance repair man come and fix it and have a look at our dryer. The problem with the stove was the igniter, which he replaced. The dryer just had some lint clogging the inside, and it worked fine after he removed it. Now the clothes dry much faster, and the dial advances as it should. I mentioned the sound the washer makes, and he thought it sounded like the motor is getting ready to go out. I hope it doesn't go out while all the babies are here for Christmas! (We bought our Maytag washer and dryer in 1982.)

The Wisconsin grandkids had a visit from their other grandparents over Halloween. Here's Zachary giving his fork a little help, photo courtesy of Bubbye.

We're into the second week of the time change, and I'm still waiting for my "extra hour of sleep." Sunny and I are waking up an hour too early every morning. [Sigh!]

Special Note: If you don't read the text of my blog posts, you may have the impression that I'm some kind of super woman. Most, of the projects shown in my blog are produced by friends. Of course, if you don't read my blog text, you won't be reading this.

What's on my needles: The Johan socks and Mr. F's clothes. Back to hand-quilting my Spring Flowers quilt, working on the second of four appliqué blocks.

What's on my Featherweight: Silently waiting for the next sewing project.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Reading The Long Way Home by Karen McQuestion, which was one of Audible's Daily Deals. Good story, and it makes ghosts and psychic abilities seem everyday. I would like to read other books by the same author. Still reading Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel, from Book Bub.

What's my app of the week: Craftsy...again! They recently gave me a choice of any class not in my primary category. (I could only choose one, so I picked knitting, since there was more for me to learn, I thought.) I picked Peggy Martin's "Quick-Strip Paper Piecing." Then they had a surprise sale! I picked up Stacey Trock's "Amigurumi: Woodland Animals," thinking I would improve my crochet skills and maybe use up some scraps making toys for the grands. The only thing I don't like is, when they have a sale, they give me a notification, which shows up on my phone and my iPad, in addition to the email they send. If I read it one place, it still stays on each device until I delete it from that device.

What's in my wine glass: Blackstone Mendoza Malbec 2011, coincidentally the same vintage as DH's "new" Impreza. The fate of his old 1998 Legacy Wagon is still undetermined. However, I'm certain the Malbec has a better bouquet and flavor, although the finish on the Impreza is pretty nice.

What's my tip of the week: If you need to slice vegetables that are rounded, like carrots, radishes, zucchini, etc., and you're in a hurry, slice them lengthwise first. They they will lie flat while you quickly slice them. Of course, this only works if you're happy  with half-moon shapes.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals were harmed during the production of this blog post.