Fiber Fest Shawl Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is enjoying their spring! We've had a lot of melting here (and another foot of snow) and still have a couple of feet of snow on the ground. We're supposed to get a little more on Sunday night, but then next week looks beautiful! I look forward to seeing some bare ground sometime!

I was able to finish and block my Fiber Fest Shawl designed by Stephen West. I don't have a good place to take a picture of a finished shawl, but here you can at least see the whole thing and the shape of the shawl:

Fiber Fest Shawl

I love the colors, but think I would like it more if there was less white mixed in with the blue. It dulls the blue and kind of dulls the green on top of the blue. Here are some close-ups to give you a better idea of how the colors look:

Fiber Fest Shawl - body

Fiber Fest Shawl - main pattern

Fiber Fest Shawl - border

I love how this turned out! I really love how the stitch pattern of the final border makes such sharp points. I did a simple blocking without pins, so those points really created themselves. One thing I don't really like is how the center lines in the brioche part of the border (the purple and green part) bow out. I think it would look better if those were straight, but that's a minor detail. I'm guessing that I probably needed to make those stitches tighter. I haven't done a lot of brioche so I'm still figuring out how tight I need to do things.

I also received my March shipment for the Jimmy Beans Wool Blanket Club. I'm making the crochet version of the blanket, which is the Wildflower Crochet Blanket designed by Lena Skvagerson. This blanket is constructed as individual squares that are then connected in the end to make the blanket. Here are the squares for March:

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 7

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 8

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 9

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - March center block progress

The fist block (block 7) is the first time I've crocheted a block from corner to corner, diagonally. I had to use a lot of stitch markers so I would recognize where I needed to work into the stitches, but it was pretty easy to do with that help. The second block (block 8) is probably my least favorite block for the blanket so far. It would be a good learning block if I hadn't done last year's blanket which was just variations of this pattern, but it's a bit awkward to put a wavy pattern in a square block and putting the border around the block caused some holes to appear along the right side of the block. The third block (block 9) is a variation on the Granny Square. I had to start this block over a couple of times because I wasn't reading the instructions carefully for some reason, but it was easy once I paid attention. I like how the center block is coming along. 

Grace has been having fun playing in the snow. Here she is playing in the snow on our walk on Monday, after the most recent foot of snow:

Grace on her walk

She loves to play in the snow! We usually go out in the yard in the afternoon to play a little soccer:

Grace playing soccer in the yard

It was in the mid-40s today, so Buttercup went out for the first time since we got all of the snow:

Buttercup enjoying the day

She enjoyed finding little water puddles to drink from and watching us play soccer!

March Madness continue today with the first half of the Elite Eight. Unfortunately, the University of Kansas didn't do well and they are no longer in the tournament. But I can still enjoy some very good college basketball! And if I don't get another post written before then, I hope that everyone enjoys the ecclipse! We're just going to stay home and enjoy our smaller part of it.

Nancy

Snow, Snow, Everywhere

 Hi all -

Well, it's been quite a week! We ended up getting over 4 feet of heavy, wet snow in last week's storm. I can only remember one storm with more snow since I moved up here in 2000. Luckily, we only lost power for 2.5 hours. Not sure how that happened! Must have been because I got everything as ready as possible for a long power outage. 🙃 I have a fairly long driveway so it took me three days to get the driveway cleared and the car dug out. Here's Grace enjoying the snow while it was still coming down:

The snow completely buried most of the fence. Do you see the fence peeking out of the snow on both sides of this picture?

I did an initial shoveling of the path from the house to the driveway while the snow was still coming down to give Grace a place to walk:

We got another 8-10 inches overnight after this. A neighbor walked by on the road while I was working on the driveway and took this picture:

At least it was beautiful while I was shoveling after the storm!

On the second day, one of the neighbors was passing by in his little Bobcat, working on the neighborhood roads, and he stopped and dug out some of the big piles left at the end of the driveway by the plows. I was VERY thankful since the pile was huge and the pieces were heavy!! Once I finished the driveway, I worked on digging out the car:

It really felt good when I was done!! We've had some warm sunny days this week and the melting has begun, but there's still a LOT of snow out there! Our morning walks have been affected because the trail is very difficult to navigate right now -- lots of postholing! But I did take Grace down to one of the dog parks in Boulder yesterday where she got to do a bunch of running and swimming! It's a different world down there! We have another storm coming this weekend, but it's a bit early to get a good forecast on the amount of snow we'll get. My neighbor said that Weather Underground is forecasting about 10 inches, but that they tend to overforecast. I'm torn between wanting the snowpack and being ready to walk on solid ground!

When I wasn't resting my arms after shoveling, I did make good progress on my Fiber Fest Shawl designed by Stephen West:

Fiber Fest Shawl

I'm working on the first of two borders now. It is a more complex version of the Brioche bands, where the Brioche forms a triangular pattern. I've finished the first of three pattern repeats for this border:

Fiber Fest Shawl - Brioche Border

Then I'll just have the final border to finish, which will be purple stripes on the blue background. I'll be really happy when this shawl is finished! I really love it.

Finally, March Madness is upon us so I'll be happily knitting away while watching the action! It doesn't look like Kansas has much of a chance at willing the Championship this year, but you never know!

Nancy

Craylola Scarf

 Hi all -

I thought I should get this out before the storm starts. If the forecast bears out, we are in for a couple of feet of snow in the next couple of days. Up here, that means that we'll also lose power which means no water or internet either. And there's very little cell service up here, so it will be some time to relax and concentrate on hand work. To get ready, I'll be filling a couple of buckets with water for the toilet and bringing my battery charger in from the car (I have one that can be used to jump the car battery) and topping it off since I keep my knitting patterns and my books on my iPad and iPhone. The more I do to prepare, the more likely we are to keep our power....  😉

The first project I want to share with you is my Craylola Scarf designed by Laura Nelkin. I made this scarf for my neighbor. For some reason, my dogs like to escape my yard and go to her house. Lance did that all of the time until he got too old to slither between the bars in the gate. And now Grace is doing the same. I've been working to shore up the gate to keep her in, but it's been a process. I started by covering the gate with plastic chicken wire, but Grace broke through that within a couple of days. So then I covered the bottom of the gate with craft chicken wire (a thinner chicken wire that is covered in green plastic). With that, I saw evidence that she got through the upper part of the gate. So now I've covered the top of the gate as well. That seems to be keeping her in. (I didn't originally cover the entire gate because I was scraping my hands on the zip ties that I used to attached the plastic chicken wire when that went to the top. But I switched to heavy-duty zip ties for the wire version and I don't seem to scrape my hands on that as much.) Anyway, the last time Grace got out before I covered the tops of the gates, I saw her at my neighbor's house (as usual) and when I went up to get her my neighbor wasn't home and Grace had obviously knocked over a painted Mexican flower pot and it broke. I let my neighbor know what had happened and offered to replace the flower pot, but she was really nice about it and told me not to worry about it -- she would glue the pot back together in the summer. So I decided to knit something for her to apologize since it felt incredibly intrusive to me. So I looked through my Laura Nelkin kits and decided to my Craylola for her:

Craylola

I've been wanting to make this scarf for a while. I love the zig-zag construction and all of the beads (just under 600 beads in total)! And I like that it's a thinner, lighter scarf that I think can be more useful. Here is a close-up of one of the ends while it was blocking:

Craylola - close-up

I'm thinking that the weight of the beads will also help to keep the scarf in place around your neck. I hope to make one of these for myself sometime!

I also started another Stephen West shawl -- the Fiber Fest Shawl. Stephen said that he designed this shawl to highlight one of those wonderful single skeins of yarn that you pick up at a fiber festival because it is so beautiful, but you don't know how you are going to use it. I haven't been to a fiber festival, but I have a lot of beautiful skeins that I've bought online just because I couldn't resist! So I looked through my yarn stash and picked out some skeins for this lovely shawl:

Fiber Fest Shawl

One of the reasons I wanted to make this shawl was because it has these mini baubles that I wanted to try:

Fiber Fest Shawl -- mini baubles

I think these are so cute!! This is where most of my knitting efforts are going right now.

Before I go, I'll share a couple of Grace pictures. I think I've mentioned that she loves sticks! Of all sizes!

Her favorite stick lately has been this VERY HEAVY stump!

I know how heavy this is because she keeps setting it on the path in front of me so I'll throw it for her, and I can only get it to go a couple of yards. And just another fun picture of the bobcat tracks I found on my driveway when we got back from our walk a couple of days ago:

I took a picture with my hand so I could gauge the size and check online to make sure they are actually bobcat tracks -- and they are! I love all of the interesting wildlife we have around here!!

Well, the first game of the Big 12 tournament is on now so I'll watch the rest of that and then start my storm preparations before the second game starts. I hope everyone is doing well!!

Nancy

Starflake Shawl Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Things are good here. I'm continuing to knit away. I was able to finish my Starflake shawl designed by Stephen West:

Starflake

The knitting is done and the ends are woven in, but I still need to block it. The blocking will open up the decorative holes in the design. As usual with Stephen West designs, this shawl has a bunch of interesting techniques, but was still easy to make because the instructions are so clear. One of my favorite parts is the striped I-cord edging. I think it really highlights the stripes in the rest of the design. I'm really enjoying knitting Stephen West designs and am looking forward to starting another one!

I was also able to finish the knitting on my Bandola designed by Laura Nelkin:

Bandola

This project also still needs to be blocked. It will really blossom with blocking! I'll post pictures of my blocked projects when I get that done, hopefully before my next blog post. 

My final project this time is my Jimmy Beans Wool crochet blanket club project, the Wildflower Crochet Blanket designed by Lena Skvagerson. I received my February installment and was able to finish the blocks last night. Here are February's blocks:

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 4

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 5

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 6

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - center block

I'm really enjoying the variety in this blanket. Block 4 had a stitch I'd never done before - the Backward Single Crochet. The pattern comes with detailed YouTube tutorials for everything so it's easy to figure out what to do. I'm looking forward to receiving the March installment!!

Finally, I thought I'd leave with more pictures of Grace. I've started carrying my new camera with us on every walk. Funny, as expected, I figured out where I'd left my old little camera right after publishing my last post! But I like the new camera with a better zoom and the ability to take action shots more easily, so I don't regret the purchase. Here is Grace on the Ceran St. Vrain trail, near our house:

Grace at Ceran St Vrain

I was happy to be able to get a picture of her when she was still for a short moment! I'm trying to go to this trail more often because we drive to get there even though it's less than a mile away, so hopefully these short drives with fun destinations will help ease her fear of the car. Unfortunately, this trail is difficult in the winter because of the icy spots so we won't be going there often until things start to thaw. But our neighborhood trail, just a short walk from the house, is beautiful, too! Here is a picture of one of our daily views:

I zoomed in on one of the mountain peak because it's so beautiful:

Isn't that incredible (and don't you love the camera zoom)? But on to Grace pictures.... She loves wood, no matter the size. She will bring smaller sticks to me to throw and will pull larger pieces around. I call it "logging." Here's one she was pulling around the other day:

At home I now have logs strewn all around the front porch! I also got an action shot of her running through the snow:

And a cute shot of her snow covered face:

She will miss winter when it's over, but I'm really looking forward to summer and a little relief from trudging through the snow and slipping on the ice! But it sure is beautiful right now!!

I hope everyone is enjoying their winter!

Nancy

Super Bowl Sunday

 Hi all -

It's Super Bowl Sunday and I'm looking forward to cheering for the Chiefs this evening! It should be a great game!

I've been continuing to work on my Starflake shawl designed by Stephen West:

Starflake

I'm really enjoying this knit! I was drawn to this pattern originally because it starts with a traditional quilt block. A great fusion of my hobbies! It's also fun to have the non-traditional shawl shape, although I won't be able to get any good pictures of the points on the shawl until I get it off the needles. It also has interesting techniques. The section I'm currently working on uses a technique called "brioche":

Starflake close-up

It's hard to see in the picture, but brioche kind of weaves the two colors together in the rows and results in a really smooshy, wonderful fabric. But it also takes longer to knit so this section is taking me a while to finish. Again, the instructions for this shawl are very clear and easy to follow with video instructions for the different techniques included. I have several more Stephen West patterns on my future projects list!

I also finally worked on the January blocks for the 2024 Jimmy Beans Wool crochet blanket club project. I had been enjoying my Stephen West shawls and was feeling intimidated about the blanket pattern for some reason, so I left it sitting for a couple of weeks after receiving it. This year's pattern is the Wildflower Crochet Blanket designed by Lena Skvagerson. This pattern has you crochet a bunch of squares and then connect the squares at the end. Here are the squares for January:

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January squares

Here are close-ups of each block:

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January block #1

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January block #2

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January block #3

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - January center block

The center block, which was just started this month, will be larger than the other squares and will be multi-colored. These blocks ended up being easier than I had expected and I'm looking forward to the February installment.

Finally, I gave up on finding my little camera and I bought a new one (so I'm sure I'll find the camera in a couple of days....). I really like this little camera so I don't think I'll regret the purchase. It has a "burst" mode where it will continue to take pictures in quick succession when the button is pressed. This will make it a lot easier to get a good picture of Grace when she's running around! We took it on our walk this morning and got some pictures of Grace in action:

It was a beautiful, but cold, morning with about 3 inches of fresh snow on top of the foot of snow left over from last week. Grace loves running through the snow! Here are a couple of pictures of the trail that we go to every morning:

It's a beautiful little trail that is only accessible through our neighborhood so it is only used by myself and my neighbors. We haven't seen the moose for a couple of days now, but I'm sure they'll be back! I'll post some pictures of them if I get any good ones.

I hope everyone is enjoying their winter! Grace is enjoying walking through the snow a bit more than I am, but I'm definitely enjoying the beauty!

Nancy