2012 Chicago Yarn Crawl and some bargello

This year, I participated in the Chicago Yarn Crawl.  I visited 5 knitting stores:  I'd Rather Be Knitting and Knit Happens in Buffalo Grove, Mosaic in Des Plaines, Fuzzy Wuzzy in Arlington Heights, and Three Bags Full in Northbrook.  I would have stopped in at Gene Ann's Yarns in Barrington, but I did not plan that portion of my trip well enough and arrived after she had closed.   It was fun to see the different types of knitted models in the different shops and to look at all of the yarn.   I bought yarn for three shawls in varying weights and for two pairs of socks or more lace shawl knitting.  I also bought some more small stitch markers to use on lace projects and some new cable needles to replace the ones that have disappeared.  Friday, I also went to Stitches Midwest and looked around the Marketplace.  I some beautiful sweater kits and lots of yarn by independent dyers.  I took my Afternoon Tea Shawl to the Zen Yarn Garden booth to show off what I had made out of their yarn.

I have also been doing needlepoint and have been working on Liz Morrow's Mad Miters.   I decided that I did not want to have to lay threads in this project.  To select the colors, I started with a skein of Caron Collection Watercolors in Bark and selected Silk and Ivory shades that would compliment the colors in the Watercolors.  The instructions recommend using a metallic accent color but I am very happy with the plum Silk and Ivory.  

Fiber Weekend

I spent quite a bit of this weekend at the Midwest Fiber and Folk Fair.  It helped that the fair has moved to the Lake County Fairgrounds which have moved to a new location which is very close to my house.

Saturday, I took two classes from Franklin Habit on lace knitting.  Between Franklin and studying Diane Thornton's video on Left Handed Knitting, I think I have finally mastered making flat lace fabric with all of the decreases and increases slanting the right direction.  On Sunday morning, I volunteered as a greeter and I finished wrapping all but one of my Temari balls.  I also went shopping and bought beautiful yarn, wooden tools, and yarn bowls.

The fibers in the bowl at the top are from Knitting Notions, Wolf Creek Wools, Socks that Rock, and Mountain Colors.  They are a combination of sock and lace weight yarns in wool and silk combinations. This beautiful yarn bowl is full of sock yarn from Happy Hands Yarn and Fiber.  It is part of a package of 24 colorways in a Toe Candy Sock Kit.  They looked like a lot of fun to knit and wear.  I have to decide whether I want two socks that match or two different socks -- two different ones might be fun.  The lovely bowl was from The Fold's booth.


I also bought some beautiful wooden tools including a sock darning egg and a nostepinne.  My mother had a lot of sewing tools, some of them may have come from her grandmother.  They included tools for pressing things including a sleeve board, a point presser, a tailer's ham and a clapper.  I missed them the other day when I was trying to alter the sleeves on a karate gi to fit my daughter but I don't do enough sewing or alterations to collect my own set of pressing tools.

Finished knitting

I took pictures of my finished sari silk scarf and the mermaid's tail evening bag. I am going to embelish the bag with small brass bells that I took off an old shirt, they are sitting on the bag in the picture but are not attached.

I also finished my farrow rib scarf and made a hat to match. The hat is my own pattern. Both are made out of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino yarn in black but they look very different in the pictures.

My next project is going to be the elfin hat and scarf set from the Fall 2007 issue of Interweave Knits. The yarn is handspun that I bought at the Chicago Botanic Garden during the Fine Art of Fiber show last fall. The hat will be in the brown and the scarf in the boucle. I hope that I have enough of the brown for the whole hat and that the pattern stitch shows up in the boucle yarn. I will have lots of time today to find out since I am going to spend it at a karate tournament.

Knitting Ministry Shawl

I finished the easy traingle shawl and am ready to donate it
to the Knitting Ministry at my church to give to someone who is in need of comfort. I hope that they get a lift from the bright blue color. The crocheted loops on the bottom edge were much easier than I thought they would be and went very quickly. It was hard to get a good picture of the shawl. Maybe I should have made someone wear it and taken their picture in it.

I started a new knitting project, a Sari Silk scarf. I am making up the pattern as I go along and I tried to add some lace elements but you can't see them so I think that I am going to stick with a simple pattern and let the colors come alive. I plan on a long, relatively narrow (6 inches) scarf with fringe on the ends.

I also got yarn and a pattern in the mail from the Plimoth Plantation. I had signed up to be a volunteer knitter before Christmas and I got my yarn and glove pattern in the mail today. Now all I have to do is locate two sets of size two double pointed needles -- either that or finish my Bartholomew's Tantalizing Socks and take the needles from that project.