Rose-Kim Knits Donors Choose Challenge

I know that knitting has enriched my life. It gives me comfort, a community, a sense of accomplishment and mastery. It has given me a career and great friends. Imagine being able to give these things to children in need.

For the month of October DonorsChoose.org is having a blogger challenge. I have chosen a project I think will resonate with all of you. You can go to this page and make a donation of any size. Leave a comment on this post letting me know. At the end of the month I'll have a drawing for some prizes.

This blog gets about a 1000 hits a day. That's a dollar for every reader of the blog to fund our project (it ends before the end of the month, I might have to add another similar project to fund in another week). Give big or give small, it all makes a difference.

OFFF '08

We all piled in the car Friday afternoon and headed to Portland. I dumped bade farewell to Wes and the kids and headed down to Canby on Saturday for the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival with Sarah. We perused, did a little purchasing, visited with friends, sat in a shady spot and knit (I brought my wheel but couldn't be bothered to lug it over to the fairgrounds). It was lovely as always.



My favorite of the trip: A St. Croix Hair Sheep with her 6 day old lambs. A-Fricking-Dorable.



Alpacas are just so lovably goofy-looking.



Did you know it takes three guys to primp a goat for the show ring? Just kidding. Usually it takes like a 10 year old and her mom. Why this goat was getting the celebrity treatment I don't know.



Beautifully woven handspun alpaca blanket. How would you like to have this to curl up under? It was gorgeous and so soft. Just lovely.

We headed to Fabric Depot after the fest. Last year we were so overwhelmed by the sprawl of it and had no game plan. We left empty handed. This year I had a game plan. We carefully combed the racks looking for shades of chocolate brown for a new quilt I'm dreaming up. We found lots of wonderful, strange and funny things.

I've got about a quarter of the edging on my shawl left to finish. I also pulled out the Auburn Camp Shirt for some car knitting. (I can't read charts or look at my knitting in the car.)



A great weekend.

Oh Dear

One of these is in the middle of my living room. I'm renting it for a beginning weaving class. I know. I know. When will I ever have time for that? Believe me, I know. But I wanted to learn more about it anyway. I nearly have the thing warped. This is the part of weaving I always suspected would keep me from becoming a weaver. I only have 60 warp threads and already feel it's more warping than I care to do.

Thursdays are for What the Hell is This?

Borrowing a page from Candy Kirby, I pose the question, "Who wore it better?"


Or



Or



Or



Or



Or

Blue Star Rectified

I fixed the goofed up block and took better pictures of them all. There will be 30 blocks total. A riot of pattern by the end.

Rivendell

Pattern: Rivendell from Eclectic Sole by Janel Laidman
Yarn: Smooshy in In Vino Veritas
Notes: I feel silly posting this because I'm only knitting the one for a shop model. But wow! This yarn and pattern love each other. It was an entertaining knit--a bit fiddly at first then a fun bit then simple ribbing.

On Edge

I've started the edging on my Pi. This is Cypress Edging from a Weldon's Practical Needlework reproduction. I'm about 1/6 of the way around the shawl now and need to weigh the yarn to see if I have enough to actually make it all the way. If not I'll rip it, knit more of the body of the shawl then do a crochet loop cast off. Not my favorite but doesn't take as much yarn.

Blue Star Progress

This new quilt is coming together really quickly. It takes me a long time to do all the cutting for each block (mainly because I keep making mistakes) but the sewing is fast. I finished eight blocks already.



The colors are off in this photo. And that's not all that's off.



How did I not see this until I edited the photo? Easy enough to fix but still...how did I not see it?

Playing With Fabric

Today I barreled through the piecing of all the blocks for my 30s quilt. Next is to figure out the placement and get all the blocks sewn together. My chain-piecing epiphany--one year after starting the quilt--made an enormous difference. I now have no idea what took me so long on this very easy project. But it's now coming together.

As a diversion I made a sample block for my next quilt. I have been gradually collecting fabrics in the teal/green/brown group. I got them all pulled out the other day and tried to figure out what I wanted to make.



I think it will be the Blue Star Quilt from Kaffe Fassett's Caravan of Quilts. It gives me the perfect chance to try out this method for making flying geese. Mine won't be quite the riot of color the one in the book is. But I'm trying to be a little more daring mixing up prints.



Any suggestions for a good iron? Ours is old, slowly breaking and doesn't have an automatic shut off. Wes is convinced I will burn down the house, killing us all, if I walk away from the iron while it is still on or even plugged in.

Thursdays are for What the Hell is This?

Scene: Jessica is looking at knitting patterns.

Jessica: Hmm, those are kind of nice wrist warmers and--Oh my god! What the hell? What the? What the hell is that? What? Oh my god. Ew. OH. MY. GOD. EW! Ewewewewewewewewewewew. EEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

(I think this is around the time I blacked out.)

A Case for My Crap

Pattern: Based on these box bag instructions
Fabric: Peas and Carrots by American Jane
Notes: I need a zipper bag or two to go in my purse. I'm tired of carrying all my lotion and lip balm, etc. in a ratty quart-size ziploc baggie (thanks TSA!)

Again I had an initial moment of completely not understanding how to sew this together. I kind of rushed through it so the seams are a bit off and it is generally a little wonky (it looks wonkier in the photo because I could not pull one corner to a nice point without poking in its facing corner). I don't like how the inside, though lined, has lots of raw edges. I might try to get my head around how to put in the lining after boxing the corners next time. Though this is where I always mess up sewing. I am terrible at visualizing things in 3D so inevitably something gets sewn in with the wrong side facing out. If I hadn't sewn any of it together wrong, this could have been about 30 minutes to sew.

Still Another Great Seattle Headline

Teen sets record for blowing up balloons with nose