Last weekend I hosted a reunion of my crafty friends.  We gathered together to share food, drink, and stories.  Sharing and supporting each other as we ate.  I decided on a simple craft of the old school friendship bracelets with a slight twist.  I came across this amazing little tool from Loome that can be used as a pom pom trim guide (always fun) or to make kumihimo cords.  Kumihimo is Japanese for "gathered threads" and it is so simple to do with this great little tool, yet it creates this intricate braid.



I really love it.  It is a nice break in between knitting.  I started my first bracelet at the gathering, worked on it on a little day trip with my mama and sisters, and finished it up today sitting outside soaking up some sun on this amazing spring day!  I have been really drawn to these soft pinks and salmon and I added some yellow and white as well.  Mostly wool with a touch of cotton from my stash.


Today I was sitting near my youngest son's birth tree, a beautiful redbud in full bloom right now.  We planted this tree at his birth, and though the willow is my favorite tree, redbuds are my next favorite.  Did you know you can eat the buds?  A great little vitamin C boost!  I learned this when I was pregnant with my youngest and getting ready to give birth in April when my doctor and midwife shared this food foraging wisdom with me.

So I was inspired as I was sitting outside finishing up my bracelet nibbling on the redbuds to do a little giveaway to one lucky winner.  I went down to see if I could find a yarn in my stash to go along with a Loome kumihimo tool.  As luck would have it, I had a skein of Lamb's Pride Bulky wool/mohair blend in rosy velvet color way.  Brown Sheep Company spins and dyes yarn in Nebraska.

How to enter:

1- entry for comment here
1- entry for comment on Instagram
1- follow me on Instagram

Contest ends May 1 at midnight.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy this little set to help you play with some wood n- wool!

Mid-April always hit like a whirlwind in these parts.  My mama has her birthday 4 days before me, and my youngest has his birthday 5 days after mine.  So lots of birthday wishes along with those April showers!  This year my mama celebrated a milestone birthday and my youngest became and official teenager!

Me- well I was convinced I was 46 last year and then took the time to do the math and realized I am just now 46 so it felt like a bonus!  I often will take the day off work and have a self-care day.  This year I met up with a friend.  First we hit up a local eatery that seems a bit like a hole in the wall but I like their Vietnamese Pho soup - mmmmm!




Next she joined me to an appointment at a tattoo shop that I had made for my "knitting tattoo" I have been wanting for a while.  Now let me start this story by saying this year my bday fell on Friday the 13th and the artist I made the appointment with did not remember that the shop was doing $20 tattoos on the 13th.  You can imagine my surprise showing up on a Friday at noon and seeing a huge line of folks out the door.  Confirmed that there was a mistake in taking my appointment and knowing there was no way I was hanging out in that energy I decided to walk into one of the oldest studios in my town where I got some of my very early ink back in the 90's.




As luck would have it, they had an opening and the atmosphere was so relaxed and the shop had been remodeled and had this great eclectic mix of flash tattoo art, taxidermy animals, russian nesting dolls and old vintage pictures.  You know the large pictures with the dome glass- just gorgeous and my speed!  My tattoo itself is actually the constellation of Aries, my sun and moon sign.  I like how the 4 stars represent me, my partner, and our two sons.  Aries is a ram which is a sheep, sheep has wool, wool for . . . well you get the picture right?  My subtle knitting tattoo!  Old stars for my sun and moon sign and my soul hobby!


Our next stop was out to the local antique mall and look at treasures surrounded in old dust!  It fills me up to be able to take it all in.  It took all my will power not to buy one of the old vintage portraits like I had just seen at the tattoo parlor!



My evening ended with some chicken wings from another local favorite and dancing the night away with my partner while Old Salt Union played for us at the bar where my partner and I had our wedding party years ago.

All in all my friends it was a great day for this old gal!

We are entering the final stage of our home remodel that we have been doing.  Our basement is done, the new roof went on last month and the last part is transforming our carport into a garage and replacing our front and side doors.  Our contractor let us know that this was going to be getting started on Monday so we spent our Saturday cleaning out and storing the contents of our carport.

I had a little corner shelf were we would toss nature treasures and odd things we would pick up on hikes.  You can image a hodgepodge of little treasures and lots of years worth of dust.  As I was packing them up I came across some goodies I completely forgot about and brought them into the house to clean up.


The first was this beautiful old lantern that my husband picked up off the curb somewhere years ago.  It has been on lots of troll walks and lantern walks in the neighborhood with the boys when they were little.  I cleaned out the leaves and old wax and lots of dust and now this beauty is going to hang out inside.


I also found the old glass chicken waterer that my mama gave me from the family farm.  My hens have a giant watering system so I cleaned this up and I have it on the table for the moment.  It think it makes a great little candy/nut dish!



Last I found these beautiful pieces of old smooth glass.  My husband thinks he found them along the Missouri river at some point and time.  The funny thing is I really wanted to find some "sea glass" when we were in Florida and did not.  Little did I know there was some beautiful unique "river glass" just waiting for me on my dusty old nature shelf!

They all color coordinated with my Vernal Infinity Scarf that is my current WIP!  I love it when my projects, the fun and not so fun all line up just right.  I am off to knit a few more rows!

You may remember the maiden voyage of Knit Your Own Adventure last summer when my husband and I took a two week trip to take our sons to the beach and . . . we hit the early part of hurricane season and decided to head to Colorado mountains midstream.  When we sat in that hotel last summer making the decision to head west I made a promise to the boys to take them to the beach on spring break.  We were able to make good on that promise and we took our fellas to Miramar Beach in Old Destin, Florida.





No big adventures to speak of; just the truest sense of "spring break"!  While the wind made the days slightly cooler- the 70 degree days on the beach beat the weather that was happening back home!  I had not been to the beach in years and this was my first spring break trip ever!  We had a great little place we found via AirBnB right on the beach and found some yummy seafood markets.






I decided on the Nakia's Infinity scarf for my spring break knitting.  This is the scarf that was in the Black Panther movie.  I wound my yarns the night before we left and cast it on in the van.  It was grey and rainy when I cast it on- pretty fitting.  When we hit Alabama and started seeing the red dirt roads we were listening to S-Town pod cast and going right past Bibb County when the color changed to a little orange patch!  By the time we got to the beach I moved to the green blues and stayed there all the way home.




I am about 1/3 of the way through and enjoying the free flow of the pattern and interpreting and changing along the way as I feel.  It is a nice mirror to the free flow of these beach days we had.  It is an opportunity I don't take lightly.  Not everyone is able to take a break/vacation like this.  My husband and I worked hard to be able to swing it ourselves, but I am so glad we did.  I am thankful all around- the fellas not totally getting on each other's nerves, the long walks on the beach, the incredible food, and the abundance of fiber in my life.