I thought I would share some of my finished fiber works and upcoming projects as I spent the day watching big ol' fat snow flakes fall and doing some volunteer knitting teaching with some 4-H'ers.




First I was happy to bind off my Olympic knitting project, the Eureka Cowl.  Cast on during the opening ceremony and bind off during the closing ceremony.  I did a couple adjustments to the pattern including removing the popcorn bobble in the pattern and I also reduced the amount of sections at the end opting for a smaller design.  It was a fun pattern that reminds me that I still want to make a Boneyard Shawl!  This was my first time working with Brooklyn Tweed and I enjoyed the loftiness, earthiness, and color.


I also had the pleasure once more of doing some community art work.  I have been able to work with a group of friends in my community doing large scale art installations for our film fest called True False.  This group dubbed "the fiber mavens" created 4 panels this year using traditional embroidery stitches with upcycled fabric on hardware cloth.  The four images were of microscopic views of a leaf, cracked mud, pebble and a topographic map.  They hung outside one of the venues.  I loved these this year!




For my upcoming projects I have two on the horizon- one is a pair of fingerless mitts for the upcoming March For Our Lives knit along.  This is a vision by the co-creator of the Pussyhat movement.  I will share more in another post on my progress when I get ready to start the eye embroidery but more information can be found here if you are interested.





As I look forward to some spring break knitting, like many other knitters I saw and fell in love with the shawl/scarf from the Black Panther movie.  It has hit the knitting community like wild fire with knitters trying to decipher a pattern and the yarns.  Both the costume designer for the movie and the pattern designer have been really accessible to the knitting community.  The pattern was designed for machine knitting which as far as I can tell quite a bit different from hand knitting.  They also listed out some of the yarns used as well.  The great thing is that what stands out in this scarf is the combination of the yarns, colors, and textures.  Really you can decide on some different stitch patterns you like and roll with that along with some yarns you enjoy.


I am using Noro Silk Garden in colorway #417, Madelinetosh Dandelion in colorway Shire- this is discontinued (I totally guessed on this one based on early tweets and found a shop online that had a skein before it was announced) Madelinetosh Merino Light in colorway Plaid Blanket, and Malabrigo Mechita in colorway Hojas.

Wish me luck as I just let my creative juices lead the way on the stitch patterns.  You can find the pattern here.



And to throw in some wood element I wanted to share that I have added a new font option for the calendars- a fun cursive option.

What are you wrapping up at winter's end?

Ahhhh, they are finally here- the Winter Olympics!  I am a junkie when it comes to the winter games.  I love them!  It is a great time to take shelter and curl up with my crew and wig out on the games with good food and lots of hot cups of beverages.

It does seem as though Christmas is barely out the door and our American commercial senses are overloaded with images of spring.  Valentines Day is snuck in there, but it makes it a bit harder to imagine that we still have several weeks of winter ahead of us before we can awaken our spring selves.

Last week at the first of February, it is a time to celebrate mid-winter.  This year there was also a pretty amazing celestial event of the Super Blue Blood moon happening right on the eve of the mid-winter celebrations.  Since I did not do my best to pay attention I completely missed the lunar eclipse as I did not pay attention to my am vs pm- ugh.  But in my new place of balancing expectations with traditions I rolled with it and ended up doing most of my mid-winter honoring yesterday.

We had all been running at a pretty fast pace this last week and another round of this stubborn head and bronchial cold set in for my husband so we took it easy most of the weekend and canceled plans that had us in large social circles and preparing lots of shared food.

It might have been super bowl Sunday but it was a little hybrid for us.  We got a small snow shower for a couple hours which made me want to hunker down even more.  We still had some wings, guacamole, and tacos; but I also made some oat Bannock bread that I had wanted to make for the first of February.



I used this recipe for an unleavened oat Bannock bread with rosemary.  I really enjoyed it- I did tweak it a bit and replaced the refined sugar with honey and I did not sprinkle sugar on top of the caudle.  In the future I would cut back at least half on the fresh rosemary, but the combination of the hearty rolled oats, oat flour, fresh orange zest, and rosemary was lovely.  I served it with some fresh berries and coffee during the second half of the game last night that we watched in our cozy basement with candles lit.



Where does knitting come into this?  Often the mid-winter celebrations to Brigid/Brigit also involved honoring sheep as this is the time of the year when ewes begin to birth and lactating new milk.  So I looked through my stash and found an awesome earthy Rowan Prelife British Sheep Boucle undyed yarn from my last Fiber Share swap and knit up a little rustic matt for our old magazine/bookshelf.  I used huge needles and knit up this sweet little square to go under the candle.  I might need to grab a bit of sheep milk cheese just for good measure before the next snow comes in this week!

I do love spring but am ready to embrace the last of winter in my home that we worked hard on remodeling.  Plus there is the huge bonus of the Winter Olympics starting this week- I finally decided on my olympic knitting project- now to make final decision on which yarn to use!

This weekend a friend helped us take out two trees in our front yard.  When we first bought our house I did not pay much attention to the trees that the prior owners (the house flippers) had planted.  They just seemed like a couple pretty little trees.  A few years later and I am now learning about how invasive this particular tree is.



The Bradford Pear is often sold as a landscaping tree.  After I woke up to the information out there about this tree I did not feel so bad removing live trees from the yard.  What was surprising was beauty of the wood.  As a wood worker I am immediately drawn to the gorgeous deep orange color of the wood.  Our friend who helped up take the tree down is also going to mill a couple pieces out of the largest trunk.  I will be interested to see if the wood changes color as it dries out.

Here is more information about how invasive and bad these trees are.  Doing our part to stop the spread.  We are thinking of replanting some redbuds or other native this spring.

Sometimes it is the simplest things that can bring pleasure to your day.  Like knitting up a simple little plant matt in natural cotton.  A pleasant result of the remodel is the desire to keep on sorting, purging, cleaning and organizing.  This poor plant that just did not want to flourish has been through the ringer.  It has never liked the corner I gave it in the basement thought it was near a window.  And . . . it endured the remodeling with all of the dust.  So I have been nursing it back in the sun filled window.



It has been nice to welcome our walls with some artwork old and new.  I added a new letterpress print that I got from Tolt.  The packaging we so simple, personal and full of wool love!  I am looking forward to this piece getting framed and hung in my studio.




A good reminder of the simple pleasures; home, yarn, hands to create, and always a hot cup of goodness waiting for you!

The phrase "remodeling is not for the weak" is no understatement!  I am happy to say that the first phase of our remodeling adventures is done.  What was supposed to be a week long project started in late October and just finished up this month!



In the beginning there was our basement, a finished space where our family room and studio room is located.  It is half of our living space.  And it had yucky carpet that I have been wanting to rip out for a very looooooong time!



Then there was the discovery of the asbestos tile in one room- not a great discovery but we found an excellent local abatement company that had it removed in 1 day!

And then there was probably worst part of the whole project.  The first sub contracted company was a nightmare.  What was often communicated was not what happened.  To simple things like taping off and plastic sealing the stairway so tons of concrete dust did not come upstair and cover my main living space, to not grinding and prepping the floors correctly, to not protecting the walls and doors from the stain, to not finishing filling in cracks completely, to sealing in debris into the floor, and leaving a huge mess with a undesirable color and horrible sealant finish and refusing to come back and look at.  It was evident this person had not done something like this before and bit off more than they could handle.  Unlucky for us!






I am still shocked by the experience.  Luckily we have a good contractor that arranged for a new company to come in and examine the mess to determine how to fix it.  Unfortunately that meant grinding all of that had been stained and sealed and starting over from scratch.  So that is what we did and were really happy with the new company who talked us through the process, our options, and as a bonus we met a pretty amazing person in our community.

We now have a really fun and unique stained concrete floor, fresh new paint, rebuilt stair treads and a fresh new living room space for our family.  I just have to share some pictures!