Half a Century

....yep - that's me. I've crawled, walked, sung, played, performed, shucked, jived, taught, knitted, spun, and loved my way through 50 years of life. Here's hoping for many more years of fun....however, I hope we can delete the 'crawling' from the list!

Many friends helped me mark the B-I-G day:

• last week, Janice & Ken cooked a wonderful dinner for me and another January b'day friend, Larry.
• all of my 4th graders made me cards.
  

• Janice & Kim took me to lunch....(there was an ant in my soup - lol).

• I enjoyed reading 40+ Facebook greetings :) - thank you all!

• DH & I enjoyed a nice lunch together.

• ...and today, we have a day off from school due to heavy rains and flooding. :)

There were nice gifts, too and I'm only posingt the fiber-related photos. Last year's vacuum cleaner was an exception...lol.

Here's a yummy thing - a Ken Ledbetter spindle. It's made of purple heart wood and lacewood and has an inlay of some sort of crushed stone and a metallic wafer or disc. It's very lovely and spins well, too - so it's functional art and a gift from DH.


There was one frustration on my big b'day. It involved and still involves this.


This is the beginning of Clue 2 of The Enchanted Wood KAL. I'm now starting row 9 - after knitting-tinking-knitting-tinking-knitting-tinking all day yesterday....and it's not even a hard pattern! After getting off to a rocky start due to errors with the charted pattern, I started following both the corrected chart AND written clues -double checking my numbers with every little section - carefully marking through each section I knitted...and I've still ended up with a shortage or overage of 1-2 stitches on each row...gaaaa.....it's making me crazy! I will NOT frog....no trips to the pond b/c it's too cold for a swim! It's just going to be what it will be. When I post the final blocked shawl photo, please don't look too closely!

2010 Thus Far

For one reason or another (travel, sports, laziness, etc...) I have not yet blogged this year. Time to get to it because there's a lot of exciting knitting news going on.

First of all, I joined a Ravelry group called 10 Shawls in 2010. I figured it would be a good way to knit down my yarn stash a little and learn a lot more about lace knitting. I have completed one shawl thus far - so I'm on track! I used Wollmeise WD 80/20 in Der Letze Versuch to make the Traveling Woman shawlette. Here are the results:



The colors in the yarn are amazing - all different shades of purple. Here's a closer look.



Traveling Woman is a really easy lace pattern. It was very predictable and I enjoyed knitting it very much!

In other Ravelry-related news, I'm also knitting in The Unique Sheep's Enchanted Wood shawl KAL. I just finished the first clue this morning. Here it is in their Luxe yarn, custom-dyed for me by Kelly. The color is called Winter Sunset.



This yarn came in a set of six skeins in a gradient colorway which The Unique Sheep ladies call Gradience. My next skein will be mostly apricot with a little brown and lavender. Lovely!

...and because life isn't exciting enough, I'm also getting ready for the Ravelympics' events with Team Cindy....see?



I'm planning to work on finishing some WIPs - one in particular which I will not mention because I've mentioned it enough before.....really....enough said.

(many of the above hyperlinks access Ravelry pages. If you are not a Ravelry member will you not be able to see them....sorry. :( )

As you can see, 18 days into 2010, there's been lots of knitting going on. Here's hoping that holds true for the rest of the year!

The Day After Christmas

We did it! We survived last week's BIG snow and had a wonderful Christmas, despite the last minute rush to get gifts and the horrible roads in C'ville. Because I was basically snowed in last weekend, I managed to finish this.

The pattern is called Victorine and it's designed by Cindy Guggemos. You can find it HERE on Ravelry. This one is for a co-worker. I have plans to knit another one for me as part of the 10 Shawls in 2010 group, also on Ravelry.

This is the first non-snowy Saturday we've had in three weeks. A little later, I'm going to brave the shopping centers in W'boro for size-related gift exchanges - but for right now I'm content to work on this..

...the oldest WIP in the history of the world....I've blogged about this one at least twice before, so I'm a little embarrassed to even mention it...so I'll stop now. :)

Not everyone needs to go out to have fun. The cats have plenty to do. This has been their second favorite past time this past week - the first being napping, of course!

I think I'll add napping to my list for later on today - hope you can, too!

Snowed In!

It seems that we're a bit snowed in here at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It's been snowing HARD since about 3:30 yesterday and the forecast calls for continued heavy snow throughout today.


Snowbound! Yippee! Since I can't finish Christmas shopping and our party for this evening had to canceled, I think I'll turn my attention to other finishing and preparatory details.

First, we'll finish de-cluttering the dining room and kitchen. Then I'll put on a big pot of beef stew to simmer all day. After that I'm planning to indulge in fiber related activities like winding these for the 10 Shawls in 2010 and The Enchanted Woods KAL.


Maybe I'll finish this today - fingers crossed - so I can get back to my Bobbie gloves and Circular Vest.

I'm not going to panic about not having our Christmas shopping complete. It will take care of itself once we can get out again and into town. I hope you will enjoy a safe, warm, and wonderfully fibery day - even if you're not snowed in!

Oh Wollmeise Tree!

We're caught up in the pre-Christmas vortex here. Between the boys' activities, my school activities, and concerts there's been no time to even decorate our tree. Today I thought, why not decorate it with some of my favorite yarn? So while waiting for the shop update, I stuck a few colorful skeins of Wollmeise on it! Doesn't it look happy and bright? Who needs tinsel and ornaments when there's a box of Wollmeise around? Here's wishing you and yours a joyful Christmas season.

Marvelous Mail Monday

I don't usually post during the week, but apparently today was Marvelous Mail Monday. This deserves a post. What a surprise to have recent trades and purchases all converge in my mailbox at the same time. Somehow our mail carrier managed to fit all of this into our smallish box.


First up -Corgi Hill Farm roving in merino, bamboo, and Firestar....and it's named after oneo f my favorite drinks - Gin and Tonic.


Next, a Wollmeise trade. This is Turkis and Skarabus in100%-


And last, the beautiful custom-dyed yarn from Kelly at The Unique Sheep for the Enchanted Woods KAL, beginning January 10th.


Kelly based the colorway on this photo-


Didn't she do a great job of capturing the colors? Excuse me while I go play with it and wait for January to roll around :)

Cozy Saturday

It was suppose to snow today. Actually, it did snow - all around us....up the road.....down the road.....to our east, west, north, and south.....just not here. You may insert imaginary images of snowy lanes and forest paths here. It was very disappointing, but it was still a cozy day for knitting. After the food bank reports were all done, I settled in to knit a bit and play with other fibery items. To brighten the day, I made a bouquet - a spindle bouquet!

I hope it brightens your day too! ....and here's hoping for more productive snow events in the near future!