Welcome Spring Potluck

We had a great turnout and fabulous food for the Welcome Spring Potluck. What good cooks in our midst! We had another rowdy game of Knitionary (with a charades option). I'm sorry we don't have a picture of Heather's "Superman" charade. She's quite a good flyer!

Phyllis read a wonderful poem, that several wanted the words to. It's got a Zen-like call, a good reminder of the season, and anytime: to be still once in a while.

Think Like A Tree

Soak up the son
Affirm life's magic
Be graceful in the wind
Stand tall after a storm
Fell refreshed after it rains
Grow strong without notice
Be prepared for each season
Provide shelter to strangers
Hang tough through a cold spell
Emerge renewed at the first signs of
spring
Stay deeply rooted while reaching for
the sky
Be still long enought to
hear your own leaves rustling.

Karen I Shragg

Spring is here!

Spring is not only here in the form of daffodils and crocuses, but we've got spring yarns too! I love the arrangement of pastel Cottonwood (Fibra Natura from Universal Yarn). It's 100% organic cotton dyed with natural dyes, except for the colors which do not require dyes.

Knitters are using this yarn for babies as it's very soft. It knits up at about 5.5 sts to the inch on a size 3-5 needle. We've also had it knit up in Y2Knit's Flirty Tank. You won't find a lovelier yarn for a facecloth, for baby or mom.

Keeping the spring theme, Jill and I purchased a couple new yarns at the trade show in January. Cotton Blossom from Farm House Yarn is a worsted weight cotton with a rayon twist which gives a nice sheen. We'll have our pattern, Star Mesh, available soon. It's lovely in this yarn and perfect for summer wear.

Another new yarn is Evolution from Chameleon Colorworks. Evolution is a stretched Merino. The stretching is a mechanical process, which makes the wool shiny and soft. It doesn't have the stretchiness, but seems to have good memory.

We're combining these two yarns in an Italian Summer Shawl pattern--the combos are fabulous. We'll share soon!

Free Form Knitting

Sandy D'Onofrio and I have been working on some free form knitting in our spare time (she has much more of it than I do!). Her piece, pictured at left, is "Miami." The colors were so Miami-ish and she added textures, beads, pockets for seashells, etc. It's quite a magnificent wall hanging.

My piece actually has "growths" on both sides, but they aren't visable here. I ended up draping this on a curtain rod and around the radiator pipes in the classroom area. It's much better in person!

The nice thing about free form knitting is there's no pattern, no right or wrong result and no known outcome! We mostly knit in short rows, creating wedges that gave the pieces dimension. Then we added pieces as we went, just knitting them in. Sometimes I would have 6 needles in my piece at once, working in different directions. I did no sewing.

Some of the pieces were knit first, then joined as I knitted.

Teaching in Ohio

I drove to the Youngstown, OH area on Friday with my daughter Rose. I taught at the Western Reserve Knitting Guild on Saturday to about 32 knitters and at the Witty Knitters of Warren Sunday to 16 knitters, four who were repeats from the previous day. Morning class was Continental Knitting; afternoon was backwards knitting and entrelac.

I was so impressed by the intensity of everyone both days. The knitters did not have to pay for this class or their meal--it was part of their annual program that was paid from earnings from Knitters Fantasy, an all day knitting conference and market that the guilds host. Yet they came, they sat, and they knitted like their lives depended on it.

Both guilds were excellent hosts and while all the knitters were experienced, they presented enough of a teaching opportunity to keep me more than fully engaged the entire time.

It was fun to visit Kay Thompson's Knit Wit Yarn Shop in Salem. I've known Kay for a few years as a fellow vendor at Knitter's Day Out and as a customer at TNNA. Her husband, Barry, has taken one of my business classes, so it was good to see him too. She stocked up on Y2Knit patterns and sold Rose a ball of yarn and some needles as she had forgotten the instructions for the project she brought. We all enjoyed a good dinner at the Green Rose Bistro behind the shop.

I'll post pictures as soon as I have some, since they are on the cameras of others.

Punk sweater

Sandy D'Onofrio from Shepherdstown, WV is a prolific knitter and precise pattern tester (we use her often, so if you work a Y2Knit pattern without errors, you may have Sandy to thank for that!). Sandy has a college-age granddaughter that is the lucky recipient of this sweater. Too cool!

Helmet liners head to Iraq

John, the army guy who inspired our local helmet liner project came by on Thursday with his wife Melissa. They took away 150 helmet liners that he will take to Iraq. More hats have been delivered (like probably another 100), so if anyone knows a direct contact we can ship to, that would be great. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

Back from TNNA!

Jill and I had a great time at TNNA, as usual. We didn't get out to enjoy the lovely southern CA weather, as many have asked about. It was nice, but we only were outside in the morning and evening on our walk to or from the convention center.

In addition to setting up and manning our booth for three days (we are on our feet from 10-6!), we scout the hall (walking on our feet) looking for new and interesting yarn or related products. Not as much this time as others, though this show is smaller as the yarns being shown are mostly spring/summer yarns, not wool.

We're excited about the organic cotton from Malabrigo. Grown and spun in Peru, it is dyed in the same manner as their merino and the colors are great. We chose an earthy palette and some spring colors. Yummy!
Speaking of Yummy, Universal Yarn has a new sock yarn called Yummy and the colors are just that. We've already designed in their Sea Song (cotton and sea cell) and have worked up several of our patterns in other Fibra Natura yarns distributed by Universal. The design, Sea Song, was in the fashion show and the pattern will be available soon. I don't have a picture yet, though you can glimpse it at the far left of the picture here--a salmon color.

Also in the fashion show was a new design by Jill, MustHave Lace Top. I'll get a picture up soon! It's in Kraemer's Sterling Silk & Silver.

We bought some yarn from a new company, Chameleon Colorworks. We're trying their hand dyed Optim, a stretched merino. More to come on that when we have it on hand.

Other orders included some handmade stitch markers, new sock yarns from Skacel and some cotton from Farmhouse Yarn to support one of our new patterns.

Great to go--great to be home!