yarn shop visit

This summer we vacationed in Ely, Minnesota. While we were there, I stopped in the local yarn shop, Sisu Designs. What a wonderful shop. Lots of yarns, knitted samples and accessories. I look forward to visiting next summer! 

continuing the sojourn

These are some fish created by an artist from an event called Art Prize in my city. They were sweet, changing colors as you walked past them. I am still knitting!

Christmas Stocking Exchange

I received a beautiful felted stocking and thoughtful goodies from my Ravelry International Christmas Stocking swap partner. Check out these pictures. She put beautiful pearl buttons on the snowflake.

Market Bag swap

Yesterday I received my Market Bag from jcoop. She is a talented knitter. I love it! The main yarn has colors in it and I like the way she incorporated the stripes. I'm still working on her bag. I kept making a mistake on the pattern. Frogged with it, restarted three, maybe four times. Thankfully my mom figured out what I was doing wrong. I hope to mail hers on Monday. Here's a picture along with the thoughtful goodies.

Wee Sock Swap

Last night I started my first wee sock for my first swap. I even used DP needles (I usually work with magic loop) because I didn't have that small of a circular needle. I'm using wool yarn from a woman in Muskegon, Michigan. It has blues and greens. Reminds me of summer. I'll finish it at my son's baseball game tonight and get it in the mail on Thursday. It looks so cute!

I've also been making an afghan, wool and mohair mix, working on it at my sons' high school and college baseball games. I'll post pictures. Good thing we had a very cool spring. Several games I was really happy to have additional lap coverage to stay warm.

Snow Day

Today was a beautiful winter day with basically all the schools in the area closed. I got caught up on my work, so I'm looking forward to snuggling up tonight and working on my son's hat. He's wondering when I'm going to finish.

I'm posting my first picture. It's from our trip to Detroit in July to a Tiger's game. It was so hot that day. We were near the top of the stadium, luckily, because we were shaded by the awning that runs around the top of the stadium.

Update

The knitting continued even though the blog has been idle. I've completed a second pair of socks, knit and felted two purses, read several knitting books, and I'm finally working on a hat for my son out of some really wild wool yarn.

I've started the Monkey socks but had to rip them back to the ribbing. For some reason, I kept getting off on the pattern. I let a few mistakes go by, but then it became obvious that I needed to begin again. In my youth I would have either charged on ahead or been too frustrated and put it away, maybe for good. Sometimes I would give whatever the project was to my mom and she would get me back on track. That was nice. Now I guess I can do that for myself. I'm in Michigan and she's in Florida.

We spent the Thanksgiving weekend in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan and on the way home we stopped at a cute yarn shop in Mackinaw City called Cynthia's. My DH came in with me and found yarn and a pattern for a felted oven mitt that he thought was totally cool. So that is on my to do list for him. I didn't realize that wool was naturally fire retardent. I also heard that repeated on EZ's DVD for one of the reasons she knits with wool, especially good for kid wear.

My son is on the HS swim team, so there will be time to work on some projects! I'll post some pictures.