A Sneak Preview of What's to Come!

During Camp Stitches this past week I was teaching an intensive class on Entrelac and thought it would be fun for the students to see what happens between knitting and felting. So I finished up a project I had started just few days prior to leaving and during our afternoon off, went down to the local Laundromat / Tattoo parlor!! We would have gotten tattoos while we were waiting for the felting process to finish, but they are closed on Mondays.

Any way, I was so thrilled with the result. I wasn't really planning on publishing the pattern right away, but it got such rave reviews, I knew I would need to get it ready for the TNNA show coming up in June.

Although once you get going the knitting is straight forward -- the planning and starting of the project is not for an entrelac novice. The yarn is left over from another project I will also be unveiling at TNNA in a few weeks. It is from Ellen's Half Pint Farm and is her Wool / Mohair blend. It felts up with a boucle' type texture which just adds even more interest.

Watch the Knitability Newsletter to find out when it is available to the public!

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The Garden In Bloom

Today is the bi-annual garden tour for our local garden club. We may be a small town (less than 2000), but we do have some beautiful gardens. I suppose that most folks around here are farmers helps, but nonetheless, it is a very enjoyable day. Some day I hope to have my yard on the tour, but I still have a long way to go before it is ready for the tour.

However, I do have some of the most amazing foxgloves anyone could want. Right now most of them are 6 feet tall and many of them will get taller before they finish their blooming period. Yesterday I was able to snap this photo and was really pleased with myself for getting it! Knitting is fun -- but so is gardening!

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Iris Are Blooming

I have always loved Irises. In particular the Tall Bearded variety. I am sure that it has something to do with the fact that they come in a huge number of variations. Mom and I have brought and traded over the years and I have finally decided to try to track what I have!

I am taking pictures, laminating them and securing them in the ground next to the plant. That way, when I divide them I know what I am dividing and I can keep the ones I want and give away or throw out the rest.

This picture is of a variety called SkyLab (guess when it was developed)! It is definitely one I want to keep -- I have always liked it. Interestingly enough, it was a freebie with a gift I purchased for my mother some years back. Sometimes you just get lucky!

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End of Ski Season

Well -- ski season is just about to come to an end. I was up on the mountain yesterday and actually taught a couple of classes, but the snow is getting thin and just as I was leaving a RAIN storm started up. They are hoping to be open through next weekend, but I am not sure that is really going to happen.

It has been a fun year and I hope to doing the part-time ski instructing thing again, but I wish it didn't clash with "knitting season". I have already got almost every weekend in January already booked for 2008. That is a good thing -- but it cuts into my skiing time. Maybe if I just didn't enjoy life quite so much, had fewer interests and was a bit more boring -- NOT!

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Poetry Day

Not too long ago I discovered a great blog site from a children's writer called Gotta Book The thing that got me there was a new form of poetry he coined called Fibs which he described one year ago today. This poetry based on the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8) starting out with 0 and 1 adding them together to get the next number in the sequence. So in honor of Poetry Day, here is my first Fib:

Math
Geek.
Don't get
Poetry.
But I like these Fibs.
Even I can have fun with them!

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