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Let us be grateful to people who make us happy: They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust

What’s better than yarn in the mail? Unexpected yarn (and treats!) in the mail!

I was picking up the mail Friday and there was a note in my mailbox informing me that I had a package at the front desk that was too large to fit in the box. Hmmmmm, I didn’t remember ordering anything recently. Had I ordered something awhile back and forgotten about it?

As soon as I saw the return address on the package I knew it was from my friend Jacqui! I raced through my remaining errands so I could hurry home and open it up. (LOL, that sounds like I’m so self disciplined! I really don’t have that much self-restraint. I likely would have opened it in the car if it hadn’t been well-taped! Note to self: must keep extra pair of scissors in the car from now on).

Inside the box was an envelope marked ‘Open me last’. I dutifully set it aside and one by one pulled out several nicely wrapped packages (in a pretty Asian-style wrapping paper – I really wish I had thought to take a photo before opening all of them) .

Jacqui knows about my extreme addiction fondness for coffee so she sent me some delicious French Roast (and a fair trade coffee too!) ground for my ultra low-tech Melitta cone:



An autographed copy of Stephanie’s most recent book (from her visit to see Stephanie speak at the Tattered Cover):




But wait! There’s more! A treasure trove of treats:


Isn’t the frog bag adorable? Jacqui couldn’t have known this ahead of time but that is one of the frog designs I looked at when trying to find tree frog samples for my graphic designer while we were working on my business logo!

And sock yarn! I love Opal and I’m looking forward to trying the Knit Picks sock yarn too. A new Chibi in blue (one really cannot have enough of these). The journal is perfect too. I always have at least one journal or notepad with me at all times because it seems that these days if I don’t write my thoughts down they’re gone for good! The kitty stickers are so fun – very retro.

Lastly, I opened the envelope to find a lovely note from Jacqui.

The timing couldn’t have been better. My morning had been spent trying to collect money from three stores that haven’t paid me for merchandise delivered in January. It was a bit discouraging to realize that there are some people who evidently do not feel at all bad about ordering and taking delivery of merchandise to sell in their store and then not paying for it.

But here was the other side of things – a kind, thoughtful friend who mailed off a fun package of treats for no reason except to surprise me.

And I was surprised. And delighted. And grateful.

Meow!

I take the cake

The cupcake that is! Friday I came home to find a package waiting for me. Inside was the adorable little cupcake pincushion I won in a drawing on Vallen’s blog.

Isn’t it fun? It is even cuter in person. And the best kind of cupcake; high fiber and zero calorie! I will really enjoy using this.
(ETA: the cupcake is made out of felted knitting and felt. It is incredibly soft)

Vallen also tucked in one of the clever fabric flower pins she makes (you can see more of them here )

This gift is made even more amazing by the fact that I never win anything. Nothing*. Every drawing I enter is pretty much the triumph of hope over experience. Of course, I guess I really can’t say that any more. Do you think this is a turning point with my luck?

Thanks so much, Vallen!



*I know what you’re going to say Vanessa, and that knitting bag does not count because you were the one who won it not me. I didn’t say that I don’t have incredibly generous friends who give me the door prize that they won!

SuperWool Sunday

Preparations got underway early at Casa del Chaos for SuperWool Sunday celebrations.

A quick trip to Starbucks provided the caffeine-fueled ambition needed for the early morning trip to Costco for appropriate snackage supplies for the event. Some basic amount of housework was performed in order maintain the illusion that we are not complete slobs somewhat tidy (family members were coached in appropriate intervention techniques should a guest appear to be inadvertently opening a closet door on the way to the bathroom).

Toby (aka Spazzy McTerrierpants) did his part by barking wildly for several minutes after Holly and Miss O’s arrival just in case we hadn’t noticed that there were actually guests standing in our living room. (what did we ever do without him?)

We quickly got down to business with SuperWool Sunday activities.

First we all went through the Magic Stash Box** that came home with me from Madrona courtesy of Sam. Selections were made and re-stock contributions were added to the box.

After some snacks to keep up our energy, it was time for the knitting and spinning portion of the day.

Miss O swatched for her first sweater and received some tips from Mom in how to alter the pattern to fit her swatch in lieu of knitting a second swatch to meet the pattern’s gauge.

Sorry for the sucky picture - I really need to get a scanner for this kind of stuff

After the details were worked out, Miss O cast on for her first sweater.

Holly worked on Miss O’s birthday sweater for awhile (Bed & Breakfast Pullover, Interweave Knits Winter 2003, in Beaverslide Yarn) and then got to work spinning sock yarn from her Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks to Shoe spinning kit.

This is where the internet needs ‘Touch-O-Vision’. This Beaverslide Yarn really needs to be touched to be experienced! It’s absolutely glorious. And the colors have great depth too.

Oops! I forgot to take a picture of Holly's spinning until was starting to pack up her wheel!

And I worked on finishing my Brocade Wrap (Jamieson’s Shetland Knitting Book 2, page 94, in Elann Peruvian Highland Wool yarn)

not in Beaverslide yarn unfortunately

I am still undecided as to whether to keep knitting one or two more repeats to use up all the yarn or follow Miss O’s sage advice to just bind off and finish it at the end of this particular pattern repeat (each repeat is 24 rows). I’m thinking at this point it may be the latter. This project has been in progress for too long.

Only too soon the day was over. If only every Sunday could be SuperWool Sunday!


Hey, did you know there was some big football event today with a similar name? Eerie.

**The Magic Stash Box is a box of traveling yarn (or several boxes in this case) that moves among group members. When it arrives at your house you go through it and remove the treasures that you want and then add your unwanted treasure contributions back to the box before shipping it off to the next person on the list. It's great fun.

Madrona Report

(I am finally on the mend and have been cleared for limited computer access and blogging by the rest enforcer my loving husband. This is a conditional release however and privileges will be revoked if I relapse due to failure to exercise moderation…)

My absolute favorite part of Madrona is visiting with friends from both near and far that I don’t get to see nearly often enough.

Beyond that it’s hard to pick favorites at Madrona because the event itself is just wonderful from start to finish and the classes, in my experience, are always excellent. The only bad part of Madrona is waiting a whole year for the next one!

That being said, if I had to pick one class from the entire weekend as my favorite then Susanna Hansson’s Lapland Hand Garments: The mittens from Rovaniemi would be that class.

When the Madrona class listing first came out I had googled ‘rovaniemi mittens’ and found Lene’s lovely mittens . I was quite intrigued to learn this interesting intarsia in the round technique though the reference in the class description of using “11 small balls of yarn” sounded a bit daunting. I was thrilled when Vanessa and I both managed to get in to the class before it filled up.

Day One – The Mittens of Rovaniemi
After some interesting historical and geographical background we were able to admire, fondle and even try on the sample mittens. I read Lene Alve’s blog regularly and so I have admired her knitting online many times, but it doesn’t compare to seeing her absolutely perfect and beautiful knitting in person. Lene is an artist and an absolutely inspiring knitter.

The mittens were very difficult to part with once on the hand!

The first part of the class involved learning the technique with Cascade 220 and larger needles (I’m new at this blogging thing and was so intent on my knitting I forgot to take a photo of this part). Once we felt comfortable the process in the larger gauge we were able to pick out the colors for our finer gauge cuff.

The technique was a bit more challenging in the finer gauge and smaller needles (I believe I overheard Stephanie tell Susanna that the larger gauge sample made one a little over-confident and the finer gauge knitting was a more humbling experience)

Sample mitten in progress

This had to have been the quietest knitting class I’ve ever been in. There was no chatting or cross-talk in the room - everyone was heads-down and focused on their knitting!

Of course, Vanessa, being the lightning fast knitter that she is, was miles ahead of me towards the end of class. Here she is knitting away:

(note the difference in magnet placement on our charts!)

The mitten round-up at the end of class. My mitten is the blue and green one on the left.

Usually by the end of class I’m ready for a bit of a break before continuing on with my sample (for example, the break for my Estonian lace sample has been going on for over a year now…), but I think this technique is quite addictive. After class Vanessa and I went straight to our hotel room and kept knitting, only stopping because we had to leave for dinner with friends.

Susanna Hansson is simply an excellent teacher and an absolutely lovely person to spend the day with. I’m anxious to take another class from her and am looking forward to attending the the Nordic Knitting Conference in October if I can.

I may have been a bit over-enthusiastic in relaying my excitement about the class to Susanna repeatedly as I saw her throughout the weekend. I’m nothing if not enthusiastic... (Sorry, Susanna, I wasn’t really stalking you. Thanks for being really nice as I gushed about the mitten class and expressed my disappointment in not signing up for the Bohus class again and again. I’m sure by Saturday you were thinking that the hotel was maybe a wee bit too small and, my goodness, can’t they screen these people somehow?)

You can see more reports on this class here, here, and here.

Day 2 – Morphing Cables and Mentoring
My morning class on Friday was the Morphing Cables class with Fiona Ellis. I enjoyed listening to Fiona talk about her inspiration for cables and techniques to use in order to achieve different cable forms. I think I would have done better with a slightly more structured class on this particular day. I was starting to feel decidedly unwell at this point and not overly creative. The unstructured approach left me a bit at loose ends (no pun intended) until the Sudafed finally kicked in close to the end of class. I enjoyed chatting with my neighbors though and seeing their lovely cable creations, Lara’s was particularly lovely. My own was quite hideous and there will be no photographic evidence presented here.

My afternoon class was a mentoring session with Stephanie. Holly and I had signed up just to hang out and listen to Stephanie. Class introductions revealed that the majority of attendees had been of the same mind (I was relieved not to have to be the first one to admit it during the ‘around the table’ introductions). Among other things, Stephanie shared a lot of good information about decreasing for set in sleeves and planning decrease ratios based on body frame (complete with drawn flip chart diagrams!). As usual, Stephanie was highly entertaining and educational at the same time.

For some strange reason, I decided to bring my Rovaniemi sampler to work on during the class. In retrospect, I have no idea what I was thinking other than I really wanted to finish it up. I already knew that I didn’t feel well, that the process takes a lot of concentration and there was limited table space all of which made this knitting a horrible candidate for the afternoon’s work.

So of course you know what happened. I looked up at something Stephanie had written on the flip chart and when I looked down one of my 00 needles had slipped a few stitches off. I tried to fix it in class and succeeded in only making it worse. I set it aside and picked up my sock but too late the damage was done! Dropped stitches with this technique have some real negative progress involved in fixing it. To be continued...

Day 3 – Introduction to Fair Isle Design and Colorwork
Saturday’s class was an introduction to Fair Isle design with Janine Bajus. Another excellent class! As a regular reader of Janine’s blog, it was quite exciting to see her lovely designs in person and hear about her approach to designing Fair Isle projects.

This was a 3-day workshop crammed into a single day. Lots of color theory and hands-on color exercises, including interpreting an inspiration photo in yarn. Janine gave instruction on two-color knitting for attendees not familiar with the technique while more advanced members worked on selecting yarn to make their sample cap. The class included two hat patterns and two ounces of yarn from Janine’s really amazing stash of Shetland yarn.

I would love to take the 3-day version of this workshop!

I did not take as many photos as I should have during this class because by Saturday I was feeling decidedly lousy. I wish I’d gotten a photo of Janine’s huge bag of Shetland bobbins. She has a sample of every single Jamieson’s and Jamieson and Smith yarn available. Invaluable if you are planning to design your own Fair Isle garments according to Janine.

You can read Janine's report report here (with all the pictures I neglected to take!).

Yarn and Fiber Marketplace
I was really quite restrained at the Madrona marketplace, especially if we decide to completely ignore the fact that my actual goal was to buy nothing…

My sole marketplace acquisitions:

Birdseye Maple Spindle by SpindleWood Co

BFL and Merino-Tencel rovings in “Autumn” by Chameleon Colorworks
Mulberry Silk-Superfine Merino roving in “Farmhouse” by Blue Moon Fiber Arts

The Chameleon Colorworks rovings will be spun up as my February contribution to my Spin To Knit swap pal.

The Blue Moon Fiber Arts roving is just because I couldn’t resist (I tried, really, but resistance is futile). That’s a dangerous booth to be in!

I also bought some felted flowers from Una at Wooly Walkers (these are gifts for some friends at work).

I have to admit that the lack of purchases probably had more to do with me feeling sick most of the weekend and not from any real self-control on my part.

Toby inspects and approves the Madrona purchases

Friends!
One of these times I’ll remember to take more photos of the evening get-togethers. The trouble is I’m so busy having a good time that I forget to snap photos. Here are a few that I did remember to take:

clockwise from front left

Mel, Holly, Marti, Vanessa, Jessica

Lara, Kerry, Barb, and Sam from the FT group

Angela! (looking much better in my hat than I do)

Jessica and Marti

clockwise from bottom front

TMK (back of head), Ryan, Jessica, Marti, Rebecca, Vanessa, Peggy

I can’t wait for next year!