I love Autumn!

A small group meets every Wednesday afternoon for knitting, spinning, and mostly, laughing. Since the weather is so nice, we met out on the Riverwalk today. It was beautiful! This is my most favorite time of year. I love Autumn!

From left to right - Erin, Dana, Diana, Juanita

I wasn't paying attention, and I only got a photo of Juanita from the back? Hmmm... must do something about this. You can see the river right behind Dana. I tell you, this is the best thing to happen to this town in a long time - the HARP

So, if you are ever in my neck of the woods, join us! Email me.

This group began as a spinning group, and Erin and I break out our drop spindles at every meeting. Here's Erin,
and here I am, spinning away on this lovely day.

On my spindle is some of that wonderful Suffolk from my friend's barn - many other projects pushed this project to the sidelines, but now, I'm back to it and an nearly done! I've spun the wool using Tammy Rizzo's Ply on the fly technique, and I've spun from rolags, which has made a lovely, boingy, springy, wonderful yarn. I'm knitting a pair of socks for Annette's Mother in Law, using a heavily modified version of Nancy Bush's, Chalet Socks, which is from the book, Folk Socks. I should have them done, soon.

They are coming out good enough, I guess - I'm not thrilled with one of my decisions - to knit the traveling stitches "regular" instead of "twisted" - my reasoning (at the time of the decision, sigh) was that the twisted stitches would render the sock less stretchy, which is true, but it also makes the design less defined. Anyway, they should be done soon, so you can see what I mean.

Also, I used Cat Bordhi's idea for the construction of the toe up sock. Check this out - Houdini Socks - (note the pattern download) - Oh My Gosh, I may never make socks any other way again! I love it! I keep telling you, I'm surrounded by geniuses on all sides! The woman knits an afterthought LEG, rather than an afterthought Heel. How terribly smart! More later....

Get out there and knit/spin in public!

We Won!

Grace and I mopped up at the Colorado State Fair! Check out our pretty ribbons –

Grace won first place and best of show for her skein (click for blog entry about it)

and first place, best of show and superintendent’s choice for her shawl

Notice how her beautiful shawl is oh so casually thrown onto the floor (the dirty floor, ahem!) in such a way that the viewer has no idea as to its shape or size. Sigh.

The nice thing about this contest is that you win pretty ribbons *and* money. Each first place win comes with $15, cash. Well, not exactly cash, they’ll mail out checks next week. So, Grace is $30 richer!

I didn’t do too badly, either. I won first place for my humongous knitted doiley, which you might notice is folded into a lump in order to be displayed,

and I won first place for my skein of bicycle spindle wheel yarn

Yesterday, I collected our items and our ribbons and I made a delightful discovery – my skein also won a non-ribboned prize from the Pikes Peak Weaver’s Guild – they awarded me an additional $25! How cool is that?

It’s fun to take home pretty ribbons.