Yarn Crawl 2017

Last year my friend and I participated in a yarn crawl throughout northeast Ohio.  This year we had planned to take part in the I-75 yarn crawl, but life got in the way.  We decided to hold our own over Labor Day weekend.  We visited 7 shops between Dayton and Cincinnati.

Our first stop took us to 2nd Street Public Market in downtown Dayton.    We were looking for an alpaca shop that was only open 3 days a week.  What we found was a market with full of different vendors, ranging from various foods to wood crafts.  This proved to be a very pleasant surprise.  We didn't buy any alpaca products there, but we did walk out with a huge pretzel, a loaf of artisan bread and natural skin products.  When I got home I promptly told my husband that we need to take a trip over there sometime.

The next stop was another shop in Downtown Dayton named Strings Attached.  It was a cute little shop with very friendly staff.  I picked up a Crazy Zauberball.

From there we headed south.  We attempted to visit a shop in Centerville, but found the place was not yet open for the day and had a "Going Out of Business" sign on the door.  So from there we headed further south to Springboro to visit Wooly Bully.

I had visited Wooly Bully a couple years ago and was impressed with the selection in the shop.  Cindy found some linen on the discount shelf that she couldn't pass up.  I found a set of bent double pointed needles to try.

While in Springboro we walked down a block to a cute boutique.  I couple shirts caused my credit card to jump out of my wallet.  Darn if I don't know how that happens!!

Lambiken's Hideaway in Hamilton was our next stop.  I've known about this shop for years but have never made it there.  There were several rooms to explore.  I came away with a couple skeins of  Villa.  This yarn is so soft and lovely.  It will someday become a cowl or scarf.

Silk Road was the next stop.  This is a hybrid yarn-fabric shop in northwest Cincinnati.  I found the cutest knit fabric that was imprinted with Charles Harper cardinals.  Charles Harper was an artist that lived in Cincinnati.  His art featured animals, sometimes in a comical setting.  The fabric was too cute to pass up and will become a long sleeved shirt for me.

In the picture above I also show some fabric that I will use to make another shirt.  The raccoon print was purchased at a shop in Columbus and was also too cute to pass up.

After a stop for lunch and a dash into Busken's Bakery, one of the things I miss by not living in Cincinnati anymore, we headed to Hank.  Hank was the yarn shop closest to the nursing home where my mom lived during her last 17 months.  I would stop there and pick up yarn for a project to knit while I sat with her.  This was Cindy's first visit there and I think she fell in love with it as much as I do.  I came away with two patterns and yarn to go with them.  First was a Laceball to make a Holey Scarf.

Second was Elite linen for Stonecrop Top.

Our last yarn stop was Fiber Optic.  There I picked up 4 ounces of an alpaca/silk blend.  It is going into my spinning stash.  I also picked up another spindle for my spinning wheel since most of my others are occupied.

Slaying Dragons

Drachenfels has been tamed.  This project was finished and blocked last weekend.  It ended up being quite large and lovely.

The colors are true in this picture, but it give you an idea of how big it blocked out to be.

Here the colors are more accurate, but still a bit too blue in the photo.  This was pre-blocking.  Overall I am very pleased with how it turned out.  It will be a snugly thing to wrap up in on chilly days.

There are a few other things on the needles.  Here is Prevarication.  This is one of the patterns in the Curls 2 book.  The pattern repeat is fairly easy to follow, but I think I messed up the starting sequence.  I figure it doesn't matter as long as I am consistent.  My intention for this is to just learn the Curls technique.  Maybe later I can apply it to my own lace pattern.

Last year my friend and I went to a local fiber festival.  I bought a yarn bundle in a gorgeous green color.  One skein was fingering weight and the other was a lace weight halo.  At the time I wasn't sure what I would do with it.  Along came the Combinatorics KAL.  This KAL called for two coordinating yarns.  I thought I'd try using this yarn bundle for this project.  This is a bit of a gamble since the KAL is a mystery, but so far I think it is working out nicely. 

Here is how the two yarns are playing together.

Here is Clue 1.

It is now a long weekend, made longer by taking today off.  It is a cool, cloudy day thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Harvey.  The rest of my day is going to be spent making soup, watching college football and knitting.  My perfect day!!

9 Time Ironman

My husband has incredible determination, especially when it comes to physical endeavors.  When he makes up his mind that he wants to do something, he makes it his top priority and goes for it.  Yesterday he just completed his 9th Ironman Triathlon.  Things were in doubt for a while.  He injured his shoulder while we work working on the basement repair.  A trip to the ortho doc and a shot of cortisone assured him that there wasn't any damage and brought relief to the inflammation.  He made the trip to Santa Rosa and decided that he was going to give it a try.  The kids and I weren't able to make the trip with him, so we watched throughout the day on-line.

In the wee hours of yesterday morning, he gathered with hundreds of like-minded folks and at 6:24 am PDT he started his 10th attempt at an Ironman Triathlon.

About an hour and a half later he emerged from the water.  I sighed a huge sigh of relief.  I was worried his shoulder was going to lock up on him while swimming.  And many bad things could occur if that had happened.

After he headed out on the bike, I went about my day taking my son to IKEA and going with one of my daughters to the Serbian Festival.  I got home just in time to see him finish up the bike and head out on the run.

The Ironman website has a decent athlete tracker so I was able to monitor his progress on the bike and run without a lot of worry.  It appeared that he hit the wall around mile 20 of the run.  His average pace slowed considerably.  With each checkpoint his estimated finishing time slipped.  Between miles 20 and 24.6 it has dropped from 13 minutes/mile to 19 minutes/mile.  The last 1.6 miles took him about 50 minutes.  As a long distance spectator it was getting to be a bit nerve-wracking.   Finally about 10:30 pm PDT he crossed the finish line.  It was a relief to see him in relatively good shape.

He completed his 9th Ironman.  There was one attempt a few years back where he had to drop out during the bike.  He mentioned this morning that this might have been his last.  Honestly, if it is I'll be happy.  I'm proud of him and want him to now focus on things that don't stress his body so much.

While he has been gone this week, I started working on some Christmas presents.  These are becoming a pair of footies for either my son or husband.  I originally thought they would go to one of my daughters, but after a test on my foot I realized they would be too big.  The colors are manly enough to go to either one.

I'm also working on a shawlette for a friend.  It is from one of the Curls books.

Drachenfels is coming along.  Still in the long Color C section.  If I commit to one ridge a day I should have this done by the end of August.

Now it is time to sign off.  Time of another cup of tea and a shower.

Need Yarn Anonymous

Hello, my name is Kathy and I have a yarn problem.  

It is all so pretty and hard to resist.  In any form.  My sister taught me how to spin. Of course, I then bought a wheel and several drop spindles and more fiber than I have time to work with.

Yesterday I learned how to dye.  I see another fiber related hobby in my future.  Not good for the bank account.

My friend Cindy and I took a dyeing workshop from Jeanne of Destination Yarn fame.  The workshop was hosted by YarnByrds at The Nest.  It was a very fun and interesting class.  In the morning we learned how to do hand painted yarns.  Below is a picture of the morning's output.

In the afternoon we learned how to kettle dye and speckle yarn.  At the end of the day we all went home with 4 skeins of beautiful fingering weight yarn.

The only downside of the whole process was when we had to handle the dye powders.  Masks were required.  It was a hot, humid day and even the air conditioning couldn't make wearing these masks comfortable.  Don't I look lovely!

At lunch time Cindy and I browsed the Destination Yarn trunk show.  I bought these cute project bags.  Because of my fiber issues, I need to take the one on the left to heart.

And some Game of Thrones yarn.  My son loves the show.  This skein will become a hat for him.

Not sure about these mini skeins yet.  Maybe socks.

Here are the skeins from the workshop.  This first one is a hand painted made primarily blue-green with yellow-orange and purple-red as accent colors.  This was dyed without adding something to tone down the color.  It is very vibrant.  I think this one will be called Jamaica.

The next skein is another hand painted.  The main color is green with accents of blue-green, yellow-orange and a blend of pink-yellow.  This one is named Parrothead.

The kettle dyed skein has seven colors:  yellow-green, green-yellow-brown, green-brown, grey, blue, blue-grey and blue-black.  This one is named Irish Coast.

The last one is also a kettle dyed but with speckles.  The base color is grey.  Fire Yellow and purple speckles were added to create the speckled effect.  I have to admit that I didn't really love this when it came out of the dye bath.  I thought the colors looked muddy, with too much blending of the yellow and purple.  But now that is is drying and I look at it more, I'm learning to love it.  It seems to have a hidden potential.  This one is named Ugly Duckling.