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One of my all time favorite artists' books is True Colors, a book that documents a round robin among some of my favorite collage artists, based upon different color schemes. The book has been around for years and the concept has been repeated many times, but I was still really happy when we decided to do one while we were all together for classes with Catherine Moore.
It seems way too quick, but I've Just finished working in the last book, which belongs to Kathy McElroy.
Ollie loves to pick up pretty leaves, in between skipping rocks in the water and running as fast as he can along the path.
My yarn is going some place I've never gone: SAFF. That's the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair. It takes place just outside of Asheville, North Carolina every fall. I've always wanted to go, but the timing is bad with children in school and all.
This year, though, some of my yarn is going! Some of my sock yarn is going with the very lovely Brittany from Knitwitch.
If you get up there (October 24 to 26), make sure you stop by the booth and say hi to my yarn. I hope it won't be lonely without me!
Knitwitch makes some fabulous yarn bowls too -- pretty little hand thrown pottery bowls that keep your yarn from tangling while you're knitting.
I bet it's going to be a lot of fun! I wish I could go along with my yarn!
Tropical Storm Fay is messing with my yarn dyeing mojo. She has dumped 3 1/2 inches of rain (much needed I might add, but still...) on us in the last day. This means that freshly dyed and rinsed yarn is drying about as quickly as it would if it was just sitting out there in a monsoon.
The slow down annoys me, because I can't do much once the drying racks on the covered porch are full. But, it has given me the opportunity to catch up on reskeining this weekend, so I will have lots of pretty yarn to show you over the next few todays.
Today, it's the new Seasilk yarn colorways for fall. This is a yarn spun from Seacell, a fiber made from seaweed, and silk. It would not be an exaggeration to say that if it was a man, you would want to marry it. It's really wonderful.
From left to right, the colorways are Clover, Tarantula, Reflection and Retro-Kitchen. I'm going to wait until my new lighting set up for photography gets here to take proper pictures and make this yarn available at Elliebelly. There are 15 to 20 skeins of each colorway, so hopefully this will last awhile and there won't be a mad rush for it, but if you just can't wait, it's fine to e-mail me for it and I'll be happy to send it out.
I had someone e-mail me about this yarn last week. She linked me to a really beautiful Clapotis that LisaB (Oliphant Knits on Ravelry) made using this yarn. LisaB/Oliphant, who is clearly a master knitter, made the Clapotis in just a week and it's beautiful! You really should go check out her blog to see all of her beautiful knitting!
I've been a really bad blogger, and I apologize!
I've been off doing lots of fun things, like shopping for my oldest's dorm room and getting the littles off to the first day of school. I've also been doing some downright dull things too. Long overdue yardwork, like the dreaded task of cleaning out and thatching the tall garden iris.
Even that mundane work uncovers some beautiful surprises, though.
Anytime I work in the garden my dyeing muse goes into overtime and I find that I have to translate the colors onto fiber. The large yarn storage unit in the dining room sideboard in our dining room is overflowing with yarn waiting to be reskeined. It makes me think we have a late-summerl harvest of yarn, instead of melons or squash.
And knitting time! It seems like everyone we know is suddenly pregnant, so I have been spending a lot of time on baby sweaters. This one, in organic cotton, has a fun construction. The cardigan part of the sweater is knit in one piece, sleeves and all.
The lace panel buttons onto the body. I'm about three-quarters done with the panel and clearly in love with this sweater. The yarn (Blue Sky Alpaca) is very soft and a pleasure to knit with and the lace is simple enough that I haven't done it any major damage, even while laughing through the Daily Show and Colbert. I can't wait to finish this one and see how it looks!
Remember the grainy photo from last week and the promise of a bit of yarny goodness to the person who guessed what it was? Here are the results.
There were two many good answers to have only one winner, so I’ll engage in a bit of stash reduction and send yarn for all of the following answers.
Correct Answers:
Hmm -- it's either the yarn you took with you on your vacation, or it's the yarn you bought along the way.......
Posted by: Jen P. | August 07, 2008 at 11:29 AM
(Jennifer, you know the Judge well enough to know he wasn’t letting me near a yarn store on this trip after my “excesses” on the Arkansas trip – mmmm Alpaca!)
Yep, I'm guessing it's the projects you took with you on vacation.
Posted by: Knit Witch | August 07, 2008 at 01:15 PM
This one is very close too; and I like the image:
it's your dream basket... a mix of WIP and projects that are crying out to be cast-on.
Posted by: Rita | August 07, 2008 at 01:55 PM
It was actually the basket of all of my knitting works in progress (WIPs) that I took on vacation last week:
• The Manos Silk Shrug
• Juliet
• Baby Bolero
There was also yarn for a few projects that I wanted to cast on.
I managed to start an organic cotton baby sweater.
I also swatched for the Chantal Sweater in Rowan's Big Row (for those of you who noticed, Juliet is smaller than when I left due to a nagging issuing involving me not realizing until lace repeat four that I had misread line 2 of the pattern. Chantal's relative ease may be just what I need to get me through Juliet)
And, I felt compelled to bring along some “extra” yarn and my Option needles because I live in fear of running out. Some leftover Shibui I want to do Saartje’s Baby Booties out of, some of my own yarn to knit myself a hat, and a few other things because really, what if it had rained all week or something?
Next is my favorite answer, because it is so true!
It's a basket of time well spent.
Joanne
Posted by: Joanne Huffman | August 08, 2008 at 08:44 AM
And this post really stopped me in my tracks, because it’s the answer that should have been. I wonder if I could start a prison knitting ministry?
Hi Joyce,
Well, it's quite obvious that these are odd balls of yarn that you are donating to a women's prison so that the inmates (is that a politically correct term?)can learn to knit. This way, when they re-enter society, they can spend time knitting and not revert to their former, ill-advised illegal pursuits.
Judy
Posted by: Judy | August 07, 2008 at 07:20 PM
If your comment is included in this post, will you email me with your address?
(joyce at elliebelly dot com) Joanne is getting fabric because I know she makes art dolls. Here is some of the other yarn I’m sending out.
As many of you guessed in the last post comments, we've been off on vacation. (More on the winner when we get settled back in -- I liked the comments so much I thought I would send something to the most accurate poster and the most fun one as well).
I thought that despite the absence of internet coverage in our cottage, I could post using my Iphone -- it seems to access the net no matter where I am. And, I thought I was posting while we were gone. Apparently though, the posts hung up somewhere in never never land. I'll have to try to recapture them and show you vacation knitting later this week.
In the meantime, here is a bit of what we did -- probably my favorite part of our trip.
This is what a giraffe looks like, coming in through the sunroof on a minivan.
Here is the Judge, having a close encounter with a steer.
And, rare vacation pictures of me, here feeding a llama (and wondering if he would let me stroke his coat -- he didn't). Below, I'm feeding a buffalo. Can you believe that tongue? And wow, can they drool!
The kids absolutely adore this last-day-of-vacation ritual. They love feeding the deer, seeing the tiny baby warthogs, and they particularly enjoy their dad clowning around.
Thanks for indulging me with this splurge of family photos. Back to knitting (I made progress on Juliet and the Debbie Bliss Shrug, and cast on another baby sweater) and art later this week.
Can you guess what this is? I mean aside from the fact that it's obviously a basket of yarn.
Post your guess below and I'll send whoever comes closest a skein of yarn (or fibers if you're an artist not a knitter).
Shameless. I've been cheating.
I've knit up the entire body of a baby sweater without even mentioning that I was casting on, let alone showing you pictures in progress.
In my defense, let me say that this little bolero knits up very quickly -- and it's so simple you can even knit it with a migraine. And, adorable! Beyond words adorable.
Here are all of the pieces, done and sort of stupidly artfully placed together so you get an idea of the final design.
There is a little eyelet motif on the back that I just love.
It knits up all in one piece, except for the sleeve, which are done separately.
All I have to do is sew the shoulder seams, set in the sleeves, and then knit the edging (picking up the stitches left live at the neck along the way).
My only concern is that the sleeves look a bit big, um, actually huge, in the circumference. I compared them to an actual baby today and they were ginormous. I'm hoping it's some brilliance in the pattern that I'm missing. If not, it won't be horrible to rip them out and reknit them a bit smaller.
The pattern is Leigh Radford's Baby Bolero from the One Skein book. I'm having dreams of knitting a second one up (it seems like everyone I know is pregnant all of a sudden) in cashmere, or perhaps a silk cotton blend. It's a fun, and very satisfying pattern, because it takes shape so quickly!
