Knitting at Sunpeaks

I had an amazing time at the Twist of Fate Fair Isle retreat. We spent an entire weekend hangout, knitting, eating and learning Fair Isle techniques.













Everyone got a swag bag with Erynn's logo on it and some yarn to make a fair isle sock project in it. We spent Saturday learning how to make a 'Goofy Bag' which is a great little project that taught all sorts of different fair isle techniques.













Oh, and I almost forgot the shopping! Twist of Fate, Wild Geese & Unwind Yarns were all represented. I bought 2 amazing skiens of 'Walk The Line' a new merino/cashmere/nylon blend. It is amazingly soft. I just love cashmere! I also bought some patterns and buttons.













I think everyone learned something, and we ended up with a cute little bag to show off our new skills:


It was a great weekend. It made me want to sign up for the Fall Spinning retreat even though I dont spin. I was sad to come home...

Cali

Vacation's Eve

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG ~ I am so excited!


Tomorrow morning at 7 am I will get on a Greyhound bus headed for Kamloops BC. I am going to be attending Twist of Fate's Spring Knitting Retreat and I am so extremely excited.


My BFF Shannon, from Unwind Yarns has packed up a HUGE suitcase full of fibre-y goodness for me to sell while I am at the retreat. The yarn is oh-so-pretty. And of course I will be paid in yarn for all my efforts. I have already set aside a beautiful skein of Ocean Cove Merlot.


I should probably try to get some sleep...


But for those of you who are curious here is a little sneak peak of the yarn suitcase:


ttyl,
Cali

Treats For Me!

I am such a spoiled girl today! I went for my first proper bra fitting. I know I am fairly busty but when the nice lady finally left me with some bras I snuck a peak at the tag and... Yikes! G42!!! Holy cats! But I ended up buying 3 beautiful bras. I have never had such pretty bras, lace and embroidery...

Last night I had more treats, I finally gave in to the temptation of the cupcakes at the Safeway bakery. I couldn't eat all the icing, it was a bit much but they were so cute!

The cupcakes kind of made me feel sick, but my new bras make me feel so sexy. Everyone should go for a proper bra sizing...

Cali

Fibres West 2009

Last weekend my Thursday night knitting group, Grimoire's Yarnies, all went on a field trip to Fibres West 2009. I forgot my camera but fortunately, Pixie, remembered hers. I have borrowed some of the lovely pictures she took that day.

We spent a lot of time and money at the Twist of Fate booth. Erynn had some amazing stuff for sale, including a new shipment of yarn from my very favourite; Unwind Yarns!

I bought some Silk Noil and a silk/yak blend from Twist of Fate. I also got some lovely hand dyed 100% Tencel at another booth.

My very favourite purchase was some beautiful alpaca which I had to wind into a ball right there. It took a while as the skein was half a pound!

Shannon finally got her spinning wheel, which resulted in a lot of excitement and crazy running around. Another from our group got an amazing new Namaste bag. And everyone got some pretty new yarn or fibre.

It was a very fun day, I think we all had a great time...

Cali

Happy Valentine's Day!

My husband is not the overly romantic type, we have been together for nearly 11 years now so I don't usually expect much on V-day and neither does he. Well, This year he got me flowers! He even remembered that Gerbera Daisies are my very favourite!
I have been meaning to get some new dress shoes for work and I got a gift certificate for Christmas at my favourite clothes store that I haven't used yet. I thought I would go do a little shopping today. I bought a new pair of jeans and a cute skirt, nothing overly exciting. Then I went to payless shoes, they are having one of their BOGO sales. Well, I found 6 pairs of shoes that I liked and they fit and are all so cute! I got a nice range of sensible to sexy. My very favourite are the teal wedges! So cute! I can't wait to go somewhere so I can wear them!


I have bought a lot of yarn in the last little while, I was actually a little surprised when I laid out everything that I haven't added to my stash on Ravelry. There is quite a bit there! I have got to get caught up! I placed an order from the Elann website and got some of the clearance Zara and some baby alpaca and silk. I have a bunch of new sock yarn from Unwind Yarns. See that one messy tangled skein in the pic, Shannon gave me that one for free I just have to take the time to untangle it. I love tangled skeins and the colours in this one are wonderful!




















I also got a wonderful present from Shannon. Sock Blockers! With little sheepsies on them! I hung them on the wall beside my yarn and stitchmarkers. I think they look good there. My hubby thinks I am crazy.











Now I am off to stash all my new yarn...


Cali

A Pretty Neat Trade!

I hinted in my last post about trading some Mary Maxim kits and a good chunk of my acrylic stash. I traded it for a knitting machine! A Bond Elite to be precise.

Last night hubby helped me set it up and I stayed up til 2am using it. In 4 hours I got it set up, cast on 120 stitches and knitted 70 rows. But I kept dropping stitches and I could not get the hang of it so I ripped everything out and went to bed.

I spent a good portion of today getting used to the machine. I have knitted 325 rows, 120 stitches each. I have been using my dwindling acrylic stash to practice with and am making a particularly ugly striped blanket. It is so much fun!

You have to push this thing across this other thing (pretty technical huh) and you have to do it smoothly and slowly. You also have to keep slack on the working yarn. The acrylic I am using is very rough and it keeps snagging on everything so I haven't been doing a good job keeping it slack. I keep losing stitches on the edges. But it is happening less frequetly and I am getting faster at fixing it.

Well, I had better get back to my little experiment...

Cali

Its a new year.

Happy New Year Everyone!

I have been setting myself annual goals and tracking them on my Ravelry profile page. I achieved success in about half of last years goals. This year my goals are:

1. Make me a sweater.
2. Finish my sampler skirt.
3. Finish a lace project.
4. Finish the Harry Potter Scarf.
5. Make 4 Mother Bear Project Bears.
6. Sell/Trade the Mary Maxim Cat Afghan and Rug kits.
7. Blog at least twice per month.

So since January is more than half over I thought I better get a blog done or I will have failed my blogging goal before the first month is even over. I have already successfully completed one goal; trading the Mary maxim cat kits. I traded them for something really cool, but I will save that for my next blog post.

I have been working pretty steadily on my sampler skirt, it looks like I will need 1 skein of sock yarn per gore so I picked 4 more skiens out of my stash. Right now I am working on the second gore and doing it in the CCR colourway. I am absolutely thrilled with the results so far but it is an awful lot of brainless knitting.

The exciting part of this blog: NEW YARN! I bought my first handspun this month. I bought a beautiful 2-ply merino from SeeJayneKnit. It has shades of brown and gold with a bit of teal. Beautiful!

I also bought some single ply corriedale handspun from another etsy seller, MySweetSpot2. She listed a fabulous auction of 5 skeins that all coordinate, 2 multi coloured and 3 solid coloured. I just love these yarns! I have been stalking her shop looking for more of these sets.

While surfing, I stumbled across a neat yarn club. It is a sample club for the Elann.Com clearance yarns. Every month they send you a small sample of the yarns they will be clearing out plus little snips of all the different colourways. I received my samples yesterday. They are so cute! I am determined to figure out some kind of teeny project to make them into, There is about 20grams of yarn total so I cant do much with it, I am thinking maybe a coffee cup sleeve, or maybe saving several months worth and making a crazy scarf...

The fuzzy dead-muppet yarn is soft but I cant imagine ever wanting to knit something out of it, the tweedy looking one has a sparkly strand of lame in it so it is quite pretty, the dark brown yarn is a beautiful merino and the yellow is cotton blend. None of these are really calling out to me to buy so I think my credit card will be safe in February.

'til next time...

Cali