An End and a Beginning

A new visitor in our garden.

Finally! Here are the completed slippers I've mentioned before. I knitted them twice and tried felting them by hand in the sink. The washing machine was the key to shrinking them down. Now they're all ready for tromping around the house!

And Winky and Dobby helped us model them.

I've started dressing Sophie with the cotton I got from Glimakra. I've made towels out of so many different cottons. Many of them are too soft to be as absorbent as I'd like, if they're absorbent at all. We'll see how this one works. I've heard good things about it. 

I've never done waffle weave before. I'm having so much fun with it!

This one is a five shaft from Simple Weaves.

The Work of our Hands

Since I've been on a sock hiatus, I've been working on this sweater. The yarn is Columbia from Imperial Yarn and the pattern is Fuse Cardigan from Brooklyn Tweed. This was the first time I saw a pattern in a yarn store, paid for it and it was delivered to my e-mail to be downloaded onto my tablet. How far we've come!

My hubby and I went to the Designing Weavers show and I almost didn't get past the front porch. I was fascinated by the weaving Trudy Sonia was doing on her inkle loom and she was gracious enough to explain and show me what she was doing.

She designed this pattern for a leash and collar. It's pick-up. And now I'll know what pick-up means the next time I read about it. 

Some other woven goods that caught my eye.

I wish I'd gotten the names of the artists. There were so many beautiful things there, I didn't know which way to look first!

I wish I'd taken my camera out sooner. There was so much more!

This woven sculpture is beaded.

Now, back to my projects, this is the beginning of a tallis (prayer shawl) for my daughter's boyfriend. This was quite a family affair. They said blue, green and a little brown. My mom and I figured out how to Skype and chose the colors together. Winky decided she wanted to help sley the reed.

I ordered this yarn from Halcyon. It's a cotton, rayon, and hemp or flax blend. I used the same yarn 13 years ago for my daughter's tallis. I sett it at 24 epi. For a little, a very little stash busting, I used two strands of 10/2 cotton for the design. 

It's a summer and winter.

My younger son helped with knotting the fringe while my older son was our photographer.

My sister did the counted cross stitch. I wove the fabric for the matching bag and sewed it all together.

Then, we had a lesson on tying the tzitzit. If you look closely, you can see the reinforcement corner that my sister embellished.

Here are my daughter and their friend working on the other corners.

A little break for other pursuits. My daughter has been working on one of the needlepoint canvases I got from Solvang this summer. I needed a project for traveling, so I was knitting a hat for her.                We also took time out to felt the slippers I'd made for my daughter and her boyfriend. Big mistake! They don't have a washing machine, so we tried using their kitchen sink. For an hour. We tried. Really we did. We ran out of hot water and had to boil some. Our arms and hands got tired. Jokes were made about working in a laundry. We had an hour of trying and hoping and hilarity, but no go. I ended up bringing the slippers home. Cross your fingers!

This was the big moment when we celebrated my daughter's boyfriend with him wrapped in the work of our hands.

And here's my daughter in her new hat. The pattern is a freebie I found on Ravelry. It's called Volkstricken, Neon Ski Bonnet. The yarn is Royal Alpaca by Aslan Trends. I bought it at my LYS.