The Great Craft Room Reorganization of 2017

My crazy-time at work ended at about 2:00 AM Friday, June 30, at least for a little while.  I've been working a lot of hours since March, but particularly in the last 2-3 weeks I was easily working 60 hours/week.  It's an annual occurrence, so in that sense I'm used to it, but when it's over I'm always exhausted and cranky and have the feeling that while I was working the rest of my life has spun out of control.  That last part is not usually literally true, but so many things get put off those last few weeks I always feel like it is.

I don't know about you, but organizing something always gives me a sense of putting my life back in order, so I've spent a good chunk of the past week rearranging and reorganizing my craft room.

First goal was to get the yarn and fiber out of the closet and into the room where I can see it easily and constantly.  This is in part to make it easier to see and find what I have, but also to remind me of how much I do have and hopefully curb some of the "oh pretty" impulse buying of more.  I bought some more cubes and successfully got all my yarn, including handspun in bins or on display.  There's very little room left for more.

All of my yarn

And most of my fiber is also out on display now.  The only thing left in bins in the closet is a couple of fleece-sized quantities.

Most of my fiber

I moved my cutting table to a longer wall.  This makes it easier to access the fabric and supplies in the cubbies underneath and it's also a better location for rolling it away from the wall if I need to be able to walk around it while I cut.  My ball winder and swift also stay attached to this table most of the time. The cart between the fiber bins and the cutting table holds all my current crossstitch projects (which have seen no love in recent months) and rolls easily out of the way when necessary.

My sewing table is now where my cutting table used to be.

 About the only thing that stayed in the same place is my desk.

The bookshelf that was full of fiction books got moved to the guest room.  I removed the shelf in the closet and moved the other two bookcases in there. These hold photos that need to be sorted, craft books, supplies and things I don't use as often.

The closet is now more for storage so I won't have to move things in there around as often trying to get to my yarn or fiber.  These two tall rolling drawer sets hold partial balls of yarn, buttons, smaller pieces of fabric like fat quarters, and other odds and ends.  My blocking mats are to the right of them, and my drying racks to the left.

Although it still looks like a bit of a jumble, the remaining shelves that hold more supplies and other odds and ends for various crafts are more organized as well.

Overall, given the limited space I have to work with, I'm pretty happy with where everything is and how functional it will be.  We'll see how long it stays that way!

Frolic Eve

 It's that time of year, and I'm working a lot of hours, but there has been some knitting  going on the past couple of weeks even if it hasn't been as much as I would like.

Tomorrow after work, I head west to Sapphire Valley and the Carolina Fiber Frolic.  I've been getting some things I finished a while ago blocked to take for "show and tell".

First I washed and blocked my Find Your Fade shawl, although blocking in this case just meant laying it out to dry without really stretching it, because it was already huge enough!

 

This picture shows the colors better.

 I also finished and blocked my Snowmelt Shawl MKAL.

And last in the just needed to be blocked category is the Moroccan Days/Arabian Nights shawl I finally finished at the end of 2016.  This is also a giant shawl, but I finally took the time to pin it out.  I couldn't figure out how to get a really good picture of this, and there are beads, but they are very similar in color to the yarn, so they're subtle, which is what I wanted.

As for the projects I was trying to finish in time for Frolic, the Cayambe is finished.

But the Sweet Chilly sweater is not.  I only have one sleeve and the neckline to do, so I'm hoping I can finish it up by Friday in time to give it a steam with the hotel iron Friday night and enter it in the "what I made with my door prize" contest on Saturday.

Pic of the body before I started the sleeves.

One sleeve done, second one started.

As usual, I'm sure I've packed way too many projects to work on at Frolic, but that's nothing new.  I'm looking forward to seeing friends, making new ones, learning a few things, and just hanging out with my people.

WIP Roundup - The Blankets

If you knit or crochet, you may already realize that "scrap" blankets are a popular project these days.  I appear to have bought tickets on the crazy train when it comes to blankets the past couple of years and have several in progress.  Some of these get worked on regularly, some sporadically.  I consider them all long term projects with no deadline (except for the one that will be obvious in a moment).

The crazy began back in January 2015 when I decided to start a sock yarn blanket. I use a lot of fingering weight yarn, for socks and other projects, but I always have at least a partial skein left over.  I'm doing 31 stitch squares on US1 needles, so each of my squares only uses about 3g of yarn.  I've been throwing more of the larger squares in lately because I've been using more self-striping yarn and it takes a larger square to really show the stripes.

Not too long after I started the sock yarn blanket, I decided to start a blanket that is truly from scraps of sock yarn.  These are bits that are too little to even make one of the small squares in the sock yarn blanket.  I'm making this one up as I go along.  I cast on 25 stitches and just knit the bits in stripes until that one strip was as long as I thought I wanted the blanket.  Now I'm working on the second strip of only 10 stitches, attaching it to the first one as I go.  Other than trying to make sure I don't do the very similar colors right next to each other, I'm not planning anything, just knitting until I run out of that yarn, then magic knotting the next color on and keep knitting.

Because it only takes a little over 50g to make myself a pair of socks, I still had a lot of sock yarn left after making a square for the sock yarn blanket, but more than I really wanted to use in the true scrap blanket.  So in June 2015 I started making blanket squares similar to those of the Barn Raising Quilt that a lot of people have made and called it my Bandwagon Blanket.  I start off my squares a little differently, but it's the same effect.  So far I've made 14 squares for this.  I'm a little more choosy about which yarns I use for this, sticking to ones I really love the colors of or ones that are colors outside my "norm" so there will be some variation in the end product.

I blame Diane of The Suburban Stitcher podcast for this next one.  She started a granny square blanket out of sock yarn, and after seeing it several times on her podcast, I had to have one too.  This is basically a big granny square that just keeps getting bigger.  I started it in December 2016 and I'm using a 3.00 mm hook and just crocheting around and around in whatever yarn I pick up next out of the bag.

So with all these "scrap" sock yarn blankets I've developed sort of a system for where my leftover sock yarn goes.  I knit my socks two at a time, so when I finish a pair there are 2 balls of yarn left over, usually about 20-23g each.  One goes into the sock yarn blanket bag and if I like the yarn enough, the other ball goes in the bandwagon blanket bag.  Whichever ball is biggest after those squares are made goes into the granny square bag and the other one goes into a bin where I keep leftovers for making mini skeins for swaps, etc.  Yarn only goes into the scrap blanket bag when it has less than 5g left and therefore not enough for making a mini skein.

The final blanket is the only one that's not a scrap blanket.  I did start it out of leftover worsted weight superwash yarn I had on hand, but I've already had to order some more of some colors, and I'm sure I'll probably need more before it's done.  This one is my 2017 Temperature Blanket, which I'm making using the Groovy-ghan pattern. This is also a crochet blanket, and I'm using a 4.5mm hook.  Basically, I do one stripe for each day of the year and the color of the stripe is determined by the high temperature for that day.  I'm about a week behind on this one because of trying to finish things for Frolic, but I'm generally trying to stay on top of it by working on it every 2-3 days.  It's going to be a large throw blanket when it's done, but not wide enough to cover a bed. This picture shows January and February.

So that's the blanket madness.  Sadly, those are not all my projects.  I have another group of projects that are hibernating.  I was going to post about those, but since it could be a while before any of them get any attention, I've decided I'll just wait until I actually work on them at some point and tell you about them then.

WIP Roundup - The Waiting

Today I'm sharing some of my other works in progress (WIPs). These are the projects I haven't worked on in the past week or so, but I plan to start working on again soon.

First up is my Rhapsody in Cables sweater.  I fell in love with this sweater as soon as the pattern was released and had to start it immediately!  I initially started it in the yarn I'm using for my Sweet Chilly sweater I talked about yesterday, but between the darkness and slight variegation of that yarn, the cables just weren't showing up well, so I ripped it out and started the Sweet Chilly with that yarn.  But I still really wanted to cast on this pattern, so I'm doing it now in some Morning Meadows yarn in a natural colorway I bought at SAFF in 2015.  I got started at the end of January, but then I started to realize I didn't have too long to finish all the things I wanted to finish before Frolic, so this one has gotten set aside for the past few weeks and doesn't look like much right now, but as soon as my Sweet Chilly sweater is done, this one is getting some serious attention.

 The next two projects that are getting ready to go back into the regular rotation are a couple of baby blankets.  My daughter is pregnant with her first child and due in June with a boy, so of course I'm making a blanket for him.  I don't think it will be any surprise to her if she sees this that I'm making him a blanket, but I will hold off disclosing the details until I've finished it and gifted it.  I'm hoping to get it finished by the time or shortly after he's born.

I've also got a blanket I started for my grandson (my son's son) when he was a couple of months old that's been hibernating way too long.  That's a Baby Dragon Blanket  that I'm making in Cascade 220 Sport.  I made him one blanket before he was born, but his older sister got two, including one with a castle on it when she was born, so I thought a dragon would be cool for him.  He'll be 2 in July so that's my artificial deadline for finishing it this year, and really 2 years old is the perfect age to appreciate a blanket with a dragon on it right?

I'm also planning to get back to spinning regularly as well.  I've currently got a gradient set from Three Waters Farm in progress, but I haven't spun in a while.  Here's what I've spun so far and the waiting fiber. 

Towards the end of last year I started working on counted cross stitch again.  I pulled out a couple of old projects that had been hibernating for years and started a couple of new ones, that are now hibernating.  But I signed up this year for the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's year long Happily Ever After pattern.  They send a portion of the pattern each month, and I started out doing well in January, but that's fallen by the wayside as well.  I want to get back to working on it again regularly so I don't get so far behind.  I still haven't finished January, so it will take a couple of months, but if I start actually working on it sometime soon it's possible.

So those are the things I plan to try to put some work into in the next few weeks, but sadly, they're not the only things in progress.  Next time I'll talk about the blankets.

WIP Roundup - The Active

I keep thinking about writing here, and I keep not doing it.  So I've decided it doesn't matter if I have nothing "important" to write about, I'm just going to write about what I'm crafting, and if something more exciting happens, I'll write about that too.

As a starting point I thought I'd start a run through of all the various projects I have in progress.  As I've mentioned previously, I'm not a monogamous crafter, so there are a lot of them. Today I'm talking about the ones I've been actively working on recently.

The Cayambe poncho is the one I'm closest to finishing, and plan to have finished in the next couple of days.  When I went to Carolina Fiber Frolic in November, someone was wearing one and several of us decided to make it, so I want to have it finished before the spring Frolic the weekend of March 24th.  As soon as I finish the knitting I'll need to block the piece before I seam it up into the poncho and since I'll be busy the whole weekend of the 17th, I need to get it blocked this weekend.  I'm making this in Miss Babs Yowza in the Forever colorway.When I started this post yesterday I still had about 3 repeats of the pattern left to do, but I worked on it a good bit last night and finished the big rectangle.  I'm not going to have enough yarn to do the neckline as written (despite having almost 150 yards more than the pattern calls for) so once I get it seamed I'll have to decide whether to do something different at the neck, or nothing, or maybe I'll raid the stash to see if something I have would blend well or be a good accent at the neckline.

The other project I'm trying to get finished in time for the Frolic is my Sweet Chilly sweater that I'm making out of the Neighborhood Fiber Company yarn I won at last year's spring Frolic.  The yarn is their Studio DK base in the Dupont Circle colorway. Neighborhood Fiber Company will be vending at this spring Frolic, so I want to be able to show off what I made with the yarn.  I'm not quite half-way down the body on it, but once the Cayambe is finished this will take priority and I should be able to finish it up in time.

Also seeing some action this week are my March socks for the Desert Vista Dyeworks year long KAL. These are just vanilla socks for me and this month I'm using the Secret Life of a Snowflake colorway.  I chose this color for March hoping it would bring on at least one snowfall this winter despite the 70 degree days we've been having, and it looks like it might have worked, they're calling for snow here Sunday!

And I have a second pair of socks on the needles.  These are for a friend at work who is an ECU fan and I'm using the Hermione's Everyday Sock pattern although I'm doing them toe-up and will use a different heel.  The yarn I'm using for these is sock yarn dyed by the Friends and Fiberworks yarn store near Asheville in the Happy Ripper colorway.

So that's it for what I've been actively working on this week.  Tomorrow I'll show you what's waiting in the wings.

Long Time Gone

The longer I go without blogging, the harder it seems to be to come back to it, primarily because I feel like I should tell you everything that's happened of any significance since the last time I posted.  But that's just not realistic, so here I am back again, and I'll hit a few highlights and we'll just pretend it hasn't been that long OK?

My son and his family are back North Carolina, at least for the next couple of years until the Army decides to send him somewhere else, so we've been able to spend more time with him, his wife and the grandkids.  I love my kids, I love my grandkids, but spending a few hours with the grands makes me glad I'm done with the kid-raising phase of my life.  The joy of being a grandparent is being able to enjoy some time with them then send them back home with Mom & Dad!

We took a trip to Louisiana in March to celebrate the 90th birthday of Rob's Aunt Sue.  It was good to see some of his family that we rarely see and my DIL was able to bring the grandkids down too even though my son couldn't get leave.  Sue is my MIL's sister and is quite a bit older than her, but you can see the family resemblance.

Rob & I celebrated our 16th anniversary last week, and I can't believe he's put up with me this long.  There are days it seems like our wedding was yesterday, and others when it feels like it's been forever.  But that's true of most marriages I suppose, but I'm glad he's stuck with me for yet another year.

I took a sewing class for a few weeks and have actually learned how to use my sewing machine, although it will be a long time for I feel like I have any degree of expertise. I've also attended a couple of fiber events this spring, but I'll talk more about those in separate posts.

Other than that, it's my busy time of year at work, so my hours are erratic.  Some days I work relatively normal hours and other days I work until late at night just to get things done that need to be done for the next day.  I've been in my current job over 20 years now, and although some days I would like to find something different, for the most part I still like my job, and every time I try to imagine doing something else I think of all the things I would miss about my current job.  I keep my eyes open for something else that might be interesting, but I've essentially resigned myself to being here another 9 years and 8 months at which point I can retire with full benefits, and hope to do so!

O.k. quick and dirty update done, more crafting and other tidbits to come, assuming I don't get totally distracted again right?

Finally FO Friday

After taking a couple of weeks off for the holidays, the last two weeks of work have seemed inordinately long.  So I'm glad it's finally Friday, and it's a 3-day weekend to boot!

I was feeling the need to work on some quick projects this week and get the sense of accomplishment that comes with actually finishing something, so I made up these three hats.  Aren't they adorable?! The blue & green monkey is for my 6-month old grandson, the pink & purple unicorn is for my 3-year old granddaughter, and the blue & white bear is for my 17-month old nephew.

The yarn is Top This! by DMC and it comes with the cute little animal heads to make these.  Each one knits up in just an hour or two, so I made these in three consecutive nights this week.  One caution if you want to make these, the pattern runs very small.  I actually knit the monkey one twice.  I had heard that the pattern ran small, so I knit the toddler size for my 6-month old grandson, but even that looked too small to me.  So I ripped it out and made the small child size for him, and I made the full child size for my granddaughter and nephew.  If they're a little big, that's always better than too small.

I'm hoping for a relaxing weekend.  I've got some yarn to ply off the bobbin so that I can get started on my Spin the Bin goals for 2016.  I finished spinning the singles last weekend, but didn't want to start spinning something else until this last thing left from last year is completely done.  I also need to sort and organize some clothes this weekend and see what can be donated. Finally, I want to get Scrivener reinstalled on my laptop because so far I have made no progress on my goal to actually write for 30 minutes 3 times per week.  I reloaded my laptop early in 2015 and I've never reloaded Scrivener, which tells you how little writing I've actually done in the past year.  Hoping to change that.

So that's it for today.  Happy Friday!

WIP It Into Shape Wednesday

Knitting WIP
This week's knitting WIP is the pair of socks I cast on New Year's Day.  As I mentioned, one of my goals for 2016 is to knit at least 12 pairs of socks.  I don't know that I will do exactly 1 pair per month, but I know that if I finish at least 1 pair each month, I'll hit my goal, so these are January's pair in progress.

I'm just doing a plain "vanilla" sock, toe up.  The yarn is Knit Picks Felici in Rainbow. I will do the Fish Lips Kiss Heel when I get to that point.  I prefer to knit my socks two at a time on two circulars if possible.  There are occasions when doing certain types of patterned socks where that's not possible, but if I can, I do.

These are being housed in my Dr. Who Tardis bag from Erin Lane Bags.  This is a small sock bag that has a divider inside to keep two skeins of yarn separate.  I love the fabric and I like the interior design.  I'm not a big fan of the way she does her drawstring on this bag.  The bag is very well constructed, it's just a personal preference thing.  I prefer one drawstring coming out one side with a tension clip or something.  This one has two ribbons running through and you pull from both sides. This is the first of her bags I've bought, so it may just be this particular style of bag.  I bought this one at SAFF, so I'll have to look at her others next time.

I'm using a Poke Me Not from JanBSmiley to not only keep my stitches from sliding off the needles, but to keep the small pointy needles from poking through the bag.  I have about 7 of these things because I use them on just about every project.  Highly recommend!


WIP Me Into Shape
I've decided to add weightloss progress to Wednesday's as well.  After all, I'm a WIP too.  I don't really want this to become a weightloss blog, but I don't want to ignore that part of my daily life either, so I will attempt to strike a balance between sharing some of my efforts to be healthier with you without going overboard.

I may do a longer post at some point with a little more of my lifetime battle with my weight, but suffice it to say it's not the first time I've made an effort to lose weight.  I've tried tons of times, and even been successful a couple of those.  I can lose weight when I set my mind to it.  I just need to make it stick at some point.  But for now, I need to focus on losing.  Hopefully by the time I get to where I want to be this time, I'll figure out how to maintain it too.

I'm a lifetime Weight Watchers member, but I'm way over goal.  I've tried to get back into WW the past few months, but it just wasn't clicking and with the changes to the new program, it's not going to work for me.  So I'm doing this without an official program of any kind.  I need to make lifestyle changes that are just that, my lifestyle, and not work this program or that, or this eating plan or that.  So my current tools are my Fitbit Surge and the Fitbit App to track my food intake.  I'm trying a couple of different online groups to find the right fit for support, but mainly I'm trying to eat healthier and move more.

I "officially" started last Tuesday, January 5th and I will record my weight every Tuesday morning.  Doesn't mean I won't weigh myself other days, but the weight I will record for tracking purposes will be whatever I weigh Tuesday morning before I get into the shower.  So yesterday was my first weigh-in day and I did really well this week.  Of course, the first week, when you go from eating a bunch of junk to actually eating somewhat healthy is always good, but it's always a nice boost as well.

I have a lot of weight to lose, and I haven't decided yet whether I want to share actual numbers here or not.  I have a feeling that if I'm actually successful in making some progress this time I will get more comfortable with sharing the details, but until then, I'm sorry if I keep that part vague.  I will say that my first goal is to lose 5# by February 2, and in one week I'm well on my way to that goal.

Happy Hump Day!

Fee Fi FO Friday

Sometimes I actually finish projects.  That's not accurate, I actually finish a lot of projects, but I go through spurts. I'm not a monogamous knitter, so I usually have many different WIPs at any given time, so unless I'm really focusing on one particular project I may go weeks without actually finishing anything and then suddenly I'll finish several things one right after the other.

In knitter-speak a finished project is an FO, i.e. finished object.  I'm designating Friday as the day to generally share FOs, so here's something I've finished recently.

I went to Southern Pines a couple of days before Christmas to do a little last minute Christmas shopping and after I got what I needed for everyone else, I treated myself to a little Christmas at the yarn shop there, Bella Filati.  It's a nice, friendly, yarn shop and I go there occasionally on Saturday afternoons for social knitting.  If you're in the area you should stop and check it out.

But the reason I mention it is that at that visit I bought a skein of Knitted Wit Victory DK yarn  in the Autumn Rainbow colorway.  I just couldn't resist these jewel tones jumbled all together.  Isn't it gorgeous?

I had the store wind it for me so as soon as I got home I could cast on.  I knit a pair of gloves for me, but because I have small hands they only took about half of the skein, so I made a short cowl to create a matching set.

Cowl pattern is Diamond Cowl, gloves I made up as I went.

I love them!  They're so fun and colorful.  I just bought a new charcoal grey dress coat, so they give me a fun pop of color with that.  I loved this colorway so much that I've ordered a skein of sock yarn in the same color from the dyer.  She has more in her shop if you want it, go on, you know you do!

I get many hours of enjoyment from knitting and other crafts, but wearing something you made at the end is also very satisfying.

Watch Me WIP Wednesday

I've realized that in order to post here more regularly, I need to have some recurring segments to fall back on when the brain is not cooperating.  So welcome to the first WIP Wednesday.

For you nonknitters, WIP stands for Work in Progress, so this segment will be related to projects I'm in the process of making using some form of crafting, most often knitting.

This week's WIP is my Jamestown Sweater, which I'm making out of Alisha Goes Around Bevy of Swans DK in a beautiful teal color.  I bought this yarn at SAFF in October and it is sooo luscious!

 I spent most of November knitting this sweater.  I had finished all the pieces and seamed it together, only to discover that I had made it too short.  I knew I needed to make the front and back pieces shorter than what the pattern called for because of my height.  Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking clearly and kept holding the piece up to my side to determine when to start the armhole, which means I didn't account for the amount of length going over my boobs and belly and hips would take up.  End result, I put it on & it's at least 2 inches shorter than I need it to be, and I don't think I'll be able to block it out those extra inches.

Since this is knit from the bottom up, I can't just take out the bottom and knit it longer, so as you can see above, I've ripped the back piece back down below the armholes and I'm in the process of getting the stitches back on the needles correctly so I can knit some more straight before doing the armholes.  Hopefully I'll get it right this time.

I love this pattern and the yarn though, so I really want to finish this sweater.  I'm just trying to stay motivated to get it done now so i can wear it a little this winter.

This sweater is being housed in my library card bag made by Amy Beth aka The Fat Squirrel.  I love this bag because the reading geek in me is thrilled by all the old library cards for books I mostly read as a kid.  Jane Eyre, The Secret of the Old Clock (Nancy Drew), Where the Wild Things Are, and so many more!

I've really become a bit of a knitting bag addict, so I'll try to make a point of showing my knitting bags with my WIPS as well.

Until next time....

2016 Goals

Unlike 2015, which was the year of no goals, I've set some goals for 2016, and one of them is to blog here at least three times per week, so I probably should get on that by actually writing a post huh?

I've done some serious thinking and planning about goals this year.  Who knows if I'll be able to achieve all of them, but I'm going to try.  I'm also trying a technique I've read a lot about of having a word and a mission statement for the year. 

While I will probably talk more about most of these in future posts, for the purpose of this one, I'm just going to give you the list, or as Joe Friday says..."just the facts."

My word for the year is....  

DETERMINATION

My mission statement for the year is....

 Determination and action lead to achievement.

Writing Goals

• Blog 3x/week
• Write 30 minutes 3x/week
• Journal regularly

Health Goals

• Make exercise a habit
• Lose weight (I've set a more specific number, but I'm going to keep it general here for now) 

Crafting Goals

• More yarn out (knit) than in (purchased)
• Knit 12 pairs of socks
• Spin the bin challenge
• 2 laceweight projects
• 2 handspun projects
• Finish Marigold Moroccan
• Steeked & Zippered Cardigan
• Learn to sew 

Crafting Update

There's been too much knitting, spinning, and overall crafting happening this year to completely cover what I've worked on this year.

You may remember that my crafting goal this year was to avoid any goals or deadlines and to just craft what I wanted when I wanted.  I've been pretty successful, although it's resulted in quite a few more works in progress (WIPs) than I usually have. 

I usually have 5-6 WIPs, sometimes venturing up towards 8 or 9, but right now I have 13.  Three of those are long-term scrap blanket projects and one project is the beaded lace shawl I've worked on off & on for the past 4 years (hint, no progress made this year really, but it's going to become a priority in 2016), so I guess that's really only 9 WIPs, but still a lot.  I'll share some more info on most of those soon.

Despite the "no deadlines" goal for this year, a couple of the WIPs are items I'd like to finish for Christmas gifts.  One of them will most likely get finished, the other probably not, but that's o.k.  I don't really consider these violations of the no deadlines rule since I'm not going to feel guilty if neither of them get finished. The one that probably won't get finished in time for Christmas is for my grandson, who's not quite 5 months old, so I doubt he'll notice.

I did participate in a couple of knit-a-longs (KAL) this year, because KALs are just fun.  It's fun to work on the same project at the same time as other people and share info on where you are in the pattern, ask questions, etc.  Most of the ones I did this year were with the Carolina Fiber Girls.  The did a KAL in the spring where everyone made something with Jones Street yarn from The Copper Corgi.   The KAL lasted a couple of months and I actually finished 2 sweaters.  I made a Hiro out of Jones Street Worsted and a Triticum out of Jones Street Sport.

I don't have a modeled shot of this one.

 

Looks great with my sweatpants doesn't it?

 

 

 

 I also couldn't resist the competition of Socktober with the Carolina Fiber Girls, and I completed 7 pairs of socks in October.  There were points involved for different things and I actually came in 4th place and won a skein of (you guessed it) sock yarn.

Collywobbles

Fireweeds

I was spinning pretty regularly the first part of the year, but not as much since work started getting so busy.  For some reason I just lost my spinning mojo.  I've spun a little here and there, but right now, the project on my wheel is one I started September 12th and I'm still not done spinning the singles.  I'll get back to it I know, it's just not what I've felt like doing as much lately.

I haven't done any weaving since March really.  Just haven't made the time to set up the loom with a new project.  I bought some yarn at SAFF specifically for a weaving project though, so I'll definitely get something started in the new year if not before.

While it's been nice not to set any rules for my crafting this year, I think I'll be going back to setting some goals for 2016.  I'm still going to try not to get too over-committed on things with deadlines, even if they are self-imposed ones, but I like to have a bit of a plan for my knitting, and I like checking things off a list.

SAFF 2015

One of my favorite trips of the year is the annual Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF) held just outside Asheville, NC.  This year, because the dates of the event were moved to the last weekend in October, there was no tractor show, so we were able to use the entire grounds of the Western North Carolina Agriculture Center.

This year I took two classes.  On Thursday I took an all day spinning class with Judith MacKenzie.  I still consider myself very much a novice spinner, so I really learned a lot in this class.  Unfortunately, as is usual when I get immersed in what I'm doing, I didn't think to take a single picture of Judith or anything we did in this class.

Friday morning I took a class with my secret boyfriend Franklin Habit. This class was on doing steeks (aka cutting your knitting on purpose) and installing zippers into knitting.  I had never done either one of these techniques, and while I'm generally a "learn what you need to know to do the project" type knitter I thought it would be helpful to actually have someone physically show me how to do it.  And of course, I had to take at least one of Franklin's classes (secret boyfriend remember?)  While I wasn't particularly doubtful of my ability to do either of these things before, now I know for sure how to do them, and I'm currently scanning patterns to do both in a sweater.  Fortunately, I had a little more focus on Friday and did get a picture of Franklin with Dolores in the background.

Friday afternoon was the first chance I had to do some shopping with all the vendors.  I had a couple of specific projects I was looking to find yarn for, so I focused on those mostly Friday, although I picked up a few things not on my list as well!

Saturday I had no classes, so I decided not to get up at the wee hours with the rest of the group, and instead slept a little longer and got to SAFF about 11:00 am.  One of our group has a vacation home about 45 minutes away from SAFF and she graciously lets us stay there.  Not only is it a huge money saver (more money for yarn & fiber & classes!) but it's nice to have a comfortable place to sit around together in the evening and show what we bought or made that day & just knit and socialize.

This was the day I made it over to the barns to see the animals.  Alpacas and llamas and goats and sheep.  Just about any fiber animal you can think of.  And because they're all so cute and furry I took lots of pictures.  I won't subject you to all of them, just some of the cutest.

Baby Suri Alpaca

Baby Alpaca

More Baby Alpacas

Llama

I admired this sheep's dreads

Nosy Sheep

This one just wanted you to scratch between his horns

Saturday night we joined Ann & Janis of the Carolina Fiber Girls podcast and a few others for dinner at the Sierra Nevada Brewery just down the road.  I'm not a beer drinker, but the food was pretty good and it's undeniably a gorgeous building.  I think I need to take Rob there the next time we're in the Asheville area.

Outside of the brewery

Vats of beer

Something to do with making beer

Sunday morning we took our time getting up, packing, and loading up the cars for the drive home.  Michiele was riding with me and we decided to make one more quick stop at SAFF on the way home.  A couple more purchases were made, and we headed home.  I'm so glad I took Monday off work too because besides needing to do laundry and grocery shopping, I need to some time to admire and inventory my haul from the event.

It's quite a haul, but almost all of it was bought with a specific project in mind.  That gorgeous teal grouping towards the bottom of the picture is already being knit into a sweater in fact.

All in all, another great year at SAFF.  The classes, the yarn, the fiber make it worth the trip every year, but the weekend with such great friends that share my love of all that SAFF offers make it more than just a trip.