Community Sock two ~

The second Community Sock is up, with some of the knitting our group did!  The second stripe from the bottom is the purple striped "scarf" knit by the Jitteryknitter. It was so lovely and stylish compared to the neon yellow, neon pink, purple and peach stripes that I knit, yet they all look lovely on these trees! 

 

There are now 50 trees with "socks" on display at Anderson Park and you should stop by if you are in the area. They are so beautiful and whimsey and delightful!!  Hurrah for Suzanne Tidwell!

Hurrah for all the knitter having fun knitting with acrylic yarn! Hurrah for the kids showing off these fun socks!

Our Community Sock is Up ~

After knitting more stripes and sewing them together, Suzanne Tidwell was able to install the first Community Tree Sock at the park on Saturday night. Here she is up the ladder, lacing the sides of the tree sock together so it will stay put.  It was great fun to watch all the reactions of the people visiting the park. Lots of kids pointing at the different stripes that were their favorites, and lots of adults taking pictures. Lots of enjoyment for everyone there!

I had to bring my kids back on Sunday to see the lovely Community Tree Sock, and show them how the lovely and wild neon yellow, neon pink, purple and peach stripe that I knit was a perfect addition to the other knitters creativity!  Hurrah for this yarn installation! My stripe is the one above the turquoise stripe!

Community Tree Socks ~

What has happened to the Blogger formatting, I do not like this new way of posting! Plus, who has time to figure out the new way, when it is tough enough to find time to post in the first place!  Sad...so I will post a few more times to see if I can live with this, but I don't like how it looks with the pictures floating without the words surrounding it... anyone have any ideas... I am not a computer geek or even an HTML geek, so this is not a comfort zone...back to the knitting....

We were able to get together on Saturday to work on the Tree Sock art that we started last Saturday. Suzanne has been doing a marvelous job with these trees, and we were able to knit more on the stripes and sew some of the stripes together. It was a great Yarn Yoga event for us, as we had not been together since our February island vacation!!

 We were able to get together on Saturday to work on the Tree Sock art that we started last Saturday. Suzanne Tidwell has been doing a marvelous job with these trees, and we were able to knit more on the stripes and sew some of the stripes together. It was a great Yarn Yoga event for us, as we had not been together since our February island vacation!!

 Look at all that great acrylic yarn!!!  Hurrah!!!

 Here is Suzanne with MY STRIPE as the top most stripe of the "tree sock" she is holding up! See how she likes neon yellow and neon pink matched with peach and variegated purples and oranges!!!

Here is the first "community tree sock" that we all helped knit on, by hand, not by the knitting machine. My stripe is the one above the solid turquoise stripe.  See how lovely and crazy it looks!!!

Walkin' the dawgs ~

(Warning, something has happened to my Blogger formatting...Yikes????)
Since this week was too full of work to get any knitting in, I will share some other fun that occurred. My kids have a job each week of walking a neighbor's dog as she leaves for work early and gets home late a few days during the week, so my kids walk over after school and take Lola for a walk around our neighborhood.  Lola is a very sweet dog, and the kids love her.  Lola's owner let us know that this week she was "dog sitting" for two other dogs, and would that be ok if our kids walked all of them...Of course yes!

Plus it snowed, and I said I wanted them to send me pictures of this fun with all these dogs and kids....

  Plus it snowed, and I said I wanted them to send me pictures of this fun with all these dogs and kids.... and then my man had some fun as well, and youngest daughter started playing for the camera - I'm sure she's singing a Glee song...and the dogs look like they are singing too!

 

They are loving all of this fun! Even my man looks ever so patient while the pictures are getting taken and the dogs are curious about what is going on...Kids and dogs and snow, a perfect combination!

Tree Socks ~

Today was a great day! The Jitteryknitter and I were together knitting, and we each brought home a big bag of acrylic yarn! (WHAT???) Yes, let me explain... we were helping the VALA group that is helping the artist Suzanne Tidwell with her latest installation nearby. We were knitting strips (like a scarf) that will all be sewn together next week and installed on more of the trees in this City Park. Our strips, or scarves, need to be 73 inches long to fit around "our" tree. What a lovely forest of very happy trees in this park! Yes, we really are excited to bring home a big bag of acrylic yarn to knit the 73 inch strip of bright colors to be installed next week!

Navajo Super Rainbow~

The super wash rainbow fiber has been such fun to spin. I love all the bright colors and it is very soft to work with. Then the Navajo plying went well too, and the blending of the colors is just as fun as working with the singles. I still need to wash and measure the finished yarn, and I love how the plying turned out! I did this plying "in between" my spinning the singles on the Party Time roving, just to mix around the spinning fun! I love all these great colors!

Zebra toes and Coffee~

There are some weeks when there is no time to knit. That stinks. Some weeks the only time to sneak in some knitting is while waiting for youngest daughter while she's doing weight training to prepare for her track season. I say thank heavens for weight training. I am not looking forward to the end of weight training, as then where will I sneak in an hour of knitting in my weeks of chaos?

Secret Pal surpise ~

We've started our Secret Pal program again for this year. The goal is to treat a co-worker once a month with something nice and uplifting, for good "wellness" in the work environment. Last year I had the best EVER Secret Pal, as I was sure this pal was really my knitting soul mate....It turned out to be a bit different than that, as I describe in this post....and this post.... When I arrived at work today, there was a ginormous bag on my table, and I stared at it all day...thinking that if I can get through this day, my reward will be opening this gift.... and it was a great and wonderful gift!!!! The big bag was full of balloons and colored tissues, and at the bottom of the bag was a little box...and I opened the box to find wonderfully soft and wildly colorful YARN!!! Oh YES!!!! I was so excited!!! There was also a little pattern book for Regia tucked in the little box, so I get to play with some pattern dreaming as well! Then, I see there is a rolled up magazine at the very bottom, and it is one that I've not seen yet - SCORE SCORE SCORE!!!!!!!! I can't wait until the next month's surprise!!

Party Time Spinning ~

After buying this lovely Potluck roving at Madrona, I could hardly wait to try to spin these colors. I wondered if the wild colors would stay wild in the spinning, or if they would be muted when mixed with the other colors. As I spun them by mixing the colors while drafting, I began to wonder what would happen if I spun one color at a time, and then plyed them with the other colors for the lovely barber pole that I love so much...turns out that mixing them during the drafting mutes the colors a bit, but still holds the bright colors and popping combinations that I love. I am already wondering how they will look in a Navajo ply.... So I'll have to try that technique of spinning one color, and then the next color on the next ball of my Potluck roving purchases. I wonder what that would look like? I do love these spinning adventures!

Sunday Mystery Afghan~

For our church mission trip for our high school kids, we are raising money by knitting and raffling a mystery afghan. This is the brain child of one of the mom's and it is coming together well. So far, I am knitting 8 squares and each of my daughters is supposed to knit one square. Here is one of the squares so far. They are small, just 4 inches by 4 inches, so I should be able to be done soon....

Mum's Birthday Shawl too~

Here are some better pictures of mum's shawl, just before wrapping it up to send. It turned out so lovely. The alpaca was a joy to knit with, as always. I kept knitting the lace repeat of the shawl pattern until I was almost out of the two skeins. So lovely!!

Mum's Birthday Shawl ~

I have been thinking of knitting mum something for her "real" leap day birthday since the new year began...she does not do well with wool, so I had some llama silk blend, plus some alpaca in the pondering cycle. The decision was made when we were leaving for our vacation weekend and decided to stop at one of our local yarn store's Going Out of Business Sale...and there was my answer. Alpaca with a twist in lovely green, at 45% off.... so, since I couldn't really decide, and I know that mum loves green, I bought two skeins of each green - the dark green and the medium green. Since they were 45% off, the other two were almost free, right? The first night of our vacation, I was going to cast on, but was talked into casting on my Ms Gusset handspun... easy to talk me into that...and after blocking that shawl on Saturday afternoon, I cast on mum's shawl and knit like crazy for the rest of the weekend - pausing only on Sunday to work on the knitting project for the church (Sunday would be a good day for the church project, right?). Once I came back to the real world of family and job, the knitting slowed down but I still finished it that next weekend, blocked it on Sunday and 2- Day-Air to mum for her special birthday! Hurrah!