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!

Leap Year Celebrity ~

My mum is a leap year baby, and this year she really gets a day all to herself. Typically we celebrate all February, and part of March, but this year she gets a lot of celebrations, plus her very own day!Happy Birthday mum!!!! I'll show you tomorrow what special knitting I did for mum.

Island Dancing ~

With all the knitting and quilting and laughing and relaxing, plus the ocean right outside our cozy little cabin, we certainly made time for dancing. It seems dancing is the way to celebrate good music, great friends and lots of relaxing time. So we did some dancing in the sunny cabin on the ocean.. Just couldn't resist posting this pictures as we are having such fun!!! (but no videos...)