Spinning

It snowed here last night. . . about four inches! For some reason snow always puts me in the mood to spin. I received some gorgeous Wool of the Andes roving from Knitpicks. Their color selection is very nice and the colors I chose were even nicer in person than on the website (it is always nice when the product you buy exceeds your expectations)! My wheel is an Ashford Kiwi. I have been creating two-ply worsted weight yarn. My evenness is getting better with practice. Practice makes perfect is definitely appropriate for spinning. However, I need to find some patterns and use up my random practice yarn. I shall have to look on Ravelry and my old Spin-Off Magazines. Happy Spinning!

Flyer Cap Done and Sent!

I finally got the long awaited buttons and was not disappointed!

The Ogee Beanie is the next hat in progress. This hat has some easy cables to create a left twist. I have tried two different cable needles working on this hat; the u-shaped cable needle and the curved needle. I found that for this cable the curved needle worked better because there is only one stitch moved to the cable needle. I believe that the u-shaped cable needle would be more effective if there were several stitches held on the cable needle. I remember being very intimidated by cables. . . I did my first cables as part of a Sampler Scarf. A Sample Scarf is great for learning many different types of stitches and how to read a pattern. After I did my first cables I decided they were fun and not nearly as difficult as I believed. I asked my knitting group why cables have the reputation of being scary and they laughed. They all had felt the same way about cables until they tried them also! Moral: Just try the cables, they are not that bad! Happy Knitting!

Socks

I have chosen my next hat project while I wait for my buttons to come in. For Christmas I gave my sister one sock because I could not get her other sock done on time! I am sure that many of you have experienced the same situation. So, I have been working on her sock furiously to give myself a break as it is easier to work on with the kids running around!

Hats

I am going to try to blog my fiber experiences and ideas from Lander, Wyoming. I moved with my family to Lander in August 2012. A lot of changes have happened in the last 5 months. I wonder where the time has went. . . it feels like we just moved here yesterday. One of the most important events was my mother's diagnosis with stomach cancer the day before Thanksgiving. She asked me if I would knit her a bunch of hats for the chemo treatments and of course I said yes! When I flew back to New York in December we went to our local yarn store, Finger Lakes Fibers, in Watkins Glen, NY. My mother picked many beautiful yarns and we chose a book that I had been eyeing for some time: Weekend Hats by Cecily Glowik MacDonald and Melissa Labarre. The second hat from the book that I am working on is the "Flyer Cap." I am using a beautiful blue Cascade Pima Cotton. You will notice that there are no buttons yet. . . they are on order from Knit Picks! Here is the first hat I made from the book. I did not finish the hat completely because my Mom already had a button she wanted to use. I also left the ribbon long in case she needed to resize the hat.