Sweet Pea's Fiber Frolic & Other Stuff

Let's Try This Again

I have been thinking "do I really want to keep up with this blog stuff?"  My family is encouraging me to keep at it, and it is a great way to force some kind of record of my knitting and other adventures, so I will try this whole routine again.

Soooooo, I sit down to open my email today and there is one from TypePad apologizing for loosing all of my photo images in some technical data implosion (I do not need details here).  The net result is that I had to re-do my photo albums but I get six months of blogging for free.  Sounds like a deal to me.  I am just going to let the photos embedded in previous posts go...no need to reinvent more wheels than absolutely necessary.

Living History Day was lovely.  Nothing like glossing over months of planning and 2 weeks of intense work like that, but it really was nice.  Now it is done.

Now that I have a little more time to knit, I started the "Ethereal Fichu" that I mentioned was to be my next project.  It is coming along, although the rows are still pretty short - the progress will slow down dramatically as I go along.  I've picked up Helen's socks again so that I am not knitting with a gun to my head at Christmas.

I really like this sock project.  Aunt Helen is my dad's sister.  She never married, and was very much a part of all of our family celebrations when I was growing up.  She was a frequent weekend visitor and came down for all the holidays.  She was there through my dad's illness, and helped my mom after he died.

Helen is extraordinarily generous.  She always said "why wait until you get married to have and enjoy nice things?"  Her gifts always reflected this philosophy.  She loved to travel, and she took each of her nieces and nephews on a grand trip at some time during our teen years.  Everyone went to England and Wales to meet the relatives (my grandfather came to the US via Ellis Island) and then on to wherever else she was going that year.  I went on a safari to Kenya and Tanzania when I was 13.  It was an amazing experience and the memories have helped to shape my world view even as an adult.

So, in her honor, I chose the Conwy (a Welsh town) pattern from Knitting on the Road - a book for traveling knitters.  I started the socks while taking my own family to see Arizona and the Grand Canyon, so they were, in fact, knit on the road.  I previously knit her socks for her garden clogs and she was so appreciative (or just amazingly polite - sometimes it is hard to tell on the phone) that I thought she needed to have these socks and the story that goes with them.  I am enjoying the idea of these socks as much as the act of knitting them.

Next post will have photos, I swear. 

Life has been absolutely crazybusy.  The second floor air conditioner at work is still blowing hot air.  It is BFH (bloody f-ing hot, a technical term that pretty much gives you the correct picture) in there.  We are moving furniture, hanging linens and digging through boxes that see the light of day only once a year - for Living History Day.  It will be such a relief to wrap up this project - we are doing so many new activities this year that it has been a real race to get everything lined up.

Anyway, I did have time for a little "Block Party" over the weekend - so I finished up the branching our scarf so it could keep the falling leaves scarf company all pinned out on the bed.  Still trying to figure out why the photo looks so blurry, because it was looking just fine on my computer earlier.  These two items are destined for the Grace Church Knit-Wits, our church knitting group.  For years the group knit hats and mittens for elementary school children in Camden.  As knitting began the big come-back a few years ago, several members saw potential in knitting novelty yarn items (especially those eyelash scarves) for sale at home or craft shows.  So far we have raised over $5000 and awarded 4 scholarships to Camden high school students.  It has been an effective way to grow the group and help our neighbors in Camden.

I will leave you with a photo of my dog Ralph, enjoying a late-summer ear of corn on the cob.  There will be many Ralph stories to come. 

Interesting Day

Very interesting day today.

The small museum where I work is getting ready for the fall season of events and school visitors.  Today we hosted a guest speaker from the Philadelphia Museum of Art at a workshop for all of the education program staff and volunteer docents.  She brought a slide presentation regarding Quaker dress and how the Quakers expressed their faith through their clothing choices.  Since our museum is in a home built by a Quaker family, and we interpret their daily life circa 1816, it was a great fit with our program.  If you are ever in the Philadelphia area, go see the museum's textile and furniture collections.

Then it was on to working on Living History Day, which is coming up at the end of the month.  It is our biggest public event of the year, with house tours, spinning and weaving and blacksmithing demonstrations and lots of hands-on family activities.  This year we are trying a number of new things, including allowing kids (or grown-ups) to try their hands at setting up a rope bed.  Since we do not have a spare antique bed hanging around, we decided to make our own simple version, for everyone to try.  Check out what a couple of women (both knitters) managed to creat with a few borrowed power tools one morning this week... Not bad for a first try, huh?  We are so full of ourselves we are ready to see if we can get Black & Decker to make knitting needles.  Since the bed holds both of us we figure it can handle the kids on Living History Day.  Hopefully posting this photo will not jinx the whole thing.

I keep running to get the mail because I won a skein of Opal Bumblebee sock yarn in the Give A Little challenge that Margene and Susan are organizing.  They have organized a great (and VERY successful) effort on the part of the knitting community to come to the aid of those who need it most right now.  All without political commentary.  Very positive and uplifting for the donors and the recipients.  Way to go!

Getting Started

So now I am a blogger. 

I still have reservations about starting out on this adventure, especially since I clearly need the tutorial on digital photo taking and editing.  Along with spell check - where the hell is spell check?  I discovered the whole knit-blog community about a year ago when searching for a pattern for a poncho to make for my daughter (who will be known to blogdom as SugarPlum) and discovered everyone's favorite Harlot.  I have been hooked since.

I still have a bunch of photo-taking and posting to do to get the albums up to speed, but that will come over the next few days.  In typical fashion, I started this new project during one of the busiest times of the year at my job.  Why start something when it makes most sense?  Why not just dive right in?  Sometimes that is the only way to get the job done.

On the knitting front right now I am working on finishing up the Branching Out scarf from Knitty.com.  I am knitting it in some mohair purchased in Maryland and spun up into roughly lace-weight singles on my Ashford Traveler.  My husband gave me the wheel for Christmas last year.  Is he a great guy or what?  Anyway, the scarf is a bit boring right now, but I keep making mistakes and having to rip back, which the mohair really resents.  I love knitting mohair but do not like the shed it lays down over everything it touches.  This is destined to be a gift or a donation somewhere.  When this gets off the needles, I am going to start this in the most beautiful chocolate brown lace-weight from KnitPicks.  Actually the color is called Redwood Forest, but it is a really rich heathery brown.  I learned the hard way - ONLY ONE LACE PROJECT AT A TIME, PLEASE.

Well, I must start the get-ready-for-tomorrow routine.  My kids are both in new schools this year, and it is a bit of a transition - especially getting used high school.  If I do not come down to the already brewed pot of coffee in the AM it gets the day off to a bad start.  I certainly hope whoever thought to put timers in coffeemakers was properly compensated.

edited to add:  Uh, duh, looks like spell check is probably the little ABC thing up there on the right.  How embarrassing.

testing testing testing

This is a test to see if I have any idea at all what I am doing.