A walk in our oasis

Posted in kids, Uncategorized by 4theloveoffiber

Well the snow is back folks, as my bosom friend says “it only snows when you make plans”, and that certainly seems to be true! Friday I had plans to go visiting, and then we were hit with snow, yesterday I was lucky enough to get out & go grocery shopping with a friend, and made it home soon after it started snowing.

Don’t get me wrong, I love snow, I am jealous of the amount of snow everyone is getting. I’m just learning that the weather people say sunshine, and that doesn’t apply to my house, because we live on top of a mountain, so it’s hard to plan day to day activities.

This morning I had plans to go vote in the NH Primary (by the way, I endorse you all to use your minds and vote for who you want, & ignore the celebrity who says “vote this person”).

However the snow that was not in our forcast had other plans

That is our driveway.

The plow trucks don’t seem to visit our road as often or maintain it as well as the do the main roads, so even if I had been able to make it out of my driveway in my car, it wouldn’t have done so well on my very steep road. Luckily my husband was able to get a good amount of the driveway with the snow blower, and after hearing that I was considering tossing on the snow shoes & walking to town, he put the truck in four wheel drive and away we went.

Speaking of snow shoeing, we spent some time over the weekend snow shoeing 3/4 of the boarders of our land, first we started off with the kids in tubes

But after awhile, the trees started to get in the way

We found that we had a few springs on the property

And experienced some sibling love

We all had a lot of fun and the parents were certainly exhausted in the end. All my Saturday evening plans (reading, knitting, crocheting) went down the tubes & instead I spent two hours looking at seeds, because that is all the energy I could muster.

My sweater slowed down due to the quality of knitting needles I was working with. 18 sizes of circular knitting needles for $8 sounds like a great idea in theory, but it’s really not. It’s like going shopping for groceries when you are hungry, “why did I buy these?!”.

So, while I was out yesterday I stopped at one of my absolutely favorite yarn places, Nancy’s alterations and yarn shop in Conway, and purchased two pairs of circular needles and had to shield my eyes from the yarn because I want to buy it all but I need a new car…priorities 🙄😒

However here is my progress so far

Even Ailey appears to be a fan.
Have a great day folks!!

4Feb2016

A few rows short of a blanket

Posted in Fun with fiber, Uncategorized by 4theloveoffiber

Last time on ‘The Year I Made My Own Clothes’

I had an 8 year old
I was crocheting a mermaids tail blanket
I found some neat artwork
And we had a lot of snow.

Well, I now have a NINE year old 😳, the mermaids tail blanket is almost finished, turns out my girl had a bit of a growth spurt (I also apparently used the wrong size crochet hook for twelve rows 😭) so I am adding rows to the top

And I messed up the fin, go me. So while I have presented the mostly finished present to Lorelai (which is how we found that blanket to be too small), I still have a little ways to go.

However I have been enjoying every moment of it & I am excited to announce that I have joined the knitting group in town and I absolutely LOVE every minute of it. I haven’t been part of any group since the spinning guild two years ago, so I am happy to have been invited to join in and have made new friends!

I started a new project this week (because we all know how great I am at finishing old ones, maybe I have a fear of finishing things…is that a phobia some sort?, I’m attached to the project so much that I can’t bear to finish it?!)

Anywho (disclaimer for people who keep getting snarky with me, yes I meant to write anywho over anyhow, so simmer down!!)

I started the bluebell cardigan from Jane Austen Knits 2015 designed by Zsuzsa Kiss

(Picture curtesy of Intearweave’s Jane Austen knits 2015)

Lorelai, the budding fashionista she is, chose the colors for me

I’m using this Caron simply soft Harvest Red & the contrast color will be Caron simply soft Blue Mint.

I won’t lie, this pattern was a little confusing at first because it called for something I had never heard of before, but after frogging six rows I finally figured it out and now it’s coming along.

We are currently have strange weather here in New England, some people are getting hit with snow, while here in our part of NH we are having 50 degree days that is melting snow, today we had a mix of rain and snow, and sometime next week we will be getting snow again.

We are looking forward to spring however, we just got in the first order of seeds for our garden, with plans to place a second order sometime soon!

I’m also looking forward to fluffy animals and hopefully spending some quality time with my hand carders and the insane amounts of wool I have sitting in my craftroom. I’m ready to be spinning again!!

This was the last thing I spun, seasilk back in who knows when!!

Oh well, soon enough 😊

Have a great night folks!

16Jan2014

I don’t have time for this

Posted in Uncategorized by 4theloveoffiber

I’m couch bound today, it’s not that I have the flu so much, I just have awful back pain with a bit of…never mind you don’t need hear details. There are pros and cons to not feeling well, the pros being that if some unsuspecting visitor were to stop by and see the piles of dishes on my counter, I have a good excuse, the downside is that I have now have a messy house.

Right now the cons out way the pros, sure I get to cuddle up and read knitting magazines

And dream about all the things I will, hopefully, maybe, one day knit. Then I start to think about the fiber & color I want to use to knit said item….then I go to

I’m not proud of what happened next….yeah, but you got good deals
Before I could talk myself out of it I started adding items to my cart, I then texted Toph, surly he would disapprove and remind me that I have a lot of wool left to spin in my craft room. However I didn’t say “I want to buy wool”, I said “I want to buy rovings, that have already been carded and are good to go”. He gave me the okay and now suddenly I am expecting

4oz of white merino ❤ – tussah silk- bamboo rovings at $2.75 an oz, I mean COME ON NOW! What a deal!
Then I added this

2oz of winter mix hand painted mulberry silk roving. MULBERRY SILK PEOPLE!!! MUL-BERRY. SILK It’s amazing.

I have since given myself a lecture and I’m not allowed to purchase anymore fiber until all my wool is spun up, also I am now donating almost a tub full of (commercial) yarn to my knitting class….to make room for the fiber that is coming.

Alright folks, I’m going to go chug some orange juice and chicken broth and muster up some energy to I can at least sweep and vacuum. I’ll leave the links to the etsy stores below, I am an enabler.

Felting Supply

Silk and Shine

14May2013

Cold front

Posted in Uncategorized by 4theloveoffiber

For those new readers who want to catch up this is my old blog, I tried to pop over there this morning to let old readers know that I had moved, however the site is down again.

We seem to have a cold front these last couple of days, we have gone from low 80’s to mid 50’s tis a bit chilly out! Lucky the only thing we have planted outside right now are peas, carrots & lettuce (planted last year) are starting to pop up as well.

It’s funny that 50 was considered warm this past winter when it got down to below zero outside, now it feels like it is time to layer up!

Nothing makes you feel warmer on a cold day though, like a nice cup of tea or coffee or cocoa, or whatever floats your boat, I don’t know what you drink so feel free to replace those drinks with whatever you want. Anyway I digress, as I was starting to say, nothing makes you (or me anyway) feel warmer then a hot beverage and working on a project that involves warm yarn

Here are how my projects are coming along

Linen work apron
I’m only on row 5 right now and unfortunately I think I made the wrong stitch somewhere but it doesn’t look bad (right now anyway, I’m not very far)

It’s really hard to tell against the picture from the magazine. So far, I’m happy with it.

An aran for Fredrick
Ok, if you are just tuning in and do not want to wait for blog.com to start working again, here is the backstory behind this sweater.
Last year my husband bet me that I couldn’t knit him a sweater before he built an apple cider press, my friend Kaytee said it sounded like an “Amish bet” and it just kinda of stuck. I’ve had so many issues with this sweater before finally (after showing fifteen million people the pattern), contacting the author Kathleen Dames, who from states away, was able to tell me exactly what I was doing wrong (actually, if it weren’t for her, ‘knitting my way through Jane Austen‘ would not be possibly because I didn’t truly know how to read a chart).

Anywho, my husband hasn’t even drawn up plans for the cider press and well, this is how far I’ve come on the sweater.

Bartók Tunik
I am 10.5″ away from being able to move on the next step. With this cold front I should get a lot more done and hopefully have this sweater finished by my June 7th deadline. I need to “haul ass” on it.

So long folks!