Kim's winnings

Roxie asked to see Kim's prizes from the spinning competition. First though, I have to show you one of the items she bought. There was a booth that was really different. A Peruvian (?) man had a rather large booth with capes, shawls, sweaters and lots of other goodies from Peru. Alpaca goodies. This shawl is alpaca, very soft, very warm and cuddly. It is a pretty cream color and will go nicely with her Halloween costume/dress from last year.










T-shirt, bumps, and ribbon. She plans to ply the two colors together. Should be interesting.


And her own spinning wheel. One of her friends who was at the festival bought this and presented it to her after the competition results. I thought it was cute.

Our local fiber festival

Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, Canby, Oregon. Just south of Portland about 15 miles.

We went for the Jr. Spinning Competition and for more yarn. (yah, like we really need more yarn)

Kim is in the middle of the girls in the green shirt. There were 4 girls competing.





Setting up the roving, she hasn't started them actually spinning yet.



Spinning their hearts out.




This one on the right end was using a drop spindle and it looked like she was struggling with it. She didn't draft her fiber at all.


The basket stall!! We both came away with large baskets frome here.

Part of the general spinning circle.


The 4 girls getting their results several hours later. They all did very good!! Kim won first in her category of most consistent spinning and even had the longest with 59 yds. The girl who won the spinning wheel? The 2nd one from the left, the one who had been using the drop spindle. They all won ribbons and prizes. Kim came home with a T-shirt and two bumps of roving in green and purple.



Pretty flowers at the farm we stopped at for apples on our way home.



My basket. It's a pretty purple-pink.


Some of our stash.


Soap from Fogwash Soap Company



Lots of Duet Sock Yarn from A Swell Yarn Shop. And some from Butternut Woolens. And a pattern from Gardiner Yarn Works.

A new form at our house

Kim is a designer at heart. She comes up with all kinds of cool little knitted things, or sewn things. (I have to follow a pattern, I can't dream things up on my own) So when she asked for a dress form, I thought it would be great to have one around. I priced them and said, "not yet". So last week I got an email about dress forms on sale at Joann.com. I read the reviews on both that were offered, and placed an order for this gal. She can be used for both Kim and myself. It's weird how we can have similar measurements but have totally different body types.






And a couple of finished objects. A hat for a friend.......


And some interesting "lace" doilies. These have not been washed or dressed out(blocked). These are about the right size to place your drink on.


This one is huge!! It's probably 12 inches in diameter pre-dressing. I think it is so cool how I learned to do these. All of them are made from cotton of the Peaches and Cream variety on size 3 needles.

Socks Done

My most recent Rockin' Sock Club socks. Summer of Love Lace. Vine lace pattern on the cuff is done on US 1's, and the rest of the sock on 0's. Color is Flower Power. Definitely summer socks as they are fairly short. I haven't taken any other pictures, so the lace pattern doesn't show up very well in these pictures.




I spent the afternoon in a lace class. With Myrna Stahmann. She is cool!! I like her idea of what lace is. It's whatever you want it to look like. I go back tomorrow for an all day class. This is the Fall Knitting Retreat with the Tigard Knitting Guild. Worth the money!! And it's less than 5 minutes from my house, so I am not staying the night at the retreat center.

It's all about the Birds!

Pictures from the swifts this last weekend, and a Finished Object at the end!! It's beautiful.




This is one of the hawks that was stalking these little swifts.
As it grew darker, they started spiraling into the chimney.










My Mystery Stole 3 is off of the needles as of Monday night!! I blocked it yesterday/today. I could not get the wing to block the way I wanted it to. The bind off in the pattern is too tight.

The theme ended up being Swan Lake, and this is the wing end. You can see the feathers, I think they are beautiful.


Cat's Paws like the ballet steps.










The stats on it. Grignasco MerinoSilk in Dove Gray from Woodland Woolworks. I might have used half of the ball, maybe. Size US 3 needles.

I can breath again

No pictures today. I have some to share, they just haven't made it to my computer. Thank you for the good wishes on my migraine. I was able to get it under control and by the next day I was feeling much better. However, we had a lot of work around the house to do to get ready for a visit from my parents this last week. So I went from a headache into major cleaning mode. Fortunately it was a holiday weekend and I had Monday to get more stuff done. They came in on Wednesday late afternoon.

We did some fun errands on Thursday morning with my mom. Portland Music was one of the stops and Kim now has a music stand for her harp. Our next stop was a fabric store. WHOA NELLY!! I found 4 different pieces of material that had Sunbonnet Sue all over them and one with Farmer Sam. If you remember last year I was part of a quilt block swap and received Sunbonnet Sue as my blocks. I had a quilt as a child that I wanted to somewhat recreate. So this was really cool.

Later in the day, Kim had her appointment with the cardiologist. It was better news than we had received with John. Her murmur has not changed since she was in 3 years ago!! We thought it might have because of the growth spurt she has gone through, but so far nope. She will go in for a check up in another 3 years or so. If it doesn't change, then she will only need to be watched if she ever decides to become pregnant. That was a relief!!

Friday was mom's birthday and I can't remember what we did!! Oh we did piddly errands like the bank to change some accounts that I am on, a Costco run, stuff like that. I did convince my brother to come for dinner that evening and we had Kim's specialty of Mexican Lasagne, cornbread, chips and salsa and salad. We also had warm brownies with ice cream. I gave my mom an Orenburg Lace style shawl that I had bought last December from CIC. It was in a soft pink color and she loved it!!

On Saturday we visited the local nature park. My dad used his scooter on the paved trails so he could enjoy it with us. He can't walk long distances as he has neuropathy in his feet. He is also very unsteady now. Later that evening we went to one of the schools in Portland to see the Vaux's Swifts come in. This is what I have pictures of. It was so cool. If you read the articles about it, the descriptions are exactly what we saw. 10,000's of Swifts!!

Yesterday mom and dad headed out. Actually, we kind of booted them out to my aunt's house for a few days until they drive back home. Robert and my dad spent the day with my brother out on a lake. (My brother has a boat that he wanted to take dad out in), and mom took us into Portland for a SnB at Twisted, then she headed to my aunt's on the east side of town. We are relieved to have our home back to normal!!

Vacation Days and Swaps

I wanted to blog earlier in the day, but a migraine sidelined me for about 4 hours. I'm starting to feel better, but still have a bit of a headache and I am sure there will be words that won't come to me right away.

We went to the beach yesterday. There were supposed to be some whales passing through, but we didn't see any. It was a really nice day though, and it was fun to spend it just the four of us. It's not often that we get to do things like that.

We started out at Cape Meares. There are three capes in this area, Cape Meares, Cape Lookout and Cape Kiwanda. We made it to two of them. This one is just southwest of Tillamook.







The lighthouse at Cape Meares. You can actually go up into it, but we didn't. I didn't notice until I was just uploading these pictures to my computer, that Robert and the kids are in the lower left hand corner. They had the birding scope and binoculars all set up.


This is looking south from Cape Meares. You'll see it again from a different angle, like from that little patch of rock on the far left of the picture.





This is going up to Cape Lookout. There was a pullout there that was really nice.




And this is looking back toward Cape Meares, where we started. We didn't actually go all the way to Cape Lookout, because we forgot that you have to hike out there a couple of miles and we weren't prepared for that.





When we got home, there was a wonderful package from my Knitter's Virtual Vacation Swap Partner. She took me to Vermont. I have always wanted to visit the northeast corner of the US!! There is Vermont honey, Honey Mustard with Dill, a Vermont spoon that is already hanging with the other spoons. A magnet, a scrubby that was made in Vermont, some Tofutsie yarn, and probably the best of all is the Maple Sugar CANDY. I remember having some candy like this at Christmas time when I was a kid. A couple of years ago I went looking for it and only found it at Christmas time and it wasn't super good. This stuff is wonderful. It just melts in your mouth it is so good. Thank you Rachel E.