The Calm After The Storm

 Yesterday after talking to the 3rd doctor in 2 days, I finally have my head wrapped around last weekend.  Partly be cause I finally had a definite answer. Be cause of it I am less anxious and can get on with the very slow recovery process.  We are talking months not days. 

I am designing a new shawl.  I will play catch up on a lot of UFO’s, one project at a time.  I will catch up with getting patterns listed.  I do have one question for you though. If I open an Etsy store for my patterns would you use it if you currently do not use Ravelry?  

I also have another question.  Does anyone else knit both right and left handed. If so do you have a different knitting style for each hand? The knitting nerd in me is curious.  

TTFN.  It’s rest time again.  

A Do Over

 I have found that the yarn I recommend for My Doodling Shawl is literally just disintegrating. When I picked it up to wear last night it just started falling apart.   So I am re writing the pattern with yarn I picked up at the last Flagstaff Wool and Fiber Festival.  It is by an independent dyer and the yarn can be ordered from her website.  You may also use any yarn of the same weight.  

Details will follow, because I am literately knitting it up right now. I have also not told the dyer that I am using her yarn in the pattern  yet. I wound the yarn and started knitting it after dinner.  So give me a week or so to finish the sample and the pattern changes. 

I will leave the pattern up on Raverly and you will get an update with the new information.  

A Little Progress

 The stitches came out today. My hand is still sore. No schedule date for the next finger.  No knitting for a while yet.  So tomorrow I will warp a loom with a 12 dent heddle. Take some Cascade lace weight yarn and weave myself a shawl.  I have a truly awesome idea in my head. It will be a one of a kind creation.

I also listed several books and magazines on Ravelry for sale in the Destash and ISO Library group.  I will add more. All books are 1/2 the retail price plus postage.  Other things will be added when I take their pictures.  

Not to Plan

 The day did not going according to my plan.  I got up early to go to an out doors artist market and museum activity.  By the time I was finished with breakfast, it was raining. So on to plan B.  I went through my fiber closet and decided want I no longer wanted to spin.  This will be divided between two friends. The extra empty bags will go to the knitting guild. 

Well one thing lead to another and I decided to go through the rest of my inside yarn stash. The net result is more craft bags leaving the house for other people to knit charity projects.  One empty 36 quart tub. I also managed to get both larger suitcases in the cleaned out spot.  The smaller one is stashed in the larger one and tucked into the corner of my closet.  This took one thing off John’s to do list.  

Did I mention the best part yet? I guess not.  I will be having a stash down sale in different areas of Ravelry.  There will be books, weaving shuttles, 2 Turkish drop spindles, knitting kits and yarn.  Most will be priced to sell fast.  These are things not suitable for Bookman’s or Goodwill.  I hope to start listing things tomorrow.   My excuse for today is the antibiotic wiped me out.  After this morning’s cleaning spree and lunch I took a nap.  

Getting Scrapy

 I am currently working on another Stash Dive Scarf by Summer Lee Designs. It is not exactly as written.  I have gathered all my small skeins of sock yarn and cotton yarn.  As you can see by the second picture there are a lot of the smaller skeins.  The first picture the very colorful scarf so far. I am trying to do my best to make a fun and colorful scarf.  This scarf is going to be between 5 and 6 feet long so it is definitely going to a 7th or 8th grader. With all my recent destashing I now have room in my closet to store it until next fall.  

I also think that I over did it a little on my errands.  I was only out for 1 1/2 hours.  I did 4 errands today.  On the 3rd errand I found kids fall socks on sale for 70% off. This was my *Ganga of the day.  So I went back and grabbed a shopping cart and pick out a whole bunch of socks for the clothing bank I support. Yes, I filled up half a huge bag.  My hope is that the kids who get them, like them.  I then came home and slept for 2 hours.  I still managed to get 1 out of 2 loads of laundry folded, but not all at once. I also managed to mis match the colors on 2 pairs of socks, oh well. No harm no foul.  I still have to put the clothes hanging in the garage away too.  

*Ganga is Tucson speak for a great deal.  

Pattern Release Day

Today I finished typing and setting the pictures in my new pattern called The N.H.Shawl.  I think the name is quite clever and honest. The N.H.Shawl is short for the numb hands shawl. Usually in the United States when the initials N.H. Are used it stands for New Hampshire or a designer who hales from New Hampshire.

I am surprised that it got past the editors.   I got a yellow warning flag saying  it might be a sales link which is not allowed.  I guess the second paragraph of my pattern description was clear enough.  The pattern is now listed on www.Ravelry.com and www.LoveCrafts.com.  If you do nott have accounts at either your local yarn store should be able to purchase a copy and get a commission on the sale.

More Hats and Spinning

The next 11 hats for 642 rows. These will go to the Flowing Wells SD Clothing Bank. Below that will be yesterday’s spinning.

Hats

I am ready to bag 26 hats for The Flowing Wells School District Clothing Bank. This equals 1,225 rows for the one million rows challenge on Ravelry.

2,444

This is what 2,444 rows looks like. There are 3 hats, 7 scarfs, 2 shawls, 2 cowls and 5 kitchen things. These will all be at the Taglit fundraiser.

The other score for the day Arthritis 1 Sheri 0. John an A+ for a great dinner. Last but not least I think Eric is doing better..

25

I fell short of my goal of 31 hats in 31 days. Here are the 25 hats that are finished for July, with the last two hats in front of the other 23 hats. I will keep knitting hats because winter is comimg. I will keep knitting hats to use up the yarn my friends are giving me. I will keep knitting hats because the children like them. I will keep knitting hats becasue I like to knit hats and I have many heads to cover.

Now I need to count the rows for the one million row challenge on Raverly. I hope to see a jump in the counter. Then its time to tag and bag the hats.

A New Pattern

Today I added a new pattern to my Ravelry Shop. I have found that when I use 3 different cameras to take pictures, the pictures go to 3 different places in the computer memory. John says he has an easy fix for this. It took me 3 days to transfer the pattern from my iPad to the main computer and add the picture, I could have knit this pattern at least 3 times in the time it took to transfer the pattern. I know that this is a winter hat, made with bulky yarn. When the high is 111 for the day, I find that releasing a winter hat pattern adds a bit of fun to the day. It's a Tucson thing, where else do you go to celebrate the first day of 100 degree weather of the season?

The hat is called Grandma's Winter Hat and my friend Jimmy was gracious enough to be my model. This is the link to Grandma's Winter Hat . Even though it is listed on Ravelry you will be able to view and purchase this pattern with this link. It will fit teenages through adults. If you are in a country outside the United States, use this link to  Loveknitting.com , you can find this pattern and 5 of my other patterns. At Love Knitting you will also be able to buy the yarn and supplies to knit this pattern.

Recoup Time

Sometimes there is a down side to sharing.  I landed up with Eric's cold.  It woke me up at midnight and I then understood how miserable Eric was.  The good news is that with my immune system in a very hyper state I was feeling better by this afternoon. Just a warning for everyone, I will be expecting a bad body day for a few days as I am already very stiff.  

There was no construction work today. So Eric and I took it easy today. I set my sights on UFO's.  For those who are not craft people UFO' are unfinished projects.  While I was resting I managed to get 6 UFO's finished today.  I then looked for a few more UFO's to finish.  So after all was knit and done I have 1 more empty project bag and a free set of knitting needles.  Plus I can add 727 rows to the million row challenge on Ravelry.  

Tomorrow is suppose to be the last day for the kitchen remodel. Thursday we are suppose to repair the water damage to the master bathroom caused by problems with the last remodel. After 5 years we finally finished fixing the mistakes on the addition. Fingers crossed as I say this.   Then next week we move back into the craft room. When that is finished we will move onto the living room.  With completion before mid December.  Hopefully I can make a honey do list for a few more things I want done like the back door, I want to keep this energy moving forward.   

Project 5

Is a hat for a friend. With 81 rows towards the one million row challenge on Raverly. 

A Little Too Much Stress

It has been a rather stressful week around here with family issues and Eric being sick. There has not been enough time to sleep, nor enough caffeine consumed to balance life out. The stress level was high enough to get to my tummy, not fun at all. I will have to add that the arthritis flare up was not the least bit helpful either.

I dealt with the stress by doing some more cleaning. Cleaning was even done in the middle of the night when I could not sleep. The craft room is 1/3 of the way done. Maybe I can have it finished by the end of the week. Lisa was a big help by taking some craft supplies for her projects. My older sister is going to finish some needlepoint for me. Some projects were deconstructed and recycled into different projects. Some were thrown out for good in the recycle bin. Some of Eric's aides graciously took my excess of college ruled paper, 6 reams left the house.

I also came to the conclusion that at this stage of my life, I just don't have the patients for lace knitting. So I listed almost a dozen skeins of lace weight yarn on my Ravelry destash page. No reasonable offer will be refused. For those of you not on Ravelry here are the pictures, make you offers.  Most are very soft and squishy. The sock yarn will come with the pattern designed by me for the yarn. More yarn might be listed later.

I think it is time to get back to cleaning. Have a great weekend.

New Patterns

I have finally figured out the new system on Ravelry. They have changed it since the last time I posted new patterns. So today I posted 2 patterns that were designed for the Old Pueblo Knitting Guild June Luncheon. The patterns were each exclusive to a different Local Yarn Store in Tucson. The top pattern is Grandma's Summer Shawl and the bottom one is called Morning Glory. My Good friend Lisa is the model. Both patterns are suitable for beginning knitters as well as more advanced knitters.

If you are a local Yarn Shop, I have also enabled a discount for you. This will allow you to download only the patterns as needed with out tying up capital.  If you would like to use my patterns as teaching tools or to teach a class in shawls please contact me and we can make arrangements.

So if you are on Ravelry you can look the patterns up by the pattern name or by my name. If you are not on Ravelry just use this link. Sheri's Pattern Shop .

So I wish you happy knitting and would like to remind you that the holidays are around the corner. It is possible to knit one or both patterns before the holidays.