Tag: pghknitandcrochetfestival

Still Plugging Along

Wow, it’s March? How did that happen? Not that I am complaining mind you? The days are getting longer and it’s almost spring. Anyone who knows me, knows I am not a friend of winter. It has been a gray and wet winter here in Nashville, but at least no frozen stuff to speak of, so that’s good.

I have progressed to the inner border on my fingering weight re-knit of my Honeydew Lace Square pattern. I am halfway through that and making edits to the charts to update that pattern when I am finished. I just added the third skein so I may be able to complete the whole thing with only four skeins. That is what I hope for anyway.

The festival season will be starting back up for me in just 10 more days. I have three shows lined up for the second half of March. I will be at the Carolina Fiber Fest on March 13-14; from there I will be in Pittsburgh for the Pittsburgh Creative Arts Festival on March 20-22; and then it’s on to Hartford, CT for Stitches United on March 26-29. It’s a two drive home from there. I am working through my preparation list and have completed most of the tasks. I am mostly just focusing on that and trying not to think too much about being away from my loved ones for almost three weeks. :-( I enjoy what I do but that is the hard part.

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Checking in from Pittsburgh

Good Morning! I arrived safely in Pittsburgh yesterday afternoon. I am here for the 15th annual Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival AKA Pittsburgh Creative Arts Festival now, since it has been expanded to include all kinds of needle arts. We are expecting an exciting year, with lots of fun activities in the new Green Tree location. I will be heading over to set up the booth at noon but wanted to use part of my free time this morning doing a quick catch post for you.

As you see I didn’t quite get my Holbrook finished for the show. I am about 70% done on the border. The biggest set back was due to coming down with some cold/mild flu thing on last Wednesday night. I had a large mill dyeing order that I was trying to get done that I had picked up on Tuesday. I went out Wednesday and did prep work for that and got 4 of the 12 batches dyed before quitting for the night. After a light supper and bath I felt a fever coming on and went to bed early. Thursday morning it was clear not work was gonna get done that day. I was down with a fever off 100. I so didn’t have time for this. UGH. I was not able to get that work done until Sunday due to continual fever. I did manage some less strenuous tasks from my to-do lists that were mainly printing patterns, and other computer oriented stuff. I didn’t even feel like knitting the first two days. I am fine now, just have a bit of a lingering cough.

I did manage to DRAG myself out to Best Buy on Friday when my pre-ordered Samsung Galaxy S10+ was ready for pickup. I tried not to breathe on anyone, LOL. This is the first time I splurged a bit and went for the Plus. It was mostly the 4100 mAh battery that I wanted it for. I love it! I hate taking selfies as a rule but I was playing around with the camera in my room last night and took a couple for experimentation. I was surprised that I managed to not totally hate the results, LOL.

Okay it’s time to get to work. See you soon!

Posted on by — 4 Comments

I think I can…

I am about 10 days into my Holbrook Shawl and the progress is encouraging. I have only 3 repeats of the main stitch pattern, which means 18 more rows, if I want to end it there and move on to the border. I had entertained the idea of adding two more repeats to make it a bit larger, but I am probably just going to go with the size as written. I would like to have this one finished in time to have it in the booth at Pittsburgh and Raleigh next month.

Speaking of fiber festivals, I have been working through my other show prep lists when I am not knitting or taking care of the household and family tasks. It has been a challenge with all the rain this winter but I did manage to get some yarn dyeing done on Monday. This is about half of it which I put back out on the lines today during a short respite in the wet weather. My next opportunity to get it all dry will be Sunday and Monday.

There are things that can be done on rainy days too. I have some Yarn Boxes I need to wax, yarn labels that need printed, cut apart and color labeled, patterns to be printed, etc. Of course it’s that time of year that we all dread; tax time. I have done my Federal return, first quarter sales tax returns, and local business personal property return, so that’s at least out of the way. Whew! I also need to take my truck to get some scheduled maintenance done before I hit the road again.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

What’s Next?

I am finished with my Dowland shawl and have begun my next project. I actually have quite a few in the queue, but have selected and wound the yarn for the next two projects. The darker one is Classic Merino Superwash Sock yarn in color Slate which is the yarn I am using for a new Holbrook shawl in the photo below. The light green is Classic Merino Superwash Sport yarn in color Honeydew which I will be using for a new Kimani shawl. I need to knit new samples of both of these due to inventory changes.

Holbrook Shawl beginning

Holbrook should be a quick knit even if I decide to enlarge the original size a bit. It is an easily memorized lace and I remember it being very fast the first time I made it.

Dowland on the blocking mat

So, I was blocking Dowland yesterday and to my annoyance I realized I still need more blocking mats. I thought 18 should be plenty but if I had just ONE more I wouldn’t have had to come up with the work around you see below for that ONE point I couldn’t pin down. Sigh. It worked for this time but I will be buying some more before I block the next shawl, just in case. Of course I won’t need them then, right? :-D

Looks like I still need more blocking mats. :-)

I am quite pleased with how it came out and hope it will inspire many knitters in the booth this year. I can’t believe it’s only about a month until festival season begins again for me. First up is the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival and the next weekend I am happy to be going back to the Carolina Fiber Festival.

Usonian Shawl
Katania Shawl
Dowland Shawl

I hope to have the Holbrook finished to add to these three new samples. I think it is too much to expect that I can have the Kimani finished before I leave but I should have it on the needles to work on in my down time while I am traveling.


Posted on by — 2 Comments