Life With The Crew

Lace Cotton Shawl - Looking for New Home

Hi Everybody, the problem with knitting every day is that you tend to accumulate a lot of knitted items!  Since I don't plan on stopping any time soon, I would like to do a little Spring cleaning in order to make room for future projects.  I have this shawl/scarf worked in a combination of "diamonds in moss" lace pattern and garter stitch.  It is Quince & Co's 100% California Cleaner Cotton in a pretty cornflower blue color.  It is a long rectangle, about 17" wide and 49" long.  The lace is very stretchy.  It can be wrapped around the neck like a scarf or looks beautiful with a shawl pin.  I am a wool girl and the cotton just doesn't make me sing, but I know a lot of people don't like the "itchiness" of wool and this cotton is very soft and drapey.

I would like to sell it for $40 plus shipping - that covers the yarn cost.  I only wore it several times.  Smoke free home.  If you are interested, please email me at [email protected]

 

A Little Announcement (And A Pretty Blue Bonnet)

So folks, this is the Big Girl Bonnet, and it is special because it is the first handknit item that I am offering for sale.  I decided that I've knitted enough things for myself and the little babe and I should start putting my skills to good use (maybe help pay for that kindly senior horse gentleman of mine named Frank.)  This bonnet is knit with Wool of the Andes Tweed yarn, which is 80% Peruvian Highland Wool and 20% Donegal Tweed.  It is soft and squishy and has little nubs that offer pops of color.  The color is called "North Pole", which I think is totally fitting for the Arctic conditions we've been having.  This is a great hat for a free spirited babe.  My daughter is 6 years old and the hat fits her perfectly which a bit of room to grow.  

Measurements: The I-cord ties are 8.5" long, the front edge is 18" from one side to the other, the height from nape of neck to point is 8.5". From the middle of the forehead to point is almost 9". The model's head circumference is about 20".  The bonnet is brand new - only worn for these photos.

This Big Girl Bonnet is for sale for $20 plus shipping.  If you are interested, please contact me at [email protected]

And despite my Instagram bashing last year, I have jumped on the bandwagon in the name of "marketing".  You can find me there as @warm_in_wool

 

Warm in Wool

We have plenty of ice and snow and cold.  As we should in January.  Luckily, we also have wool (and alpaca).

This is a modified Isle au Haut Pullover by Beatrice Perron Dahlen.  I have had this pattern in my Favorites box on Ravelry for two years now.  Knit in Quince & Co's wool/alpaca Owl yarn, I thought it would be warm and toasty - perfect for January weather.  After knitting a couple rows of the lace pattern on the arms, I just wasn't feeling it.  I have been in a color work craze for a while and that is what I wanted to knit, not lace.  So I switched gears, grabbed leftover Local yarn from O-Wool and got creative.  After washing, I patiently waited three days for it to dry and on the most frigid day of the year so far, I pulled on my wooly sweater.  Warm in wool.  Smile.

(The white streak on the photo above is not a flaw on the sweater - it is a drip from the gutters.  The little babe took the photos while standing inside and I was out.  She is getting pretty decent with her point and shoot.)

 

Light in Many Forms

Today is the Winter Solstice and I wish I had a lovely snow dusted Winter landscape to share with you.  Or perhaps candles flickering warm light in a cozy indoor scene.  Alas, the temps are above freezing, the ground is muddy instead of frozen, and since I apparently have a compression fracture in my spine, I cannot bend down to take any artistic photos.  So this is what I've got.

A little bit of sunshine captured in the morning before the clouds rolled in.  (And I just love how there is even pet hair on my evergreen display.  Darn cats knock it over at night.)

Sugar cookies made with my grandma's recipe.  The original Sour Cream Sugar Cookie recipe calls for oleo and margarine, neither of which are things I use, so butter it was.  They did not have quite the texture of Gram's, but the sprinkles were the important part for the little babe.  For me, it is the memory of making them with my grandma, putting green and red sprinkles on some of them and cinnamon/sugar/walnuts on the others.  She kept them safely sandwiched between layers of wax paper in a plastic Tupperware container.

And since we have a new baby in the extended family, I had to make something to keep her warm.  I had yarn leftover from the sweater I just completed for the little babe and it was just enough for a tiny little cardigan.  

The toddler sweater is the Anders Kids pattern knitted in Wool of the Andes from Knit Picks.  The little sweater is the Baby Owl Yoke Cardigan, but instead of doing the owl cable pattern, I did fair isle hearts.

This whole compression fracture occurred when I fell off my horse on Sunday.  My last horseback riding fall was twenty years ago and apparently I am not as soft and flexible as I was back then.  It was a very uneventful fall - I wasn't cantering through the woods or jumping over something impressive.  Frank just spooked at a loud noise and jumped back to the left; I flew forwards to the right.  After clinging to his neck for several long seconds, I went splat.  The embarrassed gentleman did not run away, but stood there looking very much concerned.  (No anthropomorphizing here of course.)

So Happy Solstice everyone!  Let there be light in your life today, whether it be a flickering candle, twinkling fairy lights, a dinner with friends, or the smiling face of a loved one.  Light shines in many forms.

 

The Use-it-Up, Wrap-it-Up Shawl

My recent knitting project has been a shawl for myself, or really for the little babe and myself.  She has declared my favorite shawl "too itchy" and so I wanted one that we could wrap up in while reading.  Over the past year I have knitted a cardigan, fair isle sweater, and vest all using O-Wool's Local yarn.  I love it.  It is 50/50 wool/alpaca sourced locally from states near Pennsylvania and it is soft, wooly, and rustic.  My perfect yarn.  I had varying amounts of several different colors; not enough for a sweater, way too much for a hat, and I didn't want to use it for the little babe.  So, that pretty much left me with a shawl for myself.  

It is a very wide shawl and the middle is a bit too long, but it works.  The colors are not necessarily ones that I would choose if I was designing a project from scratch, but the muted palette is still pretty.  To soften the geometric stripe pattern, I wanted something different for the edge, so I tried a picot edge for the first time.  It takes much more time than a normal bind-off, but I really like the result.  A little bit rustic granny.  That's me at 38!  

I think sharing this shawl, with the autumnal golden brown color, is a good thing for the last day of November.  The sky is overcast today and there is a dusting of snow on the ground.  We hung up a new bird feeder last week and just now had a female Red-bellied Woodpecker fending off the House Sparrows.  My husband said he saw one yesterday morning and I didn't quite believe him.  Here is the public apology.  I was wrong.  On an unrelated note, as we enter the season of giving (buying), I wanted to put a plug in for Patagonia's Worn Wear program.  I had one coat that was a bit too small, one that was a bit too puffy, and so I wanted something new for the barn.  I found the perfect coat  - used, a couple of years old, but in awesome condition - on the Worn Wear website.  It was more than 50% less than the cost of a new coat.  Buying used is better for the environment, your wallet, and the Worn Wear website rates what kind of condition it is in and what exactly is wrong with it.  I am super glad I gave it a chance.

Whatever It Was, It Was Beautiful

Since the "big snow" that we received a week and a half ago, we've had some weird weather.  There was maybe a day of cold sun, but otherwise it has been gray and damp.  Warm enough for the snow to melt and everything to be soggy and wet.  Yesterday it straight out rained all day.  But over the weekend there were two mornings of beauty, when the ice on the trees couldn't decide if it was hanging on or slowly letting go.  Whatever it was, it was beautiful (as long as you kept your eyes up and averted the muddy ground and ignored the squishing with each step).

When we went with my Mom to get her Christmas tree, I had snagged some free branch cuttings.  At home, I grabbed an old wire hanger from the closet, bent it into a circle, and attached the branches with floral wire.  Ta-dah!  A free wreath, complete with hanging hook.  I made two and saved myself at least $50.  The little babe is in the festive stage, so a little bit of holiday decorating has begun.

It's Thankful Tuesday Folks!

I am thankful for the fact that on a cold drizzly day in November, with 5 inches of dirty melting snow on the ground, I did not have to go anywhere.  It was a pajama day.  After reading about candle making in our morning book from Little House:  The Charlotte Series, we dug out the beeswax and molds.  When the hand dipped tapers weren't turning out very well (you need a deep pot for dipping), we turned to the molds that we've had since we sold candles year ago.  We combined bayberry and beeswax and added frankincense essential oil.  Several pine cones, evergreens, and a turkey later, we felt pretty productive.  All of the candles came out of the molds cleanly, but we did have two wicks pull completely through the candles (so the turkey is just for looks).  One of the small trees burned nicely during dinner.  It is nice to have a candle burning on a dark night.  

I am also thankful that the little babe loves being read to, because when the going gets tough, the frustrated mother grabs a book.  The Horse Diaries are fantastic books - we learn about history, different cultures and different time periods, and horses.  We both really enjoy them.

And tea parties.  Even though I get annoyed sometimes when I am trying to get things done, the little babe loves a good tea party.  And really, we should all be able to find 15 minutes for a civilized conversation over fine chocolate and home baked cookies.  So I am thankful for tea parties.

What are you thankful for today?

The cards are leaf prints that we did with simple acrylic paint and construction paper.  It was a bit messy, but we both enjoyed doing it while listening to an audiobook.

 

Winter Preview

And after all that playing...

belgian waffles for breakfast made in my grandma's waffle maker.  The plug only sparked a little when I pulled it out of the outlet and the waffles were terrific with blueberry strawberry jam and maple syrup.  It isn't even Winter yet, but we're enjoying the warm and cozy feeling.

I've been on a bonnet kick.  Both are modified versions of the Feathers Bonnet.  Oh, and the treat of the moment is a cranberry juice snow slushie.  Love the simple things.

Recent Images

~A surprise ladybug in late season dahlias.

~A baby bonnet and a new skill - making I-cord!  I have avoided any project with I-cords because I thought it sounded scary.  Oh, silly me, it is SO simple!  The pattern is the Feathers Bonnet, but I couldn't figure out the feathers pattern for some reason, so I decided to make this heart pattern instead.  The pattern is clear and simple to make; I am ready to start one for my own bigger babe.

~Homemade yogurt from local raw milk.  Thanks to the husband and to the farmer.

~Pictures from a blustery picnic day.  We left the normal path and ran down the far side of the dam.  The grass had just been cut, it was sheltered from the wind, and apparently the hill was begging to be rolled down.

~Ladybug love.

All good things.  I have fallen out of the Thankful Tuesday routine, so let's call this a belated Thankful post for this week.  What are you thankful for today?

 

Looking for Lichen

The little babe and I are reading a new series, a spin-off of The Little House on the Prairie books.  These are about the women in Laura Ingalls' family - her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.  Works of historical fiction, they are entertaining stories for young girls that provide interesting information about different times and places.  We started with the "oldest" books, set in Scotland, and there have been many times when I've said, "Oh, we need to look that up and find out more about it!"  Dyeing wool with lichens is one of those things.  In the book, a woman who is knowledgeable about plants for herbal medicine and dyeing uses lichens soaked in stale urine to achieve a staying red color.  We found out that instead of urine, we can use straight ammonia and that we have the possibility of getting bright pink and purple colors.  

So we took to the woods on a lichen hunt, which is actually a bit harder than I thought.  In the woods around us, we have more moss than lichen, and a lot of what we did find was flat against rocks, with no chance of being collected (maybe it wasn't the type we wanted anyway - as usual, I did not do the necessary research.  I read one website and decided to go for it.)  We did not pull lichens off of live trees, but ended up finding dead branches on the ground that had sufficient lichen clusters.  The little babe was a great helper, gamely scraping the damp lichens off the chilly rotting logs.  We collected about a cup of various types of lichens.  When we got home, we did the "C test", to determine if we should soak our lichens in the ammonia or could use the boiling water route.  After applying a cotton swab dipped in bleach onto the white underside of the lichen and seeing the color change to red, ammonia it will be.  (There is more information about that on this website.) 

The lichen has to soak for several weeks; the website actually says a minimum of three months, so I'll let you know how it ends up sometime in Winter.  We have high hopes for girly pink and purple, so I can make something warm for this wood sprite of mine.  She does love adventures like this, but she has to do it in her own style!