I grew food, foraged for some more, cooked it and ate it and preserved the rest. Lots of food. TONS! We have a freezer full and I canned 116 jars (info here), with more to come, now that apples are in full swing. I never expected the warm, toasty feeling that comes from preserving all that food and seeing the jars in neat little rows, but I suppose I should have. I get the same feeling from piles of sweaters I’ve made. It’s that much work, too. Goodness! I spent the summer pretty sweaty and tired.

Pippa:

Pippa is well and enjoying life. She spent an idyllic (bar the ticks) summer hiking every morning with Mr. HelloYarn and enjoying her fenced yard and having friends over to play in it. She has grown into a fantastic dog who’s just a pleasure to be around (bar the ticks).

What’s up now:

Fall is here, there are epic piles of leaves around our house, and it’s almost time for Rhinebeck! I’ll be there, shopping like a maniac and waiting in the artichoke line. I look forward to seeing all my woolly friends there. If I really knit a lot this week, I’ll even have a finished sweater. I’ve actually done a bunch of knitting that I haven’t showed here. I’ll be back with proper discussions and photos.

Fiber Club:

The fiber club renewals are up for November through January. If you’re a current member and would like to join again, go get ‘em! I’ll leave this up for 2 weeks, then start emailing people on the waiting list to invite them, if there are any slots left. Please note: I sent out a newsletter today and, as usual, about 20 were returned. Please add adrian at helloyarn dot com to your contacts.

Stuff I Love:

* Guardians of Russian Art Museums- Check out this wonderful series of photos.

* Postcards from Yo Momma- A Depository of Moden Day Maternal Correspondence. Mom, I swear I won’t send any of your emails in.

* New House Textiles- The hearts! The mushrooms!

* Cooking- My new favorite recipes are this Vidalia Onion Tarte Tatin, this apple cake, cream scones, and this tomato galette. Nom nom nom.

See you at Rhinebeck!

June’s club has shipped and I’ve got a sneak peek, if you like.

I dyed up some extra, like last month, and if you’d like some it’s $16 per 4 oz. bag. Email me at adrian@helloyarn.com. Members only, please.

Thanks!

PS: I’m going out of town for a couple of days this week. I’ll hopefully have internet access, but if I don’t answer lickety-split, don’t fret. I will respond.

Jared, I’m done! He looks cute in it! I’m super late to this game, obviously, as Jared’s vest is now a pattern and 22 people have knit it/are knitting it, including at least one other in my fiber, the lovely David’s, which is super fun to see. I didn’t use his pattern, but they’re totally the same idea.

The Info:
Pattern: my made-to-measure
Yarn: my handspun Spicery Shetland wool yarn and Shetland yarn from Whitney Acres Farm, which is down the road from the pizza place in the next town over.
Needles: 7 for the body and 5 for the ribbing
Size: 40″ with no ease- the fit reminds me of a schoolboy’s vest

This vest was knit in the round with steeks to preserve the color shifts on both sides of the v-neck. I did crochet steek reinforcements, like for this vest and this vest. It’s so tidy, makes knitting so much simpler, and looks so good that I’d never do it another way.

I left no ease (knit a 40″ vest for a 40″ chest) and Mr. HelloYarn felt it was a big snug for his taste. It looked great to me, but with a second, pinned-out wet block (Mr. HelloYarn helped, perhaps because he does not trust me not to strangle him with a tight vest again), it felt great to him, too. No more zero ease for him!

And for the Pippa fans:

Pippa’s doing well, in case you wondered. She’s learning new things every day and now that our village is getting busy (it’s a popular summer tourist stop), she’s getting a taste of crowds. Other than one incident with a woman and an ice cream cone (no ice cream was damaged, but it was certainly threatened), she’s generally made of awesome. We’re getting a picket fence in a couple of weeks (what color to paint it is my obsession at the moment, and along with that comes the question of what color to paint the house) and once she has a secure place to really run her head off, we can really get busy with her “circus dog” training. She loves to jump through hoops!

Stuff I love this week:

-Graham Annable’s Children of the Night & Their Dad prints. They’re not only fantastic illustrations, they’re wonderfully, as well.

-Sherman Alexie’s young adult book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I’d highly recommend this for young people, unlike some other young adult books I’ve read. This one is hilarious, painfully true, and hopeful. If I didn’t already have a crush on Mr. Alexie, I would now!

- True Blood- I can hardly wait for the new season to start on Sunday. I look forward to Eric, Eric, and more Eric and finding out what happened to Lafayette, the skank.

- Those teensy tiny Ravelry symbols alerting you that you’re following a link into Ravelry. Want them for your blog? Here you go- scroll down to the bottom.

May’s fiber is on its way right now. I hope you all love it!

Want to see it?

This is a fiber I’ve done before for the club, but it came from a new source and it’s quite different from what I usually get. It drafts like a DREAM, so should be a fun spin for everyone. It’s a great middle-of-the-road wool that would be suited for a variety of projects.

I dyed some extra fiber this month and will make it a point to do so in the future. There’s a limited amount, but if you’d like some more of this month’s fiber and are currently in the club, let me know at adrian@helloyarn.com. It’s $15 per 4 oz. bag and I’m happy to ship it with next month’s club to save you shipping.

It’s a sad post without any photos, so would you like to see the baby chipmunk we saw in our yard the other day? I thought so.

Thanks!

I’ll be back with photos of Mr. HelloYarn in his handspun striped vest as soon as I can get him to pose, hopefully tomorrow. I’ve been letting finished projects pile up. Whoops!

Woot! I’m done! Between practicing my crochet and trying to settle on a pattern for the swap, I must have made 10 potholders, so when it came time to do my 5, I was kind of sick of them. Great behavior for one of the hosts, right?

It turns out this pattern is super fun and I started a 6th last night, just because there was one more color combination that I needed to do.

Pattern: Old-Fashioned Potholders by Cathy Irish (rav link)
Yarn: a mix of Tahki Cotton Classic and Elann Sonata, 66 grams per potholder
Size: 8″ across
Hook: 2.5mm
Extras: plastic drapery rings
For: The Swap!

Verdict: AWESOME! This is a totally simple pattern that lends itself to stripes and fun color combinations.

These potholders have 2 identical sides and are crocheted together on the last round.

White plastic drapery rings are used for the loops. When I got to the end of the joining/ last round, I did single crochet around the plastic rings and slip stitched through the first stitch.

These are heavy duty potholders. There’s no chance a finger could poke through and be burned.

These were very wonky until they had a visit from a steam iron. Don’t freak out if you make them and they won’t stay flat. Give them a good smushing with an iron.

Stuff I Love:

Toddy coffee: I’ve been making mine in a 1/2 gallon jar, straining through first a regular mesh strainer to get out the big bits, then through a fine tea strainer back into the original, now washed, jar. We drinking it iced, 1:1 with vanilla soy milk. I can’t believe it took me so long to try this. It’s excellent!

Mimobot mimoShroom: My new project is going to be to put all of my recipes into this little flash drive, rather than printing out recipes from the internet. Since getting a Dell Mini 9, it’s been super easy to cook from a recipe on the screen.

MASW: I’ll be at the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair both days this weekend, shopping, visiting, and helping out AmyBoogie/Spunky Eclectic at her booth. I won’t be selling there, just visiting. Say hi!

The fiber club renewals are up for sale right now and will be available until the 27th. I’m not sure if there will be any slots available to new members this time around. I am running at capacity in the current club. I’ll definitely post here if/when I add new slots.

Life is about to get even busier. I’m preparing for Yarn School, which is May 7-10 this spring. There are a few slots left, if anyone wants to join us. Flights are so cheap! Nikol’s sheep had babies recently, so I’m looking forward to snuzzling some lambs in addition to hanging out with a bunch of awesome fibery people.

I’ve been all over the place as far as making stuff goes. Crochet took over for awhile:

It’s going to take over again because, despite being one of the hosts of the potholder swap, I haven’t made any potholders. I spent a lot of time practicing stitches and reading charts, especially in Japanese books.

The book on the right is phenomenal. It’s Crochet Patterns Book Motifs Edgings 300 (ISBN9784529042338) and it’s all charts and very easy to understand, despite being a Japanese book.

Stuff I Love:

Green Porno: Isabella Rossellini’s very short films (viewable on the Sundance Channel’s website, although I watched them On Demand) about animal sexual behavior are a trip! Be sure to get your Green Porno name. I’m Pisces Pincertail.

TtV Photos: I only took my first Through the Viewfinder photos last night, but I can tell it’s my new favorite. I’ve got a Kodak Duaflex II and an Argus Seventy-Five that I’ll use with my Nikon D50 with 50mm f1.8 lens with 2x closeup filter. I’ve built the connecting contraption (shoddily) for the Kodak and have taken a few photos, including the one of seedlings below. The deal is, for anyone who isn’t familiar, you set it up so that your digital camera takes photos through the viewfinder of an old reflex camera. Super fun!

Gardening: We’ve been doing a lot more outdoor stuff now that the snow is gone. Raised beds have been built for vegetable gardens and seedlings are growing in the house.

We always had a little kitchen garden in the city and had success with strawberries and herbs, but the sun was never quite bright enough for a bounty of anything. The new yard is a different story. Between the raspberry and blueberry bushes that were already in the yard and our two big raised beds, there should be a lot of canning and freezing in my future. I can’t wait!

Baby Animals: They’re everywhere! Local fiber artist/farmer Barb Parry’s sheep are lambing like crazy. Nikol Lohr’s sheep weren’t supposed to be knocked up but someone’s got three lambs. Watch them jump and listen to Nikol’s infectious laugh! My other favorite critters are Flickr’s LisaNH’s Tamworth piglets. She generously posts nearly daily pictures of their progress. Lovely.

The Commons on Flickr: Many institutions are publishing old photos on Flickr. The Library of Congress has enormous sets of beautiful images to peruse. Check out the 1930’s-1940’s in Color.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: I haven’t read the books, but I certainly love the television show! It’s charming, funny, takes place in a super interesting place, and the characters and actors are wonderful. I find myself checking the DVR for it days before a new episode airs, like it will appear just because I want it to.

(Yes, that’s snow in the lower right corner. If that could go away soon, that would be awesome.)

Pattern: Chevron Love Mittens by Julia Vesper/Knitterly Things (rav link for pattern only) (kit link)
Yarn: Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport/Knitterly Things kit in “Hello” colorway
Needles: Size 1 Addi Turbo for Magic Loop for mitten, size 3 for thumbs
Gauge: 7 sts. per inch
Started: February 22, 2009
Finished: March 21, 2009

The Knitting:

These were great fun to knit! The chart’s super easy to memorize on the first repeat, then off you go! As a tester for this pattern, I got to pick my own colors, 8 in all, which was a blast. The skeins were lovely and sitting down to fiddle around with the color order once they got here was even more fun.

The burning question may be, what to do with all those colors? I carried all them up the inside of the mitten, twisting them into a rope as I went. Every time I changed colors, I wrapped the new color around the rope to secure it. It worked great and I don’t feel the “rope” when wearing the mittens. It took some getting used to the 8 little balls of yarn hanging off the mitten as I knit, but it’s absolutely preferable to cutting the yarn and having 9 million ends to weave in, at least for me.

Conclusion:
Fun to knit, absolutely lovely product, great yarn in great colors. What more could anyone want?

Things I Love Lately:

Milk- I sadly missed all the Oscar-type movies in the theater, so we’re getting them from Netflix. Milk was so wonderful, wasn’t it? Sean Penn was lovable, spazzy and overly excited. Who knew? I’ve seen The Times of Harvey Milk a good few times and have such affection for him, so it was wonderful to have the affection carry over into the new film.

Tilt-shift photography - I’ve made a few using this tutorial. There’s an online generator, as well. I need practice, but they’re such fun to make.

James LeFleur. I love Sawyer all cleaned up!

Everyday Food on Twitter. Just when you don’t know what to eat for dinner, some crazy sandwich is pointed out to you.

The Swap:

It turns out the crochet attack is going around, and some of us got talking about starting up a swap for these hot pads and potholders, so that’s just what Maritza and I are doing. The goal is for each participant to crochet 5 beautiful potholders or hot pads and send them in. In return, you get 5 glorious potholders back. We’re aiming for something a little above and beyond the norm, here. We want potholders that are super kitschy and fun, or extra beautiful (handspun?!), functioning as useful objects as well as art.

We’d love to have you join our swap. To participate, please email us at potholderswap2009@gmail.com. Deadline to enter the swap is 3/21/09. Please join us at the swap blog, as well!

Now for the rules. They’re pretty basic, so here goes….

RULES FOR THE SWAP:

- hot pads/ pot holders must be crocheted
- each member will crochet 5 hot pads/ pot holders in the same pattern. Different colors are okay. (You can choose whatever pattern you want to work with and vary the colors between them, as long as you crochet 5 hot pads/ pot holders in that same pattern.)
- each pad/holder must be tagged with maker, fiber content, and care instructions
- wool or cotton yarns only please
- if you have a wool allergy please let us know so you will receive cotton hot pads only
- each pad/holder must be between 6 - 12 inches in diameter
- US swappers., you must include a USPS Priority stamp for return postage with your potholders. Non-US residents are welcome, we’ll just need to work out how you pay for return postage with you.
- have fun with this!

We’re thinking that 2 months should be enough time for everyone to finish their hot pads/ pot holders, but we’ll post an official deadline and details as to where to mail them shortly, once we have all our swappers.

For now, there are a few wonderful resources for pot holder patterns, such as Crochet Pattern Central and the Crochet & Crafts Link Index, as well as an inspiration group we started on Flickr.

Take a button! (Save it to your own server, please.)

Pattern: Top Down Bonnet With Anime Character minus the character (rav link)
Yarn: Hello Yarn Fat Sock in Olive and Navy, 1.2 oz. total, or about 120 yards
Needle: size 3 Addi Turbo for magic loop
Gauge: 6 sts. per inch
Size: baby

I hadn’t knit one of these in ages, and found some language that could be cleared up in the pattern. I’ll get right on that.

Translation News:
The Top Down Bonnet pattern is now available in Finnish, thanks to the lovely Minna Neuvonen. Get the PDF here.

Babies also need rattles, so I got knitting.

Pattern: Toadstool Baby Rattle (rav link)
Yarn: Hello Yarn Sock in Hot Peppers, Kale, and Pickle
Needle: size 0 Addi Turbo for magic loop
Gauge: 8 sts. per inch
Size: one size

This was totally fun to knit and it’s an adorable rattle. Knitting with the rattly bit inside, already, was super annoying, but I’d do it again. It’s so cute! I’d also like a couple with weights in the bottom, just for decorations.

Can you tell I’ve been raiding my bag of dud skeins and leftovers of hand-dyed yarns? Free yarn, free patterns, just what a person renovating a house needs!