Mystery Sock X (part 1)

Since its been so extremely cold outside in my neck of the woods I decided to work on indoor projects for now and save the new weaving project I spoke of In my last post for warmer days. One of these projects, we all have more than one going at a time right?, is the Mystery Sock X KAL by the Knitters Brewing Company. I have knit a lot of socks but I have never participated in a mystery sock kal so when I got the e-mail from Knitters Brewing about this and saw that it was FREE to participate I couldn't pass it up. I have a good supply of sock yarn in my stash already so I decided to use some of that up for this project.

Typically when I knit socks I use double points and work top down, (from cuff to toe). This pattern is a top down pattern but doesn't begin in a typical top down way so it has really expanded my view of sock knitting and I'm loving it so far! The cast on begins with Judy's Magic Cast On for toe up socks, yep you read that right. You can google that if you don't know what that is, I did, lol  this is what my cast on looked like.

Now normally this cast on uses two needles but I find that this cast on method is harder to control the tension, at least for me anyway so that's why you see three needles in my photo. The first row has k2 togethers and it was way to tight for me to do that so I made my cast on over two needles on the working side and then slipped one out before beginning row one, worked great! The stitches on the single needle are held there as a provisional cast on and will be worked later.

This is row one finished

Other firsts for my sock knitting is that this cuff is worked flat instead of in the round and incorporates the Elizabeth's Lattice Lace stitch pattern which I have never tried before in any project. Here is a photo of the first 10 rows of the pattern.

These 10 rows are repeated till the size being made is reached, in my case size med. means I need ten repeats of these ten rows.

Here are a few pictures of the lattice work in progress.

This was pretty cool to do, Unlike a cable stitch, where the crossed stitches are held on a separate cable needle and held either in front or behind, these stitches were actually pulled through the crossing stitches.

The total length of the cuff is now finished.

Now it's time to join the two ends together in the round using the three needle bind off method.

This is what the wrong side looks like at the seam. The next picture is of the right side.

As you can see the seam is barely visible.

Here is the finished cuff!

This KAL is a lot of fun and I don't think it's too late to join if you want to give it a try. Just head on over to the Ravelry site and search the forums for knitters brewing co. sock-aholics to get started.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this installment of my progress. Till next time, stay warm.

Happy New Year

Well it's here, 2018!! "Another year over and a new one just begun ". 2017 is officially written down in the history books as the year I had nothing new to share on the fibery front and even though my studio still lies in the cold dark storage unit, I have a few ideas up my sleeve to make 2018 the best fibery year yet,

I have blogged in the past about my promise to myself to learn a new craft every year and this year I have chosen dimensional weaving as that new craft. I plan to use materials I find in my woods such as sticks, vines and perhaps a hollow log just to name a few ideas of some things I can place a warp on since I have no room for a loom. We have a beautiful mountain view here and I plan to use that as my inspiration for building my scene in my first piece.

Since this is only day one of 2018 I don't have much to write about at this time. I do hope that all who are reading this had a wonderful holiday season and I wish for all of you a happy, healthy and extraordinary 2018,

From my TN mountain top,

Homesteading Blues

WARNING NOT FIBER RELATED

If anyone ever told you, or you read somewhere, that starting a homestead was easy, they lied. At least in my case I have not experienced anything easy about it. It was my husband's idea to move here, (Blue Ridge Mountains of East Tennessee), in our 50's. The property he purchased is all wooded, mostly steep ridges, not something I was interested in because of a lack of any flat place to build a house or grow a garden. "I'll build you the house of your dreams" he promised. Well I have been here almost 4 years now and the spot where he sais he wants to build the house isn't even cleared yet. At first there was no driveway, no water, power, plumbing, cell service, or internet.

Where am I living? In a camper, on top of a mountain, in the woods while my studio and house contents have been sitting in several storage units for the past 3.5 years. Yeah, not happy. We now have a well for water, we did hook up to the grid for now so we have power, we just got the septic in place two months ago, internet installed a couple weeks ago, (satellite being our only option which sucks even when it's working), still no cell signal which will most likely never change.

What do I do all day? Absolutely nothing, with all my studio contents in storage I have nothing to do but clean, do dishes, do laundry and play with new grand baby when I have him. I don't know about you but for me, doing my crafts is therapy, It's what puts me in a happy place and state of mind. I was in Gatlinburg a few weeks ago and picked myself up a Mountain Dulcimer, never played one before but I do have a Hammered Dulcimer in storage. The Mountain Dulcimer is small enough to keep in my camper and I have been playing with it to help pass time.

I used to love going camping on the weekends during summer months but now that I'm camping full time I look at it a bit differently these days. For example, I wonder sometimes if I were to go away for a weekend and visit someone with a house, what would that be called? Housing? Honey I'm going housing for the week-end, lol !

I wasn't surprised when I was finally able to log into to my account here and found that I had lost nearly every follower, A big thanks going out to the two that are still here! I am truly grateful to you both.

On the bright side, now that I have some internet service I can finally start posting more often, I promise I'll try to keep it interesting and add photos next time.

I hope you're having a good summer and you're staying cool.
Signing off from my mountain top.

When The Kit Arrives

 Up to this point I have been showing you the finished pin keep if the month but this time I thought I would mix it up a bit and show you what it looks like before I get it started.

As you can see in the photo above I get a card containing brief instructions and the patern pieces drawn out for me to trace and transfer for cutting the wools they preselected for me. The front of the card has a color photo of the their finished model so I have an idea how everything is supposed to be put together. I'm not going show that until it is done In the next post so you can see that they will look similar but different because they don't supply the threads and embellishments to finish the piece. My challenge for each month is to use up these little extra elements from my stash instead of going out and buying new to match the fabrics they sent. This self imposed challenge is a pretty good way to exercise the creativity as well as busting the old       stash.

Well that's it for this post, I have to get busy on this piece for the next post so thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderfully crafty day.

Blessings

Cute As A Button

                                          

This is my newly finished  pincushion for the month of March, yes I am still behind and playing catch up but isn't this one a cutie? The black fabric on the far left that was in my kit had yellow and red patterns on it, you can see a bit of it there but the white circle dots were all yellow and I used cream colored DMC floss to make tiny little french knots and I think that looks much better. None of the embellishments come in the kit, just the wools and fabrics for the front and back. I like that because it forces me to be more creative by using up what I already have in my large stash of random stuff, like buttons and bits of ribbons to small for larger projects and beads like the one I used for the crows eye. The threads or DMC floss I have to supply can be tricky sometime because I never know what color the fabric in the kit is going to be until it arrives but so far I have not been forced to go shopping for a matching color, did I mention I have a really large stash? I haven't always used the recommened color but I think they have matched up close enough so far.

That's it for this post, thanks for reading and watch for April's pin cushion coming up next time.

Blessings

Moving and Catching up

Moving is a lot of work! All our previous moves have been military, the easy way to move. They send a crew of packers out one day to pack out the entire house then send a moving company on another day  to load it all up on a truck and badda bing badda boom your done, easy peasy and all thats left to do is clean the empty space. This time however the move is all on us and it feels like it will never end. As I write this I am sitting in an almost empty house and I am taking a break from taking down old wallpaper and prepping walls for new paint. We won't be fully and completely done with this move until July. Needless to say it has been difficult to keep up with this blog in the process but I have been able to steal a few moments here and there to work on my pin keeps however I am still behind on them.   The last one I posted was January, I did finish the one for February and posted it on my FB page but didn't have the time to write the blog post so here it is below.

I am almost finished March's Pinkeep so I will hopefully get that one posted this week. Then I have to catch up April and May so if all goes well I will be caught up by the end of May.

This move is different in every way from all our other moves not just the packing out and loading up part but the biggest thing is we don't have a house to move to. What we are doing is living out of a large camper off the grid until we build the house of our dreams. The off the grid part is part of the reason keeping up with this blog has been difficult, no power means no internet and the cell service is pretty much non existent in the location we chose to move to so it makes things a bit more challenging. I must say though that being up on that mountain is so peaceful I don't really miss all the electronic age stuff because spending less time online means more time to be creative, at least when this moving process is finished.

I will post more about the move and crafting later but for now I have to get back to work.

Thanks for reading and please let me know you stopped by.

On Pins and Needles

Let it Snow

This year I subscribed to "Year of The Pinkeeps", a block of the month club from Primitive Gatherings and this is my finished pinkeep for January. The kit came with the pattern and wool felt to complete the project but did not come with any of the threads to match the wool or the embellishments like the snow flakes or mittens and buttons, I was thankful to have had all I needed in my stash.  I also added a few elements not listed on the original pattern instructions, like the words on the bottom, Let it Snow, the lace trim and the weighted bottom to make it stand upright. Also, instead of using the called for fiber fill, I used some sheeps wool I had that was two short to spin, using seconds off the wool carder is great for this.  I also added some lavender buds and a few drops of lavender essential oil to the wool prior to stuffing so it smells great!

Thanks for reading and watch for February's pinkeep.