Ready for Christmas & Thinking Ahead

With a little more than a week until the birthday of our Lord, plans are in place to celebrate with friends and family - near and far away. I have also been planning for the annual winter hibernation with felting and knitting.

For knitting enthusiasts, hand dyed yarns like this skein just added to our website called Winter Woods, will help create those one of a kind warm woolen heirlooms.

By request a few of our standard worsted skeins and sport cones are now at Sharon's Quilts & More in downtown Allegan. A sampling of the hand dyed worsted skeins are there as well, including this new colorway of Mauve.

The felting plans for the coming months will unfold soon.

October's Activities

October is a gathering month; when you have trees all around your home, nearly every free minute is spent gathering leaves in the fall.  The summer's weather created a bumper crop of leaves, as well as walnuts, grass and other growing things.  This was good for many - our neighbor baled a late hay crop and the numerous varieties of great Michigan apples are in abundant supply so it is totally lame for me to complain about a few extra leaves and walnuts.  We will finish gathering leaves, squirrels will gather the nuts and some will gather extra foods to put away for winter.

It is also a time to  gather supplies for our crafts, knitters need yarn and felters or spinners need fiber.  Four new colorways of hand dyed yarn are posted to the website; purples and blues .  Merino fiber selections are restocked as available and new ones added.  This is Lemon, softer yet deeper in shade value than the Yellow and blends well with Gold. I hope we can help with your gathering for winter wool creations.

Photo could be topic of the "Priceless" commercials.

I have a soft spot in my heart for cute little boys, probably because we have one - although he is all grown up now.

When a customer emailed this picture to show what she knit with our Blue Heather sport yarn, I immediately asked if I could post it here. The sweater design is very pretty with cable patterns on the front and running up the center of the sleeves, truly an heirloom piece. The wooded outdoor setting is a perfect background for the picnic table bench the child is playing on. But the precious flaxen-haired boy with those big blue eyes is priceless.

Cleaned Out the Knitting Magazine Stash

Reading about knitters cleaning out their yarn stash got me on a slightly different cleaning of stash, knitting magazines. I love to read them from cover to cover, sometimes the patterns are so enticing or remind me of one similar that I want to do. Sometimes it is just pure inspiration.

But enough is enough, expecially when more will be coming. So I listed 19 lots of magazines on eBay, the current lot started yesterday http://cgi.ebay.com/6-CREATIVE-KNITTING-knit-magazines-full-year-2005-/170594435672?pt=Magazines&hash=item27b8388258

I do this every few years so I can open up the corners and begin stashing again. I hope this will keep those old and more current treasures circulating for more years.

Knit Ski Cap for Men or Women

Naturally the colder months are particularly busy for anyone interested in wool. No matter if you are a sheep owner, fiber artist or just love to wear wool. Since I am all three, I LOVE the fall and winter months.

This is one of the hats I made for the Dec. 10 Art Hop in Allegan. It is knit with 2 strands of Marr Haven Sport Weight so it has the density of worsted yarn but the stranding gives unique varigated colors. The elasticity of wool makes this suitable for most sizes, men or women.

This one is done in Blue Heather and Light Heather, I also knit the Light Heather with our Green, Burgundy and Lilac Heathers. The hats and several felted wearables will be at Baker Studios for the Art Hop. Of course, I did a couple for Christmas buyers at the shop as well.

Ting's Kntted Vest Cardigan

Ting is a busy mother of a toddler and infant so I am sure her knitting time is limited, however she found time to knit this beautiful cardigan for herself . The pattern is designed by Meghan McFarlane and can be found on Ravelry. The yarn is our Light Grey worsted weight.

Ting's choice of pattern and yarn color are timeless so she will be able to enjoy it for a long time. I appreciate her sharing the photos with me and knew you all would enjoy them, too. I do love this style sweater and Ting did such fine knitting of it.

Sam the Ram Stuffed Sheep

Sam the Ram is back!! He is really handsome with his aran patterned knit fleece, of course all of Sam is knitted and then stuffed.

After several requests we now have the pattern booklet in stock. Just wanted to show him off to everyone . Sorry for the pun but sheep shows are in full swing now.

"City" Friends Visit

This is Diane - from California. She and Karen from Illinois were here for the weekend. We just had to get her out in the snow.

Diane began knitting about 6 months ago. She is a very quick study proven by the lovely ascots she knit for all of us in sport wt. It was a wonderful weekend, the day was sunny with no wind. The melting snow made it too muddy to be out walking around much so we got plenty of knitting and talking done inside.

Both gals were eager to trudge thru the mud to help with barn chores though.

from bleak to bright..more FeltUnited

Yesterday began as a rainy, chilly day...but then I opened my emails and it seemed cheerful even with the rain. There were two spewcial emails that changed my mood.

The first was from Judy of Muskegon, she came to the Felt United event last Saturday and sent a link to her October 8 blog posting with pictures she took.

Second was from knitting designer Jennifer Hagan of Figheadh Yarnworks. Her October 9 blog posting included the cutest picture of a sweater she knit with our Medium Grey, the sweater is hugging a cone of our Lilac Heather sport yarn which may become her next project.

We have known for years that we have some of the best customers in the world and this is a sample of why we think so.

Happy Belated Independence Day

Hope everyone had as perfect a weekend as we did, beginning with the Wed before the 4th, the sun was out, breeze was light and temps in the mid 70's during the day. We stayed home and enjoyed the neighbor's fireworks.

I did get more of the knitting pattern pdf's added to our website. Now 3 of Suzanne Pufpaff's entrelac knitting patterns are available as well as the gorgeous Civil War Shawl.

Seven of Suzanne's knitting with roving patterns are also available now as a download, including one called Simple Projects which is a primer to learn to knit with roving. It has 4 projects in the one pattern of instructions.

I finished the Kalamazoo Knits wrap that I started two months ago, it really was an easy and quick knit but gardens got in the way. I will get a picture of it taken next week to show it.