Sometimes the temptations are just too great.

Today I began my first pair of toe up socks using Cat Bordhi's book that I spoke of in the last post: New Pathways for Sock Knitters. I love it, but my most important recommendation to all is to have a giant pack of post it notes beside you when you begin; there are lots and lots of references to charts, directions and patterns that send you scurrying all over the book, referencing what you need to know to get on with you new sock technique. It's not for everyone but I'm having a ball.

Then just to get my nose out of the sock that I'd been working on for a few hours by now (funny the chiropractor seems to think that it should be forbidden to work on knitting for more than 30 minutes at a time.) I went on Ravelry, just to see what the knitting world was up to. From there I ended up redirected to a YouTube video on the basics of needlefelting, which I also love to bits. From that video, I found this site at http://www.feltalive.com/onlineclass.htm where Kay Petal offers an online class to create these most adorable characters. One of the great things that I found there was that she names our very own Andrea Graham, of Odessa, as one of her inspiritions. Check out Kay's site and Andrea's too http://www.andrea-graham.com/ to see what another branch of the fibre world is playing around with.

P.S. Of course, WOOL-TYME Kingston carries all your needle felting needs.

I MISS MY BLOG!

It's been way too long since I've had a chance to get to the blog and do some writing. But now I have the chance to fill you in on some of the things that I have been doing over the past few weeks.

One of the parts of my knitting store life that I really enjoy is getting to try out new techniques and having the opportunity to finish things and make them look good.

I get a chance to do a fair bit of this, which breeds experience, which means that I can get better at it, which means that I get to do more of it.

This jacket to the right is from the "Dozen Favorite Kids and Toddler's" book from Knitter's Magazine. A customer had ordered it for her granddaughter and when my knitter returned it to me, beautifully finished but without the glove "pockets" I was thrilled to be able to play with it. I took a picture when the pocket on the left was sewn on and the right one was part done so that you can see the inside of the half-glove which becomes the pocket. It's the cutest design and not very difficult. When sewing the pockets on I used a strong nylon sewing thread in navy and worked from the outside, doing a small backstitch between the knitted stitches. That way the thread sinks into the groove between the stitches and hides.
Some of you may know that in my former life I was a teacher. And one of the things that I do miss about teaching was learning new "stuff" on (good) PD days. (Not all of the "stuff" that we learned was of value, but much of it was very good.) So I booked myself out of the store for a day and took a "Professional Development" day and sat down with Cat Bordhi's book: New Pathways for Sock Knitters, and a set of needles and some yarn and proceeded to make Charlie's Seeded heart socks using her Sky sock "architecture". This is one of the most amazing books I've ever come across, where Cat takes the basic premise that in creating a sock you need extra room to accomodate the instep area and she adds those extra stitches at many different places in the design. I fell in love with the concept and within minutes I was designing an advanced sock course incorporating some of her ideas. (Watch for details of this class in the spring.)

This past weekend we had our 5th "Sock-in-a-day" workshop and once again I'm amazed at the fun that can be had by people who are willing to take a bit of a risk and learn a new skill. There were several people who had actually made several pairs of socks in their knitting careers but were always questioning the results and wanting to feel more confident. One of the ladies was actually keeping track of the number of new tips that she picked up during the day. It was good to have my belief that this class is great for anyone who knits confirmed.

Have we not been blessed with a ridiculously beautiful October? Yesterday we took the opportunity to drive through Prince Edward County and check out some of the wineries. (It does feel a bit odd to be drinking a glorious Chardonnay at 11am on a Sunday morning). We stopped in Wellington for lunch and walked around a bit to get the blood pumping again after the full English Breakfast, complete with deep-"fried bread". We came across this tree (these trees?). My husband teaches construction and is a bit of a tree fanatic so we stopped to take a picture of it for him to use with his class, and as I sat in the car waiting for him it occured to me that this tree really reminded me of a cable design. (isn't it true??) Anyway, I do believe that I'm back in the saddle again and will hope to be a bit more faithful to these blog posts as I really do enjoy the writing. Happy rest of October!