On the Topic of Knitting

Yes, there have been some lovely yarn developments at our house recently. Our long-awaited craft day with Christina was on Tuesday. I've spent a good bit of time unravelling sweaters in recent weeks so we would be ready to skein them up in preparation for washing it all.



Auntie C brought the Knitty-Knotty and Rachel helped to skein some of the yarn:


How very satisfying to see this start to the project at the end of the day:



In the mean time, Christina brought her dyeing equipment and we set out to dye some felted balls for flower centers. Our goal was yellow, but we got orange. However, they dried in such a way as to result in lovely varigations of yellow to orange, which will look perfect in the center of my flowers.

There was also plenty of work to be done with the yarn winder. Several sweaters were ripped out directly onto the winder and a load of yarn was readied for knitting by being wound up.

Andrew especially enjoys the yarn winder:

Our Knit Night was a success last week with 9 of us enjoying each other's company. We had another new knitter. She learned quickly and wrote a few days later to say she'd already completed her dishcloth! What next?!

Another exciting development from knit night was the completion of this hat by one of my friends. It started a year ago as a birthday gift of yarn and needles. With Knit Night beginning in January, the hat got started, and it was finished last week! It is to receive a pom-pom on top as well. We were very excited!

Knit Night also included goodies:

Last, but not least, I won my first bloggy giveaway last week! I was SO excited. Susan B. Anderson hosted a yarn giveaway of a new line from Blue Sky Alpaca called Spud & Chloe. Isn't the yarn just gorgeous!!!

It's not often that I get yarn brand new from a yarn shop and so this is a real treat! I can't wait to knit something with it. Susan's blog is all about knitting and she's written several great books. I have two from the library now: Itty-Bitty Nursery and Itty-Bitty Hats. It looks like Susan has an Itty Bitty Toys coming out in November! The books are adorable and there are some easy patterns that many of you could do. Have a look!