A Shop-Owners Impressions of the LYS Tour (North Puget Sound)

First off:

THANK YOU ALL, FOR TRAVELING AND VISITING US!

We truly were honored by seeing how many of you came to check out our little shop up here in Fairhaven and it was SO awesome to hear how much you liked the shop and the patterns we came up with for the tour!

This was our first time in the LYS Tour and we really did not know what to expect. We were told it is going to be intense. There will be lots of people. So we thought, ok, lets print 60 patterns….(I was still a bit skeptic, if we really needed that many…HA!)

These last 4 days were the most intense work days I had in a while! It was amazing how many knitters and crocheters came out and participated in the tour! We ended up giving out close to 500 patterns!!!!

The Patterns! I haven’t shown them to you, have I?

Well here they are:

When we first thought about participating in the LYS Tour this year, we thought we should have a pattern for knitters and crocheters. For a while, this is as far as we got. Then we settled on wanting lace shawl patterns. Ok again, for a while, we hovered there. Finally we thought, we should try and make a knitted and a crochet shawl as close to each other as possible. This way, if you are a crocheter and liked the knitting pattern, you will still be able to have it and visa versa! This way nobody will feel left out, or sad, or feel the “other” craft got something unobtainable for them. We do feel very strongly about embracing all kinds of fibre arts and artists and wanted to do our best to express that in our patterns.

So, said and done and there were the shawls not long after. It was such fun to pick out the yarn, design the shawls and knit/crochet them up, trying to imagine how people would like them and what kinds of colours they would choose to work up their sample!

We were done with the sample shawls quite a bit before the Tour started and it was SO hard to keep them a secret and not show them off to people! FINALLY the Tour date rolled around and we got to take the precious out. We decided to hang them on the wall in the shop, so they can be seen from all over easily and if you choose to make them out of yarn differently than the suggested one, you could glance over there and decide which one of the tons of yummy yarns and colours you would like to imagine it in.

We were open until 8 pm on Thursday and Friday and we had two sets of knitters that came in just under the wire on Friday, calling and letting us know they were close and asking if we could stay open just a wee bit longer.

We thought, well if it was us in the car, coming up from down south for several hours drive to check out a yarn shop, we would be super disappointed if we didn’t make it, so we stayed. Can’t disappoint a fellow fibre addict!

We were happy to do it and it turned out the ladies were super awesome and we were happy to get to know them.

I have to say, it was one of my favourite bits of the whole tour! The chatting with fellow fibre enthusiasts! Talking about (and in some cases fondling) the latest project on the needles, discussing what and why one yarn is preferred over the other, checking out favourites and regaling in tales of past projects and past years of the LYS Tour of the knitters/crocheters that came in our shop for the first time ever. This is not to forget our regular friends and neighbours that -of course- also hopped on by this weekend! YOU ROCK, but you already knew that!

Look! One of our new friends and I!

I am amazed at the amount of creativity and generosity and happy attitude of fibre folk. I was a bit sad, that I had to “work” that weekend and could not go on the tour myself, but it ended up not being “work” at all. Many of you told us you really liked the shop and the patterns and generally made us feel like a welcome stop on the tour! It was so wonderful! I can really not begin to tell you how great that made us feel! I do hope to see many of you back for a bit more chatting and knitting/crocheting together (or even showing off some of the other projects I have been hearing about, like quilting and weaving and embroidery!!!!). Maybe we can enjoy a spot of tea together and get to know each other a bit more. If we can’t make it, then I do hope to see you again next year and that you at least stay in contact via email! I DO WANT TO SEE THE THINGS YOU KNIT WITH THE YARN YOU GOT! EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE OF THEM!!!!

Another really fun and sweet gesture was that Meg, from NW Handspun and Andrea and her husband, from Apple yarns took time out of their own busy schedules, to come over to our shop and check on us! I guess they remembered their first time on the tour and how hectic it can get. Thanks guys! It was such a nice surprise to see you. The gesture was absolutely appreciated and made us feel such a part of the group!

In recap: Lots of laughter, lots of ooh-ing and aaah-ing, lots of stuff learned, lots of tips swapped, lots of new friends made and A WONDERFUL TIME was had by Callie and me at Mrs. Hudson’s Yarns and Teas in Fairhaven!  We hope you had a great time, too, and we are looking forward to welcoming you again!

Thank you, from Callie and me!

Review: Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet by Darynda Jones
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Sadness! I absolutely loath writing bad reviews.
This book, however does not deserve more then two stars.

The series started with the promise of a PI solving her cases with the help of the deceased. She can see and talk to dead people, because she is a “grim reaper”. Oh! C’est Surprise! This sounds interesting!The first book absolutely delivered and I told everybody to go and get it and read it as fast as they can! The case was great, the writing funny, the heroine engaging.
The second book kept up quite nicely! The talking to dead in order to solve cases lessened a bit, but it was still funny and the case was not bad either. The third book however was a total let-down. Almost no dead people talking, the male antagonist/love interest of Charley (the heroine) was more the focus of the book, the case was shallow and predictable and felt like and afterthought and the sexual tension stretching over almost every page got annoying really fast!
This fourth book follows this new recipe to a T. The sex scenes were less! Yes.One cannot enjoy something, if it is over-done, never mind how hot the guy is!

Charley doesn’t get hired for the case until page 26. The pages up until then are spent rambling on about Charley’s new spending habits while trying to deal with getting tortured in the previous book. We also get introduced to the ghost of Charley’s aunt, who died sometime in the 60′s and well before Charlie was even born, but doesn’t seem to know it until just that scene, when we get to know her! The aunt has nothing to do with the case, or much of anything later in the book. She is not even funny!
This sets the tone for the rest of the book! Disjointed scenes, that have nothing what so ever to do with the plot, the case again is more or less on the fringes and the entire book has more to do with Angles and demons, then with a PI trying to solve her case! One demon attack after another happens. The dead dog and the son of Satan take care of the monsters trying to kill Charley (well, it’s not sexual tension this time, it’s demon attacks! WE GOT IT! SHE IS BEING HUNTED!) For not liking damsels in distress, per her own account a few books ago, Charley is sure giving a great impression of one.
The case Charley was hired to do on page 26 has in it’s entirety maybe 50 pages devoted to it out of 265. You draw your own conclusions from that.
At the end of the book, it is mentioned that Charley solved four cases in one swoop. Hard to believe she did all that just driving around in her car “Misery” recounting what else she named in her life (including her brain and her heart and trying to find a name for her couch).She is starting to sound more like an over the top teenager, then a private investigator with an employee to keep in paychecks.

I wanted to give the book before this one the benefit of the doubt. Seeing where the story is going. Maybe it will snap around and go back to the PI story, that lured me in. But it didn’t. It got worse.

After reading the first two books in the series, I recommended them to a bunch of people as THE great paranormal detective series! Now I have to retract this recommendation, as it is not a detective series, but rather about the war of good vs evil (well at least that is what is being hinted at all the time). If you are into demons and angles, half told stories, disjointed scenes, unimportant characters getting more time than the actual case and a repetitive “THIS GUYS IS SO HOT” , this book might interest you. Otherwise, give it a pass.

Review: Fabric Surface Design: Painting, Stamping, Rubbing, Stenciling, Silk Screening, Resists, Image Transfer, Marbling, Crayons & Colored Pencils, Batik, Nature Prints, Monotype Printing

Fabric Surface Design: Painting, Stamping, Rubbing, Stenciling, Silk Screening, Resists, Image Transfer, Marbling, Crayons & Colored Pencils, Batik, Nature Prints, Monotype Printing by Cheryl Rezendes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow! What a book!
This is one of those books that gets you going and makes you look around your home for fabrics you could use to try out some of the techniques!

Fabulously explained, even a total novice can get elbow deep into tie dye without too much ado!
I have made rubbings on paper in art school, but somehow it did not translate that one could do this on fabric as well. It took this book to point it out to me! What a genius way to add textural effects!!!!

The book takes you through making your own stamps and gives you all kinds of ideas on what could potentially be used as a stamp and you may already have around the house! I love it, when I get to use stuff I already have, instead of having to run out and buy a whole bunch of stuff brand new! The book definitely earned a star on that account alone!

The depth of information the book provides is extensive. I have worked with fabric and fabric paints before in school and do know a fair bit, but there was so much more I had no idea existed!
If you are like me and love books, that can be with you from the shaky starts all the way to accomplished artist and not bore you to tears with the second perusal, this book is DEFINITELY for you!

I have flipped through it the minute I got it out of the envelope, then put it aside a while. Every time I went by the bookshelf, I picked it up and gave it a go. Reading a bit here and a bit there, re-reading some of the chapters. I can hardly wait until I actually have a bit of free time to try out everything I just read.

A nice thing about the book is also, that it does not just deal with one technique! It gives you a wide range of things to do to your fabric.
The profiles of the fiber artists are fantastic and definitely add another dimension to the book! To see what people have done with techniques now at your own fingertips is simply amazing!

Do yourself a favour and get this book! Never mind, that you have never done anything remotely like this before! If you have ever wanted to, THIS is the book that will get you there successfully!

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An update is in order, methinks.

Ok so. I will try and be a better blogger! One update a week? I think that should be in the realm of possibility!

A lot of things are happening! We are getting ready for the LYS Tour (the local yarn shop tour) here in the pacific Northwest coastal region! It’s a big deal and 24 shops are participating from way up in the north, all the way down to a bit south of Seattle!

If you are in the vicinity, do go and check it out! It is tons of fun!

Every shop came up with at least one free pattern (and some even with two). They are all one or two skein patterns and the yarn featured in the patterns is 10% off that 4 day weekend! (May 16-19) There are daily prize drawings (and every shop will give away the same prize, so visiting a few is going to up your chances of winning!) and on the total you can get entered in the grand prize drawing by visiting at least 8 of the 24 participating shops!  Here is the link to the official website for the tour. You can check out who is who on the tour and where we are!

Ok on the knitting front: I have been knitting up a storm and writing as well. I finished a pair of socks, a pair of slipper socks, three kerchiefs, and a shawl, alongside the patterns for all of these! O.O  Pictures of the socks , kerchiefs and slipper-socks will be uploaded to my flickr account shortly.

I have no idea how I got all this done and still kept my sanity!

Let’s start with the shawl! It is my happy at the moment! I spun the yarn for it myself.  I wanted a tight and clean look,  something soft, but  not fuzzy that could hold it’s own in square miles of stockinette stitch. I decided on  a beautiful gray-ish brown Merino roving, spun with a short draw (inchworm) technique, to about a Dk weight.

The shawl was knitted from the bottom up with short row shaping on the “wings”. It’s  a small one, with only 39.5 inches from bottom tip to the top of the wings. I wanted something simple, something for every day, something warm and comforting. I have been thinking about my interpretation for a Jane Eyre Shawl for a few years and now it materialized.
The shawl itself is rather plain, in all stockinette stitch, just as Jane appears to be. The center spine, as it’s only embellishment, does give a hint of Jane’s playful nature though. Just as we get glimpses of it in the book! I dare say, I think Jane would have approved of it!

Here are some pictures of it blocking:

 

Let me know what you think! I will make modeled shots after I pick it up on Wednesday. I got it done on Sunday and blocked it at the shop, but it was not dry by the time I went home, so it is still there.

I really love the shawl.

I do want to change the style of my blog a little, so I will put additional pictures on my flickr account. If you want to see more of the projects, please feel free to follow me there! I apologize for the inconvenience, but I do believe it will improve the overall look of the blog and make reading it more pleasant!

Review: Crochet One-Skein Wonders

Crochet One-Skein Wonders by Judith Durant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this book a while ago already.
First I thought : What on earth can you make with only one skein in crochet, as it need more yarn than knitting….
Well, did I get a surprise!
So many cute little pattern for only one skein of yarn! Not only hats or scarves, but lace shawls and fingerless gloves, doll clothes and children’s clothes and topping it off are some of the cutest felted purses ever. If you would like to know: I am going to make the little felted purse. The one with the leaves appliqued on them! Simply too cute!

If you have been following my reviews so far, you will know by now, I like things organized and easy to find. This book does not disappoint on that count either. All patterns are sorted by yarn weight from lace, to bulky! Wonderful! Got a bulky weight? Try looking towards the end of the book! No long searching through page after page and looking for the yarn requirements! After all, you would rather spend your time crocheting, then searching.

All in all, I would absolutely recommend this book! The patterns in it are great for beginners all the way to intermediate. Need a quick gift? Do check out the book!
As a matter of fact, I brought the book to work with me and showed it to some of my crochet students and one of them went out and bought it right that week! Now if that doesn’t tell you it’s a great book to have in your library, then I don’t know!

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Review: Put ‘em Up! Fruit: Creative Recipes for Making and Using Fresh Fruit Preserves, Chutneys, Infusions, and Pickles

Put ‘em Up! Fruit: Creative Recipes for Making and Using Fresh Fruit Preserves, Chutneys, Infusions, and Pickles by Sherri Brooks Vinton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When this book first came into my house, I thought: Oh another canning book! (I collect cookbooks and love books on preserving food a lot, so I have quite a few of them).. I’m one of those people that like to know what’s in their food 

Then I opened the book and found out:Oh! This is not just another canning book! This is actually pretty cool!

The first thing that struck me as really great is that the recipes are sorted by fruit! BRILLIANT! This way when the apples on my tree are ripe, I don’t have to root through the entire book to find out what else can I do with them? There they are, all in a row and neatly for me to check out before I get started. LOVE THAT!

As I started to actually read the book I fell even more in love with it. It promotes local! I adore it! It gives you wonderful, to the point advice on getting started, with a great basic set up. I dislike books that have you spend hundreds of dollars just to get started! Not so on thins one. (I also learned something new, I had no idea there was a tool to get your lids out of the hot water! Brilliant! I regularly burn myself )

I love the fact, that this book doesn’t just give you recipes to preserve, it tells you the difference between the kinds of preserves you can make! (Marmalade, jelly, pickles etc.) That way you can make up your mind up front if you like big chunks in your preserved food, or rather not.

As you move on through the book, you will notice that it does not only give you recipes to preserve the fruits from your garden, or farmers market, but it also gives you ideas for using them up after you made them! Recipes to use the preserves you just made is GENIUS! Specially since there are a few in the book I had not ever thought of! YESSSSS that’s a big win in my book!

Another nice surprise was that the book does not just talk about canning, but does incorporate drying fruit as well and other preserving methods. Infusions, leather, fruit cheese, things that not always come to mind right off the top.

I love the photography in the book! Very mouthwatering! I had my husband look at it and we already found a few recipes we are going to try (the ones to use up the preserves we are going to make) with bought preserves and sauces etc until we get our own.

I would say this book is great for beginners as well as for more accomplished fruit preserve-enthusiasts. It gives you a great starting off point, but does not hold you back by giving you simple recipes only. It will keep you going and wake up your creativity!
I would recommend this book to my canning friends, that’s for sure and I have already been asked if some of them can borrow it!

New dish towel

I have been noticing that more and more of my beloved T-shirts are falling victim to holes. I really had to do something about it, so I decided to go through my closet and weed them all out, then go to the thrift shop and buy “new” ones to replace them with.

Said and done. Then yesterday I looked at the refashion pile, that accumulated in a box at the bottom of my closet. The new influx of T-shirts made the box explode with possibilities and overflow with old clothes. So I sorted the box out yesterday evening.

Clothes without holes and in general good shape, but that have not been worn by anyone in the family and hence have been designated to the refashion pile, got folded up and put in another box, which subsequently went out on the curb by my driveway as a free box for people to take what they need/want. We do that a lot around here in our town. I love free boxes! don’t ya know, the whole box was gone by this mid-morning!

The T-shirts from the refashion box with holes got taken apart for the fabric.

I then surfed my bookshelves for inspiration on what to do with all this knit jersey in the coming summer months, when you just don’t want to knit (snort… I just made myself laugh)

I thumbed through my Alabama stitch book again and found the tea towels she made! oh what a great idea! I need new ones anyway! So I plucked the biggest bits of fabric from the T-shirt box (now safely again in the bottom of my closet) and a few contrast bits and started pinning and basting. (I only basted one, it was just too late to do more)

Then this morning I tried to think of what kind of pattern to use for the stitching. I didn’t like any from the Alabama Stitch book for my fabric.

After a bit of ruminating, I had a stroke of brilliance and went to the drawer with my cookie-cutters! Yes Ma’am! A star and a heart later and I was off sewing!

My new stripe-y dishtowel! I love it, what do you think?

Here now is the result! I feel it is a wee bit Punk Rock-ish. I love it! I will definitely make more of these! They dry really well and are so fast to be made!

Pretty! I had two bushes beside my house. One died this winter… (I have a sneaking suspicion it was because of the darn neighbor with the empty field spraying. My other neighbor and I (both our properties are adjacent to the empty field) are very unhappy with them spraying over there. We are trying to have organic gardens!!!! Weedkiller is rather counterproductive to that!

Spring has finally arrived in my garden! Here are a few pictures I took some days ago! (the lettuce is bigger by now) I also transplanted  some of the plants to other locations. (Trying to work on the garden and make it look great without spending any money is not as easy as it sounds… but thankfully I have a lot of plants that re-seed themselves and spread like weeds. That way I can thin them out and have pretty views all over instead of just in one place.

Thyme and lemon balm! LOVE the lemon balm in tea! On the right there are the forget-me-not.. don’t have a picture of them yet, but then they are not blooming yet. I will make some when they are. I love the way they look! So wonderfully old-fashioned!

My Violets! They have multiplied from last year as well, but are still not enough for freezer jam.. so I have to wait a few more years I think.. until then, I snack on them when I’m in the garden

The Rhubarb plant! It came back yet again! I thought for sure this last transplant killed it, but nope! lol I am the only one in the family that likes rhubarb. I don’t even remember where I got this one. (I have this idea that I got it from a fellow volunteer at the foodbank, but I really can’t remember for sure)

Rosemary! I rooted this one myself! SO PROUD! They came through the winter as well! Happy dance!

I have no idea what this plant is called.. I got it last year somewhere at the side of a trail by the marina. I didn’t think it would make it through the winter where it was, but it did and it is twice as big as last year as well!

My lettuce! It needs thinning.. by now it is about twice as big as in that photo! It grows so fast!!!!!

Lovage! This is bigger by now too and in it’s new home! I love Lovage! It tastes like celery, but stronger and I put it in every soup I make!

Corner of my vegetable garden! You can see my Sprouting bed right there as well! Got it from the neighbors, when they moved for free. LOVE IT!

Chives! I love chives! Specially when chopped really small and put in cream cheese! I have 6 bundles growing!

I made these little roses for a crochet class I was teaching! I played around with a few edgings to roll up and what shape the flowers would come out. Then I tried alternating a few chains and other stitches and voila! I like the way they came out. (I wrote down the pattern for them! Woot woot!)

 

I am also still knitting! A lot! The dresser scarves are on hold for now (need a decision about the yarn) , but I replaced them with two summer tops. One fest and one short sleeved raglan tee! Can’t wait to have them done and show them to you!

My apple tree is about to bloom and I am starting to look for recipes and things to do with apples. Then today a new book came into the house for review!

“Put ‘em up fruits” how to preserve all kinds of fruits. I am so looking forward to reading through it and making some of the recipes in it! CAN”T WAIT!

So that is all folks! What have you all been up to?

Until later!