Sharp Rock Fall Fest, etc

Well, I've completed another training session for work - translated that means that after three weeks of surrendering my life to the job, I can take a deep breath and enjoy myself until the next time around. Which also means I can catch up on my blog.

The last time we spoke, I was about to head out to the Sharp Rock Winery Fall Festival. This winery is the only one for which we faithfully attend all festivals - the location is beautiful:

The owners are friendly, down to earth people and the atmosphere is nice and relaxed.We sat under a copse of pine trees and listened to some really great blue grass. The sound quality in this isn't as good as it was live - obviously - this is just from my little camera - the most entertaining aspect of this performance was it was all one guy. He would lay down a track of himself playing one instrument, then loop it and pick up another instrument - he'd lay down that track on top of the other - loop those two together and pick up a third instrument - he'd keep on doing this until he had an entire ensemble put together. It was very entertaining.

Naturally, I did some knitting:

This little piece of knitting now looks like this:
I may have been busy, but that's not to say I didn't knit for three weeks - I mean, really - what were you thinking?

After the festival we stayed in a very quaint B&B called Conyer's House. We stayed in the Spring House which is up on top of a hill -very secluded - surrounded by woods.

This was our bedroom - we had a nice little fireplace, a loft with another bed, and a quaint little bathroom. It was such a nice day out, I didn't want to shut up the cottage, so I shut and latched the screen door and left the outer door open, thinking we'd come home to a nicely aired out room - with the smell of the woods wafting through our rooms - well, I'm not so sure it was all that aired out, but it did have a little of the woods in it - a nice big fat black snake had crawled in through a hole in the screen and made himself at home. I squealed like a three year old girl. The SigO nearly jumped out of his skin hearing me scream like that. And then, what was he going to do? He was the man - so he had to be manly - right? So he grabbed that damn thing by the back of the neck and hurled it out into the yard! My hero!! Rest assured I did a thorough check of the rest of the cottage before settling in that night.

The next day, we went for a hike in the Shenandoah. This is where I point out that both of us had been suffering from a nasty lingering cold - hacking up loogies - sniffling all day long - but I was not to be deterred - we hadn't been on a hike in too long, and we were going hiking! But I'm not a fool - I searched through my books and found one that was advertised as "a nice easy hike - suitable for the entire family". Yeah. Right. If you're a family of Sherpa's maybe! If you don't believe me, check out the view:

You don't get a view like this from "a nice easy hike". But it was quite gorgeous, and obviously we did survive.

Other than finish up the jacket pictured above, the only thing I've finished is my October quilt block for Carol Doak's newest Block of the Month (BOM) challenge. This time around, she's putting a "theme" block for each month for us to work on. This should prove to be as interesting a finished product as last year's BOM challenge.

Carol had instructed us to "embellish" our blocks, so I had all these grand plans to put in fall leaves all over the tree - well - it took me nearly as long to embroider this tiny little bush as it did to put together the entire block, so eff it - it's good enough. As is this blog!

Sometimes you get the bear...

And this time, the bear definitely got me. The knitting bear, obviously.

As already mentioned, I signed up for a class to learn Fair Isle and Steeking. As a side bonus, we also learned how to knit continental. Ah, but when I knit my swatch, I didn't know we were going to knit continental, so I knit the swatch using the good ole throw method...

Turns out I knit much, much, much looser with continental than I do with throw. Don't believe me? Check it out:

Here's the sleeve

Here's the body

that's just the back...obviously...

Maybe not as easy to see in the picture as it is in real life, but suffice it to say, since Hagrid is only a fictional character, I don't know anyone I can give this to in its current state, so it's going to have to be frogged, after which I'll have to decide: Do I want to hang up this continental thing and knit throw from now on, or do I always just want to go down six or seven needle sizes and two-three garment sizes when knitting continental. I really don't like loose knitting, so I'm leaning toward the former, but maybe if I go down enough needle sizes it won't matter? I don't know. And since I don't want to make that decision right now, I've picked up my suede jacket to work on instead.

This is knit in Berrocco's Suede Tri-Color and here's the thing with that - if I had known it was going to knit up into such definitive stripes, I think I would have ignored the pattern and knit in the round, then steeked the front. As it is, I'm going to either have some seriously mismatched stripes when I sew it together, or I'll have to work really, really hard to make sure the stripes match up - and knitting isn't supposed to be about working really, really hard....so I guess I could frog this too - but probably not - I have a limit on how much frogging I can take in one week.

I guess that makes the score: Knitting bears - 2, Jo - 0.

Kosovo, Soldiers Spoof of Beach Boys Kokomo

What a Mess

I finally finished my Carol Doak Block of the Month (BOM) quilt top. I probably shouldn't say "finally". After all, I only got one block per month x 12 months, so I'm not sure I could have finished it that much more quickly. I am very happy with the way it turned out - I put all the blocks on point and used Carol's China Star to offset the BOM blocks. Of course, the problem with paper piecing any quilt is the mess it makes when it's time to take all the paper off. This picture REALLY doesn't do justice to the mess in my house when I was finished pulling off all that paper!

It really looked like it snowed in our basement there for a while. The SigO (those are his feet in the picture - so cute!) tried to keep it under control by picking up papers every so often, but he was fighting a losing battle.

Of course, the real mess came when I nearly chopped off the end of my finger. We were watching Horatio Hornblower while I was trying to cut some fabric with the rotary cutter. I mean, honestly, who can expect anyone to be concentrating on quilting when Ioan Gruffudd is on TV? So, off came a sizeable chunk of my index finger, and off I went to the ER to get some coagulant stuffed into the hole (nothing there to sew up) to stop the bleeding. That put a real damper on the weekend, needless to say. But it's almost all healed up already, so ho hum - moving on...

I just signed up for a class to learn how to do colorwork in my knitting and - you might want to sit down for this - learn to cut (Yes! Cut!! Yikes!!!) my knitting. I'm working on the Enid Cardigan and I'm learning to knit continental for this project since Olga (instructor) wants us to knit the colorwork using both hands. So, that's somewhat awkward.

The reason for steeking (cutting) this knitting is to put in the button band - so if I chicken out, it just won't be a cardigan - it will be a pullover - see how easy life can be! This class is a three day class held over six weeks to give us time to do all the knitting. Olga wants us to have the body done up to the yoke and the sleeves done for a bonus before the next class, which is in two weeks. If I weren't trying to knit continental, this would be a breeze, but I'm not so sure I'm going to make it. And I can't just switch back to the good ole comfy throw method since my tension is completely different between those two techniques. So, I might be the problem child in this class. Oh, let's not kid ourselves - definitely, I am the problem child.

Thursday night I'm taking a crochet class from the same instructor. I decided it might be a good idea since one of the projects I have on my needles right now is the Beachcomber Tunic:

Which, as you can see, is knit for the top, and crocheted for the bottom. I don't think the actual crochet is all that tough, but reading the pattern has me thrown right now.
I'm knitting the Enid Cardigan in my current size, because it's a cardigan, so who cares if it's a tad large, but I'm still knitting all my other tops in a size too small because I'm devoted to losing some of this weight, although I can't say I've been very dedicated to the process. I blame the SigO. I'm not saying it's his fault. I'm just going to blame him.

I have finished all the knitting for the Filatura Di Crosa top. Here are the sleeves, all nice and blocked:I still need to crochet the belt (see, another reason for Thursday's class) and then it's just a matter of seaming it up and sewing on the sleeves - yeah - the dreaded finishing. That's why it's still on the blocking boards, even though I finished it well over a month ago.

Not much exciting going on in the way of trips lately. Not for lack of trying. We tried to go camping for Labor Day weekend and all the campsites in our chosen weekend spot were full. So, we went winery hopping. Such a hardship! And that pretty much sums things up for me for the last few weeks - lot's of knitting, wining, quilting, some trauma, some work, mostly fun.

An industrious, if unexciting weekend

The big event this weekend was pulling the bowflex out of storage and getting it set up in the media room. My quilting space took a hit for the team, but since the sewing table can collapse and roll around to accomodate my space issues, and the bowflex, well, can't, it was a logical decision. The SigO and I are both very pleased with the final outcome:
That's my first ever wall-quilt behind the bowflex. It has so many flaws and goofs in it that it's the perfect backdrop for the bowflex, since I'm hoping no one will try to climb behind that bulky thing to try to look too closely at my quilt. The only part of putting the bowflext together I helped with was putting the cables on. The SigO did everything else...aren't you proud of him?! Meanwhile, I played in the yard this weekend and got the weeds pulled, the pond cleaned, etc. The weather this weekend was very mild and I had enough deet sprayed on to repel even Them!
so, after playing in the yard for several hours, I sat out on the deck to do some knitting and watch the wildlife - which in my yard consists of several different types of birds, some butterflies and a handful of squirrels. Ever since I've moved into this house, I've been trying to attract hummingbirds and I've finally had a measure of success with that! I now have two regular visitors - one male, one female. The female is one bold lady. She hovers right over our heads, checking us out while we're on the deck and at one point, literally hovered one foot away from my face. I had my camera with me at the time, but when a beak that sharp is that close to your eyes, you don't make any sudden movements! I sat out there for some time trying to capture pictures of all the gorgeous birds and butterflies that come to visit. We even had a bald eagle fly overhead at one point, but those dang birds are Fast! By the time I get upstairs and download the pics, all I've managed to get is blurry images. This golden finch is the only halfway decent shot I got.
You can also see a household sparrow about to take a drink from the pond in this shot:
You can well imagine that with me trying so hard to get some shots of the local wildlife, I don't get a whole lot of knitting done. I did get one really good shot of a wild animal that wandered into my yard a little later in the day:Quite the specimen - but beware, cuz yes, he does bite!

I have made a great deal of progress on the pullover. In addition to both the front and back shown here, I've finished one of the sleeves and am 2/3 done with the other. I hope to be blocking the sleeves within the next few days, and then sewing it up this week. I'm very pleased with the way it's knitting up. I've had to frog several rows and tink several times due to not reading the directions, or simply knitting along thinking I had tons of rows to go to reach the desired measurements, just to have to frog back when I discovered I'd gone 3" too far - this is my first time knitting with 100% wool. I'm more accustomed to knitting with DK weight or smaller, so I'm not used to four rows = 1 inch. It's nice to work with something that knits up that quickly, but it has thrown me off a few times.
Finally, I wanted to share some pictures from the Lion King, just to show that even though the dance routines needed some more work, the makeup and costumes were well worth the price of the seats.
Scar, my favorite character - how can you not love anyone who's main line is: "My Teeth and Ambitions are Bared!"
The woman that played Rafiki could really belt it out!

Young Nala - my favorite part of the entire show was young Nala, Rafiki and Shenzi singing their mourning song after Mufasa dies and Simba disappears. Very nicely done.

Quilt Odyssey, Green Gables, Filatura di Crosa

As usual, I'm way behind on my blog. This time it wasn't my fault. I wanted to show off a picture of my completed Green Gables top and we couldn't find the computer cable for the camera until yesterday. But here it is: The picture shows off the fit of the top, but doesn't show the lacework (at the top, near my neck) very well. The funny thing is I wore it to work Monday, and when I got home and hung it up I noticed I missed a few ends that still need to be woven in. Thought I had gotten them all.

I finished the Green Gables top Friday night and immediately started on my Filatura Di Crosa Sideways Striped Pullover.

I've gotten the back done and just started on the front. This picture doesn't do justice AT ALL to the yarn. The yarn knits up beautifully. This is my first 100% wool project and now I see what everyone is on about. And of course the colorways are spectacular. I'm knitting this a size too small for me - and I fully intend to be able to wear it this winter. If this doesn't keep me motivated, I just don't know what will. But, then, considering I have a closet full of gorgeous clothes I can't wear right now....yeah, but this is different! Yeah!

Anyway, the Quilt Odyssey this year was awesome as always. I took a class with Phil Beaver to learn how to paint fabrics. It's funny, when I signed up and it said we were going to make sunflowers, I had this image of a cheesy looking quilt top in my head. I had no intention of making any sunflowers - you've all seen what I'm talking about - cutesy, cheesy, boring. But I was interested in learning how to paint my own fabrics. We painted four panels. This is my favorite one:

and as you can see, my quilt turned out to be anything but cheesy: There were many gorgeous quilts on display as usual. Here's a small sampling:

This is just a few of my favorites. OK, I admit it - this is how many I got before my memory card was too full! Anyway, if you want to see them all, here's a nice slide-show:

http://s116.photobucket.com/albums/o11/sewpam63/quilt%20shows/Hershey%20Quilt%20Odyssey%202008/?action=view&current=7a4581b1.pbw

Enjoy.

Just as Well

It's just as well that I'm a week late posting this time...unless you want to hear all about my exciting weekend doing house work and yard work...no? Right - that's what I figured, so as I was saying...

Unlike this past weekend, last weekend was pretty exciting, if a tad painful. We went kayaking down the Potomac at Harper's Ferry. The scenery was gorgeous:

and I had a great time watching the SigO flex his biceps:

The only drawback to the whole day was the length of the trip. On the way down there, it began to dawn on me that 6hrs on the water in >90 degree heat might be a bit more than I could handle. Of course, I knew the heat would only be one factor - there would also be the 6hrs of paddling - so, like a smart girl, I called ahead and told them we would be changing our plans from full day to half day. No problem they said. But when we got there, they sold us a doozy: "Oh, don't worry - the river is so high the full day is only taking about 3-4 hrs - which is what the half day would normally take. The half day is only taking a few hours."

"Oh!" say gullible, silly us "well, in that case, yes, we'll stay on the full day!"

Here's a nice picture of a bridge over the Antietam river:

This is where we were at hour #3. This is when we were ready to get out. It's also somewhere a little past the halfway point. At hour #4.5, we were ready to get out and walk the rest of the way - screw the boats. At hour #5, we finally rowed into the home base with raw hands, sunburned shoulders and aching backs. Pure misery - let me tell you!

I can't wait to go back and do it again!

That was Saturday, last weekend. Sunday we decided to stay closer to home and hike Prince William Natl. Park - one of the most under-utilized parks around VA - which I'm not complaining about. It's a gorgeous park with tons of trails.

Even though I've hiked it regularly for the past five years, I never tire of its beauty.

I didn't just hike and kayak all weekend. I'm working on the Zephyr pattern Green Gable that I bought over a year ago (pics in the next post - honest!). I also spent a great deal of time putting all my books, magazines and yarn in the Ravelry post. With numbers like these:

And a stash like this:

only a crazy person would go out and buy more yarn anytime soon...right??!! Ermmmm....

That is the one fun thing I did this weekend. I picked up Ella Rae's Bamboo Soft in mocha. Very pretty, very soft yarn. No plans for it. Maybe I'll just roll around in it.