Happy Birthday Mark!

Yes, this past weekend was my wonderful husband's official birthday. I originally posted this on Ravelry, but thought I would add it here as well.

So, here is my report on Mark’s big Birthday Surprise Roadtrip yesterday. For HIS birthday, he took ME on the Hill Country Yarn Crawl! I couldn’t believe it until we hit the second yarn shop. He said he knew how much I had wanted to go last year and had already made plans to take me this year without knowing it would fall on his birthday. He is just so sweet and good to me, sometimes I have to pinch myself to believe I got so lucky for us to be together. Enough of the mushy stuff, now about the important things.

We went to six different shops across the top of the Hill Country, 280 miles, and we have five more to go about the same distance, which we will do this Thursday across the bottom edge of the Hill Country, making eleven in all. We had so much fun! Mark made a picture of each shop while I got my card stamped and looked around and talked with owners and fellow crawlers. I sooo much beautiful yarn, and some really interesting yarn. At one shop I saw yarn spun out of nettles. For those of you who have never experienced a nettle plant, most of them have little stinging hairs and grew in bunches and if you accidentally walk through a patch (because you would never do it on purpose) you never do it again. The yarn looked like plain old twine, and I found it in the sale bin, and it was still there when I left. Each shop gave out two patterns, and the yarn for each pattern was 25% off. Very tempting, but I only fell for one, a lace cowl with an unusual looking yarn by Plymouth called Kudo made of cotton, rayon and silk. Actually, I didn’t fall for it as much as Mark did; he wants it made for Lisa as his Christmas present to her. At one shop I found Spud and Chloe Outer, so naturally I had to have that to make the Shroom hat for Lisa, my Christmas present to Lisa. Next I found the two colors I needed in Cascade 220 for my TKGA project mittens, ugly in my opinion but on sale luckily, so into the car they went. And at one of the last shops, I looked up at a display of socks on a clothesline and there was one in a yarn like Eggroll’s! I didn’t know it was yarn like that, I just told the owner I wanted a yarn that made up like that because I didn’t know how to knit color patterns yet, and Bob’s your Uncle, she took me right to some. It’s not the brand mentioned on Ravelry, but it is supposed to work up the same. This one is Schachenmayr Regia in Adventure Color and will be for our Pug, Louie. The pattern is Elizabeth Watkin's Pug Sweater . The Adventure Color is important because the other names of colors only stripe. And so ended my yarn purchases, as well as the yarn budget that I didn’t have in the first place. Since it came from Mark’s birthday money, I felt compelled to show restraint. On the non-financial side, I met wonderful people, including the owner of VeryPink Knits, who is one of my favorite YouTube instructors. I hope to return to that shop some day for one of her classes.

Well, that is it so far. Thursday includes five more stores. One will be to a llama ranch, and I think that one will really be enjoyable for Mark. I know he enjoyed the llamas, sheep, and alpacas last year when he took me to the llama yarn show near Austin. I love to make him happy. There is a another yarn show next month closer to our house on another llama ranch. Oh boy, another opportunity to make Mark smile! ;-)

My only other news is that I have started Lesson 1 of the TKGA Masters Course. Let's see how long this one takes. I think I will do okay on the swatches, especially since many are duplicates from the Basics Course, and I have already done quite a bit of the research for the papers to be written, the mitten project may be another issue. It has a color change and that thumb challenge, and for me personally (warm weather gal from Texas and California) I have no use for mittens. Add to that, I am developing such a wonderful group of friends on Ravelry and would love to knit projects with them as well, it brings me a true understanding of "so much yarn and so little time".

GREAT NEWS!

Well, I did it. I received my certificate for the TKGA Basics, Basics, Basics course. One small step for knitting, one large step for knitting Kathryn! It not only means I have some of the basics down, and I can do them satisfactorily, it also means for me that I finished something that frightened me for many years. For reasons I can not explain, I have owned the TKGA Masters course for almost ten years and was absolutely sure I could not do it. Thanks to Arenda Holladay for her patience and for her well-structured Basics class, I have the confidence to begin my Masters course. I have given myself a couple of weeks to just do some knitting as I have fallen way behind on my committed projects for family and friends. I will, however, be back into my number one Bucket List item very soon.

I found an incredible gold mine on Ravelry today and added it to my page for Knitting Help by Subject. ClaireAlthea's Profile page on Ravelry is a real treasure of references and a wonderful start for my page. Thank you, ClaireAlthea. Now I have a great starting point for many of the topics I haven't touched on yet as well as links to many of the best references from some of my favorite sources.

Well, it's back to work for me. Well, it's really not work. I will check in with my friends at Elizabeth Watkin's Designs group and Sally's knitCompanion app group, and then work on my every growing pile of knitting commitments. All of these things bring such joy to my life that it is a great disservice to call them "work."

And the Blog goes on ...

Well, my little place to talk to myself seems to be taking over the conversation here. I just added another page for one of my great passions, knitting tools. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. Well, actually, I do know why I thought of it today. I just love the way life lives itself.

Yesterday I saw a post on Ravelry by a knitter looking for a tool like a lazy susan with a wooden peg to hold her yarn while she knitted. Well, I like to research things, and I like to hook my fellow Ravelers up with what they are looking for, so off I went. I found a post with a reference to the Yarn Lazy Susan. Not only did it do everything she wanted it to do, it was beautiful. And, it was the best price of other similar products. And, it had a great story behind it.

I had a little difficulty locating information and a good strong link with pricing and such to post on Ravelry, so I sent an email to the manufacturer. I had a response within about and hour, and after a couple of emails back and forth, life brought me a great opportunity to meet an amazing man, Bob Moffett. Be sure and check out his Facebook link under my Tools page. Buy his product, don't buy his product, you are going to like what you see and you can't help liking Bob and what he has to offer ... the best of American entrepreneurship.

Research and writing day ...

I am doing my favorite things today, research and writing. Seriously, I love it. Only one problem, I really have a problem with focus. Take today's problem; I am supposed to be finishing Lesson 3 for TKGA Basics. It is not rocket science, as real scientists like to say. Just write up a pattern to match a swatch. So what do I do? I am researching how patterns are constructed. Of course, there is very little actually written about the actual "structure." Some information is provided about content, but that was in the course information, and, you see, I always like to dig a little deeper. I am not an overachiever, but one of the wonderful things about being a research addict is that it is a great way to learn as well as put off the inevitable ... completing the project. Anyway, back to the reason for this post. While doing my thing, I came across a blog by Kate Mullen, a Suite 101 Member who had a post about where to find free patterns. Now, this is how I think and search. To find out how to format a pattern when there are no direct search results, I search for free patterns and download them and then evaluate them against the content advice I did find. Soooo, obviously I am interested in Kate's post so I can find more free patterns. Now, I think that makes sense, right? Never mind. I really just want to thank Kate for her references. Talk later; I have to finish that project today. Really. Have to. Have to go. Really.

Who knew ...

Who knew I could get so busy so fast! Let's see, where to start. Well, I will just threw a bit of this and a bit of that out there, because I really have to get going with my life in a few minutes.

I joined a group on Ravelry, Elizabeth Watkins Designs & Friends. Not only is Elizabeth a wonderful, and published I am pleased to note, knitting designer, she is a Pug mother and so are all her friends. She designed a special sweater for Pugs, understanding how difficult they are to fit and no commercial designer will entertain the idea of making a special design for them. She started a KAL, I was invited to join by a lovely lady, and I am having the time of my life. I have more friends than I ever imagined possible. They are wonderful, loving, interested in each other, supportive of each other, and just plain make you want to get up in the morning and join in the conversation. I am truly blessed.

I have just about completed Lesson 3 for BBB from TKGA. It should be in the mail this Monday. Now it is time to move forward with the Master's Course I have been holding on to for so long. It's so long, I can't remember how long. I feel much more prepared with BBB completed, and I am looking forward to beginning.

I really must go now. Life to live and all. I hope all is well for each of you. I was shocked to find out you were even reading along. Thank you for your interest. I will continue to update my references, but I am finding less and less time, or reason, to visit with myself. Not a bad thing at all. But, if necessary, I know where to go for a real heart to heart ... with just me.

No time to talk ...

Wow, I haven't had time to visit or talk to myself or anyone else! Too much to do, exploring web sites, finishing my swatches for Lesson 3 in Basics, Basics, Basics and building my Knitting Library from eBay. Every day when the mail arrives it is just like a holiday. I will have to make something for that nice mail lady, just as soon as I have time to knit again.

I did a little project where I collected knitting needles from eBay for a non-profit and that was a lot of fun. I would get the lots of needles and then go through them and catalog them for size. I found a couple that were more a collectors item and I sent those to the gal, Susan, who is doing the history project Knitting Needle History.

I used Elaine's web site, Knitting Fool, to find a pattern for the final project of Basics, Basics, Basics. That was so amazing! I knew I only had 30 stitches to work with, as the lesson stated, and that it had to be lace or cables. I went to the site, picked the category for finding stitches by number in the pattern, then picked lace and cable (why not go for both) and then picked the closest number. I found a beautiful pattern with written instructions as well as a completed chart. Now I will enter it in my knitSpeaker app and I'm golden.

I had all my swatches blocked. Yes, I am now unblocked about my blocking. My husband set up a room, we call it the rock room because it has a rock floor and is of no use because it is either too hot or too cold and is too small to hold a chair. Then I took five of my magic COCO Knits knitting blocks and placed one-inch square red gingham on them. I swear the gingham was the magic. Something about not staring at a blank block gave me the confidence to lay the swatch down and start pinning. Hey, whatever works, right?

So, I gotta go. I have to redo one of my swatches, the cable. I don't know how, but one of my cables came out different than the other one. I could have called it a design element, but I don't think Arenda would have bought that one. I also have a bit more research to do, so watch for more activity on the reference page.

Happy Knitting!

I'll meet you in the library ...

Well, I just created my Library page. I also discovered another resource on the TKGA Group Forum for reference books. Too bad I didn't find that one first. I now own a lot of books with pictures of stitches I may never have time to make in this lifetime, especially if I keep spending my time buying and reading books about knitting instead of knitting.

Oh well, that's behind me. I did finish all my sample swatches for Lesson 3 of Basics, Basics, Basics. Now for that nasty B word again, yes, blocking. Oh, and I also get to muddle my way through that ever so lengthy list of reference books to answer the questions that go with the swatches.

I have to say, to myself and anyone who may be listening, how much Ravelry has added to my life. It's like a friend to me, one with so many different personalities and so much knowledge. I am also blessed to have a husband whose only request of me is that I be happy. And happy I am.