August 25, 2005
It is one thing when your house is in disarray. It is another thing altogether when your house is in disarray, your computer is threatening to crash, and your mental state is not all it should be. Somehow I navigated...
August 20, 2005
Yes, it is. From Carol Leigh's Hillcreek Fiber Studio, bought in May at the Maryland Sheep & Wool festival. Very pretty. Very pink. Very cashmere. And Very fine. Too fine, in fact, for the Lily of the Valley shawl...
August 15, 2005
I've had this idea simmering in my head for a long time. It's not an original idea. There have been fair isles designed to be knit sideways for some time. See, for example, Sweaters From Camp. But shapely sweaters knit...
August 07, 2005
Ahhhhhhhhhh. The heat has dissipated somewhat, returning to levels in the low 80s rather than the high 90s. Randy is off to Japan. The Ten are off to Alaska. I have a car and a cell phone again. And I...
August 04, 2005
It appears there are many other sinners such as I who do nothing with our handspun. Let us seek absolution and grant it to ourselves, eh? I've now restored more than 80 blog entries dating from February of 2003. These...
August 01, 2005
I'll take a brief respite from Ireland photos to indulge in some fiber-related ephemera. But before I do, guess who showed up at my house yesterday? Ladies and gentlemen-- back from Belgium, Israel, Spain, Italy, Holland and other Lands Far...
July 14, 2005
I managed to darn in all my ends so that I can wear the Keepsake. Here we are, all ready to go! The Gray is out buying a new, tiny camera, that I can carry around with me without...
July 06, 2005
The shoulder shawl is progressing, though as you can see, it challenges me to find a good way to display it. I'm not sure this particular doily pattern is the best for a shoulder shawl-- it may be a...
June 23, 2005
I was looking back through the comments and was surprised at how many people I associate with knitting admit to having a loom and sometimes (or formerly) weaving. What stopped you, or what keeps you from it? Is it the...
June 22, 2005
I always loved the beginning of the movie Mary Poppins when the weather abruptly changed and the wind blew Mary Poppins in, umbrella, carpetbag and all. I feel like that sort of wind has been carrying me along since the...
May 26, 2005
Oh yeah-- this is addictive. I love love love the drape of the Brooks Farm Harmony. I love the colors (4 of them) and how they blend into each other like a sunset. I love the soft ripples formed...
May 23, 2005
First, I'd like to congratulate Vanessa for starting and finishing her Inishmore in less than a week!! If Emerald Downs ever has knitting races, I'll place my bet on her to win. I showed the Gray all the comments regarding...
April 06, 2005
I haven't knit a stitch in two days, but the idea is to knit the Kimono Shawl from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Shawls for Sherah. I'm using Bollicina, which is mostly cashmere with a little silk. It's a supersoft, silky yarn,...
March 28, 2005
Sometimes I try to pretend that something I'm knitting will work out-- do you do this too? Take this Misty Morning Shawl. (No no... not literally!) The pattern calls for a 2.5mm needle. I have a 2.5mm but it is...
March 26, 2005
A friend of mine recently pontificated that in time, blogs will be like answering machines. That is, if you don't have one people might think you are rude. Remember the old days when nobody had an answering machine or a...
March 17, 2005
The other night I wanted to knit lace, but I couldn't come up with the right scratch for my itch. The beautiful weather had gone, and the clouds had me in a downward spiral, wandering around trying to figure out...
March 10, 2005
The baby surprise jacket is finished, except for one shoulder seam and buttons and weaving in ends-- but I had to save something for the knit-in at Mary B's on the 19th! I made this doll when I lived in...
March 09, 2005
The surprise about the Baby Surprise jacket is that it goes so quickly! It was fun to choose some colors from my vast stash of Shetland odds and ends, and I like how these turned out. I should finish it...
March 01, 2005
So far, so good. In preparation for tomorrow I have transformed my utility room into a dye lab: ------------- As the six weeks that Alex was supposed to have been in Turkey approached their end, we received notification that...
February 28, 2005
I'm feeling good about the Rombaldi sweater now, which somehow doesn't seem so Rombaldish any more and now needs a new name. Here is a better picture of the colors. Through my recent study of the book Sweaters From Camp,...
February 27, 2005
Ok, here we are. That one bright blue-greeny color is not as obtrusive as it looks-- I duplicate-stitched it when the first color didn't work, so in the final analysis it should recede a bit and be less obnoxious. It's...
February 26, 2005
Woe is me. Woe, woe, woe is me, me, me. Woe. Is. Me. Where did I go wrong? This swatch has ruled my home for the last three dyas. Hundreds of times did I tweak colors and rip back and...
February 25, 2005
Lest you think I've been lying around the house eating bon-bons and reminiscing about Spain, let me show you my latest efforts to design a good fair isle. One cannot spend four days in the company of Janine and not...
February 23, 2005
On the second day of the Winter Retreat I took the class Two-Ended Knitting. Carol Rhoades has extensively studied textiles and especially two-ended knitting in Sweden, and in fact is the translator of Anna Maj Ling's book Two-Ended Knitting. She...
February 21, 2005
I returned home from Gig Harbor last night, tired but happy, having bid a fond farewell to Janine at the airport. Vanessa and Janine could not have been more perfect roommates, and the room itself-- featuring vaulted ceilings and an...
February 05, 2005
Here I am in my Rona's Hill vest, which fits very nicely. I wish I had made the shoulders a little less shelf-like, but other than that I am pleased....
February 04, 2005
At last, Rona's Hill is complete. I took many liberties with the design, of course. My new goal is never to knit anything exactly as designed. I used Janine's shoulder shaping in the round, which worked beautifully, and I...
January 28, 2005
We do not know how it happened, but it did. We opened the garage door to find that Harvey and Grazzi had become bird dogs at last. Sure, the feathers had already been in the middle of their second life...
January 24, 2005
Tools-- I love them. I'm worse than any man, although my tools are usually in support of handwork and do not plug in. If you think about it, there are few simple tools. A piece of paper? How do you...
January 17, 2005
Who said I couldn't finish a sock? Here is my first handspun Treasure sock, fit to my own right foot, a veritable cocoon of cerulean comfort. In other news, I did get three types of cotton from The Weaving...
January 10, 2005
This was my back yard yesterday morning. And so it was that the family festivities for the 50th anniversary of the Birth of the Gray were cancelled. Or at least postponed until next week! But the Gray aged nonetheless,...
November 18, 2004
It was one of those days when I wander around trying to find something to interest me. I looked through my yarn stash, thought perhaps I should just sell it all off-- I didn't want to knit any more anyway,...
October 28, 2004
It turned cold here today, and the weatherman predicted it would be in the 30's last night. Poor little Sherlock looked at me with his big brown eyes and I swear asked me for a sweater. So I scrounged up...
October 25, 2004
I can scarcely believe it. It was one thing to finish a small work in progress yesterday, but to start and finish yet another thing the very next day is... well... utterly unheard of! The Lawrence Welt Hat is complete,...
October 22, 2004
I polled the wheels of Icelandic yarn. None of them wanted to be cats. "We've worked hard to get where we are today," the medium brown told me. "We don't want to be 'cute' and we don't want to be...
April 30, 2003
The reindeer are singing "I Ain't Got No Body", but they do begin to have bellies. I seem to be progressing so slowly now as compared to the main body; I am only halfway through the patterned area. Doubtless, the...
April 29, 2003
I sit here with my Voice-Activated Knitter's Guide, into which I have fed the graph for the Varg Pojken (Reindeer Sweater). I've asked it to synthesize the voice of Sean Connery and to emit the cherry fragrance of a slowly...
April 28, 2003
I was forced to make a tough decision this morning: A. get to my sadistic boss's 8:00 Monday Management Meeting on time or B. take a picture of Varg Pojken progress to post to the blog. I erred on the...
April 27, 2003
The camera got a nice workout yesterday. The brilliant thought occurred to me that if I took it down to the Parlor with me, I could take pictures whenever something inspired me.... what a concept. The Knitting First of all,...
April 23, 2003
Wednesday always sneaks up on me like a cat stalking the ends of my knitting needles as they leave contrails of circles describing the stitches just knit. Suddenly the whole weight of the cat is suspended from the end of...
April 22, 2003
It's back to the mourning shawl, I've been wanting to knit on it some more, and feel good that I can come back to it 'ere it disappears in a frenzy of Brad cleaning! Am I a copycat? I see...
April 11, 2003
Today seems to be the Friday for Fluster-Bombing. I was flustered by having waked up late while still needing to get packed for my trip Out East. (Mini Driver will take me to Pullman today, through the wonderful little town...
April 09, 2003
Only 8 more scallops to go before the border is done on the mourning shawl!! I was going through old computer files and found photos I thought I'd lost, yippee! Harvey & Sherah in a photographic mood: I am given...
April 08, 2003
The Spring Forward routine has left me with one foot in the old time and one in the new, yet again. I feel like I'm stuck in a Star Trek transporter accident and can't wake up. Mourning shawl border report:...
April 02, 2003
Yes, yes, yes I know I've been remiss in blogging my knitting and especially have I been non-entertaining lately. Chalk it up to fear of really doing some unredeemable thing to the blog and website. For example, I succeeded in...
March 13, 2003
Many a sock has been started And many of them were discarded But in an effort of tryin' To keep up with Ryan from her other WIPs Sheila had parted... and finished this!! At my recently had birthday party I...
March 06, 2003
I've been working on a silk shell for my daughter's 21st birthday. It's the ogee lace shell from Jaeger's #4, and is a pleasure to knit. And still spinning! I've become addicted! I have some silk and wool roving in...
February 19, 2003
I'll quickly post these photos! LaJunieanne is coming right along (back to Order from Chaos!) The Triple-L (pesto-magpie) is progressing, but it's boring to look at once you've seen the first part, so I'm posting my second brain-dead knitting project,...
February 15, 2003
The nice neat progress pictures you've been seeing so far are the result of me taking the time to pin up the LaJ on my blocking board, smoothing out all the bumps and taking the photo. In real life, just...
February 13, 2003
The leaves are getting fuller! I am starting to name each leaf, more about that tomorrow. And the no-brainer project that I'm working on when I'm too tired for LaJ... I'm calling it "The Laurel-Linette" sweater because those two people...
February 11, 2003
An updated picture of LaJ: And evidence that Ginger really wants to be a star... Brad took this picture this morning, it was supposed to be of me: Comments Hi Sheila! I think that is a fabulous picture. Of both...
February 09, 2003
Yesterday I worked hard on my graph. I got about 1/4 of it done, but enough to get me started. What a relief! No longer am I frustrated about colors, where the line of color ends as opposed to the...
February 08, 2003
My progress so far! I found that I really needed to have a color card. I used to cross-stitch quite a bit, and used the Lo-Ran card system to organize DMC floss. The Master Cards turned out to be the...
February 01, 2003
The men in my life -- both have curly hair. They await the presentation of the Long Leaf yarns... but let's begin at the beginning. Why did I start a blog? I never have time to read other people's blogs,...
