Mushrooms and Pumpkins

Last Friday night my boyfriend held a gathering at our house. It was declared "Gamin' Night" and a few of his friends game over to play video games until the wee hours of the morning. There was hockey, football, and even some game with a microphone, guitars and drum pads. The old school Nintendo games were broken out on a smaller television. There was gamin' for all.

The menu consisted of pizza, beer, chips and dip, candy and a mushroom cake. Yes, a mushroom cake. I couldn't resist when my boyfriend asked me to make a cake in the shape of the 1-Up Mushroom from Mario Brothers. It was actually easier to make than I thought and I think he turned out pretty cute :) Of course, he was hacked to pieces by the time I woke up in the morning.

The next day I went to the monthly Marin Golden Threads meeting. We had a speaker from the Royal School of Needlework who was amazing. She brought many of her projects and explained how the program worked. There was also a gentleman with her who was at one time head of the education department in the Royal School of Needlework. He had the most exquisite piece of needlework I have seen in a while. It was a 3D knot garden with flowers and moving gates.

After the meeting, I met in friend in San Rafael at a glass pumpkin festival. It seemed like thousands of glass pumpkins of all shapes, sizes, and colors were on display and for purchase. They were beautifully laid out on the grass and I couldn't resist taking a picture.

Up next, hopefully a finished project!

Very First Handspun Yarn

This is it, my very first handspun yarn! I spent the better part of four hours this afternoon plying my singles into the yarn pictured here.
It seemed to take forever to get through it, just went on and on and my arms started getting tired by the end. But, I am very happy with the results.

I still have to wash the yarn and measure it's WPI (wraps per inch) to determine it's weight. I also want to look into getting a scale so that I can determine it's approximate yardage. I still have 2oz. left of this fiber to spin up and want to eventually use it to knit a scarf.

I bought this roving when I went to the Fiber Festival in Booneville. It's naturally colored Dark Blue Faced Leister from Tactile Fiber Arts and I love the natural gray color. I had heard that Blue Faced Leister was one of the easier fibers to spin and decided to start with it so that I wouldn't get too frustrated.

Since then, I keep looking at all the beautifully hand-dyed roving for sale online and can't wait to spin something up that has lots of colors. Now I know why people tend to collect more than one drop spindle, you can work on more than one spinning project at once :)

Rituals

Every other Sunday I pack up all my dirty laundry, my book, some magazines, and various knitting and/or crochet projects to head over to my parent's house for the day. I start my laundry and while the first load is washing, I see what my family is up to.

My Mom is usually in the kitchen cooking lunch for my brother and sister or getting a head start on the evening meal. My Step-Dad is either watching sports on the TV or playing games on his computer. If you wander down the hallway, you'll find my sister, still in her pajamas, reading a book in her room. If the weather is nice, my brother will be running around in the backyard trying to catch frogs that hide by the hot tub.

While it may seem like I'm an overgrown college kid bringing my laundry home for the weekend so that I don't have to wash it myself, I mostly come over to spend time with my family. I wander in and out of the garage washing, drying, and folding while I catch up with everyone. My mom and I will usually go shopping to get out of the house and spend some time together.

This past weekend, we ventured down to Baubles and Beads in San Rafael. Just this past year, she's really started to get into beading and has a growing bead collection at home. When we got back home, I started playing with her bead stash and had an idea to make a beaded lanyard for my keycard at work. I picked out some beads and away I went. My mom helped me put it all together and here is a picture of the finished product. I think it looks better than the plain ol' cloth ones! It worked great at work today too.

Casting On

Casting on is all I seem to be able to do lately. A co-worker told me that his wife was expecting and I cast-on for a baby blanket. I wanted a simple project to take with me to the knitting night at Llama Llama Knit so I cast-on for a scarf. What I should be doing is finishing my Mom's Christmas present and various other holiday projects I have going on.

The baby blanket I started is called the Round or Pinwheel Baby Blanket. I wanted something fairly simple but also interesting to look at. When I remembered that I had a couple of skeins of TLC Baby in my closet, I decided what the heck! The color is called naptime and is a mix of white and pastel yellow, blue, green and pink. I've really only worked on it a couple of nights, but I think it's looking pretty good. I'm not all that comfortable working with DPN's so I thought this would give me a good opportunity to practice. I want to learn how to make sock so I should get used to it :)

I have to confess that I've had my eye on the other new project I've started for a while. I love making scarves. They're quick, fun and it's great to wear different ones during the winter. When I saw My So Called Scarf, I knew I had to make it. I absolutely love the pattern and the color. I noticed the Manos del Uruguay yarn in the local knitting store and it was destiny. Instead of working the pattern with the wool it called for, I substituted the silk blend in the Wildflowers colorway. There's a long way to go on this one because I've only finished a couple of rows.



As for the knitting I should be working on, I'm almost halfway done with my Mom's Christmas present. For the time being, I'm going to keep that one a secret just in case she starts reading the blog.