Wisdom from Whoopi

A few weeks ago, I spent the weekend with my in-laws so that I could take some classes with Sally Melville in the Virginia Beach area.  On Saturday night after my second class, my mother-in-law was watching Sister Act 2.  In one scene Whoopi tells the main teenage character, "When you wake up in the morning, if all you can think about is singing, you are a singer."  I have decided that this was a great piece of wisdom and took it to heart.  I AM A KNITTER!  I wake up in the morning thinking about which project I am going to work on.  I go to sleep at night thinking of yarns from my stash and what I can make with them.  I knit in the car, in meetings, while watching TV, and sometimes at church.  I have designed scarves, hats, fingerless mitts, and shawls.  Thank you to my mom and Great Aunt Elsie for passing this tradition down to me and my family.  Thank you to all those who acknowledge my work, publish my work, and wear my work.  I am blessed to have a supportive family and hope to continue to knit for many years to come.

Stay tuned for 2 hat patterns coming soon.  One will be listed here for free to match a recently published pattern of mine in Love of Knitting Magazine.  The second will be a paid pattern available from Ravelry which I completed as a commission for a friend.  Both are chunky, quick knits which will make great gifts for Christmas, Chanukah, or other special occasion.   I hope to have them up by end of Thanksgiving weekend. 

Keeping You in Stitches Retreat

Practicing Magic Loop knitting

Well folks, like my fellow blogger WillyG, I am a bad blogger.  It has been quite a while since my last blog and I have been quite busy with gift projects, a retreat, and a design to be published.  This entry will be about the retreat.  On April 29th and 30th we held the first annual (hopefully) Keeping You in Stitches Retreat.  To say it was a blast would be an understatement.  To prepare for it I have been emailing and writing to some of my Knitting Contacts for several months to get ready.  Claudia Morris of Southern Purls in Ahoskie, was our yarn and notions enabler.  Heather, my wife, and I were the teachers/planners. The Retreat was held at the Barnes House Bed & Breakfast in Murfreesboro.

My wife bought and made crowns for us to wear in honor of the Royal Wedding which took place that morning.  We felt like the princes and princesses of knitting.  I was in my element as knitting teacher.  we began with a Cabled Coffee cozy designed by me.  Click the name to get the pattern.  Some of the attendees had not done cables before, so I chose a stitch pattern which had twists in both directions.  We worked on those for a couple of hours, then retired to the parlor for some sit & stitch time.  Around 11 pm we left for the evening  to get some rest.

Blocking our coffee cozys.

The next morning Craig, our host with the most, treated us to breakfast before our knitting began.  After breakfast we felted our cozys in the washer and set them up to block. Then it was off on a field trip to the Alpaca Farm.  Three Hawk Alpacas is less than 5 miles from Main Street in Murfreesboro.  Anita our host was kind enough to give us a tour, answer questions and let us interact with Callie, the friendliest Alpaca I have met.  (I have blogged about her before when we visited with my kids.  After our Q & A session we visited Anita's shop and several attendees purchased some lovely alpaca fiber to take home and work up.  Claudia even bought a cone of brown &                  natural/white.  We are dying to see this worked up.

Callie enjoying attention.

The afternoon brought us a great lunch from Tavern 125 in Mufreesboro.  We had placed our orders the night before and Heather picked up lunch for us to enjoy after the Alpaca Farm visit.  There were Reubens and Salads, fries and more.  Lunch was wonderful.   After lunch we were joined by another participant and began our Entrelac class.  We began a scarf, Basic Entrelac Scarf, from a pattern by Lisa Shroyer.  She very graciously gave us permission to use her pattern for our retreat.  Everyone caught on quickly and was amazed at the results.  It was a fun class and easy to teach with skilled knitters.

Tom practicing Broomstick Lace.

We took a break from Entrelac and Heather tried her hand at teaching with Broomstick lace.   Again we were making a scarf, in cotton,  with a pattern from Naztazia, Broomstick Lace Scarf.  Check the link for pattern and you tube tutorials.  I decided to try my hand at this technique as well (I can crochet, but prefer knitting).  It is working very well and will be a late Mother's Day Gift for my mom.  We all finished up around 5 pm.  Some had to say good bye for the evening.  Tom, Ilene, and I went to dinner at Napoli's Italian restaurant.  I tried the Portabello Ravioli for the first time.  It was fabulous.  We all knitted until 9 and retired to our homes, agreeing that the first retreat was a success. 

My cousin's wife makes cakes.  Her business is called, "The Icing on the Cake."  Well we had this made for the retreat (we ate on it all weekend).  The icing on our retreat was coming back to the B & B for breakfast with Tom and Craig on Sunday morning before seeing Tom off to the Triangle area of NC.  We are already brainstorming ideas for next year and hope to have more goodies, students, and knitting fun! 





A special thank you goes out to the following Donors for our Retreat: 

Skacel Collection, Inc
Rainy Days and Wooly Dogs -- Goth Socks Yarn
Love of Knitting Magazine
XRX, Inc.
Southern Purls
Yearning for Yarn
Beech Springs Alpacas
Three Hawk Alpacas

Each of the above companies donated prizes, patterns, or other items so that each participant left with a "swag" of items to enjoy their knitting.  Thanks for your donations.  Well, that is my update for now.  I plan to let you know about a new knitting shop and show off some Finished Objects in the next couple of Blogs.  Happy Knitting!

Turning a Frown Upside Down

Me "roping" an Alpaca's legs

shearers working on front legs

Show Blanket Fleece

This one was quite rowdy

Getting his teeth filed

Nails being clipped

More fleece

my new cell phone

                                                                           Last week I wrote about the disappointment from a design that I had returned to me from a major knitting magazine.  It hit hard for a few minutes, and then I went back to work.  The weather was beautiful last Monday afternoon, so I sat in the screened area of our deck, while the kids played with our neighbor in the back yard.  After a few minutes of drawing and reworking the design, I worked up the ideas for another magazine editor that a friend had introduced me to via email.  I scanned in the drawings to my family's ancient laptop, and took a couple of pictures of the swatch with my new phone (see the pic above).   I then typed up an email to the editor of the magazine and submitted the drawings, pics, and design idea.  Then the waiting began.  Finally on Thursday, I decided to drop a note to the editor, just to check in with her.  She, as it turns out, had been swamped at the magazine, but was thrilled with the design and offered to publish it in an issue  later this year!  In order to do this, I changed the cowl to a scarf and added fingerless mitts.  I know that I would wear a cowl but it seems a scarf would be a bigger selling point for most men.  All in all I am a happy designer again.  I still haven't heard from design number 3 which I submitted to Interweave for their winter issue.  If it is rejected, I will post the pattern for that design on Ravelry.  It seems that lace will be in fashion this year and chunky lace is a focus for this trend.
Several weeks ago I was given a brochure by my pastor's wife about shares for Alpaca yarn from this years shearing at a local farm.  As a result of getting this brochure I have made a new friend, Kate Brown.  She is the owner of Beech Springs Alpacas, just outside of Ahoskie, NC.  I took my family for a visit, which I blogged about just a few weeks ago.  Kate had her annual shearing yesterday, and invited me to come and participate.  The shearers came from Indiana, and it seems travel a total of 15,000 miles during a season.  They make appointments and map out their route, a large loop it seems that takes them from farm to farm until they get back home.  They started shearing about 7:45 yesterday morning and finished at 3 yesterday afternoon.  To get the Alpacas ready to be shorn, this is where all the other hands are needed.  I discovered yesterday that the animals must be stretched out with cords, to avoid clipping injuries, prevent flailing (which could injure the animal or helper), and allow the shearers to clip nails and file teeth if necessary.  I helped with putting on the cords and pulling the ropes yesterday.  It was not hard work but, I am a little sore today.  My wife and children came out for a couple of hours and watched the whole process.  My daughter was fascinated and ended up staying through the afternoon.  She took lots of pictures with her own digital camera.  She has a bag of Alpaca fleece to take to school with her pictures for show and tell.   My wife and I, sometime in the near future, will have our own show and tell of  6 hanks of alpaca sportweight yarn, our share in this year's shearing.  I can't wait to see what we get!

So excited about this fiber life I am living.  It gives me great satisfaction to share it with my family and friends.  I promised a free pattern and I am working on it.  I made a cell phone holder earlier this week.  I used some leftover acrylic and it is beautiful to look at but not very sturdy.  So I am working one up to felt.  As soon as it is finished and written I will post the free pattern.  Look for it later this week.  I will also be posting a new coffee cozy pattern, this one is felted, after the knitting retreat.