Little girls, big fun

I confess, I’m a multi-craft person. Sure, I knit (or this blog would be non-existent) but I also sew, make masks and costumes, and do art projects. So when I went to my local JoAnn’s for some small purchase, and saw that cottons were 40% off that day, I decided to do a little sewing project for some friends.

In my “real” life, I have a home business doing baby-tending, errands, shopping and the like. All of the people I tend babies for are connected through music (most are faculty at Stanford, where I used to work) and there are two lovely, and very lively young ladies upon whom I dote unmercifully. Marie’s mum teaches collaborative piano and diction (in German, French and Italian) and Kira’s mum is the violist with the St. Lawrence String Quartet.

I found two lovely butterfly-design fabrics in lavender shades, a simple sundress pattern, and went to work. Each dress took about 4 hours including cutting time, and I found a pattern on the Internets for a six-section sun hat with a ruffle to round out the outfits. Here’s Kira’s version, which has a 2″ hem take-up that will allow her to grow a bit and still enjoy the dress next summer. Marie’s legs are longer, so her dress didn’t have that feature.

Last week, both girls and their mums got together for a play date and to show off their new duds.

Where I knit

Since I haven’t been able to knit or spin much because I smashed my left forefinger with a hammer a couple of weeks ago, I don’t have any WIPs or FOs to show off, and didn’t want to just let the blog lay here idle. A bit of thinking about what I could regale you with led me to remember this bit. Before I began blogging, there was a rash of posts on the Internets showing where people knit. Since I missed out on that flurry, I thought I’d introduce you to my knitting place and what I use. So here’s my regular knitting corner:

This is the corner of my living room, which has full-length windows on both walls. IKEA provided the up/down halogen floor lamp (there’s also a high-intensity magnifying lamp that’s at the other end of the couch) so that I can actually see what I’m doing most of the time. That there couch is my very first grown-up couch (or chesterfield, for the Canadians among you), bought brand-spankin’ new three years ago. It may tell you something about my maturity level when I say that I was well over 50 when I bought this! Firm cushions, deep enough to curl up in the corner or sit in lotus without any problems. A handy table to prop feet up when necessary.

Close to hand, where I can grab and browse as needed, is what I think of as my “fix-it” bookshelf:

I Can’t Believe I’m Spinning!

No, I’m not writing another of those cheesy how-to books. But last night I took my first “real” drop-spindle class! I say “real” because I did get an introduction to the craft from Lynn at Mad About Ewes when I visited Lewisburg PA last October. Lynn generously ushered me into spinning when I stopped in to get some DPNs for a project that was on the needles, and by the time I left a couple of hours later, I had my own spindle, a lovely bag of roving, and a copy of Hands On Spinning to get me started.

Because the holiday knitting was totally consuming my time and energy, the spinning didn’t get a glance until a couple of weeks ago. I pulled out the book and supplies, but couldn’t seem to get into the groove, so started checking out the various LYSes and found that Purlescence had a spinning night! I made the short trek to Sunnyvale that very evening, about 2 weeks before Stitches West, and Sandi kindly gave me a bit of attention. But because of SW, there was a lot going on, and Sandy said she’d be doing a spinning class in March.

What the Flock?

Aloha, Shalom, Salaam Aleikum, Bienvenue, Wilcommen, and Hello! What the Flock is my first attempt at blogging, and thank you for taking a moment to check it out. It represents how bemused I am at the rate at which knitting is taking over my life. You’ve heard the one about what the sheep herder did when things got heavy – he got the flock out of town…

I’m a semi-accomplished knitter who took up the craft about 5 years ago; it seems I’m a very slow starter but am getting up to speed and enjoy finding ways to challenge myself to develop my range of techniques and build my confidence, as you’ll see by some of my projects and how they grow.

Depending on the circumstances, knitting is an obsession,a learning curve, a tonic, and a depressant. But Obsessive seems to be the dominant mode.The fact that my car seems to have developed a yarn compass, or that yarn seems to be hiding in an inordinate number of places in my house, could be an indicator that I’m well into the compulsive stage. If I find myself in a new town, is it a problem that the first thing I do after putting down my suitcase is to look in the Yellow Pages for a yarn store – that is, if I haven’t already Googled that information, located my hotel, and mapped a course to everything that’s conceivably in reach and ascertained their hours of operation?