Shepherd's Harvest Festival 2014

The Shepherd's Harvest Festival is an annual event held at the Washington County Fairgrounds near Lake Elmo, MN and I have gone for the last four years. It was me and my mom hitting the festival again this year. I like to get there when it opens on the first non-class day so I get to see the most amount of yarn and wares from the vendors. (Greedy little yarn diva that I am - I don't want to miss a thing with building up my yarn stash!) 

This year we decided to start in the last building first as that building tends to get high traffic and is hard to maneuver, and that is all because of the gentleman above who graciously welcomed me and my mom when we walked in the door. That is StevenBe who is also known as The Glitter Knitter and he is just the warmest, kindest person. He is doing a tour this summer across America with Stephen West and my head kind of explodes to even think of that level of awesome combining. (Ok - Enough with the fan girl!)

So the festival this year had three buildings set up for vendors rather than four, so it did feel a little scaled back to me. This is also the first year that they charged for entry, so I thought that was interesting. Frankly I think they should have charged all along as it is such a wonderful festival, and anything that they can do to sustain it is good with me!

There were spinners here and there, like this gentleman from the Blackberry Hills booth. So fun to watch! This was a busy booth and is you can see behind where he is spinning, they had some gorgeous handmade shawls for sale along with their other items. The shawls were just beautiful!

This is another example of a vendor booth. So much yarn and fiber goodness! This was at the entrance to one of the buildings and had great light and you pretty much just walked right in to an explosion of color and fiber fun when you walked into the building. So awesome.

Although I am not much for fleece, I do appreciate what it gets turned into, so that makes me like the fleece even if I have no use for it. (I WILL NOT SPIN! If I keep saying that it will be true, right?) It was pretty much impossible to walk buy a bag of fleece and not plunge your hands into it.

Here is a picture of me holding the reins of Lonnie the Llama. Lonnie is about 8 years old according to his human and he was so majestic. We were walking across the fair grounds and I spotted him and had to go meet him. My mom snapped this shot of me grinning wildly up at Lonnie. I just wanted to hug him and take him home!

After meeting Lonnie we headed over to the critter barn and got to see some llama's and alpaca's. It is always so fun to get up close to these guys and see them in touching distance.

 

Next we were off to the Sheep shearing which was just impressive. This gentleman can shear a sheep in no time and we watched him shear several breeds of sheep and learned a lot about the sheep as well.  Really neat!

So I managed to control my splurging this year better than years past. This is the haul I came home with. Some ridiculously reduced price yarns at one booth - like the Boku and the Nashua yarn. The white skeins are 100% alpaca from a vendor that I search out for at this festival every year. Really nice guy and the yarn is like touching heaven. Am quite pleased with my stash enhancements this year and also proud that I controlled myself a little bit.

My other bit of wonderful I picked up is this mug. Both me and my mom got the same mug and I use it all the time. It makes me smile every time I see it and it's just a fun addition to my festival memories.

All in all it was just a wonderful time. I love going to this festival and it was great fun spending the day with my mom and touching fiber and talking yarn and eating deep fried egg roles while sitting in the grass and watching the people with all their hand knit items being worn (quite a fashion show!) while they walked the fair grounds. I look forward to this every year and it's just something special.

More Coffee Please!

 

Well I have just been having a grand old time making up coffee cuffs from left over scraps around my house. The cuff above is made form left over Berocco Borealis yarn that I made my mittens from about a week ago.  And the cuff below is the left over yarn from my Slope hat made from Chloe & Spud Outer.

 

The Borealis cuff I decided to alternate a seed stitch with a stockinette. I like ribbed coffee cuffs because they grab the cup better - but I get tired of the standard ribbed look. I thought this would be a nice change and it worked out well. I will include my pattern notes for this one below and you can also find them on my Pattern notes on Ravelry.

 

The spud cozy is just a simple seed stitch pattern. I used under 11 yards of this yarn on size 17 needles. Cast on 8 stitches and worked seed stitch until I ran out of yarn. I stretched it a bit to get it to fit the mug - but it grips nicely! Simple wip stitch the ends together. Easy as pie! You can find my notes for this on Ravelry as well.

 

Pattern for Coffee Cuff a'la Borealis

 

Size 10 needles.
Cast on 12 stitches.
I did seed stitch with chunks of stockinette to give it a little bit of a ribbed effect without being a traditional rib. The one I made took less than 20 yards (18 meters) of Berocco Borealis yarn.

1. k1,p1 across
2. p1, k1 across
3. k1,p1 across
4. p1, k1 across
5. k1,p1 across
6. p1, k1 across
7. k1,p1 across
8. p1, k1 across
9. knit across 10 purl across
10. knit across
11. purl across

I repeated these 12 rows 3 times. Then I measured against my coffee cup and I was a little short, so I added a row or two more of stockinette, and then added a little more seed stitch until it fit around the mug perfect. Then I bound off and wip stitched it together.

A Cuppa Joe

 

 

 

Our local Target has a Starbucks in it, so after a shopping haul I will occasionally indulge in a nice big cuppa Joe. This last time I pulled out a cozy I knit to wrap around my coffee and it was so icky. You know how stuff gets when it's been in the bottom of your purse too long and even though your pets don't go in your purse somehow (magic?) their hair does go in your purse and will collect on any knit item you carry. So I was a little embarrassed by my hand knit cozy covered in paper scraps and dog hair and decided to make myself some new ones.

 

The Pattern: It is a free pattern on Ravelry called "Woven Cable Coffee Cup Sleeve" by Linda Thach.

The Yarn: I used left over worsted weight Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride 100% wool. I used 21 grams which is about 36 yards (33m) of yarn.

The Needle: I knit this on Size 5 needles, and I used double points. I just thought it would be easier with the cables to have the double points. When I make this again I will do it on straight needles instead of double points, but I will probably keep the dp's handy for the cables and for the provisional cast on.

The results: I really like it. I learned how to do a provisional cast on and then kitchnered the two sides together in the end, although you can cast on anyway you like and then just stitch it together as well. I had never done a cable like this before either, so it was fun to learn a new cable. I almost always hold my stitches the wrong way when I cable, and this was no exception. I had to rip out after a pattern repeat and start over. (Why do I find Front and Back so confusing?) Anyway - now that I have made this once I am eyeing other left over balls of yarn and thinking about how many coffee cozies I could have in a week or two! What else can you make with 40 yards of left overs?

 

My project notes on this can be found on my project page on Ravelry "Pretty Pink Cable Cozy".

 

 

Sunday Snippets: October 23, 2011

Sunday Snippets: A Snapshot of this Sunday in photo's with no other explanation's......

Sunday Snippets

This is my first Sunday Snippets. It's hard to not explain each photo......

Jack Skellington Coffee Cozy

My co-worker S is turning the big 30 tomorrow and I thought it would be fun to knit her a Jack Skellington Coffee (or Bottle of Mountain Dew?) Cozy.

Since I had to make the pattern up from scratch I thought I would put all the details I could in here so if someone else out there in internet land wants to make this, they would have a jumping off point.

The Yarn: I knit this out of scrap acrylic. I had in a big bag with no labels on anything. I know the black yarn was Lion Brand Vanna's Choice in Black 153 because this was the yarn I was originally going to knit Emma's I-Matey Dog Sweater out of. The black yarn was slightly thicker than the white yarn - which made the black yarn a bit raised up in the end product - and I liked that. (Happy Accident!) The White yarn I think is Lion Brand Wool Ease in White Sparkle. Not sure about that - but that is my best guess. The finished cozy weights in around 19 grams - so I am guessing about 38 yards of white and around 6 yards of black.

Needles: Knit on size US 7 Knit Picks Needles. This was knit flat and seamed up the back.

I started off by going to google and doing an image search for Jack Skellington Smile Faces. This took a bit of time to find just the right image. It had to be really simple and translate well to a knit pattern. I finally found one and saved it to my computer. Then I went to http://www.microrevolt.org/ and uploaded the image into the KnitPro pattern generator. I chose the smallest size possible and Knit Portrait. I saved the pattern it spit out into my computer and then started knitting.

I cast on 48 stitches using the Cable cast on method (see great video here on U Tube for directions on this - I was doing it wrong for years!) in the white yarn.

Row 1-4: Knit across

Row 5 and all odd rows up to row 31: k4, p40, k4

Row 6 and all Even Rows: Knit

Row 32-35: Knit

Bind Off.

We then had to make a run to Starbucks for a Venti Skinny Cinnamon Dolce in the Venti size so I would have a cup to wrap this baby around. Such a burden. ;) After finishing the coffee and giving the cup a good rinse out and wipe down inside and out - I wrapped my Jack smile around the cup to gage how it would fit and how to seam it up. I went a little loose on the seam on top where the cup is widest and then went in a bit on the seaming toward the bottom where the cup is skinny. Fit just fine!

The pattern began on row 7 and went through row 27.

The first and last four rows are knit - and the first and last four stitches of each row are knit

Odd rows are purled and even rows are knit.

I tried to carry the floats over the back only a couple stitches at a time and then twist them with the working yarn. Long floats are annoying to me and I was also concerned they would show through in the end. I don't have a lot of color-work experience - but am quite pleased with the end product here.