Award Winning Knitter!

Well, I got brave this year and decided to enter my knitting in the Jacksonville Fair. I figured after having yarn in Pluckyfluff's exhibit in Lillehammer earlier this year, which allowed me to call myself an "Internationally Exhibited Fiber Artist" I might as well go for "Award Winning" as well.

I didn't expect this!

I entered a total of 13 items, 12 of which got ribbons - 5 first place, 3 second place, 2 third place and 2 honorable mentions. The shawl in the picture is my Wintersturm, the first one I finished this year for the 10 in 2010 shawl challenge. Not only did it get a blue ribbon, it went on to get Best in Show for the knitting category!

I'm thinking it's something to do with our LYS. Everyone who entered from there got ribbons - and not just in knitting - we had winners in photography and jewelry making too! Have to love having a supportive, creative environment! (speaking of which, special thanks to Jennifer and her I-phone for photos when I went off and forgot my camera.) Now for everyone who didn't enter this year - step up for next year. Knitting, quilting, stitching, painting - you all know you're out there. Bring it on!

When Yarn Goes Bad

See that? There I was, knitting away on my April shawl for the 10 in 10 challenge, minding my own business, when I look up and see THAT! The yarn is putting its tongue out at me! Really, the cheek of it! You'd think it would be pleased, as this is becoming quite a pretty shawl, but Nooooo, not this yarn. Harumph. Story of my life.

Busy, Busy!

Welcome to the Holiday season, and the season of drive-by blogging! In addition to all the projects I have going, I discovered I have apparently turned into one of "those people". I took the IWP out today to have their pictures made with Santa. I don't think Santa or his photographers had dealt with ferrets before. We managed to get a couple of cute poses out of the general mayhem induced by a man in a white beard and red coat and four ferrets going "Whee! New peeples! New places! Did you brings us chickenses?"

On the creative front, I finally finished the Pillar socks.

The former grungy macrame board is well on the way to becoming a landscape. (I think it might end up having sheep made from yarn tags and ball bands added.)

The former musty old book is well along in the altering process. The photos on this one didn't come out too well, I think due to the reflective glazes and embellishments. I'll have to try again on a day with better light.

And while we're in the Holiday season, don't forget our furry, feathered, and scaly friends. Many shelters and rescue agencies are in need of donations. A gift of something as simple as your old towels can make a huge difference. Check with your local shelters and agencies (if you're not sure where they are, you can go to Petfinder and put in your zip code to find out what is available in your area). If you'd like to help make a Holiday happy for a weezul, there is the Ferret Giving Tree. Many of these are older or special needs ferrets, so any act of kindness you can show them is especially appreciated!

You've Come A Long Way, Baby

I know of people who never go back to old projects. They look at them, see the mistakes, or see how much their technique has improved, and scrap the whole thing for the real or perceived flaws in it.

Not me. I love to look at them, cherish them as a reminder of where I was, a milestone on the road to where I am now, and a reminder that I had the courage to start something, even if I wasn't sure it would be perfect when it was done.

Isn't this where most of us should be in life? Nothing is ever perfect, or turns out as planned. Instead of bemoaning our lack of perfection, or lack of that new car, or new job, or hunky husband, shouldn't we look at where we are now and view all these things as what made us who we are? No, you may not have gotten that promotion, but if you had, would you have met the really neat person in the cubicle next door? Maybe your car broke down, but if it hadn't, would you have ever discovered the fantastic coffee shop next door to the car repair place?

Today's featured finish is Midwinter's Eve, which was started about two years ago. Since then, I've discovered I was twisting my stitches when knitting, learned a lot about lace knitting, and knitting in general. There are several mistakes that, to me, are glaring. You know what? It's still wonderfully warm and cozy. It still impresses people to find out I made that. You can still see the pattern - the snowflakes coming down over the snow covered mountains, with the trees, stream and snowbank at the foot of the mountains.

Yes, you've come a long way, baby, but you wouldn't be here, if you had never been there.

(p.s. It appears Blogger is testing my theory. It's refusing to load pictures right now. I promise they exist - looks like I'll have to edit the photo in later. Now off to figure out what I'm supposed to be learning from this.)

Randomness

This week is all over the map. I haven't been able to seem to settle down and focus on any one thing, so here goes a series of random updates. There may or may not be follow ups on any of these items later.

Finn did just fine with his distemper shot (this is the one that ferrets can potentially have a reaction to). He wasn't quite as well behaved as last week, but I think that was mostly due to a dog in another room having hysterics. The barking seemed to freak him out a little.

Finished the Broadripple socks. I think they'd have done better with a stretchier yarn (which is what they're designed for). I've been too lazy to take pictures, but will update to Ravelry (hopefully) some time this week. May post pictures here if I do an update that I can manage to relate them to.

I think I have a yarn problem. Seriously. I found a stash of sock yarn I don't remember. I have no recollection of when, where, or why I bought it. Some of it even had patterns packaged up with the yarn (PIGS for those familiar with the term). I'm still trying to figure out why I have over 800 yards of one of them though. No pattern, no clue with that one.

My workplace had free admission for employees at the Cummer museum. This was the last days of the Quilts of Gees Bend exhibit, so was fortunate enough to see those. There was also an exhibit by Paul Jenkins. I wasn't familiar with his work, but took some notes and intend to do some research. That one is still there through August 9th if you happen to like abstract works. A couple of my favorite paintings from the permanent exhibits were MIA however. One of the guard/docent/whatever gentlemen told me that some were on loan, and some were currently off exhibit due to having to clear part of some of the galleries due to roof leaks and repair work.

I think I'm about to fall off the finish-itis wagon. I had been doing pretty well with the finish two, start one goal. The above mentioned sock yarn find may have killed that though. On the bright side, socks are a comparitively quick knit, so that theoretically will help the FO to UFO ratio. (Also the stash to PIG to FO ratio.)

With that, I think I'll wander back to what I've been doing for the last week - randomly picking at projects a seam, a row, a chapter, or a dabble at a time. (Which incidentally is why everything gets finished eventually. Some things just take longer than others if they can't hold my attention for more than a couple of minutes. Things that can interest me for more than that get finished proportionally faster. Level of interest on anything subject to change/demotion to dabbling/promotion to finishing without notice.)

Finish-itis

In a completely uncharacteristic burst of actually having an attention span, I spent the weekend finishing projects. I manged to get THREE items off the knitting UFO/WIP list. (This is the only UFO/WIP list at the moment, actually. Everything else is waiting to be located, admitted to, and cataloged).

First off - basic Jitterbug ballband socks. These are actually the most recently started project due to an unfortunate frogging incident that led to the project in progress being given a timeout. I was also having a flare and realized I was not safe around lace or any other knitting that involved actualy thought. Yarn - Colinette Jitterbug, colorway Popsicle. Odd thing I've noticed about Jitterbug - for some reason it tends to pool completely differently from sock to sock, even using the same skein. Go figure.

Second - the single oldest knitting WIP I'm aware of. I started this, got 13 rows from the end and ran out of beads on the perle cotton. This meant calculating how much yardage I would need to finish, cutting that much off the ball of cotton, and stringing beads from the other end to finish up. I finally worked up the nerve, attention span, and enough light to finish this. (Plus, I bought a bead spinner a while back. Definitely worth using a Jo-ann's coupon for if you do anything with large quantities of beads!) Yeah, I know. First attempt at bead knitting and I pick dark colors. Did I mention common sense and forethought are not my strong points? (Dime included in the picture for reference as to size of beads and lack of sense.)

And finally, a bit behind the trend, but my first foray into the world of amigurumi. What better way to start than a cute, cuddly, crochet version of the Lord of Darkness himself, Cthulhu!

Thanks to this burst of activity I'm actually down to - um, erm, *mumble,mumble,19,mumble,mumble* knitting WIP's!

Oh yeah, almost forgot -

I also finished a bottle of wine and a bag of M&M's. A girl's gotta have goals, right?

In which the Universe has other plans

I had big plans for this weekend. The weather's been getting better, but not too hot yet, I've got lots of stuff I'm working on, so there are plenty of things to choose from that need working on. I was going to get lots done (even, maybe, some house and/or yard work!)

Then the Universe laughed.

Friday I wasn't feeling well at all. Had to call off from work and take an unpaid day kind of not well. Chalked it up to the Fibro, medicated and slept most of the day. Saturday I got laundry done. That was it. (All the stuff in Saturday's post was prior work that I finally got around to putting up, not that days work.) That should have been a hint, when just doing a few loads of laundry and a blog post wore me out. That still left Sunday though - I could still get things done.

And the Universe continued to laugh.

Around 2 a.m. the storms rolled in. Big storms. Strobe light horror movie kind of lightning. The kind where the room lights up every few minutes, and you know, just know that any minute you'll see something in the corner. Next flash it'll be closer. Then closer. (For the record, love of horror movies + overactive imagination = BAD COMBINATION!) After about 30 minutes of lying there with the covers pulled up to my chin, I gave up and got out some mindless knitting to tide me over until the worst of the storm had passed. Then the sinuses kicked in. Just storm pressure right? Wrong. When I finally woke up, I was definitely in the throes of a nice spring cold. Bleah.

I did finish the socks though.

And washed and ironed some fabric for a quilt block swap

Yay.