For our Friends

The extra Workbaskets are now spoken for, thank you.

The fault is mainly mine - broke myself instead of mailing extras to Teresa Sorry about that - Dena

This blog started out as a way to share well loved hobbies with a sister/daughter/mother on the other side of the country.  In our wildest dreams, we never expected anyone but us to read it.  Dena taught me how to tat and I fell in love with yet another in a long line of fiber arts.  Then we found this on-line tatting community and what a treasure it is!  So much to learn and so many willing teachers.  And the generosity is amazing!  I've gotten gifts and prizes from so many folks and they were all so wonderful.  First off, Thank you from the bottom of my heart.  Second, we would like to repay some of that kindness.

Elaine was a long time subscriber to this magazine and as Dena and I grew, she gave each of us a subscription as well.  Workbasket was a special little gem that had knitting, crochet, and tatting patterns as well as gardening tips, recipes, and sometimes sewing and other crafts.  I remember getting excited each time my issue arrived and I've knit many patterns from these magazines over the years.  

Both Dena and I had most of our original collections but a few issues had gotten lost over the years and neither collection was anywhere near complete.  So, Dena started trying to rebuild our collections.  She bought various lots of Workbasket Magazines when they appeared on Ebay or where ever.  We have each got impressive collections now, but we also ended up with a bunch of extra issues.

So here is where we try to repay the kindness of this community.  If you would like a couple old Workbasket magazines, please leave a comment on this post and then email me your mailing address.  We will leave this post up for a week or so and then gather all the names and see how many we have.  Each mailing will include at least two magazines until we run out and if we have enough, we'll send more.  Please note that not all of these are in terrific condition - some are missing covers or the covers are torn.  Some are in terrific condition. There is also a wide variety of dates - some from as far back as the early fifties and some as recent as the eighties.  

Happy Father's Day!

Thinking of our Dad and wishing that we could wish him Happy Father's Day. 

We miss you Dad.

I think the Dad in this house had a good one.  I know the birds had a great one!  We had a window bird feeder before, but it wouldn't stick to the window and didn't hold much.  We took it down when the squirrels started throwing it around, but the tufted titmice just kept flying into the window looking for it.  Now we have a new one!  The suet feeder got lost when we had the trees trimmed and that made the woodpeckers very sad.  We have several different kinds of woodpeckers here - downy, red headed, red bellied, pileated and even sapsuckers and flickers.  I love to watch them and while they come to the seed feeder, more come to the suet feeder. 

While we were putting up the suet feeder, I discovered that Danny, my fig tree has fruit!  There are at least 9 or 10 figs growing on him!  First year for fruit and I don't even know when to expect it to get ripe!

New and Beautiful tools

These are the spindles and nostepindes I bought.  I thought it would be great to see them all together.  I love them all but one of each is supposed to be a gift for Dena.  I know she picked out a nostepinde before, but since we now have all four of them together, I'm not going to hold her to that choice.  Dena, you must let me know by Sunday night if you want that box mailed on Monday.

And this is the stairway that we rigged up so poor little broken Cat could get up on Girl Far From Home's bed.  As you can see, Cat understood what it was for and used it.  She is so much happier sleeping on a girl than on the floor!

The Start of Something

Drive time knitting . . . update later.

Feeling Better

Someone is feeling so much better. She has been off all pain meds today and happy and walking well. She has been complaining long and loud about her restrictions though, because she is feeling better. She has to be restricted for a couple more days and then we will be able to give her a lot more freedom. It looks like she is going to make a near full recovery!

Tatting Tuesday

Tuesday was a busy day. 

Mom went to the hairdresser.  Then we went to check her number and all she won was a big jar of Nutcracker peanuts.

Then we went and picked up all my fleeces.  Yummy yummy.

Then we picked up hubby and went to the new restaurant in town and had lunch.

Then off to the doctor's office cause mom had an appointment.

In and amongst that I got a bit of tatting done.  No the ends aren't worked in yet but that still might happen.

What is it?

This is a quiz. All you have to do is guess What is it?

I have been knitting and knitting. I spent time with the book Twisted Stitch Knitting by Maria Erlbacher and had a lot of fun including those stitches in my knitting.

I kept running out of yarn and since I hadn't dinished sorting the yarn in to the fiber room, I just grabbed whatever.
I think it is turning out amazingly awesome.

What do you think?

Okay - here's what is happening.  I scheduled these posts for one a day so that I could get pictures added between running around.  Blogger was taking 30 plus minutes per picture to upload and then more often than not eating the new version of the post.
Now it has eaten all the comments so feel free to repost the comments or add a different one.

To those who guessed that it was beautiful - you are correct, it is beatuiful

To the one who guessed it might be a sock - No, I don't think so but I might be wrong

The ease of this type of knitting is amazing.  I love cables but find them to be a bit of work.

These patterns were just fun and fast

I had a lot of fun picking different patterns to try, there are three panels around and sometimes I used the same pattern in all three panels around and sometimes three different patterns.

With pictures to help, can you figure it out?  And no fair looking on Ravelry.

Beach Tatting?

I thought tatting was the perfect carry along craft. I have taken my knitting to the beach, but the project I am knitting right now is just too big and too wooly and warm. I have taken tatting to the beach to do as well. This time it so did not work. I am using different thread and suspect that may be part of the problem - this thread must just be more susceptible to the moisture in the air. I couldn't make the double stitches uniform - they were all sticky and so half of them looked like they had little picots between them of various sizes. I'm not sure if the first tatting pic will show, but if it does, it is one of several failed attempts. I did finally tat a small motif in the house but don't have a needle to hide the ends.
And Girl Far From Home has been entertaining us (and the neighbors) on her fiddle. She is getting pretty darned good. Casey got herself a little souvenir - a froggie splashball which she dearly loves!

Alpaca Adventure Part 4 How many is a herd

I'd like to introduce you to some alpaca that I know.

There is Tight Runner – a young three year old male who isn't quite mature. Isn't he a cutey? He's all white with a soft fleece.  Sonqo is in front, then comes Rubicon and behind is Running Tight.

Oh and here is another boy but a bit older and a bit taller – his name is Rubicon and he is the palest beige.  Rubicon is in front and taller and Running Tight is behind.

And we have Angelique, a wonderful girl with white/palest grey fleece and the prettiest blue eyes. I have never seen an alpaca with blue eyes before but apparently it isn't all that uncommon. Oh and she isn't deaf.

Then there is Exotica. She is a gorgeous light fawn but is a layer downer. I will explain that in a bit. More introductions first.  I love this photo because it gives an idea of the range of colors.  The black one is La Negrita (spanish for the little black one), The dark brown with a spot is Syringa - she is almost but not quite as dark brown as Kizmet, the grey one (white) is Chainaral and the fawn one is Exotica - second from left.  Farther down is a picture of Caldera and Kizmet together so that you can compare the colors - Caldera and Syringa are the same brown.

We have Syringa, a girl with dark brown thick fleece and just a hint of white near the whiskers. Syringa is peeking around the corner.  Syringa has one white spot and Caldera has two. Looks like she is standing next to Exotica.

Caldera is a dark brown with the cutest spots of white in her topknot and here and there. Isn't she just so adorable.  Caldera (two spot) is on the left, next to her is Kizmet (such a very dark brown and you can see Angelique (white-ish grey-ish) in the background)

Here is Chainaral – a girl with a very strange gray fleece. I can not wait until some of that gets spun. (Left to right: Exotica [fawn]; La Negrita [black]; Chainaral [gray] and Syringa [one spot])  Oh yes, her name is pronounced Shawn-ral rhymes with tall.

Oh and here we have a llama. Her name is Tanna and she was rescued a short time ago. Her baby has just been taken off of her and she also needs some good grass to fatten her up. She is going to be the guard llama for the girls.

Oh yes, Teresa – the girls (7 alpacas girls, Cielito and one girl llama) are all out in the back pasture. That way M can really see the difference between llamas and alpacas up close and personal.

And then we can send her into the front pasture with a bucket of pellets and let the 5 boys there chase her. I can't wait until you come and pet our herd.

Are you surprised? Hubby was.

Progress

We have most of one sleeve . . .