Day 31 ~ Accomplished

I did it! I posted a photograph every day for 30 days. Woo~hoo. I did a few extra posts as well for significant events, like the one to commemorate 9/11 and another one for Pinterest Make it Monday.

Day 21 ~ Pretty Pattern

The title would more than likely make one think of something like this: patterns on fabric

However, I think of something like this: knitting patterns

My neck tends to get chilled as the cooler weather sets in. You should knit a cowl, also called a neck gaiter by some to wear this winter and all those to come. I thought to myself, you've made oodles of them for charity but not one for yourself. As my daughter, Erin brought me one (1) skein of Rowan Pure Wool Aran weight yarn in a lovely celery green from England, I decide to look for a pattern that I could use it for. I went to Ravelry and looked in my favourites to see what I had pinned there and lo and behold, there was Nic's Ashford Cowl requiring less than 180 yards of yarn. Woot! So, now I have cast on and have one repeat completed.

30 Day Photo Challenge ~ Day 1 - Self Portrait

My blog has been sadly neglected these days, so I am going to do a 30 day photo challenge to kick start me back to updating it. It will indeed be a challenge as I am going to be really busy this month what with Erin leaving on Tuesday then the Highland Games in Estes Park next weekend. I am going to learn if the schedule feature of Blogger really works. Herein is the first post for the 1st day of September:

What I did Yesterday...

I regularly get the LBY Studio blog from the Lion Brand Yarn Studio. This wee project caught my eye on Tuesday and appealed to me in many ways. It's about memories and I have a lot of them relating to knitting. My mother taught me to knit when I was six years old. She also owned a fiber retail business called By Hand in Philadelphia, PA when I was in my teens. I spent many an hour either knitting samples from our new yarns or helping our knitting customers to be more successful with their projects. The memories of being taught to knit and the various projects I worked on over the years is a very long thread of my life. When I was in England two years ago, I was working on a pair of kilt hose for my Da whilst riding the train down from London. A wee lassie watched me for awhile and then asked me what I was doing and how long I had been doing it. I thought about her questions and realized that I had been knitting at that point, for fifty years!

I also am enjoying passing those memories on to the next generation as I have taught both my daughter, Erin and my niece, Mimi to knit. I think both of them will far surpass my skills in the end. After all, Erin has become an extraordinary independent yarn dyer with her own business called The Asylum for Wayward Yarn and Mimi has just finished up a lace shawl project called Evenstar that also included 3000 beads.

So, onto this project. I grabbed some of Erin's hand dyed yarn that was leftover from a hat I knitted for my dear old friend, Rocky. I just cast on 15 stitches and did 4 rows of seed stitch and then 4 inches of stocking stitch and 4 more rows of seed stitch. After casting off, I folded the fabric in half and crocheted the seams and then the loop. Wallah!

There will be a meet and greet for this project at the studio in NYC in May, which sadly, I will not be able to attend. After that, the wee bags and their stories will go to the Wales National Wool Museum for an exhibit during the summer. I, of course will not be able to visit the museum while the exhibit is there, but the thought of my bag being part of it makes me smile. Hopefully I can convince Erin and Guy to make a run to Wales and see it for themselves.