MY DRIVE-BY POST

We've had a road trip since I last posted! I had the opportunity to take WEFT Magazine to a new Fibre Festival in Campbell River -- and it was perfect timing for a little get-away for both of us. It was a very busy, but fun, time. We had to go to Victoria first, so we drove the Malahat and stopped in Mill Bay to see the new marina there. (You can read my April, 2010 post about the storm that destroyed the old one...)

 The view out to Mt. Baker is as stunning as ever!

Then we just had to stop at Leola's Studio at Whippletree Junction just south of Duncan. I've known, and been a fan of Leola for several years, but seeing her in her studio was amazing! I didn't need to take more pictures... there are lots on her website here and on her blog here.

The first 'Vancouver Island Fibre Festival' was lovely -- Shelley Mackie from the former Fun Knits shop on Quadra was one of the organizers, and the City of Campbell River was a major sponsor, so the event was held in the Community Centre there. It was dubbed the Vancouver Island Fibre Fest, and doubled as a fund-raiser for special needs programming in the community. It must have been successful because they'll do it again next year! 

I got to see some old friends, and met a few new ones. One of the highlights for me was meeting Kate, a long-time 'bloggy buddy' who lives up there. Kate and I have a lot in common .... we are both writers, we both love the sea, we're both parents, and knitters, and readers ... and we've been reading each others' blogs for years. It was great to put a face to the name! Kate blogs at Rocks, Waves, Beach...

 

This baby was adorable in her hand-knits, AND being packed around by Dad ... so Mom's hands were free to fondle all the yarnie goodies, of course!

We rented a cabin in a little resort on the south end of town, owned by a knitter, of course! It didn't hurt that the cabin at Driftwood by the Sea was cozy, and spotless, and the view out to Cape Mudge was stunning...

I sold several WEFT subscriptions, so that was good, and only came away with a 'little' yarn... 

 The blue cone is a wool-silk blend from Leola's, the green mohair was a purchase from one of the vendors (I can't remember which one, I was pretty overcome by all the yarn fumes...), the gorgeous hand-spun has silk COCOONS spun right in -- and that skein was a gift because I transported a loom from Victoria that someone in Campbell River had purchased. Finally, fibre this deliciously sinful  really SHOULD be in a 'plain brown paper bag,' shouldn't it?

It's from Anna at the Qualicum Bay Fibre Mill ... and I offered to do a little 'experiment' with it for her. I'll keep you posted!  :) 

More about our road trip adventures next post...

BLAME IT ON FACEBOOK ...

I swear I've been in a time warp  -- a month since I blogged??

First of all, I'm OKAY, really I am. Thanks for your emails and phone calls, and I want to apologize if you have actually been worried about me. I'm better than ever, actually!

For one thing, for several months now I've pretty much been sleeping through the night -- after years of being up sometimes for 2-3 hours, often anytime from 2 - 5 a.m. (If you ever look back at the time stamps for my daily entries, you'll see they were often written at 3:30 a.m. when I couldn't sleep)! I'm still one of those people who only needs 6-7 hours of sleep a night, but I'm getting it now, and it's wonderful.

So I wake up any time after 5 a.m., which I love... that's my absolute best knitting time of the day, when there's not a sound. But then I have to choose -- to spend that quiet time working on whatever shawl is on the needles... or updating my blog. Knitting wins every time ... see?

The 'Checkerboard' afghan I completed for my sister's friend...

It's 5 panels of 6 foot-long squares, all done in what I've always called 'popcorn' stitch. I'll be delivering it to Julie in Parksville this coming weekend, on my way up to the Campbell River Fibre Festival -- where I'm going with Issue #2 of WEFT Magazine.  :-)

I've finished two lace shawls since I last posted... the first is Alhambra, a 'stole' shape which was a test-knit for the designer. You can't see them, but this one is dripping with lavender-colored beads, too.

 Here's a close-up of the edging:

This one was also a test knit, and the pattern isn't released yet, so I can't tell you what it's called. Back...

 ... and front. And as you can see, the edging is loaded with beads. 

I took a break from shawls (and laceweight yarn and size 3 mm needles, lol) to knit this cabled headband in some bulky-weight yarn:

 

... and it really confirmed that I prefer knitting with laceweight on 3's! The Apple House shawl is about half-done, too.... here's a 'teaser' pic of it. 

We've been getting out walking and dinghying since spring arrived, of course. Here is a rare sight ... our Skeena Queen (the large ferry on the right) was leaving to go into refit for a month, and the smaller Bowen Queen was waiting to take over... the Wind Walker is docked just to the left of the marina boats you can see on the left in this photo.

 In lots of places along the shore, there are 'hidden' dinghies like this one ... and canoes and kayaks, too.

 Watching otters is still one of our favorite pastimes!

This is our neigbour two doors over .. the sign says 'Aero' and refers to the wind generator!

There's a sailboat that's been anchored in our little bay all winter (and the owner went away) -- it's designed to sit on the sand when the tide goes out: 

I think if I ever went cruising on a sailboat, I'd want one of those!

I've joined the organizing committee for the annual 'Sea Capers' celebration, which happens in June. I'm excited about helping with that -- I've already brought a few ideas to the table, and we'll be including them in the events! 

I spent the afternoon and did an interview with a local woman who raises flax to turn into linen to spin and weave with ... this is some harvested flax...

 ... which, through a long and laborious process, becomes this...

It's an amazing story, and you'll just have to get the May issue of WEFT to read the rest! :-)

Salt Spring is so gorgeous in the spring. Sometimes, after I've done a Welcome Wagon visit, I find somewhere to sit and knit.... like this view out to Sansum Narrows...

... and sometimes I think ... "I get to live here?"

Michael's good, the Wind Walker is good, knitting is good, the kids and grandkids are god ... LIFE IS GOOD!

WHERE DO THE DAYS GO??

Since I last posted, Michael and I have both had the colds from hell! (They even went away and came back once. NOT FUN.)

And then we had the boys over some of their spring break ... River only stayed for one night (there are no video games at the Wind Walker, what can I say?) but we had Gibson for a week. Hailey came over at the same time, which was wonderful -- a week on a boat with an almost-seven-year-old would be a bit much if we didn't have some help! We had lots of fun, but the days flew by ... I took exactly one picture.

I think I made a movie of Gibson performing a little rap song Auntie Hailey taught him, too -- I'll have to find that and see if it's a small enough file to post here!

Feeling crappy doesn't stop the knitting ... in fact, it's the only thing that kept me from going completely stir-crazy! I finished the diamond shawlette test knit...

It's really small and I may end up frogging it, but it was fun to knit. Started another test knit I can't even tell you about yet...

Also finished the Mystery KAL from Susanna I-C -- it's called Aimatia, it's a beauty, and here's what the designer says about it:

"Aimatia is of Latin origin meaning ‘from the garden of flowers’.

The inspiration for this shawl came from the incredible tulip fields in Netherlands. The colorful flowers seem to go on for miles - it is really amazing. Aimatia ‘grows’ exactly like a real tulip plant - after the stockinette ‘ground’ the lace begins with simple shapes that look like flower bulbs. These lace shapes grow into stems and leaves, much like a real tulip plant. Finally, the tulip blooms open at the top of the plants." 

There are over 700 beads in this baby, and you probably can't see any of them in these pictures!

I finally got the handspun Pi shawl blocked, too...

The absolute best thing that happened to me in the last two weeks? Gibson has decided that he'd like to learn to knit! He's always been interested in what I'm doing, asking questions about how I did certain things, and admiring colors and textures, so I'm pretty sure there's a budding fibre enthusiast there.

Well, it's not going well, the poor little guy is having a pretty hard time coordinating all that stuff we have to do with our fingers in order to create a stitch. But you can see from the look on his face how excited he is to try it!

When I was tucking him in on the evening I took this picture, he asked me to put 'his' knitting on the shelf near his bed. The next morning when he got up and came out to the salon, we were having our traditional snuggle on the couch  and he suddenly jumped up and headed for the aft cabin. I stopped him, thinking he would wake Michael up if he went back in there -- to which he replied, "No, Grandma, I have to get my KNITTING!!" Sure knows how to melt his Grandma's heart.... :)

The first issue of my new-to-me magazine came out this week -- I spent yesterday morning emailing copies to all the subscribers and then went to the post office to mail the rest. I'm happy with the .pdf version, but I wasn't all that happy with the print copies .... the images were too dark. I can see this is going to be quite a learning curve! Here's the 'masthead' ...

... but to see any more than that, you'll just have to subscribe.  :-)

Spring is everywhere here now, so we've been getting out and about a bit more... there's nothing like a swan parade!

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with spring, but there are lots of HUGE 'sunstars' in the bay right now, in shallow water. Yesterday the tide was out enough that I attempted these pics ... this first one is looking down one of the pilings into the water, and you can see at least four of these creatures clinging to the pole:

 And here's a little closer look at the one on the sea floor -- it was at least 2' across!

Knitting like a fiend, as always... finished the 'mystery' KAL, but it's not blocked yet:

It's stunning though - I love it!

Now I have three other shawls on the needles.... first of all, I've got about 2" done on the 'Apple House' shawl (scroll down), and I've started two other test knits for other designers. Both are 'secret' (can't reveal the design until they're published) so I'll just show you 'snippets' ...

This one is a stole, and that's about 20" wide. The second one is a Faroese style....

Yesterday afternoon at Barb's Buns knitting circle, Maxine mentioned that she'd volunteered at the Film Festival on the weekend with a woman who was knitting "this long cord of I-cord and a bunch of leaves out of Noro." Well, I had taken the shuttle bus into town because Michael needed the van to go to Victoria, so when I left knitting and walked over to the bus stop, here's what I saw:

Wouldja like to see that a little closer?

So I met Usha ... who knits these 'all the time,' she says, and they get used for everything from window decorations to tiaras to props for plays. Usha is a retired school-teacher and she says she taught all her students to knit!
*

Tomorrow will be Michael's birthday, and we still haven't managed to have a little 'getaway' yet! Maybe *next* weekend...?

I frogged both the Rosebud hats after the test knit was complete, and turned them into a cowl, which I like much better!

Did you participate in a One Billion Rising event? It was SO much fun to be part of, here! About 500 people showed up when we blocked off McPhillips Ave in Ganges that day...

 (Those signs -- and the posters advertising the event -- were my contribution to the day).

 Here's a pretty good video of the event done by a local fellow.

 We had Gibson over for a visit that weekend again. He has a cold (which accounts for the glazed look in his eyes) but he enjoyed pretending he was a barber and cutting his Papa's hair (with MUCH supervision from Grandma, I might add...!)

Today the last clue will be out for the lace shawl Mystery KAL, and I can hardly wait -- I'm loving it so far! I've also started working on the shawl for the FictionKnitstas tour, finally -- I've had to graph out a house to add to the back of it. It'll be fun to knit, but it wasn't fun to design!

This  past weekend I went to Victoria to be part of a Spin-In being hosted by my old Thursday Fibre Friends group. It was great to see wide-open Pacific Ocean again ...

... and I got to see lots of interesting things going on. This little girl is 5 months old ...never too young to be introduced to the wonders of fibre, right?

Local kumihimo expert Allison Irwin spinning with a spindle...

And this is Victoria Hand Weavers and Spinners Guild member Sara demonstrating a plying method...

There was a large Salt Spring contingent there as well...

I got to watch Brenda spinning linen ... from flax that she helped grow and harvest, how amazing is that?

They've all always cheerfully accepted me as the spinning imposter that I am, and it was great to see everyone, but this weekend was kind of special for me in another way... it was my first 'public appearance' and display as the new owner of WEFT Magazine!

The owner of the former Island Shuttle magazine, published here on the coast for the last 19 years, finally retired in December - and has given me her blessing to carry on the publication! She asked that I give it a new name ... and WEFT (Westcoast Enthusiasts For The) Fibre Arts Magazine was born! My first issue will be out on March 1st --- and now you know why I haven't been blogging much for the last couple of months! I've been a little pre-occupied.... :-) but I'm *really* excited to be back in the writing/publishing business again!