June 13, 2008

A Package from Abroad

It's been such a hectic couple of weeks.  Kindergarten Programs, concerts, performances, awards ceremonies...  And some really hot and humid weather thrown in.  Needless to say, not a lot of knitting has gone on, although the red mohair shawl I've been working on only needs to be bound off, and I did knit a chevron bookmark for the Words & Bookmark Swap.  I do have pictures of what I sent to my swap partner, Jackie, in the UK, but until I know she's gotten it, you'll just have to wait a little bit...

BUT, I did get my package from her today, so I'll give you a couple of pictures of what she sent.  The guidelines of the swap basically were to knit or sew a bookmark and send it with a pre-1960's written book that somewhere mentions knitting.  Jackie sent a lovely crocheted bookmark, "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens, Jackson's of Picadilly Pure White Chinese Silvertip Tea (which sounds REALLY yummy!), Bronnley English Fern Luxury Soap, Green & Black's Organic Chocolate Collection, and the most lovely blue Jitterbug Yarn by Collinette:

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Bookmark Yarn

Tomorrow I'm going to a Spin In and Fiber Fair at the Black Bear Winery near Binghamton.  I'm hoping to get to meet some local spinners and maybe get to try a wheel or two.  I've been wanting to try a wheel since coming home from the Men's Spring Knitting Retreat.  I'll take the camera and get some pics!

I also bought an iMac last week, so I have to say that at the moment, I'm a pretty happy guy.  I hope all is well with you, and have a great weekend!

May 19, 2008

Time with the Boys

The place: Easton Mountain
The time: This past weekend
The event: Men's Spring Knitting Retreat organized by Joe and Ted.
Thirty two men gathered from across the country and Canada to knit, spin, teach and share knitting and spinning.  We also shared much laughter, excellent food and stories of our lives.  It's really difficult to express how special and almost magical this past weekend was.  So, I'll give you some photos to share some wonderful memories from some men who knit.

The Guest House at Easton Mountain:
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Joe, Scott and Sean knitting during Show & Tell:
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More knitting:
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One of Ted's shawls.  Ted is a master lace knitter, and I was fortunate to attend a lace knitting workshop run by him.  Maybe someday I, too, can knit something this spectacular:
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A beautiful Saturday evening sky:
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My favorite pictures from the weekend show exactly what the weekend was about - men getting together and sharing and helping and enjoying the process of knitting.  Sunday morning my friend Van was getting some help from Ted with his very first sweater:
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Is that a look of concentration, or what??

The weekend was a very special moment in time, and I think we all walked away with some very wonderful memories, and a sense of community that will always hold an important place in our hearts.

Now, I have some lace knitting to practice.  Have a great night.

May 12, 2008

Lately...

Life has been it's usual busy, get things done and meet some deadlines and have some more performance kinda thing. 

Drama Club at school presented "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde a couple of weekends ago.  I was the Prop Master for the show, so tea cups and silver tea services, journals and LOTS of cucumber sandwiches were taking up my time.  These kids ate through almost the entire show!  They were awesome and had quite an excellent theatre adjuducation from the New York state Theatre Association!

Some of my high school singers attended a New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA) solo festival this past weekend.  They did pretty well overall, and two of them received a perfect score on the pieces they performed. 

This weekend I'll be attended an all male knitting retreat just north of Albany.  I'm very excited!  I'm taking a laceknitting class, a spinning class, double knitting and a class on binding off techniques.  I think there are about 35 men going, so it should be quite a hoot!  My friend Van, who I met through menwhoknit.com will be going, so he and I can do some catching up, as well as meet lots of new people.  I know of a few guys who are going, but I'll take lots of pics and let you know who they are next week.

Yesterday I drove to Pa. to take Mom out to dinner for Mother's Day.  It was a very nice day.  It's not often we get to have time with just the two of us, so it was a nice treat.

I've started a little lace bookmark for a swap, and a mohair shawl is on the needles for some mindless knitting.  That's it for knitting at the moment. 

I hope you all are having a great start to your week!

April 06, 2008

It's been a little hectic...

Well hello there!  I can't believe it's been a month since my last post.  And what have I been up to?  No knitting.  Well, not much, but we'll get around to that...

So my kids had their high school production of "She Loves Me".  It was awesome, if I do say so myself.  In a nutshell, it was the right play for this group of kids.  I had options for casting, which was all put to rights during auditions, and it really did become the little Valentine of a musical that it was intended to be.  We also had an adjudication from the Theatre Association of New York State (TANYS), which was a great learning experience for us all.  An adjudication basically is a critique by a trained adjudicator, which looks at ALL the aspects of the production, from the printed program to the lighting, set design, props, costumes, music and acting.  We were given two roving adjudicator awards, one for our lead actor for his performance, and the second award was for the printed program (Since the plot involved annonymous letters to "Dear Friend", the program was written as a letter and was even in a matching pink envelope!).  So, the adjudicator liked that little detail a lot.  The scripts have since sent back, the costumes and props and sets were put away, and another musical came to an end.

We also had another Project Linus event in February.  We have over 100 blankets to donate to the cause this year, and the kids and a local knitters group did an outstanding job!  I'll post some pics this coming week.  One of my favorite blankets this year is a crocheted baby blanket with little blocks of pig faces alternating with blocks of pig tails!  It's just too adorable!

The kids and I spent a Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago cleaning out the costume room at school.  actually, we started to clean it out - there's so much to do that it's going to take several days to get it finished.  We threw out 8 garbage bags of old clothing that was falling apart or unusable.  It made quite a nice dent in what needs to be accomplished.

Today was our annual Spring Concert.  The kids did an outstanding job.  I've had bigger choruses than this one, but the sound these kids have is really special and well blended.  The sang the spiritual "Every Time I Fell the Spirit", "The Road Not Taken" by Randall Thompson, and "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by PDQ Bach.  We also recognize our seniors at this concert, which usually involves a little gift and a speech of some sort.  The speech went very well, and then the seniors take over and give a gift to their director.  Well, one of my little "off color" saying that the kids find amusing is when I talk about discipline and say something like "use a brick, don't hurt your hand".  Their first gift to me was a brick that they all had signed.  And the second gift, since I had been knitting at musical rehearsals this year (and I can't believe how it helped me to concentrate on what they were doing onstage - very interesting), they got me the book "Stitch & Bitch" by Debbie Stoller.  The funny thing was that they really couldn't say the title of the book on front of hundreds of people - they can be shy at times.  Not very often, but it does happen on ocaission.  So, I have a brick, a new knitting book, and I've been outed as a knitter to the community by my kids.  The Board of Ed. members at the concert were very amused - and very congratulatory about the kids work.  It was a good day.

Oh, and the mohair shawl?  After doing a little ripping out, I decided to put it away for a little bit.  Ripping out mohair is not a pleasant task, and I think that will have to happen in small amounts.  But I did start another one in reds, rusts and oranges.  I'll be a little more careful this time....

I hope you all are doing well.  It looks like spring might actually be paying us a visit.  Enjoy your Monday!

March 06, 2008

Crap.

So I'm still working on this mohair shawl, and I have three rows left to do.  I lay it out to get a good look at it, and (you know what's coming!) I see this hole about 20 rows back.  Yep.  I dropped a stitch.  I don't remember the last time I ever did that.  So, I guess I'm gonna do some frogging tonight after rehearsal.  And since it's mohiar, you know how much fun that's gonna be....  Crap. 

A woman I work with told me frogging could be kinda Zen-like.  Yeah, whatever....

February 24, 2008

More...

I've been knitting this shawl like I had nothing else to do with my time....  Here is a little photo from this morning while I was doing a little laundry and having coffee:

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I'm really enjoying the feel of this yarn, and I've not done much with circular needles before, and I'm liking that as well.  I'm sure I'll be knitting as I watch the Oscars tonight. 

Tomorrow is Monday.  Damn...  I hope we all have a great week!

February 22, 2008

So...

It's a cold, snowy day...

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I've decided to stay in, do some laundry and maybe even pick up the needles and do a little knitting.  Also, fighting a little cold and a stomache bug at the same time makes me not want to do much...

Thank you all for your suggestions for the Patagonia Nature Cotton yarn I showed you in my last post.  I'm still thinking and have done some more swatching with it.  Since then, I've changed directions all together for what I'm going to create for the Knitter Project.  You see, I had attended a board meeting for a local theatre, and in their gift shop, where they feature wares of local artists, was a few hanks of gorgeous handpainted mohair.  And one of them called out to me to buy it.  So I did...

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(It's actually a little more golden/mustardy than in this picture - I really can't get colors to be correct on my camera - there must be a trick to it.)

And today I did some swatching and started a simple garter stitch shawl:

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I've not worked with mohair before, and I'm finding it quite interesting and fun.  It might even hold my attention enough so that I may even finish it by the due date for the project....

February 09, 2008

Suggestions...

Okay, so...  I'm signed up to do this Knitter Project for Elizabeth at geeyouknit, and I decided that I was going to use some yarn from my stash.  I decided on these 5 skeins of Patagonia organic cotton, because the colors are really yummy, and I think I have enough to so something substantial.  Each skein has 105 yards (525 yards total).  The problem: what the hell am I going to make with this stuff? 

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It's a worsted weight, sometimes tending to thicken toward bulky (13 sts = 4" on US 8-10).  The greens in real life are more vibrant and tending to lean toward yellow/green.  It was a very dark, grey day today, so natural light was almost non-existant.  This shot is a little closer to the real colors.  A little...

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I'm thinking maybe a rectangular shawl (if there's enough) or a scarf of some sort.  Something flat that I won't have to worry too much about gauge.  So, any suggestions for a pattern or project will be appreciated.  Oh, and I need to have it in the mail by March 22.  Just sayin'.   Thanks for stopping by, and for any thoughts you may have!  Have a great weekend.

November 21, 2007

Enjoy..

Time spent with family and loved ones.  Celebrate the gifts and talents we are given, and those we love.  Oh, and knitting.  Celebrate knitting...

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Have a peaceful day.

October 13, 2007

Saturday Sky

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It's a cool, crisp autumn day here.  Finally Fall!

I finished the Rhinebeck Scarf.  The week has been cloudy and rainy, so since today we have some sun I got a couple of pics of the finished scarf:

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The colors are a little washed out in these pics.  The colors are closer to this:

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I will be wearing this scarf at Rhinebeck next weekend, so look for it if you are playing Blogger Bingo!  Have a great weekend!

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