Monday, November 15, 2010

fall festivals

Last weekend we took a road trip out to the inaugural New England Fiber Festival in W. Springfield. It was pretty nice, a lot smaller than Rhinebeck, but all indoors in one large building. That included the sheep and alpacas and even the sheepdog demonstrations. We saw a lot of familiar vendors and pet lots of animals and looked at lots and lots of yarn and fiber. Some pictures:

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Herding ducks

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A happy Fiber Festival goer

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Monday, November 08, 2010

twist and shout

Last year Kate convinced me to do the October Mystery Sock knit-a-long. That sock turned out pretty well, so when she mentioned that it was coming up again I decided to cast on for another mystery sock.

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Pattern: Through the Loops Mystery Sock 2010
Yarn: Knitpicks Bare Merino/Nylon Fingering (0.8 skeins) dyed with icing colors by me
Notes: Got impatient at the end and didn't wait for the final clue and just did a regular toe.

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I'm not as big a fan of this year's sock as last year's, but it fits and I like the colors. Which I should since I did the dyeing. I've named the colorway "Lemon-Lyman" after a particular episode of The West Wing.

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The one thing that I did like about the pattern was that it got me to figure out how to do twists and cables without a cable needle! I was going to throw the whole project out the window if I hadn't been able to do that, as it was just too fidgety for me. The way I did it means there are a good number of twisted stitches on the back sides of the cables but they're not visible in the pattern and I can definitely live with that.

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Now back to gift-type knitting!