Sneak peek

Lake Knitting FO's

We took a vacation for about 10 days at our lake place at the end of July. While admiring the views above, I spun yarn, dyed fiber, knit, knit, knit and sewed down little petals and TONS of ends...COTTON ends on this hat.




The hat kit was bought at a now closed LYS (in Louisburg, KS) on one of the Sunflower Knitters Guild yarn crawls. It is the most adorable hat. It was COTTON. Worsted weight cotton. I am not a fan of cotton. Now, the knitting of this was enjoyable and I finished in about two days almost a YEAR ago. The ends. Oh, the ends. You can't just weave cotton ends in willy nilly, they're cotton. Wool ends can be woven in and snipped easy peasy wooly squeasy. Cotton ends will come out in the wash when given to a non-knitter. (Hell, they'll probably come out if given to a knitter too, who'm I to be all prejudiced?) SO they must be woven in and sewn THROUGH strands in different directions. Did I mention it was WORSTED WEIGHT? Weaving something that heavy back & forth would make these strange bumpy lumpies all over the hat. (Tried it, unwove and rewove.) SO you get to split the strands and THEN weave them and sew them into each other and such. SO, for each color, there were FOUR ends, split each in half and you get EIGHT. The construction, while very cool, meant extra ends. Then because the petals were curling so bad it looked less like a flowery hat and more like a colorful case of leprosy, it meant EVEN MORE COTTON WORSTED WEIGHT ENDS as I had to tack down the ends of the petals. Good thing she's cute, huh?

Well, I knew I'd never finish the thing without serious time and effort, so I set myself the task of finishing each and every bit of the hat before any knitting, spinning, dying or drinking of beers on the lake vacation. I think it'd be a lovely hat to make again, but next time in superwash WOOL!

I was so proud to have this hat completed that I just handed it over to my little niece at our lake family reunion at the end of our vacation time. NO PICTURES WERE TAKEN. What was I thinking? SO, when I got the opportunity to babysit for the little one last night, I kinneared her. OK, first I had to peek into her closet and all her drawers to find it and had a baby photo shoot. (Sure hope my brother doesn't have one of those teddy bears with the hidden camera or I'll have some splaining to do!)

It went like this.....
Put hat on baby's head. Crawl backwards quickly to take photo. Crawl forward to put hat BACK on baby's head. Again try the lean out for angle, while baby is FLYING on her hands & knees, giggling and diving out of camera range while pulling hat off to chew on. Rinse and repeat. I finally figured the best strategy would be to strap her down (in her high chair) and distract her with food. She is able to chew on two big teething crackers, one in each hand and STILL rip the hat from the head, so these shots were all there were before I would have had to take the hat back home to launder. She is adorable. And the attitude in that little one? Reminds me of my own girl many years ago. This cutie is totally cotton-end-sewing-angst worthy.

These are a few of my favorite things...

I know, I know. I've harped on it before. This is my all time favorite sockyarn-not-for-socks pattern. Old Shale Scarf by Tiennie. Well, a while back when I was at the lake for FOUR DAYS with no children, I knitted my arse off. Completed two more scarves. I couldn't decide which color I thought my cousin Kelly would like better as her birthday present from *cough* LAST FEBRUARY *cough* so I knit them both. I love them both and figure I'll be happy to wear whichever one she doesn't choose! Guess I should actually SHOW HER, instead of just keeping them here where I can see them, huh?

I made a red, red, RED scarf (same pattern) for my sister in law last winter and another one for moi last year as well. Here's a reminder. My only change to the pattern was to use one size larger of needles and to only do 36 stitches, with one full pattern in the middle and two halves on each side. Gorgeous. Can't wait for cooler weather to start wearing them again!





I sometimes find myself forgetting that everyone doesn't knit. Do you ever do that? I was sitting at our two youngest boys' baseball practice on Sunday. A dad sitting near me turned his head my way and said, "now that's a lost art!" I turned my head to where I thought he was talking about. I said, "What, rock climbing?" totally without a clue. (There were some little brothers/sisters climbing the walls nearby. He said, "No, knitting socks." DUH. "Oh, yeah. that. socks. I knit them." cripes. I'm never with the witty comments unless I'm a) drunk; or b) writing things down four hours later.

Yes, I realize that the shirt I'm wearing somehow clashes with BOTH scarves I was modeling that day. I don't have a bad sense of style. I'm just lazy. :)

Back to our regularly scheduled program...

No worries people. This won't become one of those BUY MY YARNS PLEASE promotional blogs. Ok, I'm still gonna beg, but MOSTLY it'll be a log of how fiber seems to be the thin yarn of sanity knitting its way through the big bag of crazy that is my life.

So, the last time I rode a shopping cart it ended in disaster. Not normal-embarrassing-my-child stuff here, but eating pavement in front of the grocery store, laying ON MY FACE on the pavement with cans of beans rolling past my head kind of disaster. You'd think I'd have learned, wouldn't you? My last cart wreck occurred due to a combination of my clumsiness, cart weighing less than me (physics), and a big arse divot in the parking lot.

Well, I was leaving the Office Depot the other day on one of the few errands I can run for the office and get into the fresh air. I had a cart full of boxes of paper. Many, many, heavy boxes of paper. Physics...check! I had a slight downhill slant to my truck and the parking lot was full, so I was at the very end of it. Angle of descent....check! I had no children to embarrass. Bad Mother Avoidance....check! What woud you do? Really? I got a running start and WHOOOOOOOOOSH! I made it ALL THE WAY to the truck. I even was doing the leaning out to one side and then the other to STEER the cart. The wind was blowing in my hair...noises were rushing by my ears....including some kid panting and yelling, "Ma'am!...gasp....Ma'am!....gasp....Ma'am....gasp.....MA'AM PLEASE!" As I pulled up next to the passenger side door (still not touching the ground and steering with a serious lean off the side like they do in motorcycle races), quite proud of my cart riding prowess, I see this poor kid. Stumbling up next to me, out of breath and looking at me like a crazy woman. After catching his breath, he said, "My manager said I had to help you out with this paper, Ma'am!" I look back at the door and there's at least FIVE employees watching this scene. Ah cripes. Looks like I need to find a new office depot.

It's a good thing our family's not one of those reality tv shows, isn't it? My kids would just die.

My kids are a big help with the whole yarn business thing. OK, my DAUGHTER is a big help and the three boys are mostly in the way and being threatened that they STAY AWAY FROM THAT YARN WITH YOUR GATORADE/POPSICLE/GUM/STINKY SELVES! They do give good insight on color combo's, often based on pokemon characters. The discussion of just WHAT pokemon critter a certain yarn is or is not is enough to drive a woman to drink. The discussion never ends. For example, Elizabeth thought the following yarns should be "Halloweenie" and "Santa Fe Square" for the Native American jewelry sold there. Beautiful. The boys are still discussing the first one, but have decided the second is Seadra, a water pokemon of many, many skills, each of which was detailed for me. Repeatedly. I think I'll just stick with Lizzie.

mmmm mmmm good!

No, not the smell of Campbell's soup on a cold day, the smell of WET SOCKYARN on a plain old regular weather day.

If the weather cooperates, there will be a CYG Photo Shoot in my office park tomorrow over lunch and/or "sunshine breaks." (why should smokers get all the breaks?) I have THREE of those recycled shopping bags full of yarn just waiting their moment in the lightly-filtered natural sunlight! How sad is it that those bags never get used for groceries, just for toting yarn about? Ah well. At least I recycle now. I'm getting there.

GRAND OPENING!!!!

TreasureGoddess GRAND OPENING SPECIAL
Buy 2 items before 8/31 and get free shipping!
Mention you're a blog reader and get a special treat added in too!

Click any picture above to see the larger version.

OK, it's all official now. I've got a real, live ETSY SHOP! Can I get a WOO HOO? Ok, I can't wait, I'm gonna WOO HOO myself! WOO HOO! TreasureGoddess Hand Dyed Fiber, Hand Dyed Yarn and Handspun Yarn for the creative goddess (or god) in you! I've got half my dining room full of yarn and fiber just waiting on its photo shoot, so more will be added soon. Please check the shop and let me know what you think. I'd love some constructive criticism.


In order to link my yarns in ravelry, I've had to change my user name to TreasureGoddess. I'm a bit sad to no longer be the KnittingVirgin, but I guess at this point in my yarn-obsessed life, the Knitting VIRGIN no longer actually applies. Can someone with more photos of yarn than her own children still be considered a knitting VIRGIN? Someone that knows almost all of Elizabeth Zimmermann's stories by heart? Someone that knits EVERY SINGLE DAY? Yes. Every. Single. Day. I know you and I don't see anything strange about taking knitting along on a honeymoon, but apparently there are some that do. amazing.

Thanks for all the encouragement and happy thoughts about my dying process! My back porch dye lab is cooking! Here's hoping my life as the TreasureGoddess has as many adventures and good times as I did as the Knitting Virgin! (Just less the whole nature-trying-to-eat-and/or-kill-me adventures, please!)

Coming soon...to an etsy shop near you!

Ok, maybe not an etsy shop NEAR you, I don't know where you actually ARE you know. BUT I'm getting close. Real close. House-full-of-fiber close. DYING to DYE more close. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Ok, as you can see, I just can't hold a secret for anything. I don't have ANYTHING listed in said shop yet, but there WILL be a contest soon with some hand dyed fiber and some hand dyed yarn from the TreasureGoddess (me) once it's up and running and all official-like.

If you're a Sunflower Knitters Guild member, don't forget about our Opinionated Knitters' Tea this Sunday!
Sunday @ the Victorian Trading Co 2-4 pm 9/9/09 (Elizabeth Zimmermann's birthday).
$7 fee, only a few spots left. If you're interested and haven't signed up yet, EMAIL ME! treasuregoddessATkcDOTsurewestDOTnet.

That is all. I'm off to finish computer stuff and list some goodies on the shop! I'll have an official GRAND OPENING soon. There will be discounts for blog readers too. Can't wait to get things going so I can start dying again! I have a house full of fiber and yarn that's calling my name. Merino, silk, tencel, sockyarn, laceweight, BFL, oh my!

Happy weekend everyone! PS, I survived a WEEK at the lake and Mother Nature never tried to kill or maim me. Not once. :) See, the recycling is paying off! I also knit my ass off and spun a ton and had a lovely time. It was VERY hard to go back to work. Stall knitting is just not nearly as enjoyable as sitting on a boat knitting while your kids are swimming around you in the water. *sigh* Many finished objects pictures to come next week....after the etsy shop is done!

BUT nothing will get done until later this weekend. WHY? Because I have an AMAZING husband! He thought it was about time for a little "us time". We're dumping the boys with his folks (all THREE of them), a bottle of scotch and one of gin (for the grandparents, not the boys) and going to have a kid-free evening! My daughter's with a friend so we're set! Dinner & a movie, walking around the plaza window-shopping and then staying in a nice hotel to boot! He may drive me crazy sometimes, but the man wrangles snakes, stained & painted & assembled my spinning wheel, listens to my rants & raves and will truly be the Armageddon Man should things ever go to heck. He wears my socks and sweaters with pride. He rocks.

Car Kitchenering, not for the faint of heart!

OK, now I have to say, THIS part of knitting while driving has been almost entirely restricted to stoplight knitting. Talk about your strange looks. I'm fully used to the bewildered look of those that sit next to me at stoplights and see me knitting. Mouth hanging open, drool optional. (my observers, not me!) Well try a little needle & yarn action on the end of a toe. I swear, one guy next to me looked absolutely frightened! I couldn't help myself, I had to make eye contact and smile. That REALLY freaked him out. Finally he said, "are....are...are you DARNING a SOCK? HERE? NOW?" I said, "oh no, I'm kitchenering the toe together of a sock I just knitted!" (windows were down as it was a gorgeous afternoon.) When the light turned green, I held the toe-in-progress in one hand and steered with the other driving off. He just sat there for a few minutes.

I should mention that at an earlier stoplight he may or may not have seen me pop my other foot wearing the mate for that sock up on the dash and take a picture. Yeah. Sorry about that.

I feel like the redneck knitting ambassador to the masses. Maybe that explains why people look at you strangely when you're just sitting on a park bench knitting, behaving yourself. These poor people have seen CYG in action and are afraid you're going to suddenly start knitting AT THEM or something. Who knows. All I know is I got me some purty socks all knitted and kitchenered up! These were from some seriously crazy sockyarn I dyed last year. I *heart* them and their little car kitchenered toes.

Apparently the love of color goes back further than I'd realized...

Wow. Senior year of high school. Check out the eye shadow. Anyone remember the song...I wear my sunglasses at night. I wear my sunglasses at night.. Photos by Ron Morse, the cool one in the trench coat. I always wore my trench coat off the shoulder for that "just so" look. Wow, I totally remember that bandana around my neck. Except it wasn't a bandana. It was a cloth napkin from Pier I, my first job. I was quite the stylish one, no? The other cutie in the miami vice outfit was Scott Wilson. Ah Scotti. Such great guys! Ron's doing a pic-a-day blog that's pretty amazing AND he's a Hufflepuff! Rockstar!

More dying and overdying. Doesn't that shade of the alpaca fiber look a little like my eyeshadow from the 80's? Wow.






A few more shots from Ron. I think he won an award in school with one of these at a show. Probably not the one with my friend Kirsten crossing her eyes, but you never know. (I'm the one with the crooked asymmetrical hair cut. I TOLD You I had my own sense of style)

It rocked!

Yes, the Hufflepuff representative is a bit of a slacker, the ONLY ONE not wearing a hand-made house scarf. Hey, there's still TWO MOVIES coming people. I've got time.

My friends rock. A wonderful, fun evening of knitting and eating (Thanks Kelly for the Tastefully Simple Party Goodies) and knitting and then the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I also want it officially stated that I only snored for a SECOND and then promptly woke up and enjoyed the movie. I'M OLD AND IT WAS MIDNIGHT, PEOPLE! Also thanks to Jo Major for grabbing me as I jumped back over my seat at the intense part. Plus, no one can "SHUT IT!" to obnoxious chatty teenagers like Miss Teri. And Jo Minor, no one knows those books and movie details better.

I remember going to one of the early movies all by myself sitting there knitting quietly. How sad is that? You guys rock. I may even cast on for that scarf tonight....or after I take a loooooonnnnggg nap. Next time, I'm taking the day after off from work!

No spinning, but SNAKES at the LAKE

Yes, that thing really was almost 5 feet long. CRIPES ALMIGHTY. You know, I really did marry a true outdoorsman. My hero. My husband. This took him from HWIOADA (He Who Is Occasionally A Dumb Ass) to LAKEMAN! HERO OF THE OZARKS! *shiver* Seriously, I still get chills just seeing it in picture form. LAKEMAN snatched this thing out of a tree as we were walking along and it was hanging above my head. I know it's a black snake and not poisonous, but DUDE, this thing was HANGING OUT over me. It was not very happy to be snatched from its tree and proceeded to hiss and shake its tail so hard it sounded like a rattler. It was all the time flipping about in the air, trying to bite Jeff or his son or ME or whomever it could get to. SO, because we all know LAKEMAN does things his own way, after dodging its big mouth snapping at us, he flipped it in the air, grabbed it by the tail and began whoop-whoop-whoop-ing it around in the air like a cowboy swings its lariat. All the while the snake is STILL snapping its jaws as it circles by. LAKEMAN lets it fly, it starts drunkenly trying to snake its way into the water, then SWIMS BACK to shore and up the hill back to us. Well, we ended up having to kill it since we have a ton of kids running about and didn't want more snake babies in the hill where our kids go running amok.

The only thing I can say is thank God that LAKEMAN is now over his whole "If I kill it, I have to eat it" nature kick. Does anyone remember the squirrel from the back yard? The one he grilled on a stick? It was all burnt up standing like a giant X with his arms and legs out. ICK. Yeah. I told him it could, in fact, have maybe been poisonous (black snakes are NOT) and without knowing, we really shouldn't be EATING it. *shiver* UGH. You know, looking back, wouldn't a normal man just knock it in the head with a shovel? Or shoot it? We had cowboy Jeff going at it. Ah well. The man does like to get in touch with his nature.

OK, so this last long weekend at the lake (took another 2 days' vacation WOO HOO) I decided was going to be all about the spinning. Spinning, spinning, spinning. I took TWO POUNDS of fiber. (For non-spinners, that's a crapload). I knew I wouldn't spin it all, but was going to get it all pre-drafted and spin as much as I could. I actually took my knitting projects OUT OF MY BAGS and LEFT THEM HOME because I knew all I would do was spin. I had two almost-done socks packed. One for the trip down and one for the trip back. That was all. As we were picking up Jeff's boy from his summer camp and all his crap, plus bringing his dad back from his vacation at the lake and all of HIS crap, my one box of extra fiber & niddy noddy & scissors, etc. had to get left behind. No problem, right? I still had the TONS OF FIBER and the Wheel. I was set. Yeah. I was set until I sat my ass down at my favorite outdoor spot (and after LAKEMAN got rid of the snake hanging above my favorite spinning spot). Sat down. Prepped my fiber. Got the leader all wound through the hooks and orifice. Started treadling.......NOTHING WAS HAPPENING. Guess what I left back in that damn box? My drive band. (the thing that makes the wheel go round). DAMN DAMN DAMN.

I'm never, ever, EVER traveling with no knitting projects again. Enter a Very Good Friend/SUPERHERO who with a quick phone call soon had me driving up and down and all around the Ozark hills to a YARN SHOP! A really cute YARN SHOP! The Yarn Basket soon had me driving back home with some new sockyarn to make it through the rest of the weekend. If you're down in the Ozark hills, get yourself there. They had a ton of really good yarn crammed into a little shop at Osage Beach, MO.


I did get home and finish an item that WAS NOT a SOCK! OK, don't get all excited now, as it's a merino sleeveless sweater. It's orange. A stretch for me, I know! I think I'll call it a vest, but we all know I'm wearing it all winter long as is. It's the Essential Tank by Wendy Barnard (of Knit N Tonic blog) in her book Custom Knits, which I dearly love. Hers is made of cotton, but where's the logic in that? :) I actually sewed down a hem in this one and am quite proud of that too! Another first for the Knitting Virgin!


I'm off to knit and spin in my happily snake-free HOME the rest of this week. Happy Knitting all!

A Perfect 4th of July.....no hillbilly hospitals, no jail cells, Good Times!

OK, first of all I did actually miss my kids. A lot. They're with their dad for a MONTH for their summer vacation and it's awfully quiet around here. Now, the fact that neither Jeff or I had any kids that we were responsible for made a HECK of a sweet vacation and the fact that I was happy-dancing and singing "We ain't got no ki-ids....We ain't got no ki-ids!" should in no way diminish the fact that this momma was missing her babies. Occasionally. Add an extra vacation day to the holiday, a van more than half full of fiber, spinning wheel, fiber, yarn, and MORE FIBER at the lake and it was just short of heaven.

When we weren't cruising around in this.....

or bailing out this (the kids' fishing boat with help of my nephew)....

I looked like this....

And was creating things like this.....





Like I said, Good Times! The sister/brother in law plus their kids were helping me come up with names for the various things that came out of the crockpot over the long weekend. The greens the 7 yr old girl who helped me with the painting of the fiber decided it looked like "forest floor." I agreed. Her dad thought it looked more like "compost heap on a hot day." The rich brown fiber I thought of as "mahogany", the brother-in-law thought that while hanging dry it resembled more of "intestines, fully loaded." nice. I think I'll use the 7 yr old over the 37 yr old any day.

And, I'm sorry, but you KNOW I had to smuggle just a little kool aid in as well, right?


Also, if you ever wondered what the softest thing on the face of the earth was, (or at least the softest thing that's come off my spinning wheel), it's this....


4 oz of beautiful superwash merino. I've spun tons of superwash merino, but seriously? DUDE! This shXt is SOOOOFFFFFTTTTTT. Dude. (Hey, just got off the phone with my son who's having a blast with his cousins playing video games and Dude!...Dude?...DUDE!-ing themselves silly. I've been conjugating the many variations of DUDE ever since). Duuude!

Heading back to the lake for another long weekend soon, but this time with the step sons. Not too worried as they should have more than enough to keep them occupied and I just got an order of bare sockyarn from Knitpicks and have a LOT of fiber calling my name. Husband was a titch grumpy about the level of fiber vs tools that came along on our long weekend. Good thing fiber compresses so tight, huh? I'm gonna have FUN if I ever make it to Thursday.....