Oh So Pretty ....

My friend asked me to make something for a charity auction she is involved in, and I thought why not? I chose to make my own pattern, the Ocean Ripple Wrap (pdf link), only I halved it to make a leaner scarf (cast on 55 stitches instead of 90, which gives 6 pattern repeats instead of 12).

I used the fabulous Alpaca Baby Lace from Diamond Yarns (used less than a full skein to get a 63" scarf), and boy is it yummy. This scarf is as light as air yet warm. The yarn was a delight to knit with, no splitting, and I love the colour.

The only problem is .... it's so hard to give away!! Luckily I have some Malabrigo Lace in my stash that I think will be perfect ....

Retreat surprise

While the retreat was taking place I was completely unaware that all of the women were making a gift for me. It started with a conversation Janet and I had about colours. I told her my favourite colours were blues, reds and burgundy. At the store on Friday night I was selling yarn and Janet bought some beautiful yarn in my colours so we laughed and I said wow those are my colours.

The weekend carried on and I never got a sense of something going on I didn't know about. So on Sunday night when I was presented with this beautiful shawl I was overwhelmed. What a wonderful surprise and a treasured gift for me. I will enjoy this shawl and think of everyone who made it while I wear it. It has a new home on my comfy knitting chair and when I get cold it will be handy. I love it.

The shawl was knit by 2 people at a time. It was cast on in the middle and they each knit on an end. It has lots of handspun yarn in it to accent the yarn and as a great keepsake and memory of this wonderful retreat.

I feel so honoured with this shawl

Thanks to everyone who participated - What a great surprise.

Shelley

Retreat Part 3 - Fashion Show

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Here is a slide show I made of our fashion show at the retreat. We had the fashion show on Saturday night and on Sunday night we had show and tell. This is when our skeleton's and spider webs were shown. We also talked about what rules we broke and new things we learned at this retreat.

This is the first slideshow I made so I think I hope it turned out.

Tomorrow I will blog about the big surprise I got at this retreat.

Retreat part 2

On Saturday we got to work learning our new spinning and knitting techniques. These pictures show Lexi with her demo skein of yarn. Isn't it amazing. It was very soft.

Margie with her first batt.

The knitting class really enjoying playing with all that yarn

Catherine - who by the way had her 83 rd birthday at the retreat modeling a woven jacket made with recycle silk material. It is quite a work of art.

I will write about the fashion show this weekend and then I will share with you a wonderful surprise that I was given last weekend.

What a great retreat - Part 1

This was the most fun weekend. We had fabulous weather 2 great teachers and more great food than should be legal to consume and a great group of women all with a passion for fibre arts. What a creative group. I have many pictures to share so I will do this in a few posts over the next few days.

Janet came over the night before the retreat started for pizza and to pick out yarn for her workshop. We spread it all out all over the living room to decide and took most of it. Too hard to decide so there was lots of colour choice for her workshops.

The next day everyone arrived and the retreat was on. I took the spinning workshops with Lexi and it was amazing. The pictures I show here is what Lexi calls a fibre sandwich - the next picture is what it looks like once thru the drum carder. Wow - well I was hooked right there. I spent the rest of the weekend learning new spinning techniques and making fibre batts. Then Lexi spun the batt and let the fibre dictate the spinning. She showed us how to make fabulous creative yarn.

Look at this batt - isn't it amazing.

More tomorrow