Hooray! I remembered to post!

Aren't you proud of me?  I'm actually posting!  And it's been two weeks as scheduled!

Anyway, I haven't worked on Isobel Stuart again, but I did pick this little lady up for a bit -- the Small Girl 1863 from the Essamplaire.

(Sorry for the poor picture.)  I know a lot of you are sad that I seem to not be into stitching as much anymore.  Somehow that seems to be what happens with me.  I go through cycles.  From stitching to quilting, (with some knitting and weaving thrown in), to stitching, to quilting a bit, to knitting to -- you get the picture.  I'm afraid I'm in a knitting cycle right now, although I hope not to abandon quilting and stitching altogether.

This is the long way of saying that I've been working on knitting a lot the last couple of weeks.  I went to Gauge and Tension in Brooklyn on October 10 for a class taught by Sarah Solomon for the Rowe Sweater by Michele Wang (a Brooklyn Tweed design).  I love this sweater so so much and am so happy there was a class.  Otherwise I would never have gotten up the nerve to knit it!  You saw my gauge swatch or the start of one last time.  Here is a picture of my swatches along with what I believe are the swatches for the original sweater.  So pretty!

Here's a shot of the shop -- such a lovely selection of yarns and wool!

The father type met me after class, and we went off to meet the girl child for dinner.  We went to a yummy ramen place.

(Please note:  DD uses chopsticks.  I do not.  I'm allergic to them.  Hee hee!)

And here is my progress on the Rowe so far.  I've started with the left sleeve.

I started the cap sleeve shaping this afternoon.  So exciting!

The other exciting thing that happened was -- I got to go to Rhinebeck!  What's Rhinebeck, you say?  It's the NY Sheep and Wool Festival -- a huge deal in the knitting world!  40,000 plus people attend, or so I read somewhere.  Can you imagine?  I actually can after being there on Saturday.  lol!  So many people!  It was such fun!  I went with two of my good friends and we had a ball.  I had famous knitters syndrome while I was there -- saw all these knitting celebrities and was gaga about it too.  lol!  Loved sweater watching too -- so many gorgeous sweaters out and about there!  And I bumped into a couple of Instagram friends as well!  So amazing!  I hope they don't mind my posting their pics here.  Here is Tanya Marie, the Sampler Girl.  She does a knitting podcast that is so much fun!  She is @bzmama on Instagram.

And here is Tanya's mother, @lucysyarnpocket!  She has made a few guest appearances on Tanya's podcast and they are so much fun together!  Behind us is @nancydaniels92.  She is a fellow knitter and cross stitcher.  I met her years ago when we sat at the same table at a stitching retreat.

Loved meeting these ladies (and seeing Nancy again) in person!

Here are some other pictures of our day at Rhinebeck.  What a great day it was -- great sweater weather for those Rhinebeck sweaters!

The line to get in.  We were at the end of the line.  The gates opened at precisely 9am and the line went pretty quickly.

The colors are off in this picture - the main color was a lovely green.  I want to knit this swater!  I wonder if there's a pattern for it....

Here is my stash from the day.  I'd say I was pretty restrained!

(The sweatshirt bled in the wash.  I now have pink sheep!  lol!)

Mia was not happy about my absences from home.  She also did not like the cold that hit over the weekend.  I think she has declared it too cold.

Thanks for stopping by and saying hi.  I hope everyone has a great week!

Sorry, Ms Rambo.....

Poor Susan Rambo has become a neglected piece.  I had to work on my Jeannette Douglas class piece.  I just had to.  It's done, but I'm still not sure I can show it to you.  So I'll just show a couple of motifs.

Those are blankets in the middle there.  Aren't they cool?  Such fun to stitch too!  And

I got to try darning for the first time!  It was fun!  Takes me back to my weaving days.  :D

Here is a picture that was taken for my friend Nancy (no blog) with her camera of Nancy, Kathy (no blog) and I with Jeannette.  I'm glad one of us remembered a camera!

I so enjoyed this class!  And the best part is it's so doable!  It's finished!  Finished finished even!  :D   Once Jeannette teaches this piece again, perhaps I can show you the whole thing.

But poor Susan Rambo.  I really want to finish her, but I have to do some secret stitching now.  I'll be able to tell you about this secret project, but not yet.  Sometime next month I'll show you.  Hopefully I can work on both the secret project and Ms Rambo.  We'll see!

If you want to see a beautiful, finished Susan, go to Tamami's blog.  She just finished hers, and it's gorgeous!!!!  You can visit Mia's online friend too, Ms Limo.  Such a cutie!

In other news, the three of us trekked down to the girl child's college to help her move into another dorm and to take some of her belongings home with us.  The girl child is staying at college for the next week and a half so she can work the college reunions.  It's always a chore to move her and her stuff around.  But it got done in record time.  And then we could have some fun -- a late lunch at a yummy Indian restaurant, a wee bit of shopping for some sale sweaters, and a naughty treat at the local ice cream shop.  It was weird leaving the girl child behind and yet having lots of her stuff in the back of the car.

The French Open started yesterday.  I'm looking forward to being able to sit and stitch and watch the goings on.  Unfortunately, Mia isn't used to me sitting in the TV watching chair.  (The TV watching chair is usually the father type's territory.)  She's taken up residence.

She will not be best pleased with me when I kick her off the chair.  lol!  Ah well.  Such is life!

Thanks as always for stopping by and saying hi!  It's so much fun to meet new people and chat with friends.  Have a great week!

fun, fun, fun!

First off, here is Susan.  She's coming along slowly but surely.

This pic was taken with a flash and the rest were taken with just my ott lite.  (It's rainy today.)

She's pretty, isn't she?

I love that duck in the middle!

So is that the fun, you ask?  Well, Susan is fun to stitch, but no.  That's not what I was referring to in the title.  And you will want to throttle me, cause I'm going to tell you about the fun, but I don't have pictures of the fun -- except for a few.

This weekend was a two day class at my LNS with Jeannette Douglas.  It was a fun two days too!  Jeannette taught us a new piece called the Island of Hope Sampler based on her research of Ellis Island.  She requested that we not show too much of the piece since she's hoping to teach it at another location next year.

But I figured I would show you a small part of my sampler to give you a tease.

I think the lovely star quilt motif is one of my favorite parts of this design.

Jeannette is such a lovely person, very fun, and a wonderful teacher too.  We got to work our way down the sampler, doing a motif here and a motif there and learning new stitches and techniques along the way.  It was great to be able to stitch on the sampler as we went along.  Jeannette also showed us a slide show about herself and her family, her designs, and of various places where she has taught.  At the end was a lovely slideshow of sampler collections and stitching tool collections she has visited.

Of course we also got to shop.  lol!  I picked up a few things, of course.  I so want to stitch this piece of Jeannette's.

As is so often the case, the picture doesn't do it justice at all.  For one thing, it's not stitched on white linen.  There are also smalls to go with the piece.

Jeannette showed me how easy it is to do the finishing on the box top and the smalls.  She says she is another one of those who would rather be stitching than finishing, so she likes easy finishing.  Which is good!

And there was a model of this piece that one of our class mates had stitched and which was framed.

Once again, the picture doesn't do it any justice at all.  IRL, it's spectacular!  Beautiful colors (red, ladies!), wonderful stitch design.  It's so neat!  So of course I had to get it as well.

I'm so glad I took this class.  Jeannette is a wonderful teacher and so much fun to learn from!

Finally, I won a prize from Catherine of Bramblewood Stitches.  She and her family had gone to Williamsburg, and while there, she picked up a cute bag to give away.  But she gave me much more than just the bag!

It had goodies in the bag as well!

She gave me some charts -- and she really picked well, she knows my tastes!  Also some chocolate (yum!), some stationery, a lovely piece of linen, and some fibers that look very very Williamsburg in color!  Thank you so much, Catherine!  I feel so spoiled!

I forgot to mention last week that the boy child's NYSSMA score wasn't that great.  He got a 95, an A.  Not good enough for All State.  But that's ok.  The boy child doesn't seem to mind.  He's just happy to be done with NYSSMA auditions for good.  :D

I will close with a picture of the two friends in a position that the boy child seems to enjoy.  I think Mia enjoys it much less.  lol!

Poor Mia!

Thanks as always for stopping by and saying hi!  I enjoy our visits.  Have a great week!