New Year’s Day Goodness

I was invited to spend New Year’s Day with a group of die hard fiber enthusiasts….knitters, spinners and weavers…who quickly became new friends.

We were hosted by Mitzi Meyer, at her home in Sweet, Idaho.  I am ashamed to say, in the 8 years I’ve lived in Idaho, I’ve rarely been outside of Boise; I didn’t even know there was a town named Sweet! I truly enjoyed the drive, it reminded me of my native Montana surroundings, and the next time my mom visits I’ll definitely take her out that way.  Their home was absolutely beautiful and perfect for this get together.

Of course, I took more projects than I was able to work on, but my motivation was to take advantage of all of the expertise in the room to get advice for completing several UFOs including:

1. A 27 year old sweater that has been in “time out” (more on that later)
2. A spinning project that stalled last year
3. Instruction on how to ply my newly spun yarn

I showed off the hat that I started a couple of months ago for my DH, which is almost finished but didn’t make my Christmas deadline…and got a good laugh from everyone because it’s absolutely gigantic!

My knitting machine sample got some attention as well, and I spent quite a bit of time talking with Angie, who is also trying to learn more about how to work her own knitting machine.

It was obvious that this is a close group of friends, but I felt welcome and included and look forward to spending more time with this unique and talented group.

Mitzi also runs an online store, Mitzi's Yarns for Weavers and Knitters, where she sells mill ends and closeout inventory, and of course, we were able to peruse her wares. Mitzi had earlier showed off a scarf/shoulder cape she’d made, and written the pattern for, with a combination of two strands of yarn that I thought would work perfectly to keep me warm this winter.

I’ve been looking for this sort of pattern and I was able to get enough yarn for the pattern to make 3 different color options using a mohair /wool /acrylic blend. I’ll pair one of theses colors with the black wool blend yarn and see how it turns out before I decide on what I want to pair the next one with. If it goes like I think it will, I might already be ahead of next Christmas’ gift season!

This might be one of those projects that is the knitting equivalent of a PSQ though, since this is a lace weight yarn (I think) and I’ve never worked with something so small!  However, I had an idea that I might be able to ply these two yarns together using my spinning wheel and treat the resulting yarn as one strand.

I’m back to my quilting this weekend.  I hope you all had a great holiday and got time to spend with all of your wonderful creative toys.