Fun on Loon Lake. August 2020.

I love the Adirondacks.  I could live there all year long.  

This is Nate helping Owen put a worm on his hook.  

This is on the Schroon River.  Very nice until the hornets woke up.  Then we all left.  Mandy, Owen & Jack with poles in the water.  I actually caught a fish with a lure.

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All the kids caught fish and they were thrilled.

We even went to a spot on the Hudson and fished there for a while.  

All in all a great, fun week.

New Year, New TdFleece ... again

6/20/17
Looked at my last post and it was 4 years ago that I was working on starting the Tour de Fleece with Susan Sarabasha of Susan's Spinning Bunny.  

This is a wonderful place to post photos and talk about what we are doing.  I have also decided to do more spinning this year.  

It was just about 4 years ago that I got sidetracked into the not inexpensive medium of hooking rugs.  I have yet to hook a rug, but I have done a chair pad and a table runner. I finished a few mats, but not a real rug.  They take a long time and honestly, there are not many patterns I like that I would put on my floor.  The key words there are "I like".  I have seen many beautiful rugs completed in the last four years.  I admire them, but not any I would put on my floor.  Too flowery, too dull, too patriotic, etc.  

Rug hooking appealed to my design and color  senses.  I am still working on a picture of a wolf that I started in a class at my rug hooking group.  

This is "Wolfie" :

I am still working on him, and do plan to finish and hang him.  I might have to pull out some wool in order to make him look more dangerous.  I think that will happen around the eyes. But I like this project and when he is finished, I would like to do some dogs.  Probably my buddy Andy and maybe cousin Carol's love, Waffles. 

Animal portraits are very rewarding.

While many of my friends buy and dye lots of colorful wool fabrics to cut up and use in their work, I like hooking with yarn.  So if I keep spinning, I can use the yarn in rug works. This is a picture I did of a fish that is mostly handspun, hand dyed yarn. I did add in some colorful ribbon. 

 













and a steampunkish red chicken

I found a few other finished projects while I was looking for these.  I may post them later.

But, they are not rugs, but do appeal to my love of design and color.

Spinning for the Tour de Fleece starts on July 1st to coordinate with the Tour de France.  See you then. Hopefully I will find time and will remember to post.

June 2013

Seems like the month flew by .. now tomorrow is July.  Yesterday was the beginning of this year's Tour de Fleece, which for spinners coincides with the Tour de France.  Last year there was a big hullabaloo about using  the "Tour de ..." tag and they had to change the name.   They must have worked it out because it is back to what it was originally.  So, I've been spinning and it is during the tour that I start spinning out side on my porch and watch the world go by.  Quite fun.  Andy likes to go out with me.  I just tell him "let's go spinny" and he knows what to do. So that is where I am going.  

Here are a few recent pics.

Yesterdays spinning for TdF

            Flowers from my garden   

This is the fiber I am spinning.  It is a Merino/Silk

Bluebells and Jack, too.

Yesterday a group of my lady friends toured the Bluebells in the woods on Dawn Rogers' uncle's land.  There are millions of them in the piece of woods near Bloomfield.  We took a little path, crossed a little bridge over a creek, and there they were in full bloom.  Beautiful.

Just as we were leaving the woods it started to pour.  We were very fortunate, though it was a bit muddy in there.

Then off to the Rogers Farm Market for a delicious ice cream party  – what a treat.    Thanks, Dawn.

Blue bell close-up and little Jack in the Pulpit

It's been too long since I've been here.

I have been away too long.  I've forgotten how much fun it is to blog.  I have changed the name of my blog to CheshireWools.  This matches my Etsy name and my labeling.

My knitting projects have grown. I joined the Rochester Knitters Guild last year and with that have come new adventures and new friends.  I joined a group that meets at Wegmans in Canandaigua on Wednesday nite for a few hours.  We have a lite supper and then knit.  People often comment about how much fun knitters seem to have and they seem to enjoy our laughter.  

On Tuesdays we go to The Legacy Senior Living Facility in Victor NY to encourage all of the residents who are interested in knitting through their projects.  We just finished doing a lap quilt afghan with them.  We will present it to them next week to do with as they wish.  I think they will probably raffle it off among the residents with the proceeds going to pay for the yarn and the remainder to a charity.

This is the lap quilt being blocked.  Margaret did all the joining and the edging. They are going to love it.

In April I had fun with my friends  at the RKG Knitter's retreat at Camp Stella Maris on Conesus Lake in the Fingerlakes Region of NYS.  

This is Dawn working on a knitted beaded bracelet.

This is Margaret.  A VERY accomplished kitter.

Marti is in front, Nina, our retreat organizer is in back being watchful. 

Judy is always energetic

The classes we took were great.  I am still working on knitted socks that have the most complicated instructions I have ever used ... The pattern is Fiesta socks designed by Lucy Neatby.  This is keeping me interested because of the complexity.  I get too bored when all I do is stockinette or ribbing stitches.  As you can see there are a lot of different stitches here. Fun.  I handspun and handdyed the wool. The yellow is a really springy 100% wool of Portugese Merino.  Very nice to work with and is a joy to knit.  It seems to be in short supply, so I am trying to get as much as I can.

Fiesta Socks from Lucy Neatby

New Project

Here is a picture of the finished chair pad ....

And here is my next project - it will be a bag to carry my wool and stuff in. I took this from a book of knitting patterns by Vicki Square and I am hooking it all with my handspun wool. Fun!

A new interest .....

I've just started rug hooking and have almost completed my first project.

Here is a picture taken before I finished the inside. I'll take a new one when it's been bound and trimmed. This was fun. This was a pattern I bought on Etsy. It is old and the burlap actually started to split on the side just as I was finishing - so I have to fix that before I bind it off. This was fun - oh, I said that.

I am excited about designing my next one. I think I would like to make a bag.