Spring has Sprung

I have been knitting. I'll show you later.

Last week end I was teaching crochet for knitters at Knitter's Fantasy in Youngstown, Ohio. This is a new location for this event, but it seemed to work well. The even had outgrown the previous location and this one has more room. I taught the same class twice. I need to work on it some more to expand it to 3 hours. I have until TKGA in September.

I had 3 designs on display in the market. All of them are for Oasis Yarns. The green scarf is crocheted from their Seduction Silk. I called it Spring Garden. The red shawl is also from Seduction. It is knit.That stuff is wonderful! I called it Queen's Lace. I just found out that you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.


Here's the Snakes and Snails sweater in the wild. It's shown with Aussi Sock. That's the yarn it's knit from.










Trees in my neighborhood looked like this oak tree - lacy, but bare.












Today, there are trees with green lace.







Forsythia is in bloom, grass has turned green. DH calls it "that ugly shade of green" that means mowing is required.


I've been knitting on the girl sweater from Aussi sock. Both sweaters have a TNNA deadline of June 6. I'm on the last sleeve of Sugar and Spice. But still have the neckband to do. I'm not sure how I will attach it. The ruffle will also go around the neck. I'll put a life line on it, so if I don't like the attachment I can retreat. These are the same yarns as Snakes and Snails.

Sights around my neighborhood.

I have this dog that I walk twice a day. Here she is on her Daddy's lap.










One of the places we pass each morning is a service station where the guys like to refurbish old cars. This is a vintage Buick. The size of it struck me. It is twice as long as the Beetle parked next to it. The mechanics here also make vehicles that you have never seen before. They made a push-me-pull you car that had two fronts. They also took an amusement park rocket car and turned it into a car. They use it for parades and street parties, giving rides to one and all.





The flower of the week is daffodils. They are everywhere but in my yard, although I will have a few soon. There are big ones, small ones.












Our yard does have day lilies. Lots of day lilies.

















We see this tree on our evening walk. It has fuzzy "flowers" hanging from its branches. Does anyone know what kind of tree this is?







Yards are being cleaned of winter debris. In our city, brown bags are used for yard waste which is collected by the city and taken to a park, where it turns into mulch. This is free, but requires a permit from the city.











At work I have there tulips sitting on my air conditioner. Grow tulips, grow! I also have bought pots of Spring flowers to help bring Spring indoors. When the flowers die, I put the plants in the ground for next year.

Success

The Snakes and Snails sweater was successfully finished and has had its bath. The pattern is written in all 5 sizes. All it needs is a picture of the sweater. I'll do that in the morning, whether or not it's dry.

Last Friday we went to a hockey game again. DH has split a pair of season tickets with a friend. This time I took the camera. Our team is the Lake Erie Monsters, a farm team for the Colorado Avalanche. I'm not a big hockey fan, but I follow DH and knit. Hockey is 3 periods of 20 minutes each (sport team minutes). Intermissions are 20 minutes each. I have been working on a sweater that is mostly stockinette. I also have worked on simple socks. This last time I started a ruffle for a little girls sweater to go with the Snakes and Snails. It started out too wide. I seem to have swatched the body pattern too tight. I reswatched and it is fine now. Did I say that in the last post?

Here's some of the hockey stuff. The 400# monster that the players enter the rink through.

Sullivan C. Goal, known as Sully comes through first. He's sliding on a sled across the ice.













Zambonis with Zamboni riders, a great honor and thrill!



Local mascots played broom hockey at one intermission. Sully is 00, the pink thing is Slider, our Cleveland Indians mascot. The brown guy is the Cleveland Browns mascot. He's a dog, but I don't know his name. We have a dog pound at one end of the stadium. The mascot in orange is Moon Dog for our basketball team. The Cleveland Cavaliers. The guy with the hockey stick is one of the Mullet brothers (from some hockey movie). They are part of the crew and skate onto the ice during official timeouts and pick up ice shavings from in front of the goals and the team benches.




By the way, a hockey game was played for 3 periods, one 5 min. overtime period, and finally won in a shoot out.

Overconfidence, Stupidity, and De-Nile

The "Red Thing" is named Snakes and Snails. It is a little boy sweater for Oasis yarns. The yarn is Aussie Sock. After I sewed the shoulders, it looked like the back was longer than the front. De-Nile comes in here. I had washed the back to remove spilled food, which spilled in my bag in transit. I thought I had counted repeats when making the front. I wrote the pattern. I should have been able to do it right the first time. After neck shaping, the pattern says' " Work straight if needed to match back length." That step seems to have been missed. The front was one repeat shorter. Much of today was spent removing all the neck and front bands and unstitching seams to add one inch to the front. Neck bands are being replaced and numbers altered in the pattern.

Next up is Fiesta Thing for a little girl. Colors are reversed from the boy sweater. I swatched the body pattern and then started the bottom ruffle. It looked too wide. Frog pond time. I thought I had used a needle smaller than planned for the swatch, not so. It was knit on a circular needle so the mistake was possible. A second swatch was knit. The ruffle is again finished for the back. Body knitting for this sweater will commence after repairs to the red sweater are finished. I have promised to deliver the red one next Saturday when I see the Oasis owner at Knitter's Fantasy. I also need to print up enough patterns for him to sell at the show.

The other night I worked on pattern grading. I have Garment Designer on my laptop as well as my desktop, and have versions of the Snakes pattern in both. It made pattern writing easy. I have the pattern on the desktop and used GD on the laptop for measurements and stitch count in the various sizes. The pattern now has sizes 2, 4, & 6. I will do 8 & 10 this weekend. Deadline for the whole two sweater project is the TNNA show in Columbus, OH the beginning of June.

Spring is definitely here in NE Ohio. I see crocuses on our dog walks. There are none in my yard. We had landscaping done following garage construction a few years ago and most of the bulbs never reappeared. This year I have been buying pots of spring flowers and planting the bulbs when the flowers die. I'm always too busy in the fall when I should plant the bulbs.

I'm really getting busy with prom dresses at work. I'll try to show some piece/parts as I go along. I also have spring flowers growing at work. I bought a kit from the fabric store, and have tulips growing on top of my air conditioner.