Category Archives: Family

Family, Friends

Peace and Joy

Posted on by Jean

It’s so odd.  I’d just been “chatting” (as well as you can via the internet) with Vicki at Knitorious about our love of Christmas ornaments and how every year it’s like saying hello to an old friend when they come out of the box to be put on the tree.

I have two new friends this year.  Peace and Joy.  As usual, the camera does not do justice. These precious gifts will be cherished by my family for years to come.  They were a gift from Jamie, a fellow Elanner.  I’d just organized a swap so that a bunch of us could have a color card for my favorite yarn, Elann’s Highland Wool.  This amazing gift was her thank you.  I explained to my son, Daniel, about the work that went into them and showed him a picture of an inkle loom on the web so that he could appreciate the value of these wonderful pieces of handwork.  He was amazed.  Thank you, Jamie, from the bottom of my heart.

Another piece of art made it’s way into our home today.  A certain kindergartner named Joseph built his first Gingerbread house all alone today in school.  I wrung my hands as he pounced off the bus wondering how close to the door he was going to get before it crashed to the ground.

Oh ye of little faith.  It made it to the door unscathed.  He wanted to eat it as soon as his dad got home.  As always, when we have something planned, Dan gets a duty call (he’s a Criminal Investigations Special Agent for the Army).  So we took a picture and emailed it to Dan at the office because Joe could not wait any longer.

Family, Knitting

Baby it’s cold outside….

Posted on by Jean

Dan and I went to the Marktplatz today for lunch at the Weinachtsmarkt (Christmas Market).  Bratwurst and Glühwein.  Yum.  The thing is, it’s freezing out there and you eat outside standing at a small table or where ever you can find room.  The Glühwein works it’s magic quickly and warms you up from the inside.   It’s delicious hot mulled red wine served in little mugs that you can keep or take back for your deposit.   We have a large collection that we’ve gathered over the years from the various Christkindle and Weinachts Markets.  Next week we’re headed to the big one in Nürnberg so I’ll post pictures from that trip.

Here’s my always happy hubby.  The sweater is another knit from wool we picked up on our trip to Shetland.  We saw one similar to it in Shetland that he liked and I wanted to knit one for him. We chose the yarns while in Jamieson & Smith’s in Lerwick. Two years later he got his sweater!    When I got to the first band of the maroon background I hated it.  It sat in my knitting basket for about a year and a half and finally I picked it up one day and decided to finish it.  Once I got the second band of the maroon in it pulled it together nicely. It’s Dan’s favorite sweater (at least he says it is – it may be because of the sweat that went into knitting it) and he wears it often.  I have to say, he’s freezing in this photo and yelling at me through clenched teeth to hurry up and snap the photo since I made him take his coat off for the picture.

If you could see clearly what is in the window behind me, you’d take no notice of the sweater. This is the Hues in Horizontal from Knitter’s #60.  It’s Lopi Lite and one of my favorite sweaters.  Behind me is the  Hussel chocolate.  I had to pop in there for a little suprise for a certain girl in South Boston.  These quaint little shops are one of the things we missed most when we were back in the States for three years.

Back to Christmas knitting….

Family, Knitting, Shetland, Travel

Shetland Memories

Posted on by Jean

For someone who knits as much as I do, I sure don’t wear my sweaters very often.  I was going through my drawers yesterday looking at some of my old labors of love.  Since I didn’t get much knitting done this weekend to share, I thought I’d share my blasts from the past.

My all time favorite garment is this one from Ann Feitelson’s “The Art of Fair Isle Knitting”. 

It’s the Fridarey vest on page 120.  I bought the wool for it and the Scalloway yoke sweater while we were in Lerwick, Shetland in 1997.  Here’s the yoke of the Scalloway:

The nice thing about these is that they are the perfect souvenir of that trip and I’m reminded instantly of how much we loved Shetland.  Dan had just come home from eight months in Bosnia and we needed family time alone.  Couldn’t have picked a better place.  It’s the perfect get-away.  Enough to keep you from getting bored, but all relaxing and you are surrounded by natural beauty.  We spent a few days in Edinburgh, then a week in Shetland and then back to Edinburgh for a few days for the Military Tattoo.

I still have about five sweaters worth of Shetland wool kitted up.  It’s my favorite style of knitting.  That trip is the best one I’ve ever taken in my life.  We went to the mill where they used to spin the Alice Starmore yarns, visited bird sanctuaries, watched the Shetland women knit lace and fair isle at the speed of lightening and watched them spin cobweb weight yarn like it was second nature. 

I was inspired by a sweater I saw in Shetland at the Sumburgh Hotel at the where we were staying and knit one similar for Dan. I bought the yarn at Jamieson & Smith in Lerwick.

When we first arrived at the hotel and got to the top of the stairs I almost was so excited to see a brass plate that said, “Fair Isle Room”  Is that fate or what?  It’s called that because you can see Fair Isle (25 miles away) from the window when it’s clear out.  We couldn’t go to Fair Isle because we didn’t time our trip right with the mail boat that takes you there and back.  If you look at a photo of the hotel from the front , we were in the room with the big picture window upstairs.  It was gorgeous. The house used to be a family home of Robert the Bruce.  The sea is just in front of the house and there’s a croft that you can walk to just up the road.   We happened upon a man shearing one of his sheep.  Heaven I’m telling you.  Sheer heaven (no pun intended).

Here are some photos of that trip:

Dan and I look a little shell shocked as we were pulling into Lerwick Harbor because it was about 5am.  lol.  As you can see, Daniel slept just fine in the tiny berth on our P&O Ferry overnight journey from Aberdeen.  We couldn’t get over how it never really got dark at night.  It looked like dusk at about 2 am.  It was stunning with all the fog.

Here’s Daniel and I at the croft by the Sumburgh.  You can’t see it very well, but the sweater Daniel has on was from my second project all from my hand spun. It’s done in 1×1 rib with a cable going up the sleeves.  The yoke sweater I’m wearing was my own design based on Meg Swansen’s “Cardigan Details” video and EZ’s percentage system for yoke sweaters.   I call it my one-week sweater.  I knit it in a week while Dan was in Bosnia.  Lots of knitting till the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep.

This photo of Daniel and I feeding a lamb is probably my favorite from the whole trip.  It was taken at Burland on Trondra, a working croft you can visit. It’s run by Mary and Tommy Isbister.  The nicest people. We had so much fun there we went twice.  They had every kind of farm animal around.  They invited us back for tea (hence the 2ND visit) and they gave a small toy to Daniel that is tucked away in his keepsakes box.

I think I’m going to go watch the videos now so I can fully reminisce.

Family, Friends, Knitting, Spinning

It’s the Little Things in Life

Posted on by Jean

It never ceases to amaze me how much joy I can get out of a little fleece, a drop spindle and a pair of knitting needles.  Fellow Army wife and knitting blogger, Erica, could be in the hospital as I type having her baby boy.  Happy Labor Day, Erica!  Hopefully her hubster made it back from Iraq in time for the blessed event.  I met her a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to make something special for her (it’s always nice knitting for another knitter).  I had some scrumpdilicous Shetland fleece in my stash from Judy Colvin’s ranchin Montana.  I spun it up and knit a little pair of oh-so-soft booties.  Not a moment too soon because the wind is howling outside right now.   They’ll go in the mail today.

My sock-knitting friend, Lynn, made a pair of these with her handspun when I was pregnant for Joseph six years ago.  They were a gorgeous shade of hand-dyed deep maroon with jewel-tone fair isle knit into the leg.  I remember how touched I was that she did that for me.  I’ve been making them ever since.  I must have left them in storage in the States because I searched and can’t find them.  Lynn is known to many as “The Sock Lady”.  You can check out some of her beautiful work here.  I won’t forget you, Lynn, when I get to the Opal Factory!

Those booties and a baby quilt and sweater (also in storage) knit by my friend, Jessica (I met Jessica on the knitlist about seven or eight years ago), are my most prized items of Joe’s baby gifts.  I thought of how kind Lynn was every time I put those booties on him when he was a baby and I think of Jessica every night when I tuck Joe in with his quilt that he still drags around as his comfort when he’s sick or wants to snuggle.  One day his children will be kept warm with them all and that just give me the warm fuzzies.

You’ll find many renditions of this pattern as it’s been out there for eons.  With Lynn’s permission, here is my version of her version of the bootie pattern (when you knit something this many times, the pattern is bound to change here and there).  As EZ would say, these are “pithy” directions.  If you are a beginner knitter or something doesn’t make sense, just holler:

You can use any yarn from fingering to worsted.  Worsted makes a pretty big bootie.  The handspun I used for Erica’s is about fingering weight and they should fit the baby till he’s about four months (I hope).  I usually use DK weight.

Cast on ten sts.  Garter for 18 ridges.  Knit up 18 sts down next side, 10 across cast-on edge, 18 up other side.  Knit in the round now.   **Four rounds purl, four rounds knit (x2) and then knit four more rounds.  Now you’re ready to do the top of the foot.  In the booties Lynn did for Joe she did a 4×4 garter sts up the foot.  I like that better, but I forgot about it and just did st st on these.  You can do about anything you want to here.  A small lace pattern would be cute.  You’ll be knitting back and forth across the ten end sts.  As you come to the last st of each row, knit it tog with one st from the 18 st side until you have 10 sts on each needle.  Knitting in the round again, knit 3-5 rounds and then do an eyelet round for the ties (k2, yo, k2tog).  Now you are at the leg and can do whatever you want.  Add some lace or fair isle here.  I just did a plain 2×2 ribbing.  Garter st would be cute here too.  For the ties you can do I-cord (I tried but it was too big for these booties), twisted cord (which is what I used for these) or crochet a chain.  Have fun.  They make great gifts.

Family, Knitting

Loose Ends

Posted on by Jean

I’m trying to update my knitting journal this weekend.  Thought I’d share some photos of a  couple of recently finished items.

Booga Bags!  Pattern courtesy of  Julie at Booga J. Need a quick gift? These are da bomb.  Knit in Noro Kureyon they are quick and easy.  A lot of bang for your knitting buck.   I blocked them on two different sized boxes to get the slightly different shapes.  The one on the left is in color #116 and the one on the right is #51.  They’re a little more muted in person. 

Next up is the Fiber Trends Field of Flowers Shawl.  Designed by Evelyn Clark.  It’s a beauty and a pretty simple knit for lace.  I gave this one up to my Gram.  She and my Grandfather sit outside early in the morning in the White Mountain area of New Hampshire.  I knit this one from a cone of weaving yarn I scored on Ebay a few years back.  It fulled perfectly when I blocked the oils out of it.

I got an email from my Jeremy yesterday.   Things have picked up quite a bit in Mosul and he knew I’d be worried.  I’ve spent a good portion of the last few days surfing all the news sites trying to keep an eye on what’s going on.  Can’t really watch it all on TV with the little guys running around.  Please keep Jeremy and all our troops in your thoughts and prayers.

Family, Knitting

Pumpkin Patch

Posted on by Jean

I finished up some pumpkin hats on the way to the MP Military Ball in Heidelberg on Saturday. I made one for each of the four babies in my husband’s office. Yea… I know there are only three here. One was for the newest member who was just born at the end of August, so I took it to the hospital when we went to welcome him into the world. Hopefully I can get a picture of all of them together sporting their little punkin’ heads. This is the tried and true “Patrick’s Pumpkin” pattern from Fiber Trends.

Here’s a snapshot of Dan and I at the Ball. We clean up good, huh? lol. A good time was had by all. We usually get stuck at a table where we don’t know anyone. This year we knew everyone at our table and the next one over so we had… well….a ball. Sorry…. I couldn’t resist. Right now I’m playing around with felting some yarn from Elann which happens to be my favorite place to shop for all things fiber. I’ll share my experiment results within a couple of days.

Family, Travel

Bonnie Bonnie Scotland

Posted on by Jean

As I type this my oldest son, Jeremy, is on a flight to Iraq. Please keep him and all of our soldiers in your thoughts and prayers.

I thought I’d backtrack a little and tell you about my trip to Scotland at the end of July. Twenty-one knitters and spinners from all over the world met on the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides off the West Coast of Scotland. It was SO beautiful there. My heritage is very Scottish so I think it’s in my blood to feel at home in that gorgeous country.

This is the Hall in that we had the classes in and some people stayed there for the week. I was in a B&B across the field from it. It was wonderful waking up to the view of the water, sounds of the sheep and the clean crisp air with a cup of tea under a nice warm wool blanket.

There were sheep everywhere. It was a mile walk into the town of Fionnphort and you could be sure there’d be many sheep and cow sightings along the way.

Debbie New stayed at the hall for the week and taught a class on playing around with color patterning and she explained some of the patterns in her book. I need to send my book or a bookplate to her for her autograph. This woman is awesome. Her mind is like a clock. It just keeps ticking away. I was amazed. Best of all she is a very nice, down-to-earth soul who was a joy to be around.

I can’t begin to tell you how great it was to be surrounded by so many others that love wool as much as I do. What a great group and a ton of knowledge and talent. I sent a photo in to Knitter’s Magazine of most of us outside the Hall. Hopefully it’ll be in the next issue.

We went to visit Ardalanish Organic Farm. This is all wool from the Black Hebridean Sheep on the farm. I got two of these babies (the cones of yarn… not the sheep… how I wish!) Oh… to have had more money with me!!

On the last day I took the short five-minute ferry ride from Fionnphort to the Isle of Iona To see the Abbey. What a way to end the trip. Very serene and oh-so-beautiful. I’d love to take my family back there one day. The only place I loved more is Shetland.