Author: LDSVenus

Oh My Gosh! A Rick Reeves Spinning Wheel

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I got a call earlier today from someone who goes to my church.  He said he was getting ready to move to the west coast for a new job and had a spinning wheel he didn’t want to move out there.  He is a single father of a son and isn’t a spinner so he just wanted it to have a good home.  He asked me if I would like it.  I said sure (you can never have enough spinning wheels, right?)  I figured it was an older wheel and probably had some repair work that would need to be done to have it made into a working wheel.  OH MY GOSH, when he walked in with this wheel I knew it was in perfect shape, how lucky can that be.  Then he told me he had been given this wheel from his father who had worked with the Rick Reeves Spinning Wheel company and showed me the name plate on the wheel.  OH MY GOSH!  He was giving me a Rick Reeves spinning wheel.  I am overwhelmed with amazement.  It’s beautiful and in perfect working condition, and apparently it’s never been used.  It is a double band drive and I’ve never spun with a double band drive before so I will have to learn how to spin with, and adjust it, a new adventure!  How lucky can one girl get?  Since my Church friend has no daughters, I decided to name my new wheel after his mother, my new wheel’s name is Donna.  My plan is to spin some fiber and knit him a thank you gift.  🙂  (Sorry my photography skills are sadly lacking!)

I am hoping to have the 2nd heel, on the socks I’m knitting, done this week end  so I can start on the feet and toes.  Hopefully I’ll be posting a picture on Sunday of my progress.  🙂

Oh My Gosh More Snow! – Sock Update

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More Snow 4-8-18

Well we got about 1 to 1 1/2 inches of snow last week end, Sunday April 8th, evening and over night.  Close to the same is suppose to hit us tonight into tomorrow.  Sigh, we hit almost 70 this past Thursday and now we are in the lower 40’s today, cold relative to Thursday’s temps.  Tho’, in all honesty it’s not really considered cold in IA :P.  The picture was taken during the early part of the storm and it melted off by mid Monday afternoon.

 

Knit Picks Hawthorne Fingering

First, I’m sad to say I did have to frog the heel in the Hermione’s Every Day socks, sigh.  I will just go back to the heel I’m use to, the one this pattern called for made no sense to me, but I’m not an experienced sock knitter, yet :P.

This picture is of a sale yarn I ordered from Knit Picks, it is their Hawthorne Fingering Klamath Falls Tonal Hand Paint colorway (I like when sock yarn is on sale so I can afford a skein of sock yarn for special things.)  I wish my camera would get a realistic picture of yarn colors, but it doesn’t.  It is a dark blue but it has some brighter highlights that just aren’t showing up.  Because it is 100 grams but only 357 yards instead of 400, it’s a little heavier, and that makes me I wonder if I should go down a needle size and if I will have to play yarn chicken with the socks :(.  I bought this so that when I am finally finished with the socks on my needles now, I can start these for my dad for Father’s Day.

Hope you are all having a great week end.  I’m watching a Star Wars marathon on TNT. 🙂

It’s SPRING!! First Robins!!

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FIRST ROBINS of Spring!!!  I wasn’t able to catch them with my camera last year :(, but I have this year :).  They are everywhere!!!  In the upper area of the first photo you see 4 (I think if you click on it it will enlarge the picture),  and the other picture is a “closer up” of one in the adjacent yard (hehe, sorry it’s not a close up but closer than the other one, there for a “closer up” photo :P)  I am so happy to see them as they come back to stake out and prepare their areas for when the females get here in about 2 weeks.  I love the Robins!

General Conference – Happy Easter!!

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I hope everyone is having a wonderful Easter Day.  I am enjoying it as I watch our General Conference with many wonderful spiritual lessons, such peace!

General Conference is televised on the BYU channel and on the internet link supplied above.  It is wonderful talks by our leaders on Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm central time USA and 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm (those times are for both days).  It is so uplifting.  General Conference happens twice a year, in the spring and in October.

While I am watching and listening, to keep my hands busy I knit.  I finished two dish clothes, In Thirds and a waffle stitch dish cloth I don’t have where I got it from but there are several on Ravelry you can chose from :).   I had started the dish cloths some time ago and never got back to and started another new born 2X2 ribbed hat.  I am using the beautiful heart stitch marker I purchased from Yarn Candy Studio and the beautiful enameled progress keeper that came with my order from Gretel Creations, you can also see the embroidered knitting bag I made myself.  What better way to spend these spiritual days than to knit charity gifts and listen to uplifting messages :).  Hope you all have had a blessed Easter week-end.

 

Typical Midwest Spring

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Spring 2018 We had a few days of warmer weather and anticipated Spring.  However, that is not how it works in the Midwest, sigh.  We had a snow storm that was from yesterday evening about 9:30 pm to about 4:30 pm today, we even had thunder snow last night.  Yes that is a real thing, it’s like a rain storm with thunder and lightning, it’s in the winter with snow instead :P.  We could get snow here into May, but hopefully not :P.

I’ve had a bout of not wanting to do anything, including knitting.  I need to finish those socks I’m working on and start another pair.  The problem with the ones I’m working on is that the heel is causing me some anxiety because it’s a patterned sock and I haven’t done the heel on a patterned sock so I’m afraid that I’ll pick up the wrong stitches and have to rip it out, as they have the instructions for knitting with magic loop method and I’m knitting on a 9″ circular, but hey what is the worst that can happen, that I’ll have to rip the heel out, so I’ll just have to bite the bullet and plow through the heels on this pair of socks.  Next pair will be plain vanilla :P.

Is it Spring yet? Apparently NOT!

/ LDSVenus

Installing Spring

I thought spring would be coming soon (tho’ it’s IA and yes we do have snow sometimes into May, tho usually March or April is normal)  I was hoping.  But nope, we had another snow storm today.  I tried installing a Spring App but no go :P,

I did buy a couple of things for myself last month.  One arrived the middle of Feb, the other I received today!  From Canada I purchased some stitch markers from Yarn Candy Studio, lovely markers! She also sent a great herbal tea, chocolate and orange! And some safety pin markers!  So excited.  And I purchased some Harry Potter progress keeper from Gretel Creations, in the UK,  love them!  She also sent a beautiful colored bird progress keeper.  These were both great purchases, they make me happy :).

Progress on Hermione’s Everyday Socks :)

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Hermione's Everyday Socks progress

Finally back to the Hermione’s Everyday Socks!   This is a free pattern on Ravelry.  These are a birthday gift for a family member who is knit worthy :).  Her birthday is today so she will not get them on time, but I told her that and she said she was willing to wait for a hand knit item.  This will be her first peek at them, thought it only fair since she isn’t getting them today lol.

Wish my photography skills were better, you can’t really see the design for this pattern, tho’ the darker nature of the yarn also hampers that.  I am getting ready to start the heel on both socks.  I like knitting them together, makes them seem to go faster, you can make sure the leg and foot are the same length, and you don’t end up with second sock syndrome (for my non knitter friends that is when you have finished the first sock and aren’t in the mood to start the second :P.)  A friend on Ravelry is going to do a video showing how she does the heel and gusset on the 9 inch circulars (9 inch circs are my preference for knitting socks).  I usually change to the double pointed needles for the heel and gusset but if I don’t have to do that, it would be great!  When she gets the video up, I will post a link to it. 🙂

February’s Reminder

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February 2018 Snow

February sent us a little reminder that yes, it’s still winter (actually this can go on through April here.)  The weatherman said we would get between 2 to 6 inches of snow and we got around 4 inches.  I didn’t resize the picture to be smaller so you can see the slow flakes coming down (if you look at the tree trunk or the garage doors across the road.)  My camera doesn’t take good pictures of snow fall, I wish that we could leave the picture smaller and that it would enlarge when you click on it like it use to on WordPress, if it still will I haven’t figured it out yet.  This was taken around 4 pm, the snow started around noon and continued until around 6pm.  The weather report says tho’ we will have little flurries here and there until Thursday, that there will be several more systems coming to drop snow on us on Thursday, Friday and Saturday with up to a couple of inches with each system.  So nice to be able to hunker down somewhere warm and knit or spin and watch “Little House on the Prairie” or “You’ve Got Mail” or any other show or movie you love to watch.