More swappin'

This is my swap with Zarah for August's Project Spectrum dye your own sock yarn swap. In true fashion I was late, so I did an extra project for her and made a needle holder. It is made from felted wool sweaters and I embroidered it as well. She sent me a GORGOUS (and huge)hank of wine colored sock yarn which I am in love with. She said it is enough to make knee highs with, so I'm wondering if I could get a shawl out of it?? She also sent a beautiful beaded crystal bracelet. She was the organizer of the whole swap! My yarn was truthfully more fushia than purple but I think it turned out really pretty. My friend Aleta and I were experimenting with cake icing dye and didn't have vinegar in the first batch of dye, so most of the purple dye came out and it was hot pink. Redying with the vinager got us closer to purple but we could not cover up the pink. Maybe someday I will see it knitted up.

My blue sock swap partner is knitting socks with the yarn I sent her right now and it is so exciting to see what she's doing with the yarn. Check out her site http://knittingkryptonite.blogspot.com/.

I'd say have a good weekend, but so far I think I'm monologing (if that is a word).

Grateful

Today I am feeling grateful for friends. I met up with two Momfriends at Cloud City Coffee yesterday-they have an area with toys for kids and good treats and chai and coffee. We had six kids from age 1 to 8 and kind of took over the place, but all was very pleasant. How nice to have a weekend with no scheduled plans and to be able to just catch up and talk. I love summer but it is such a busy time. We've had rainy mornings and cooler temperatured here in Seattle and it is really feeling like fall.

We are also really LOVING the new Community Center/Library/playground near our house. Our neighborhood really needed a gathering place that wasn't totally commercially based

I wish I had my camera for the view out my car window yesterday of a patch of green green grass with yellow leaves evenly dispersed all over it, such a Seattle moment. One of the things that makes up for the gray, gray winter sky is how green it stays here all the time.

I am working on my Mason Dixon Log Cabin Blanket for my daughter (I haven't thought of good blog names for the kiddos yet) in Knitpicks Shine. It is soooo soft. Since I have no photo to post I will post this Gee's bend quilt for inspiration.

Catching Up

Since I have all my photos on the Mac, which won't let me post on Blogger, I'll do some catch up. Here is my Project Spectrum postcard from last March. I was lucky enough to get Lolly herself for a swap partner! It was a lot of pressure, but of course it was wonderful.

I really liked exploring color doing this project. I have a favorite color - Green- and I have a lot of green stuff. But it was good for me to think about other colors, especially ones, like yellow, that I almost always shun. I did a color collage in my journal for each project spectrum month, and I really enjoyed it.

I also did a class in the spring with Leigh Radford from Alterknits and One Skein fame (I'm also participating in the Interweave One Skein swap...more on that later). She had us pull random yarns from a bag and make a multi-yarn swatch to play with colors we normally wouldn't be drawn to or use. It was so interesting to see how certain colors made others pop. Even colors I don't usually like could look fantastic next to other colors and really made colors I love "pop".

I am so drawn to quilting right now but feel overwhelmed by color combinations. I have such admiration for various quilters and their ability to make color sing. Kaffe Fassett of course, as well as Denise Schmidt and Jane from Yarnstorm. http://yarnstorm.blogs.com/knitblog/

One of the things I love about all the crafts I do is color, so I'm sure I will be exploring this theme more.

Yarn swap

These are pictures of the items I sent out for the green month of the Project Spectrum sock yarn swap, inspired by Lolly and organized by Zarah over at Beauty School Dropout.

I'm only posting it to learn how to post photos. Next, on to links!