Where I've been Lately

I promised you a few photos last post, so here we are. I was fortunate enough to get to Madrona Fiber Arts Festival this year. It was my first time and next year I plan to go again. The classes were awesome, teachers were even more awesome. Way too much fun. I took a class from Jill Laski on Blending for Effect, using a variety of fibers. Here is one of my more colorful carding projects. I also took Modular Knitting with Ginger Luters, and we did several samples in our all-day class.

Then, as I mentioned, we went to visit Doug's folks in Arizona, and then headed to Mexico with them for a couple of days of sunshine & seafood.



My take-along knitting project was the Tina Shawl from Fiddlesticks Knitting. Carol asked what color I was using, and it's plain vanilla Knitpicks yarn. I am quite fond of Fiddlesticks patterns. I've done the Lotus Blossom shawl twice - once out of red Aurucania wool, and once out of scrumptious Country Silk. It's a quick knit and surprisingly easy considering how stunning it looks when done. As for the Tina, it's more challenging, but the directions and graphs are clearly written and easy to follow. It's been a great learning experience, and I feel that once the Tina is done, I'll be capable of returning to the Inky Dinky (Mutant) Spider (from Hell) that had me so befuddled earlier on. . . but that will be after one other important project. (Confession time: In the last year I have had three Fiddlesticks shawl patterns on the needles simultaneously. . . I've been on a bit of a lace binge lately. And my other confession is that I suffer from arachnophobia and perhaps that pattern was an unfortunate choice for me.) Getting back to the Tina, I am now on the borders, which are knit perpendicular to the body of the shawl, so I'm beginning the home stretch.