Happy Thanksgiving!

I spent a quiet day up at my parents' house, with mom, dad and grandma. It was a very low key afternoon, and the most melodramatic thing that happened was that mom forgot to serve the stuffing! It just sat right there in the bird, with none of us even noticing that it was missing from our plates!

One thing that I think everyone is grateful for is family. My brother sent us the most recent picture of my nephew, who is now sitting up and looking adorable:


I can't wait to see him at Christmas... just a month away!

Broomstick Lace

I stumbled across some broomstick lace somewhere on Ravelry the other day, and immediately decided that I needed to try it. The internet being what it is, I was able to find several tutorials, and got to work. Basically, you use a crochet hook and an oversized knitting needle or broomstick or a broomstick lace 'pin', whichever you happen to have available. You begin by creating a chain of a multiple of 4-6, then get down to business!

"Business" = alternating rows of pulling up big loops and putting them onto the broomstick, then bunching those loops together and creating a row of single crochet. That's the simplest way I can figure out to explain the basic nature of broomstick lace.

Of course, all of the pictures online were 'backwards' for me, since I'm left handed, and I needed a bit of experimentation time to make sure I was working into the correct loops.

Here's a photo of the scarf I'm making; I'm using some of my own handspun yarn. The effect is quite different using a thick/thin slubby yarn versus a very smoothly spun yarn, but both are very visually appealing to me. Also, this works up fairly quickly, and I will definitely be including this technique in my scarf making activities in the future. Very fun and different!

Images of Autumn

A few weeks ago, I took a nice, long walk around Lowell, determined to find beautiful foliage to photograph WITHOUT having to leave my neighborhood. I will let the photos speak for themselves.








I will note that I did not process any of the images in Photoshop or anything like that, but I did recently purchase a polarized filter for my camera. The result is that it brightens and deepens some colors, especially on this particular day. In a couple of the photos, the sky looks sooooo deep blue! I love the effect, despite the fact that it's not really what color the sky actually was.

Rhinebeck, part deux, extremely late!


Because I have been so remiss in posting this update, I'll get right to the point of sharing yarn pictures!

The first two are worsted weight yarns from Maple Creek Farms, in a wool/merino blend. I have several skeins of the first, solid yarn, and will use the variegated yarn to do a 'fake isle' style pattern on the sweater I am planning for:



And although I have a zillion skeins of sock yarn, I couldn't help but pick up this lovely yarn from Creatively Dyed:


I am always drawn to variegated sock yarns, so I feel that it is important to build up the stash of solid and semi-solid sock yarns... so this purchase was a success!

Next post, I plan on sharing some great fall foliage pics I took a couple of weeks ago... it was a perfect day for it, and the pics turned out great... stay tuned!