I had a blast in Gananaque this weekend at the Eastern Ontario Needlers' Retreat. I taught a class on Top Downs That Fit and Pat finished her little sample sweater later that evening.

And since I was teaching and never thought to get my camera out I have only one more photo from the weekend.

Debbie Wilson in the centre runs the Needlers' Retreat from http://sheepsahoy.com/ . It's a fun weekend and if you're free next year at this time come on down. I'm on the left with two other teachers: Nancy Knot, Style Your Knit to Suit You and Patte Fullwiler, Two-ended Knitting with Colour. A good variety of classes offerred. And the Show and Tell was, well, it was just terrific. So thanks Debbie for a very well run retreat and thanks to all the participants for making me feel very welcome.

-Deb

I'm getting ready to go to the Gananoque area for the weekend. The Eastern Ontario Needlers' Retreat is this weekend and they are going to learn about, what else?, top down knitting.

My notes are being printed out.

I have one more demonstration sample to knit up tonight. That will keep me busy.

And my car is packed with not much room left. I think I'm ready to get going.

-Deb

I did a little more work over the weekend at my favourite winter knitting place - the curling rink, Brampton this time. I finished 2 yoke swatches.

Knitting while watching curling is perfect, it keeps me from biting my nails. We follow these girls from bonspiel to bonspiel, Team Spenser. Our daughter is on the right.

And it gives me a chance to do some straight knitting because sometimes an idea is good on paper but it has to be tried out in a normal sweater-sized swatch. And once again I think I almost have something. But I've been saying that for a week or two so you might not want to believe me. And I had another really good idea yesterday driving to Sudbury so now I'm fine tuning and need to knit . . . another swatch!!
-Deb

I'm working on getting 2 different depths of the V-neck on my Top Down pullover. The shallow V I have worked out.

But the deeper V was not working out as I had hoped. But yesterday I woke up with a little idea. And now I think I have something. This V would end just below the bottom of the armhole. I think that's a good spot.

I'm on to something here. I'm going to rip out a couple of my early samples, do some number crunching and start again. Then I might even get past the V. Ha, Ha.

-Deb



I'm working a on basic V-neck top down pullover and it's, well, it's sort of coming along but not quickly. I started with this one . . .

. . . and had to rip it out because it's too small around the neck. I kept the neckband for comparison.

I then did some more number crunching and made another sample . . .

which is the right depth for the V at the front but a bit too wide across the back of the neck. Some of my ideas worked out so it wasn't a waste of time at all. Now I think I have a neckband and yoke which will be just right.

It does sometimes take three times to get it right.

-Deb



Snow Day?

Today I'm doing the final touches for the Woodstock Fleece Festival, which is tomorrow. Waking up to this:

 is seriously putting me in the mood for knitting. Yes, that's snow! And a fair bit of it. Flakes were flying yesterday but nothing was staying white on the ground, until this morning that is!
So I've dyed my yarn:

And now I'm winding it and putting labels on:

And in an hour or so I'll be jumping in the car (which doesn't have it's snow tires on yet because it's only October!) and driving down to Woodstock. If you're in the neighbourhood, drop by tomorrow. This is a new show, only the 2nd year, but it's got a great selection of fibre related goodies!
-Lynda

slowly

Things, knitting-wise, seem to moving slowly here. But I did finish another pair of socks. Yay. These are shorties which I tried to get out of a single 50gm ball of sock yarn that my daughter picked out.

I scrounged around in my jar of little left-over sock balls and found a matching colour for the heel and toes. I knit them toe-up so that I could use all of the wool and I worked a sewn-off cast off for the first time. I think I didn't do it quite right but I still like it. I have to look up the proper positioning of the wool and then I think I might use it quite often.

I was working on my cardigan and getting a little worried about how the A-Line was coming out so I blocked the bottom out.

I think it's going to be fine and I'm happy with the border pattern. But as I was stuffing it back into my knitting bag I was wondering why it wasn't fitting so well. I discovered that I had started a couple more projects while it was drying out. How does that happen!

A V-neck top down in an adult size is in there. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the short rows for the neck. And a new sock.

Which might account for the lack of space. I may have to leave one of the adult-sized sweaters at home. Carrying around 2 is a little over my weight limit.

-Deb