Peace is largely referred to as WORLD peace, but I want to focus on personal peace because once personal peace is attained, all other forms of relational peace will follow.   Peace has many definitions and I hope to crack open the last on the list.  Inner peace, tranquility, serenity.  These things seem so hard to attain even in our daily life if we block out our nation or even the world.   We rarely feel truly at peace.  Well follow me through my journey of finding peace.  And then see how I express this piece using fiber.  The yarn that screamed, I AM PEACE is what made the picture above.  Its Habu a-60 Linen Paper.  I’ve lusted after this yarn since I was in art school thinking its just too pricey, so maybe I should cut my washi paper into strips and create yarn.  Well as I wandered around an LYS with Sheepie in Seattle, this yarn practically threw itself at me.  I mean come on, I had 100% yak in my hands and it refused to come home with me because the Paper was being an excellent orator of why it was better for my budget and my next project.

In addition, today while I got the girls their 3 month check up since their mammogram in November,  I stopped at Uwajimaya today because I was in NEED of an awesome Japanese stitch dictionary.  I was limiting myself to a stitch dictionary and possibly a cool pattern drafting book if I could find it.  I was sorely tempted to purchase this book but realized I love the pattern but probably won’t  ever knit stuff from it, so I put it back on the shelf.  I did get lucky and find a copy of the pattern drafting book that I wanted.  I used extreme restrain and only bought volume 1 (volume 2 is just as fabu) because it had something that would work to complete a bit of my idea for PEACE.  This outfit is starting to be very japanese, which is no suprise since I adore Issey Miyake (check out the FETE collection).

Contest Winners:  Please comment which prize you are interested in.  It will be first come first serve.

CDaniele
Hilary of the Yarniad – I will deliver your prize in person
Jess of Knit One Blog Too
Jackie of Jackie’s Stitches
Jodi of A caffeinated Yarn
Cici of 2 sistahs knit together
Knittymuggins
Monica who is blogless but had the great pleasure of slipping in right before I closed comments.

If you will be at Stitches West, please let me know and I will hand deliver your package.   Otherwise, I will email you back and ask for your snail mail address.

I’m sure many of ya’ll have heard the buzz about Handknit Heroes.  I’m here to say its worth the lovely buzz its getting.

The comic is well written and drawn.  The story line flowed and lead you to continue turning each page wondering what is up.  The characters seem to grow with the story.  The pattern is a simple scarf with a twist (rav link), which will draw the intended audience into the knitting world.  I look forward to seeing how the comic and its storyline continue.  I want to thank the publishers for allowing me to have a pre-release copy of the Handknit Heroes and for letting me give it away to you my lucky readers.

I know the ravelympics is either months away or months past.  I was proud to be one of the moderators and bobicii for the Ravelympics.  It was a whirlwind of fun and I made a few friends through it all.  I happened to recieve two pins as a thank you for a job well done from the rav crew and Kimberli, the brain child of the Ravelympics success.  Ya’ll get to have one.

Going to live with Knittymuggins

My next love is Malabrigo. Tis a sad state of affairs. I’ve fallen for this temptress and its soft merino ways. Whether you already love it or are mal curious, I’ve got 2 skeins of Malabrigo lace in Continental. You can knit practically any size shawl with two skeins. There are many projects that only take one skein.

Going to live with CDaniele

My next love is knitting sweaters. Oh yes. I adore being able to curl up in a perfectly fit sweater. Right here I have 1,000 yds of rustic heavy worsted weight yarn that would make a nice outdoors sweater in a rich red. Its an older discontinued yarn that was spun by Harrisville Designs, which is located in the town adjacent to my High School in New Hampshire.

One summer, I drove up back from my college in South Carolina to attend the Harrisville Summer school so that I could learn to spin. I went a bit hog wild buying fiber and the cotton fiber in the bag is from that shopping spree through the LYSes of New Hampshire. The other little bag is handpainted fiber locks from Blue Moon Fiber Arts before Tina became so well known. I’ve packaged them together as one prize since they were part of my attempt to fall in love with spinning and felting. Alas I love handspun, but not the process.

Going to live with Jess in the snowy white.

This lovely 4 oz bump of autumnal colored wool was given to me by a swap pal before I realized I probably would never spin again. I might give spinning the good old boy scout try but I just get so bored so easily that I would much rather be knitting away furious.y. The color is one of my favorite color mixtures and I so want to keep it and hoard it for that time when I will spin, but realize its fruitless.

Going to live with Hilary – the yarniad

Once I reached art school in 2001, I discovered the joy that is Habu yarns. My weaving teacher encouraged us to play with and experience the things that make habu yarn unique. We had a session on distorted weaves and how a specific yarn can enhance or detract from the final product. I had lots of fun playing with the Habu yarns. I still have a rubbermaid tub under the bed in my studio full of Habu. Its all laceweight (aka weaving weight) so I don’t use it that often since I haven’t woven in almost 5 years. I’m planning to rectify that very soon. The yarn is 1 oz (265 yards) of A-1 Tsumugi Silk in color 38. I’m sure you could come up with something for this lovely crisp silk yarn, which blocks beautifully.

Lastly I’ve fallen in love with sock yarn. The only problem is I don’t really knit socks all that often and definitely not that often for myself. This yarn is the most popular color that Trekking XXL comes in colorway 100 which is a rainbow of colors that stripes nicely. So I want to share the sock yarn indulgence with ya’ll.

All that adds up to 8 prizes that meets many different people’s interests, so spread the word and encourage people to vote on which of the 6 words, I will be using.  Contest is here.

As the United States of America rings in a new president,  all are watching and waiting with batted breath what the future holds.  I have hopes and dreams for this administration as many of ya’ll do too.

For me, I’ve reached and passed my Second Blogiversary.  I’m so happy.  I started this blog so that I could focus on my art work again, instead of sitting around the house letting life pass me down.  Well I have kicked started my work and the creative juices are flowing.  I designed 5 items last year and proposed many more.  I have lots to do this year, but I will take it in pieces because if I look at all of it at once, I will get overwhelemed and just pack up shop.  I also finally pulled out my thesis and have shared with ya’ll what I accomplished in that stress induced year.  Well I’m ready to forge ahead and start researching and working on designing a new piece.  I eventually hope to display these in an art show.

Since this is a Blogiversary post, I’m going to let ya’ll in on the guessing of where I will be heading.  I thought about letting ya’ll pick the next word for me to focus on but there is one word that hasn’t left me alone for the past year.  It needs to be heard and seen and felt.

I have a collection of prizes that I will share with ya’ll over the next 2 weeks as the contest runs.  There is Habu yarn, spinning/felting fibers, knitting stuff and a brand new preview copy of a very cool concept knitting magazine.

There will be 3 ways to get into the drawing.  So leave me a comment, share with others on your blogs about my contest and those who pick the same word that I’m feeling will be thrown into the pot for prizes.  You will get a point for your comment.  Your blog post or ravelry mention will double your comment point (please let me know where you post about this).  If your friends who comment mention your name, you will get a point that matches their vote so you could vote for a word I don’t pick but still get into the prize drawing.

This contest is closed and the winners have been announced.

Your choices are:

Joy
Peace
Goodness
Kindness
Gentleness
Faithfulness

Hint:  I already have the yarn purchased, just not uploaded into my stash yet.

This weekend started out with a trip down the river to get our first CSA farm share of the year. I was so excited. I had missed having a farm share last year. This farm also seemed to meet my expectations of a CSA. If you click on the photo, you will see what we received. Somehow the salad mix and braising greens snuck out of the bag and did not make it home. No worries. I think we will be able to finish off all this food this week.

Meal Plan:

1. French Toast (made with Irish Soda Bread & fresh eggs) & Potato Pancakes (from the PPP).
2. Beet Risotto with Fish
3. Bok Choi Gratin with Chicken

I had also planned to make Mac & Cheese with the Braising Greens but since they escaped, I will have to make other plans.

Saturday morning’s plan was to wake up at 5AM to head to Whidbey Island for Earthdog Trials. We woke up an entire hour and a half late and so Lexi was unable to be signed up to compete but we went to go figure out if she would be good at it. It was a successful trip. We did not stay for the Ratting for Rating class because churchable had to be at work at 5AM on Sunday.

I took the above photo on the ride there. Lexi and Frankie were all twined up together. This one got me since Lexi was being used as a pillow.

We came home and had a tiring evening since churchable lost his cellphone. He went back to find it but it was gone. Some teen girl had taken it and refused to answer our calls until she had used it all evening. The funny child thought that by erasing the call history that we would not know who she called or how much she had used it. Thank goodness for unlimited nights & weekends and unlimited texting. I think what caused her to return the phone was my threat of turning off the phone. Oh well at least it is back and unharmed. I had given it up as lost by the time she called to say she would return it.

Sunday was spent dealing with the girl in the morning, but by the afternoon I was hanging out with my good buddy Kat. We went down to Portland to visit a store and then out for an early dinner. It was all for my birthday. It is great to have friends that remember and make things special without being too much.

Now I know you guys probably don’t care about the weirdness that is my life of yarn, doxies, bunnies and a loving husband. So on to the prizes,

the winners were emailed earlier today since I have been a bit tired from the overly busy weekend.

I have six winners since we bumped my comments to be the most comments left in the history of my blog.

I am so excited to be able to present my baby Alisa to you. She has come along way from an idea that I created for a secret pal way back in SP10. She is now a full fledged pattern ready to be knit by all.

So today is my 29th birthday for the first time. No silliness here about 29th for the 29th time or anything like that. I am almost ready to release Alisa.

I thought I would share a few pics here on anticipation of the release. I hope that you are not too overwhelmed. We did take 84 pictures and still need to do another photo shoot since churchable did not get a great picture of the whole sweater so that people would get a good impression of the overall look.

Don’t worry I don’t have that many photos to show ya’ll. Just enough to wet your love of this simple summer sweater.

At this moment Alisa has been perfected through bust size 38″. The two largest sizes need the shoulder shaping reworked so hopefully they will be all nice and ready for the 30th.

Now this last photo, tis rather good. It was on flickr for a matter of minutes and already had several views. I took it because I wanted to show that it is long enough to be worn as a beach cover-up.

So it is my birthday today and that means I want to have a contest. There are several prizes. Everyone should find something they like. If you prefer not to win one of the prizes, let me know and I will take you off that list.

Contest:

1. leave a comment with your name and your email in the email spot (I will be the only person to see that part) and if you participate in the posting bit then leave the link in the post for extra points.
2. tell me what makes you happy. Pictures are great. I would love if you blogged about it or you could post a pic in flickr and leave a comment in the description about why this makes you happy. You don’t have to post outside the comments about your happy thing but you will get added to the drawing a second time if you do post about it.
3. tell others about the contest. Yes this is just my way of getting more people here. I want to see my blog feed have 100 or more subscribers. I have between 75 & 80 right now. This will also get you another spot in the drawing.

Now you are all wondering about the prizes. Well since Alisa is coming out now, I will be giving out a free pattern to 2 lucky people. Details about Alisa here and ravelry. The other prizes are yarn.

Butternut Woolen sock yarn (local blogger and dyer)

Black Malabrigo Merino Worsted

This is the mystery laceweight yarn. I don’t know what it is. My stash has an unhealthy amount of unmarked laceweight and I don’t knit lace. I am sure this was recent addition to the stash, say last 5 years. For those of you who would like a better description, here is a close up pic.

I took this picture without the flash because it has a shiny fiber in it that washes out easily.

So read that folks, 5 prizes to be won. Any questions about Alisa, can be directed below and I will have a blog post up later with answers to those questions. If I get enough entries there might be more goodies appearing. I have been blessed lately by yarn and other goodies.

Thanks and have a great day. Oh and you have a week to enter the contest. Next Saturday at 11:59 PM PST is the end.

PS: those of you posting to the contest. This blog has moderated comments so you only need to press publish once, a notice will be sent to me and I will agree to publish. All multiple comments have been left unpublished. Typically I get comments up within 24 hours or less. Anything left on a Tuesday goes unverified till Wednesday since I take a day where I don’t turn on the computer all day so that I can focus on designing and other important facts.

PSS: Thanks for all the interest and participation. IF we keep this up, I will have a post with the most comments ever and the highest commented month.