A New Hampshire Knitter

I remember, several years ago, sitting in the basement of my favorite LYS grumbling because I had just messed up the project on my needles... again. I remember throwing the mess of yarn and needles into my bag, trying (and I'm sure failing) to reassure another knitter there that I was sure all my issues with that pattern were user error. That was several years ago, and every time I browsed through my queue on Ravelry, I'd come across this beautiful pattern, I'd sigh, and I'd move on. Last Saturday though, some yarn and needles jumped into my hand, and before I knew it, the shawl was just falling off the needles, growing with every row. I'm not sure what it was. My skills as a knitter haven't improved much since then (in fact, I'm pretty sure it's been years since I've knit any real lace. It's been all hats and cowls and toys while I was spiraling down the craft fair scene.) Maybe it's just timing. Maybe the stars aligned. Maybe I

How's everybody doing? For me, today was one of those perfect crafting days. It's President's Day, which means work was closed, and it was snowing, but it was one of those snows where it was big flakes falling gently with no real accumulation (Probably an inch on the cars- nothing on the pavement. Even in my plow-happy complex, the plows didn't come out for it.) So, on a day with no work and picturesque snow, what's a girl to do? Craft, of course! As much as I love making quilts, I hate binding. Hate, hate hate them. Which is why I have 4 quilts done, but needing binding. (That number goes up to five if you count another quilt that is done, except for the quilting and the binding.) So, with this perfect opportunity of a day, I decided to take the bull by the horns, and do something about those unfinished quilts. And I didn't set an unreasonable goal either: if nothing else, but the binding was attached, I would be happy. But what's that saying?

So, a year ago September I did something I swore I would never do again. A swap. To be fair to this one, this one seemed pretty straight forward. You take a single piece of fabric, cut 50 6 inch squares, send them to the organizer with a self addressed stamped envelope, and you get back 50 6 inch squares of varying prints. Even though I had jumped in feet first, I was a little worried about coming up with my initial fabric. I didn't want to feel as though I had sent in a sub-par fabric, and I was trying to tighten up the budget. (I had just started using YNAB and using that software had shown me just how broke I was.) After about twenty minutes passed before I remembered I had 4 yards of a lovely red plaid buried in stash closet that was just not selling on eBay. Seemed like a perfect opportunity to get rid of it pass on the love. My initial plan was to use the blocks in a disappearing 9 patch- one of my favorite charm pack blocks. I had spent over an hour (before cof

About two weeks ago, a turkey breast jumped into my cart while at BJs. I'm not sure why I thought it would be a good idea; I've never made a turkey before. I don't even own a roasting pan. But I had this six pound turkey breast, and decided to make something of it, and cooked it in the Instant Pot.  (Seriously. I love that thing so much.) I decided to coat the bird using poultry seasoning, no real measurements were taken, just sprinkled the spices on and rubbed it in. I put it on high pressure for 35 minutes (using the rule of thumb of 5 minutes per pound plus 5 minutes. It took 15 minutes to come to pressure, then the 35 minutes at pressure. and then between 12 and 17 minutes at NPR. I believe it was closer to the 17 minute mark. But, all in all. 70 minutes to cook a bird, and I didn't have to watch it every five minutes.*   (For those of you without an Instant Pot, a Natural Pressure Release is when you let the device come down from it's high pre

Every year, I say to myself that I'm going to commit to the Tour de Fleece- a challenge hosted by Ravelry to coincide with the Tour de France that happens in July... every year? Wikipedia says it happens every year, so that's what we'll go with. Not unpredictably, however, within a day or two, I give up. Although, "give up" denotes a conscious decision to do so. Usually I forget that I'm doing said challenge. This year was not so different. I joined a challenge through a Ravelry group for a local yarn shop, and I actually kept to it for longer than usual- 10 days! Here's some pictures of the beauties I've spun in the meantime...  These two were my first attempt at plying. You really can't tell from the photos, but they were rather horrible. This is a single ply, from the same braid as the plying attempts. (It was the braid that would not quit.) These pinks are not as eye-searing as the photo would make it look. This is, I thin

Thy leaves are so unchanging We're now two months away from the first of two craft fairs that I'm working this year. Both of them are bookending the Thanksgiving holiday, and obviously, the minds of consumers will have already moved well past turkey comas and football to tinsel and snowmen. As such, I've decided to introduce a Christmas line in this year, the main feature being, well, Christmas trees.  That's the bottom half of it, anyway. I modified it a bit to make it one piece and in the round. 'Cause I STINK at seaming. I go out of my way to avoid seaming when I can. And I think the pattern calls for beads and other decorations to be added after the fact, and I'm adding them as I go, using some beads I found in the back of my closet when I recently cleaned it out.  I have enough of these beads to make two trees, and I have quite a bit of silver and gold colored beads. (Seriously people, every time I see those beads, or even think the w