The sunflowers are starting to bloom. Just for reference, at most the plants are about 18" tall and the blooms are about 3" across. There's going to be more flowers at the intersection of each leaf and the stalk. Most interesting!

It's fair week here and not much knitting is happening. The kid had a couple goes at the bumper cars last night. I'm not much of a ride rider..

More Whitby

The heel on the Whitby sock has been turned. I really love this pattern. The cable is beautiful and the purl stitch pattern makes it easy to remember when to cross the cable. The photo shows the left hand cable beautifully, but the right cable looks funny. This is only in the photo and in person, it matches perfectly.


Here's the progress on my mini-potted sunflower. I'm getting buds all over the place! There's a bud ball growing at the base of almost every leaf. With my luck, the dumb thing will bloom while we're on vacation.

Fair week needlecraft

Our fair started yesterday. Needlecraft judging is one of the first things on the agenda. This is just a small sample of the knitting entries. The overall quality of everything in the needlecraft department was up. The judge was very careful and closely looked at each item.

The felted slippers that I talked about in the last post, were felted, trimmed, entered and won first place!

Scarlet and Grey

This is the before felting photo of my hubby's new slippers. Scarlet and Grey, just as he ordered. (Go Buckeyes!) After felting pics later.

I'm showing you these slippers because I didn't want you to think that I'm not knitting, even though the weather is HOT, the humidy makes the air feel like soup, and I've been tinking several rows on my new Whitby sock project. For some reason, the pattern doesn't call for doing a cable cross over every other row......

New sock and sunflowers

I really wanted to cast on for another sock (I'm almost done with the footie...) This is the Whitby pattern from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road. It's a great book, unfortunately there are lots of errors and you have to be sure to check out the errata at the Interweave Press web site. Some of the errors are just common sense things, but I'm really surprised.

There are several other patterns that I'd like to made from Knitting on the Road. My problem is that I have large feet and ankles. So, pattern adjustments will be necessary. For the Whitby sock, I'm using Elann's Esprit (cotton/elastic) and I'm knitting on Size 3 needles. Just by adjusting the yarn and needle size the socks should fit great.


Here's an update on the mini-sunflowers. They are about 15" tall and are going to burst forth with bloom!

Here's a close up of one of the forthcoming blooms. I started with five seeds, four germinated, and three are going to bloom. The fourth plant is puny and only about 6" tall -- I don't expect any blooms from it. It's been so interesting to watch!

Felted slipper formula

I dug in to the UFO pile and came up with felted slippers. I had made the first one back in the winter. This is the third pair that I've made and I have others planned. The pattern is from Fiber Trends and it's easy. The yarn is Nature Garn from Elann.

I have found that the secret to the Fiber Trends felted slipper pattern is to use stitch markers to mark the center stitch. It makes the amount of counting needed virtually nil. I also take the time to make myself a chart that's made up of row numbers. Each time I complete a row I just cross off the number. Never any confusion about where I'm at. The decrease rows get circles around the numbers and that way at a glance I can see if I need to decrease. It's very much like sock making.

My only complaint about the pattern is that the original comes printed on a dark teal colored paper which I find very difficult to read. I typed off part of it so that I could print it out on light colored paper. So, that along with my chart of row numbers makes for an easy knit.

In other news, our county has started a construction project where they are enlarging our courthouse to make room for all county offices. I work in a building that overlooks the construction site. I'm going to be starting a blog of daily (or so) photographs of the construction. Should prove to be interesting.

Knitting happens!

Yes, knitting has been happening here. I haven't posted for a while because life kind of interrupted. My dad was in a serious accident on his tractor at the family Christmas tree farm. He spent a week in the hospital and is still recovering, with a long ways to go. Then we had the 4th of July, vacation planning, work, et cetera.

But I'm happy to report that knitting has still been happening here, just at a slower pace than usual. I'm working these footies in Esprit from Elann. I'll probably be entering them in the fair along with a few other items. I have spent some time surfing the knitting blogs. I'm very impressed with the scarf that Margurite is working on as a gauge/practice piece over at Stitches of Violet. Very nice. I'm also green with envy over Susan's trip to Italy.

Vacation has been planned with a beach trip to the Outer Banks. Swimming, fishing, riding the ferry, lunch at Howard's Pub. Here's to hoping there's no hurricane!