I wanted to wish everyone a joyous and blessed Thanksgiving Day tomorrow!
I have so much to be thankful for.
A forgiving and gracious Heavenly Father A wonderful and loving husband A beautiful and sweet daughter A funny and smart son Family who love me for me A home to live in and health Friends old and new A great country A wonderful church and much more blessings of life than I could ever list here...
Take time to enjoy your day tomorrow, whether it be time spent with family or friends make every moment in life count for something. Share your smile! Live like it's your last day everyday. Give someone a compliment, make their day. Tell someone you love them. Show someone you care. Treat other's kindly. Listen. Be generous. Hug often.
our first meet up at Dilworth Coffee House at Hoods Cross Roads which is at the corner of Idlewild Road and Matthews Mint Hill Road.
I had been wanting to start a knit group that could meet in or close to Mint Hill. A few friends of mine at church had wanted to learn to knit so I thought this would be a perfect time to set up a get together where we could share our joy in knitting, crochet, etc... So hence the start...
We had a great time together and made new friends. Sandy (aka: Shandeh) was there followed by Rose (aka: CraftChick), Gail, Aura and Michelle (aka: wewantmore) and of course me...Connie (aka: conicuts).
ps... aka links only work for those in Ravelry, name links are those with blogs...
Aura had knitted me this cute little acorn magnet which was felted and she had packaged it in a clear bag with a card and bow which she had stamped herself! There was a little tag that read "who is nuts about knitting" which is appropriately named as she and I are crazy over knitting.
Thank you Aura for my sweet gift!
I had been trying to think of a name for our group and that little gift was like a light bulb blinked over my head! The Knitting Nuts! So, that's what we will call our group filled with KnitNuts who are just those that are nuts over knitting!
Everyone was showing off some of their FO's. All of which are so gorgeous. Rose had her awesome Barnacle Bill and 2 of the cutest little buddy bags. Aura had her modular scarf, baby sweater and cute baby hat which Samantha modeled! Gail brought her first ever scarf and her magic scarf. Sandy had her fingerless gloves and was wearing a pair of knitted socks and I brought my Vortex dishcloth and baby hat.
Sandy was knitting on her shawl and Michelle was well into knitting a Booga bag. I had just taught Gail how to knit using a loom and knitting board so she got started on another scarf on the scarf board and we also got her started on another dishcloth using the crochenit method. She has really learned alot over the last few weeks and say's that it is so therapeutic to knit and it helps to keep her mind off of her knee pain. Aura and I were knitting another baby hat for charity and Rose was starting to CO for a project and put that off until I can meet her to let her borrow one of my 16" circular's to try knitting that project in the round instead of flat knitting in stockinette and then having to seam.
Rose and Aura were helping me with my purling continental method and Rose gave me a tip as how to hold my working yarn which really helped so that now my tension is not lost when purling continental. Thanks Rose! Sandy had brought a stack of great knitting magazines to share.
Michelle had in tow her beautiful baby girl, Samantha who was just precious. It's been so long since my baby girl was that small and it reminded me of how fast time flies. The meeting time of 2 hrs from 2-4 pm also flew and before you knew it we were all headed back home with memories of time well spent with friends that are just "nuts over knitting".
Just wanted to share my little hat for the afghans for Afghans charity project that Alison asked us to contribute to at our Charlotte Purl group. She will take any items that we knitted up and mail them with hers by the December 3 deadline. Thank you Alison!
I used the pattern Two Needle Baby Hat that is knitted flat and then seamed. I decided to use my new Debbie Mumm Traditions yarn in Chocolate Raspberry. It only took me a few hours to complete and I think it turned out quite nice. It's been a long time since I have held or seen a baby so mine looks a little large to me, but I hope it will be fine.
Above: before seaming and Below: after seaming
I liked the new Debbie Mumm yarn and will buy more colors as the color striping is very nice. It does tend to kink up so you have to knit with a light touch and not use too much tension while holding your yarn. I also liked the wrong side of this little hat too, but I seamed it with the right side showing. I also added some little baby dreads to the top instead of the i-cord that the pattern suggested.
Above: wrong side showing
I have still been knitting away on some Christmas gifts and I have also been knitting up some dishcloths and one dishtowel.
Above: this is the Vortex Dishcloth pattern Very fun to knit and you must use DPN's. I didn't think I chose yarns with enough contrast so I made another one below... using Christmas colors.
I also crocheted a cute zig zag border.
Here is another Christmas one... still in progress using the Cro-Hook. I love these as they crochet up super fast and have one color on one side and another color on the other. This is stitch #55 in the 101 Double Ended Hook Stitches book.
Here is my dishtowel. Lot's of fun. This pattern is called The Leftover Dishtowel, so you can use up leftover cotton, but it takes a full skein and I didn't even make it the correct size. I stopped after 11 pattern rows, turned it vertically and picked up stitches to make the top part. I also crocheted a little button to match. I used the new Sugar and Cream striping yarn.
And last photo...remember me telling you that my first try at the Felted Stained Glass Fan Bag had turned mobius. Well here is the proof. Ugh! and the Karaoke Yarn was so pretty!
Also, sharing with you a FREE Shipping Code for Herrschner's. Use B12 to get free shipping with a $35 order until December 24, 2007.
Christmas is fast approaching and I am knitting as fast as I can and still it won't be fast enough. I am going to have to resign myself to the fact that I only have two hands to knit with (sigh). There are so many things that I wish I had time to knit for my family and friends but I just won't have the time. I didn't have this dilemma last year, as last year I didn't know how to knit! Ha!
However, I have learned from this year's quandary to start no later than July on my Christmas knitting for next year.
As for blogging, well if I blog about what I am knitting, I risk the chance of one of the giftee's seeing what I am knitting and wondering is that for me? Haha! So, come the first of the year I will post photo's galore of everything I made...promise! Without giving too much away I am working on my first lace project. Thank goodness for lifelines! Also, I did learn to cable without using a cable needle and it is quite easy. Here is a video of that technique from knittinghelp.com. You can also find many more helpful knitting video's there.
Ok, last but not least I am sharing here the slide that Stacey made of our latest Charlotte Purl meeting. We really do enjoy our time of knitting together. I also asked my friend Aura to come and she did and we had a great time. She even got to converse with Carrie who is fluent in Spanish, which gave her a thrill. She said that Carrie's Spanish was excellent! Who knew? You go Carrie.
We had our first gentleman (Randal) to come and knit with us and he was working on a beautiful baby blanket. I taught Angela how to cro-hook using a double ended crochet hook. Diane was working on a bright red vest and finished the front during the meeting. Stacey and Wendy showed off their Kauji or should I say Obi's? Which by the way looked great on them. Fran was still working on her first Fetching wrist warmer! You better get busy Fran... Angela showed off her cool Yoga mat bag. Janet showed us her pretty green Fetching's and Stacey was wearing her beautiful dark red Fetching's. Dani showed off her BEauTiful new Namaste knitting bag. (which by the way I just ordered one... I am so bad!) She also had stopped by the post office and had purchased these really cool Holiday Knits stamps. Aura brought her modular coasters, a cute brown baby sweater and hat to show off and Carrie was knitting on her son's sweater. Stacey, Wendy and Fran were helping Judy refresh her knitting skills.
I showed Aura how to knit the berry stitch ( or known as the bramble, blackberry or trinity stitch) and here is a video showing how to accomplish it. It is on this page at Knitty Gritty about half way down on the right. The video for the Trinity Stitch.
A couple of ladies were sorely missed this last meeting and I hope to see them next time.
Thank you Sophia for bringing me the pattern! Thank you Fran for giving me the extra book you had!
