WIP Wednesday

Okay, time for my weekly project update. I haven't done much knitting this week, but I am charging up for a marathon week of knitting while I drive to visit my family for Thanksgiving. Here's where things stand:

My "Lady of the Lake" jacket is coming along nicely. I have the back finished and I am just starting the first half of the front. Very easy and enjoyable knitting.

The "Autumn Sail" socks are also coming along. As you can see I am just to the toe of the first sock, but this is perfect road-trip knitting (remember the 10 hour car trip this Saturday?).

And my last "must-be-complete-by-the-end-of-the-month" project, my Ravelry mittens, well...here:

I need to do my swatch before Saturday, but at least I got my yarn ready. Socks and mittens, good for traveling!

What are you listening to?

I got a new toy. An ipod shuffle. I am so excited. I listen to a lot of audiobooks while I knit and before today, I was listening to them through my PDA. On the one hand this was good because I always have my PDA with me. But, it's big and cumbersome to listen to when your moving. So my dear, sweet hubby got me an ipod shuffle. It is so small and portable--I hope I don't loose it...

Here's what I've listened to over the past 6 month:
1. and 2. Angela's Ashes and Tis by Frank McCourt (and narrated by Mr. McCourt). I absolutely loved these, as sad as they were at times. I am sure I would not have enjoyed them as much if Mr. McCourt had not been the narrator, but he was, and they were both great.
3. Suite Francaise: A Novel by Irene Nemirovsky. This was a slow read/listen (I was doing both), but a good story in the end. I read this as part of Purl Diva's book club and then sadly missed the book get-together.

4. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I thought this book would never end, but I had to finish it.
5. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off: The Yarn Harlot's Guide to the Land of Knitting by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. Quick and fun. I loved it, of course.

Now I'm starting The Whole World Over by Julia Glass. I'm a little nervous because it is 22 hours long, yes-22 hours long. But I loved Three Junes by JG so I am giving it a try. I just started today--I'll let you know how it's going next week. I hope my new shuffle has a strong battery!

Misc Monday

For today's "Misc Monday" theme, I thought I'd discuss my favorite knitting time. Please keep in mind that as I type this, the 3 kids are not in school today, so an uninterrupted train of thought will not be possible for me.

I will knit any time I am awake enough and get a chance, but if I had to pick my favorite time, it would be first thing in the morning, while enjoying a cup of coffee and some nice music or an audio book. Everyone in the house would still be asleep (including the dogs) for at least another hour. I love knitting in the morning.

My favorite knitting spot is in a comfy chair with good lighting. The lighting becomes more and more important to my eyes with age.

I haven't mentioned this yet, but we will be moving in about a month. I cannot wait to set up my yarn studio in our new home. The room has excellent morning sun and great windows. I am really excited!

Speechless Sunday: Book review continued...

Photos from Super Stitches Knitting by Karen Hemingway

Book Review: Super Stitches Knitting

Of course I do not need another knitting book, especially a stitch pattern book. But the pictures in this book are so pretty! I do not have time to scan some pictures for you right now, but who knows what "Speechless Sunday" will bring...

Super Stitches Knitting by Karen Hemingway contains over 300 stitch patterns, including basic knit and purl stitches to ornamental, stitches, textured colorwork, edgings, lace, and the list goes on. The reason I needed to buy this book is the beautiful pictures of each stitch pattern. And the directions for each pattern are clear and well explained: there are written and chart instructions (where you would expect charts). I can't wait to have a couple of hours to go through this book and dream up some new designs!

Knitting topic: Fixing mistakes

It's happened to me more than once: I'm knitting along on a cable or lace project and suddenly I see it. Sometimes it's only a couple of rows down, sometimes it's as many as 10 rows below-- a mistake. Maybe a cable facing the wrong way or just a missing YO, but once I see the mistake, that's all I ever see in that project. At that point I have 3 options:

1. ignore it (if you know me, you know this is not really an option)
2. frog or tink back as many rows as it takes
3. drop just the stitches I need to fix, fix them and carry them back up in pattern.

I was never brave enough for #3 until this past summer when I was knitting MS3 (Swan Lake Stole). I decided to give it a try and now there's no going back. I definitely feel empowered to have this technique in my knitting arsenal.

Here's a great tutorial from Boogie Knits: Click here

If you haven't done it, try it. It's really not as hard as you fear it to be.

Knitty bonus patterns

Knitty just posted 3 bonus patterns! I love "Oblique" by Veronik Avery (click here to see it). As I work out of my home studio, the description of this cardigan is calling me. I am thinking this will be on my needles in January. Anyone want to join me?

WIP: November Socks and Lady of the Lake Jacket

Before I 'show and tell' my knitting WIPs, I need to 'show and tell' my youngest human wip:

Carter, my little guy, turns 7 today.

It will be impossible for my knitting to compare to the above WIP, but here's what I'm working on. I have 3 projects to finish in the month of November:

1. November SAM (Sock-a-month). I didn't start my October sock until the last week of the month, so I am happy this pair is under way so early. I am loving this yarn and the pattern is a lot of fun.


2. My Ravelry Mitten Exchange mittens. I haven't started these yet, but the yarn is finally in and I know what I'm making. Hopefully I'll cast on this weekend.

3. NaKniSweMo Sweater: Lady of the Lake. I haven't spent much time on this, but here is the result of 1 night of knitting:


And to make sure we close on a happy note, one more shot of young Carter from this morning at school:

Happy birthday Bubba!

Honey harvest

I have been meaning to post these pictures for a while, but haven’t had the time until now. Do you know what this is?

It’s honey harvesting at Buzz and Fuzz! Honey harvesting is definitely my favorite fall chore. Of course I didn’t think to take pictures of the process until the last step. Hopefully I’ll remember that next year.

A quick and brief summary of the honey harvesting process:
1. Remove the honey supers from the hives.
2. Cut the caps off the top of the honey comb.
3. Spin the honeycomb/frames in an extractor.
4. Strain the honey, bottle, and enjoy.

In my humble opinion, there is no honey as sweet as the honey from a backyard beehive!

Misc Monday

It’s “Misc Monday” here at BuzzandFuzz: a day to tie up loose ends. Today’s loose end is my “Twined Sweetheart Mittens”. But first, an announcement…

I got a shipment of Fleece Artist “Blue Face Leicester Aran” in this morning (7 colorways)! I love this yarn. It’s a great all-around wool and my favorite wool for twined knitting (even though it is “S” twist and not “Z” twist). It is so soft and the colors are gorgeous. I can’t wait to work on some designs with this yarn. Click here to order some for yourself!

Done with the shameless advertising, now on to the knitting. I finished up these mittens last month:

I am really happy with how they came out. The picture doesn’t do a very good job of showing the detail, so I tried to hand draw a sketch (I know, I’m not an artist):

The Mora yarn takes on new life after soaking and blocking. I would imagine that these mittens will become even nicer with time and handling. I wrote the pattern for sizes woman’s small – men’s Xlarge. The XL men’s mittens used exactly 1 skein of Mora yarn. I have a few skeins of Mora available as kits with the pattern: click here.

And because it is “Misc Monday”, here is a random question: Are you a football fan? If so, College, Pro, or both? My answer: I am a huge Pro football fan. It’s what I look forward to in the fall. I love knitting on Sundays while watching the game.

Speechless

http://metaatem.net/words

Honey recipes: fall soups

With the new DreamWorks Animation "Bee Movie" being released this week, honey bees should be receiving a lot of attention (and they need it...we'll talk about that later). As a beekeeper, I can't wait to take the kids to this movie!

In the meantime, I thought I'd share some great fall soup recipes with you from the National Honey Board website (all with honey as an ingredient, of course).

Vegetarian Chili
Curried Honey Sweet Potato Soup
Butternut Squash Soup

Click here to look through all of the National Honey Board recipes.

Enjoy!

Japanese knitting patterns

It's Friday and today's interesting (to me) knitting topic is Japanese knitting patterns. I don't know what it is about Japanese knitting books and magazines, but I love them. Japanese patterns are all charted and are standardized by Japan Industrial Standard (or JIS). So once you can translate most of the chart, you can figure out the basics of the pattern. I've listed the websites I use below. Most of them are from "Tata & Tatao".

1. Basics of Japanese Knitting
2. Two kinds of charts, detailed and simplified
3. Charts and knitting instruction - back & forth / circular
4. Hatched or curved line - shaping on the edge
5. Decreasing and increasing in the middle of fabric
6. Chart symbols
7. Basics from Habu Textiles
8. To translate a page from Japanese to English, I use babel fish

Here's an example of a free Japanese pattern (pdf): click here.
(in order to view this page, Adobe reader will need to download the Japanese character set).

I currently have 3 Japanese knitting books and 2 issues of a Japanese quarterly magazine (each issue has over 60 patterns!). They are so well diagrammed and illustrated that I'm sure I could make it through a project, although I haven't made the leap yet. Maybe that should be my New Year challenge...anyone up for it?

NaBloPoMo

It's here...the National Blog Posting Month challenge. My intent is not to bore you, but rather to get into the habit of blogging. I work best under pressure and I hope by writing everyday this month (under pressure), blogging 2-3 times per week will seem easy.

Here's my rough draft for the month:
Mondays: "Misc Monday"
Tuesday: A day in the life of Angela the beekeeper
Wednesday: "WIP Wednesday"
Thursday: A day in the life of Angela the angora rabbit farmer
Friday: Interesting knitting topics (interesting to me anyway...)
Saturday: All about honey (fun facts and recipes)
Sunday: "Speechless Sunday"

If you have any knitting, angora rabbit, or beekeeping questions you've been dying to ask, now is the time!

November is also National Knit a Sweater in a Month. The only part of the sweater you could do before November is the swatch:
I will be knitting the "Lady of the Lake" Jacket this month. It should be do-able--it's done on US 11 needles and knit side to side. I will be casting on this weekend.