Knitter Bunny's™ Dutch Rabbits and Yarns

While I was home for Christmas (which we celebrated closer to New Year’s), my mom and I spent some time at a little antique store close to her home.  I was delighted to find several tatted doilies, a couple of tatting shuttles, and a darning egg.  Plus one lovely tape lace (bobbin lace) doily with a little square of cutwork in the middle.

I’m always on the lookout for these treasures when I go to an antique store.  I rarely find anything, but I always look.  Some days I hit the jackpot and bring home a load of antique needlework.  There are always many crocheted items and occasionally the odd knitted item.  Tatting and bobbin lace are more rare though.  Once in a while I do collect an especially beautiful example of crochet or knitting, but I really focus on rescuing the better tatting and bobbin lace that I find.

I’m still looking for old Work Baskets, Pieceworks, and books or pamphlets with tatting in them.  I have found few so far, but it’s always fun hunting for them.

I ventured out on Saturday to take a few pictures of the ice limning the various plants around the house.  We had quite a layer of ice on everything, but by the afternoon the ice had melted from the driveway and roads.  So, we ventured out.  It was a lovely date night at Costco, Best Buy, and GameStop followed by dinner at one of the best Thai restaurants we have found.

At least the rest of the week is predicted to be warmer.

I make a lot of socks.  For those of you who have followed this blog for a while, this will come as no surprise.  Many of those socks found homes with other people, but I’ve also kept quite a few myself.  My socks are starting to show their age and holes/ thin spots are appearing in many of them.

So, I took a class on darning.  Then I darned all of my holey socks.  Then more socks developed holes.  So, I decided maybe there were other people who had holey socks and needed to know how to darn them.

With this thought, I made a video class on Skillshare.  So, if you needed to learn this pretty simple, but important skill, you can check it out.

I know, that isn’t much of a surprise is it?

My mom and sister-in-law saved tomatoes for me when they were overwhelmed this fall and I took those frozen tomatoes and turned them into 10.5 quarts of roasted tomato sauce.  Not too bad for them, but I was certainly not feeling well when I went to make the first batch.  I think I ate something that disagreed with me.  Not a wonderful feeling when faced with gallons of thawing tomatoes.

In any case, I did make the sauce and it does taste lovely.  Now to deliver it next month and clean off my table!

Welcome the Camas Flower Shawl to the Kelli Slack Designs line up.  It’s a glorious shawl in Estonian stitch patterns with nupps and twisted stitches.  Lightweight and lofty in luxurious BFL and silk, this shawl is sure to become a favorite.

Camas flowers are a beautiful native wild flower in the Pacific Northwest. Once used by the native peoples as a staple food, the flowers are now enjoyed as a welcome harbinger of summer.

This shawl evokes the ethereal and fleeting beauty of the camas flower. The nupps evoke the open flowers and stalks that rise from the bulb. The twisted stitch ground between the flowers represents the other woodland and priarie plants that may be found near fields of camas. I chose a lovely blue for my shawl, though not the blue of true camas flowers. However, this shawl would look equally lovely in any other color.

This pattern is meant for intermediate knitters to experienced knitters and all those in-between. Please read the entire pattern before beginning.

Find your copy here!

I made this lovely pan of cranberry pecan bars. Then our Christmas was canceled.  So, I had this pan sitting at my house for a week until we went to my parents for Christmas.  I ate half the pan.

I’m not exactly proud of this fact, but I did spread it out over a week, so at least it wasn’t too much of a binge.  I was heartily sick of cranberry pecan bars though. So, I gave them away at the rabbit show.  They just had to go away.  I’m not sure I will be able to eat cranberry pecan bars again for another year. lol

If you want the recipe, I highly recommend checking out Carol Julius’ blog.  She posts great recipes on occasion.

Every year I try to do a year-end accounting of what I have knit or how many projects I have knit.  This year is no different. Note: I’m not counting the washclothes.  Those things are like tribbles and I just keep making more.  My current obsession is the Almost Lost Washcloth Mini.  I think I have cranked out at least 20-30 of these things throughout the year.  They make lovely little gifts and are helping me to work through that pile of cotton I bought a while back. Ahem. In any case, here is what I finished this year, in no certain order!

• Scarf-6
• Hat-7
• Socks-10
• Shawl- 6
• Cowl- 4
• Cardigan- 1
• Shrug-1
• Blanket- 1
• Mitts-1

37 finished projects and 33 new patterns.  Not too shabby for a year. Huh? Wow.  33 new patterns.  That brings me to a total of 78 published patterns.  I’m not sure how prolific I will be next year, but I think 22 would be ok. 🙂  That would bring me to 100 published patterns.  Oh, and did you catch the new book?  I’ll be releasing it in Feb.  How exciting is that?