Ever Done the Nupp Stitch?

Yesterday, I received the link to this you-tube video. Have you ever done the Nupp(noop) stitch? I haven't but it looks like a pretty cool stitch to add texture to your knitting projects.




I hope everyone has had a safe and fun Memorial Day, with some time reflecting and being thankful to the brave soldiers who have given their lives in service to our country.

Painted Bags and My Spinning

Camp G-G ended with finished bags, full of yarn. Imagine that? Gramma filling the bags with yarn, some knitting needles and crochet hooks. I thought it a good idea, that I was starting the girls with their yarn stash early in life. :) The bags were painted by the girls and then the next day I added rhinestones to the bags. I used the Darice Gemstone Setter that I purchased at Joann's Fabrics. The girls were excited to have glitter added to their new bags.

I have to tell you, it was a precious sight for me, to go checking on the girls, to see what they were doing, and finding them sitting, knitting and crocheting. I loved seeing the creative juices flow in the projects this week.




Camp G-G is over. Daddy and Mommy came home from their cruise. Did I mention they were celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary with a cruise? CONGRATULATIONS! To Chad and Rebekah.

Saturday arrived and I was off to the Sassy Spinster in Lancaster, TX, with my Texas Twisters spinning group. Sassy Spinster is a wonderful yarn, fiber, weaving and spinning shop. The owner let us invade her store to spin. I say invade, because we were a group of about 11 people yesterday.

I carpooled down there with 2 other friends, Terri and Laurie. I met Laurie and then drove to another parking lot to meet up with Terri. Terri offered to drive to Lancaster, which is south of Dallas off of I-20.

Well, The UPS Store guy was wondering how 3 women, 3 spinning wheels, our fiber, our knitting, our snacks, our drinks(it is 90+ now in TX, so we take drinks everywhere), and our chairs would fit into a Toyota Prius! Yep, a Toyota Prius. Truthfully, Terri, Laurie and I wondered the same thing, so we had my Blazer as a back up.

I am happy to say that we did it! Yep, we got all of our stuff into the Prius and headed down to Lancaster.

I am still amazed at how much this Prius held. And if anyone from Toyota sees this, yes, we are available for an ad. LOL!!

Oh and I forgot to mention that we went shopping, of course. What woman doesn't shop, when in a store???? Then we browsed in other stores, too, and made some more purchases. If that wasn't enough, we also were bringing home 5 dozen eggs, total, not a piece. We managed to hook up with Mary of FancyFibers and purchased some of her wonderful farm fresh eggs.

Mary has a CSA(Community Supported Agriculture) farm. She is selling shares to her farm and you can find her info here. Her share purchase includes spinning fiber, if you are a spinner OR yarn if you are a knitter. Check out her info. You will receive other benefits too, and you will know where your yarn/fiber comes from. It will come from an independently owned farm in the USA. :)

Now back to the Sassy Spinster. We made it there and what a great day we had spinning. I took my Ashford Joy wheel, I packed small, knowing we were trying to take the Prius. It fit like a gem behind the front seat.

I have some great wool/mohair blend that I am spinning on it and managed to get this bobbin filled. I am aiming for a worsted weight yarn. We'll see what I end up with.

I do have a skein of the yarn plied and ready to go. Thought you might like to see it, too.

Weighing in at only 11 lbs. The Ashford Joy wheel is great to take places. It now comes, standard, with Ashford's new sliding hook flyer. If you would like an Ashford Joy, you can find them on my website.

Knitting, Crocheting and Painting

Another day of Camp G-G and we were busy again.

Here is our new knitter in action.

Here is our new crocheter in action.

Our arts and craft project for the day was painting tote bags, with our some of our favorite things on them.

N is putting names of her friends on hers.

C is using stars and hearts to decorate her bag.

Today we plan to put rhinestones on the bags! We have bubbles to play with AND a pool to swim in. We have been in the pool each day this week.

Camp Grampa and Gramma

Or as commonly known: Camp G-G, is now open. We are having lots of fun. The first day of camp we made fancy flip-flops by tying 5 inch to 6 inch ribbons on the straps.

We had pink, gold, ecru, blue, and polka dot ribbons to tie onto the flip-flops. Lot's of glittery ribbons. Here they are done! They are just fabulous.

Knitting and crocheting are also activities going on at Camp G-G. Here we have C's first knitting project. We decided it would be a shawl for her doll and we have added a button to it for a closure.

Tea Parties are a must at Camp G-G. We have lots of fun outfits to wear to tea.

Friday Night Play

The Public Library Children's Theatre

Presents

King Thrushbeard

by

The Brothers Grimm

I arrived early for the dinner and play and as I waited in my car, I looked up to see the flags that I had parked under. What a wonderful sight! I had to show you. Glistening in the sun with the gorgeous blue sky in the background.

Older sister was not in the play on Friday, but she would be in the play the next night as it would be performed two times. That way every child would get to perform. She was to play the princess on night two.

Younger sister was in the play I went to see. She played the character of the maid. She would open and close the curtains between the scenes and talk to the other maid about the story line. This Gramma thinks she did a fabulous job.

She is the one on the left in my pictures.

After the play her mom and dad gave her roses. A happy girl, who loved the play and asked immediately to be in next years production. :)

Good job!!!

In a Treasury

On etsy, a member can make a treasury of some of their favorite things. Treasuries help others see what items are for sale, without having to look to hard for them. They are fun to see and look at, because you see what others like.

Yesterday, I was in a treasury. My shop, http://www.terrificcreations.etsy.com/ was featured by http://www.cordovastudios.etsy.com/ in a great treasury. Not only that, but when I looked at the treasury, the first picture is my daughters shop, http://www.sunnybrookfarmdesign.etsy.com/ . That is fun to see. My friend, Mary, owns http://www.fancyfibers.etsy.com/ and she is in there too.

Thank you Kay for including us all in your Treasury!

SunnyBrookFarmDesign is the first picture on the left.
FancyFiber is the green mohair fluff on the top row, right.
CordovaStudios is the bottom row, right.
and
TerrificCreations(mine) is the center bottom row.

Happy Mothers' Day

HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY TO YOU!!

I am hoping that you had a wonderful and relaxing Mothers' Day today. We were able to go to brunch with our daughters and our oldest daughter's family. We had a wonderful time.

Being a creative person, I tried to instill creativity into our daughters when they were small. Both are very artistic and create wonderful items. It does this mother's heart good, to see the projects that they both work on. In turn, I love to see art being passed on to the next generation. Below is a necklace made for me by my younger granddaughter. She and her sister are blessings in our lives and I love my necklace. I put it on and wore it into the Cheesecake Factory, with pride and happiness. :)

Do you ever hit a road block when you are working on a project? I do. These past few weeks, while I have been trying to work on knitting and writing a new pattern, I hit a road block of frustration. First off, I made my first 2 prototypes from a yarn, that doesn't really have a typical gauge. I discovered this after the fact.

I wrote the pattern using the gauge for that yarn, only to discover that when I tried to make a third (yes third) one, that the new yarn didn't meet the gauge of the first two items and it was knitting up toooooo loooooose. :) Sooo, I added a new gauge and size to the pattern. THEN, when finished, I discovered that the yarn I had just used, didn't really meet any other gauge either. So, at this point, I decided I would have to knit this item yet again. Yep, a fourth time.......... This time using yarns that have normal gauges for their size. You know, like a real worsted weight, or a real fingering weight, not an acrylic/mohair blend or a fluffy cotton yarn. Yep, that is what I had done. At this point, I was also wondering where my brain had gone. Do you see it anywhere???? So..... I put it all down(no I didn't throw it at the wall) and decided to do something fun.

Here are my fun dolls. The first one that I made is in the center. She was actually made 10 years ago for my oldest granddaughter, but had lost her clothing, while being played with. First, she had a pretty new dress knitted and embellished for her. Then onto 2 new dolls.

None of the dolls have a name. Anyone have any ideas?

And going on with family creativity. My SIL, painted my gorgeous teapot, the matching tray and 2 matching mugs, that the dolls are using for chairs.

One of these days, my new pattern will be able to be seen. It will be funny, when I introduce it to you, because it looks like it should be the easiest thing in the world to write. AND it should've been, except I used unusual yarns. :)

Canton Revisited

Last weekend was the First Monday Trade Days in Canton, TX. My oldest daughter and I like to travel over there a couple of times a year, to see what treasures we can find. We usually have a list of what we are looking for, because it is very easy to lose track of what we need. This time, we both came back hauling large bags of doilies. She plans to use hers in a slightly different way than me. But, both will be creative. I have mine washed and dried, but that is as far as I have gotten.

I found several other items there, but no big furniture purchases for either of us this time.

However, here is an item I was truly shocked to find. The phrase, "One man's trash is another man's treasure," is fitting here. This is a great picture, for a knitter anyway. There is an older woman, who we would assume is the grandma, teaching a much younger person how to knit socks.

I had picked up the picture to take a look and then put it down, thinking about it. The man in the booth decreased, yep, he decreased the price and said, "The frame is probably worth more than that. The picture is not valuable." :) That is when, the knitter in me came out. I was thinking, "Well, the frame may or may not be valuable, it is dirty and old, that is for sure. BUT, the picture is what interests me." So, I said, "OK, I'll take it." Here is a picture, of the cleaned up frame and picture.



The second item that I wanted to show you is this tiny doily. The diameter is about 5 to 6 inches. Lying above the doily is a toothpick, to give you an idea of the doily's size. This doily looks handknitted. The yarn used by the knitter, looks to be cotton sewing thread. It is that fine or finer. My guess is that the knitting needles were about a 0000. Truly a tiny needle.

Wildflowers

In Texas, we love our wildflowers. As a matter of fact, our state flower, the Bluebonnet, is a wildflower. Sometimes, when the spring arrives and the grass starts to grow, people will say, "Cut your weeds! Your lawn looks terrible." But, if you let it go and see what happens, you may find, like our neighborhood did, that you have quite a collection of gorgeous wildflowers.


About a week and a half ago, our oldest daughter and her daughters came over for a visit. As you enter our neighborhood, your eyes feast on color, glorious color! The wildflowers are in full bloom and they are all over the fields at the entrance to the neighborhood.

Upon seeing the gorgeous flowers, the girls wanted to pick wildflowers. They came excitedly into the house asking, "Gramma, can we go and pick wildflowers?" So, we did. They each had a gorgeous bouquet of flowers to take home with them. Below is the picture of both of their bouquets together.

What do you think????
Do you like the wildflowers?