HMF

It’s Hand Made Friday! What hand made pieces did you wear today? I'm wearing silver filigree earrings made by a silversmith in The Netherlands.

Phoebe, Bea, and Jay

It's nesting season for Phoebe in Southern California and you can see her chicks as they grow at an amazing rate.

Bea and Jay hatched on January 18 & 20.

Springtime

Spring officially starts on March 20 in the Northern Hemisphere and through the magic of web cams we can expand our view and see spring events near and far:

Poppy's curly colt was born yesterday in TN. I tuned in just in time to see it happen. That was amazing.




Phoebe the Channel Islands Allen's Hummingbird is in Orange County, CA. Her 2 eggs are expected to hatch at any time. The nest is the size of a golf ball and the eggs are as small as tic tacs. I'm really looking forward to this one.




Molly the Barn Owl is in San Marcos, CA. She's sitting on 5 eggs that are expected to hatch at any time. Molly's cam has an infrared feed which allows viewing at night.

Where's the snowman? There's the snowman!

Remember the Snowman Illusion Mitts?


Palms


Backs


Snowmen!
Project Details on Ravelry

I was knitting them for Margit for a photo shoot and look where they ended up--in a KnitPicks Mitten Class video!



The pattern is available from the KnitPicks Independent Designer Patterns - $1.99 series: Snowman Illusion Mitten.

The mittens were quick and easy to knit and the pair used less than a skein of Palette in each color.

Interested? Click here: Snowman Illusion Mitten Pattern.

For your viewing pleasure

Hey, unless all you're carrying is YARN...

The great thing about using a DVR is being able to skip over commercials like this one.

Hey Denis (and Ford), so what if all I'm carrying is yarn?! Don't underestimate the size of the stash or the purchasing power of a fiber fanatic.

A Sheep in Sheep's Clothing

Attn feline fanciers

Ever wonder why you wake up with a headache (or a black eye)?


First seen on Casting Away.

EweTube

Parents, you may want to screen this before letting the little ones see it.

We laughed, we cried

Saturday evening was the big send-off for our beloved Kristi and her husband Andy. They'll be leaving for Boulder, CO soon--Boulder-ites, you have no idea how lucky you are.

Spinnity generously opened her house to the local knitters and their spouses and hosted like she didn't have a 4AM wake-up call the next morning for her 2 week trip to Canada. (But of course she did.)


Our illustrious hostess, Spinnity

True to form there was lots of laughter, great food & drink, and a few surprises which brought out loud, uncontrollable laughter. (My apologies to Mary's neighbors.) I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard.


Friends gather


Rachel, Freecia, Cookie & Hollis


Rachel & Cookie


Seltsame, Jill, Abigail, and Hannah

The theme was knitting and spinning (what else?) and it was reflected in the food. Let's see what I can remember (because I didn't take photos of the food). We had deviled eggs where the yolks were yarn balls and each had a pair of mini-knitting needles in them, alpaca shaped pretzels, a lamb-shaped cake, sheep-shaped cookies, along with other goodies like frog's eye salad, veggies & dip, fruit salad, guac & chips, tandoori chicken, and marinated mushrooms & veggies. I'm sure there was other food as well--forgive me if I left out your treat and feel free to leave a comment.

I brought the mushroom dish. The initial plan was to make mushroom skewers in the shape of spindles. But when I saw number of attendees, I went into action with Plan B: Marinated Olives, Red Bell Pepper, Artichoke Hearts and Mushrooms and a mushroom spindle for display.

For the record, spinning corn silk is a challenge.

Portobello spindle with corn silk

We showed our love for Kristi with a few tokens of appreciation, some of which I was able to capture.


Spinning Books


A "talking" ram


Colorado Guide Books


Shear Panic


Chasing Rainbow Roving

IMHO, one of the sweetest moments of the evening was when Kristi opened the present from all--plane tickets for her to come back and visit us.

She'll be back

But tears were soon replaced with laughter and we ate, knit, and talked through the night. It was quite a send off, there's no arguing that. Visit these blogs to see and read more about the party (like the pinata--gotta see the pinata) and be sure to take a look at Freecia's YouTube video of Kristi's sheep encounter.

• Abigail
• Cindy
• Cookie
• Freecia
• Jeni
• Jill
• Lori

I have one more post that's in post-production. Here's a preview.

Ewe go girl!