Mill City Skill Share

Next Sunday is the Mill City Skill Share, a series of free community workshops including a super-fun knitting class led by Yovani and me. If you’re local, you should definitely come out and play! More information and a complete list of workshops can be found on Mill City Skill Share’s site.

A number expressing the ratio of the circumference of a perfect circle to its diameter (or any excuse to make and eat pie!)

It’s a big holiday week ’round these parts: today is, of course, St. Patrick’s day (and I will be celebrating my Irish heritage by eating as many potatoes as possible, hopefully in the form of colcannon and boxty) and Monday was my favorite sort-of-about-math-but-really-about-food holiday of them all: Pi Day! Yay pie!

In honor of this very serious and important holiday, I made not one, but two pies for supper: pizza pie…

…and buttermilk pie.

Christmas Craftacular

Gist and I wanted our gifts to be yummy, personal, green, and hand-made so we did a home-made version of the famous Tower of Treats packed in a reusable shopping bag.

Depending on their interests/tastes/whether they own a dog, people got:

 
• Home-made cocktail/soda mixers, either Roasted Cranberry-Clove, Citrus-Herb, Brown Sugar-Clementine;

Yarn, Beer, Maple Cotton Candy & Cheese Fest 2010

AKA Rhinebeck Weekend was amazing, a perfect couple of days away!

There was beer,

Sheep,

Cashmere,

Sweater Weather

Guess where I’ll be in just three short days?

The most wonderful place in the world! Yup, it’s that time of the year again: NY Sheep & Wool Festival aka Rhinebeck Weekend!

I am looking forward to so many things: spending time with some of my favorite people, maple cotton candy, the lovely yarn, the Ravelry party, the many, many opportunities to drink local beer, the sheepdog agility displays, the Taconic State Parkway, being surrounded by so many fiber folks *sigh*

Time flies…

I am having a hard time believing that tomorrow is October 1st, especially as it is currently very warm and muggy here in Lowell. I know that most people like to hold on to the warm temperatures of summer for as long as possible, but I can’t wait to see the snow!

This past month has been all about adjusting to life with Simon. Gist and I are both so in love with him, but living with a high-energy dog has been quite a change for us. We’re up and out for our two-mile morning walk by 6:30 am, we head home at lunchtime to give him a brief walk/bathroom break, and we generally take another 1.5 to two-mile walk in the evening.

One of my favorite parts about all this walking (other than spending time with Simon, of course) is the fact that many of our walks now take place in the state forest.

Oh, hi there…

Wow, it’s been a long time! Summer has been trucking along nicely, the Lowell Folk Festival was, as always, amazing. My favorite act was the Beat Ya Feet Kings with Black Alley. The Beat Ya Feat Kings were finalists on America’s Best Dance Crew and they did not disappoint!

Henrietta and I are still in love.

I decided to dip my feet into the analog/film pool, with mixed results (more on that later.)

Ishbel

Ishbel is finished!

SPA 2010

The end of February means one thing to me – Nance and I head up to Maine for SPA!  SPA is a lovely, relaxing, fiberiffic weekend hosted every February by NETA (New England Textila Arts).

It’s a mellow weekend; there’s no schedule, instead it’s all about filling three hotels with folks who love to knit and spin, some spa vendors, a wonderful mercantile, and a fun fashion show.  It’s just the thing to calm those winter blues (if you are the type to get winter blues…)

SPA is cocktails and knitting…

Quincy

I went and made myself a hat!

Pattern: Quincy by Jared Flood (aka Brooklyn Tweed)
Yarn: Classic Elite Ariosa
Raveled here.

I’m calling this hat “Mood Lifter.” I bought the yarn last Friday after a terrible, rotten, no-good day. It was my first yarn purchase for myself in, ummmmmm, over a year…

The yarn itself is a lovely, lofty, single-ply, barely-spun merino and cashmere blend. It was lovely to work with, and the hat is light and warm – I can barely feel it on my head.

The pattern was well-written, easy to follow and interesting enough that I looked forward to finishing but simple enough that I could work on it while watching teevee or enjoying a beer/glass of wine/cocktail.  That being said, there are a few errors in the final product: they stem directly from my strong dislike of Kitchener stitch and my *ahem* inability to count.