Save the date to join us on the sidewalk at Love.Yarn.Shop. for World-Wide Knit in Public Day. Starting at 11:00, we’ll be knitting or crocheting street-side! Bring your chair, lunch, and project. I’ll provide lemonade/iced tea and cookies. We’ll move indoors if it rains. See you then!
For many of us, the summer of fiber festivals is heralded in by the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival in Deerfield on Mother’s Day weekend, May 13th and 13th. I look forward to the lobster rolls, also first of the season for me, as much as I look forward to reconnecting with my favorite dyers, admiring the animals, and keeping my eye out for something new and unusual. We’ll be carpooling from Love.Yarn.Shop. at 9:00 on Sunday morning. Call to reserve a space in one of the vehicles. If you haven’t been to this festival before, check out this year’s booklet on their website. http://nhswga.com/sites/default/files/2017_booklet_online.pdf
The Pussy Hat project was so successful that a number of scientists who are knitters (or knitters who happen to be scientists?) have designed hats, headbands, and armbands with symbols that reflect their field. You can find them here. Here’s a link for information about the March for Science on April 22nd. However, other marches are being held more locally in Lancaster and Concord.
As the snow melts, trash begins appearing on our roadsides, and I remember the Keep America Beautiful campaign which was so vocal in my childhood to counter the litter problem. Every Earth Day, local groups–church youth groups, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts–would walk the roads picking up trash. So while walking, or marching, don’t forget a receptacle to pick up the trash you pass.
Plans for the 2nd Annual Great Northern Yarn Haul are in the works. Thus far, 22 shops will be participating. Unfortunately one shop, White River Yarns, closed, but we have picked up 7 new shops, including What a Yarn in St. Albans, Scratch in Lebanon, Ewe-forium in Newport, Mountain Fiber Folk in Montgomery Center, The Yarn Sellar in York, and Whippletree Yarn Shop in Woodstock. Check out Great Northern Yarn Haul’s Facebook page to keep updated.
It’s not all about knitting and crocheting. There is needle felting, too. Needle felting is when you use a barbed needle to poke unspun wool into a desired shape. If you search on line, especially Pinterest, you will see beautiful examples of needle-felted figures, usually animals. I can’t guarantee your needle felted sheep will look as good as those, but I can guarantee that you’ll leave the class with one. We’ll be needle-felting on Saturday, April 8th, from 10:30-12:00. $10 covers the materials and instructions.
As the snow begins to melt, we are turning our minds to pulling down the bird feeders and planting seeds. However, there is no need to turn our minds completely from our feathered friends. Soon they will be making their nests and you can assist them by hanging roving-filled nesting balls from the trees in your backyard. Nesting balls should be filled with natural fibers: roving, 3” pieces of natural woven fibers, feathers, fur, and straw all make good stuffing for the nesting balls. You don’t want synthetic material, nylon, long pieces of yarn or string, dyed materials, or dryer lint. Love.Yarn.Shop. has nesting balls filled with wool roving for sale for $8, and assuming the birds don’t take the ball itself, they are refillable.
The rich palette from Quince & Co, out of Biddeford, Maine, Sparrow, is reminiscent of Italian Rococo art: the warm, saturated colors have names like Port, Venice, Butternut, and Eleuthera. If you are looking for a finger weight fiber for a summer garment, this may be it. LYS will be having a trunk show, with garments and patterns, starting the 8th of May, but yarn and patterns are in the shop now for you to check out.
Besides all the other knitting North Country women have been doing lately–Christmas gifts, pink hats–they have also been knitting “lapghans” (small afghans for covering the lap), for the Oncology Department at Littleton Regional Hospital. The lapghans will be given to patients who have to sit for long periods of time while receiving their infusions. Yesterday, I delivered 16 knitted, crocheted, or woven lapghans. We have a number still on the needles and look forward to delivering them next month. A group of us, called the North Country Fiber Forum, meet once a month to work together on current charity projects. Our new project is knitting 6 x 6.25″ squares for Project Amigo http://www.projectamigo.org. These squares will be put together as an afghan the size of a twin bedspread and given to each family of sponsored students in Colima, Mexico. Our next gathering is February 19th at 1:00 at LYS. Join us!
(with a nod to Rodgers & Hammerstein)
Skeins in a basket and needles nearby,
patterns stacked up high in a pile,
the smiles that a hand knitted hat brings:
these are a few of my favorite things.
Norwegian sweaters and Fair-Isle gloves,
headbands and cowls the whole family loves,
knitting with cashmere and fancy stitch rings:
these are a few of my favorite things.
Hand knit stockings hanging beside the tree,
crocheted afghans draped across the settee,
angels in the garland with roving wings:
these are a few of my favorite things.
When the wind bites,
when the news stings,
when I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
and then I don’t feel so bad.
Love.Yarn.Shop. 