You're in the right place!

How do you like my new look? Pretty good, huh? A few weeks ago I stumbled on Karen's Blog and noticed that she designed graphics for knitters blogs on the side. Well since you couldn't get more boring than my plain white blog, I decided to have her make me a banner and button! Didn't she do an awesome job? I decided to re-title the blog "Fiber Therapy" since I had been a full time Therapist before kids and still dabble in counseling and mental health in my part time role as Support & Recovery Director at my church. Being a busy mom, I often need my own escape and all things fiber have pretty much been my therapy...so with that theme, she was off and running. Thanks Karen, It looks great!

Cake and Presents

The Birthday Princess had a wonderful time at her party last weekend. She had 4 princesses and 5 knights in attendence (two of which were her brothers.) The children made crowns, sheilds and necklaces. And they all fought the pinata dragon (We have warrior princesses here!) And the haul of goodies she got was amazingly girly. She was loving it!
But I got a few presents myself!!!
Last week, The kids and I meet two of my knitting friends from Knitting Help Andrea and Julie and her children at The Fine Line for some yarn shopping! What a fabulous place. It specializes in teaching fiber arts as well as pottery and some drawing and painting. The kids and I went poking in the weaving room. I am fascinated by weaving and those huge looms just look overwhelming to me. I would LOVE to take a weaving class there to demystify the art of weaving a bit. Attached to the art school is a fiber shop. They have an amazing selection of yarns! It was so tempting to take a huge bag home with me! But remembering my yarn diet I decided to buy this instead:

I figured spinning fiber wasn't yarn yet, right! So it didn't count. The spindle is a louet student spindle that can be spun as both a high and a low whorl. I can't remember what the fiber is but it looked pretty. It is a pencil roving and after being assured that it was spinnable without falling apart I decided I had to get it!
And just to add more goodies to my stash...the mailman brought me my Secret Pal Goodies!

Check out those awesome goodies! Catherine has got to be the best pal. (Yes I know who she is...she told me.......)Remember my Hint Gift from my last package. The single skein of Cascade and two patterns that take only one skein....Well if I were on my toes (which I wasn't) I would have figured out that the One Skein was the clue...This package was themed from the book One Skein. My Package included the book as well as a single skein each of Classic Yarn Cashsoft Baby Dk in blue and one in tan (I have a nephew on the way to arrive in November so that will get put to good use!), a skein of Baby Silk in Black and a skein of Knit Picks Alpaca Cloud in Autumn. Catherine is also a Texan so she included a Texas shaped sucker for each one of the kiddlets! (They are very appreciative btw.) Two packages of Texas Coffee and a package of Spicy hot Texas Style Peanuts (That my husband gobbled down immediately!!!) She also included another hint gift that she graciously allowed me to open right away. (Thanks for that!) It was two skeins of Knit Picks Sock Garden in Morning Glory. So now to take our guesses as to the theme of the last box...Hmmm....is socks too obvious?

Looking to waste some time.

I am working at getting the house ready for a herd of 5-7 year olds that will be stampeding my house tomorrow afternoon. We are having my 5 yo dd's Princesses and Knights birthday party and I am very much NOT ready for this. I always get stressed out over the kids parties. Why do I let that happen? So instead of doing something constructive, here I am.
I got an email today from Jen Logan, my Secret Pal 8 hostess. She is having a contest to keep participants blogging...so of course I have to do my part! (I can always clean the house later!) We each need to post the answers to some question on our blog for a chance to win a skein of STR! Whoo Hoo! So here is mine:

1. What is your favorite season of the year and why?

Summer, hands down! I LOVE the HOT weather. (I absolutely hate to be cold!)Summer is when the kids are outside playing and I get to be outside gardening. I love that we don't need to mess with hats and gloves and coats and all of that! I love that we get to do less school! We are homeschoolers and so summer is when we get to kick back and take it easy. We still do some work but much less and just the basics.

2. Summer is hot. What do you knit in the summer?

Socks are my favorite thing to knit anytime of the year! I love to knit socks. But I also work on pretty much anything. I usually don't do huge projects anyways....I am a bit ADD when it comes to knitting projects and dont have the attention span to complete huge things. However this summer my mom and I got the bright idea to make an afghan for a bridal shower this fall. We are each making squares to seam into the afghan. This has been KILLING me! I have 5 more squares to do and less than a month to do it in! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

3. If money was no object.....what would you buy at the LYS?

Well after I bought sock yarn in each brand/colorway they carry....Hmm. I am still thinking I must own some type of shrug or cardi in Mmmalabrigo. I don't know I guess the short answer is as much yarn as I can manage to carry home.

4. What are some activities that have become family traditions for your family?

One of the kids favorites and easiest traditions is the Candle of Honor...I don't even know where I came up with this idea, but we have a candle that sits on our kitchen table and if one of the kids does something special or behaves extra nice, etc...we light the candle in their honor during dinner. They LOVE this.

5. What is the weather right now?

Grey and overcaste and in the mid 80's

Knitting with Friends

I got an entire day to get away from responsibilities and knit with friends!

A number of wonderful knitting friends from Knitting Help got together at Mosaic Yarn Studio in Des Plaines, IL for our quasi-regular knit together! This was a largest group yet. We had 10 knitters from the Chicagoland area...well 9...Sara Jayne came all the way from DesMoines, Iowa!

Not only was a great time had by all but I managed to pick up 3 skeins of South West Trading Co's Bamboo in Plum for the Lotus Blossom Tank from Interweave! Yeah (Sorry I'm too lazy at the moment to take a picture and hook up the camara.)

The felting cure?

I decided to try and use my first homespun yarn. Now as far as yarn goes this stuff barely qualifies...yet I made it with my two little hands. So of course I have to find something I could use it for. It is super think and barely spun in some places and super thin and over spun in others, so I decided I could only use it for felting. After all felting hides all things, right? Well I hope so. I started on a booga bag last weekend....

It is really AWEFUL to knit with. It's pretty scratchy stuff.

I'm wondering if felting will help this? Or is it "unhelpable?" Stay tuned and we'll find out...

Felting & Spinning Fiber

While reading on Knitting Help Forums, I found this fabulous Link for felting around a bar of soap. Looking at all the great mountain of suds this produces and thinking of the mess it would make, I know immediately that this was a FABULOUS project for the kids and I on a hot day OUTSIDE!!! How fun does that look?!?! So I went looking for somewhere I can order just a handful of fiber is a variety of colors. I found this Ebay Seller and bought some fiber. Look at all the pretty colors!

I can't wait to try this out with the kids this weekend! While I was browsing this nice lady's ebay store, I couldn't help but pick up some spinning fiber for me.

Doesn't it just look yummy. Socks I am thinking. Now if I can only spin it up nice enough to actually use for socks....a challenge for me to be sure! The name of this seller's farm is Jehovah Jireh Farms. Jehovah Jireh means "The Lord provides." And I guess the Lord wanted to provide me with some extra practice because ebay slightly overcharged me with shipping (I honestly wouldn't have even noticed it was so slight) and Amy, the owner of the farm, emailed me to tell me she would send along a little extra to compensate... Well here is what she sent.

It's just a few ounces of each...just enough to fill one bobbin. But isn't it pretty? I have already spun up the orange one and it is fun to watch the colors as I'm spinning. I have only worked with undyed fibers before so this was new to me. I still need to ply it and will show you pictures later.

Mysteries Abound

So are you up for a mystery or two? I love mysteries. So I joined a couple knitalongs that offer a bit of mystery. One is the Monthly Dishcloth Knitalong . I know your thinking "Dishcloths?", but this one is really fun. They do two knitalongs a month. You are given in advance the color of cotton yarn to purchase. Then daily you are given about 8-10 lines. It is fun to watch the pattern emerge and take guesses as to what it is. Here are the last two kal's we did. The star we did at the end of June and I was able to guess that one pretty quick. The other I don't know how well you can see. It is a dolphin jumping out of the water. This one kept me guessing until almost the end. It was knit from the top down so I was trying to guess upside down. Once I got to the bottom and started the water I figured it out.

I have another mystery that needs solving as well. I was good. I managed to wait until July to open my Hint Gift from my SP.

She sent me one skein of Cascade 220 and two patterns: Topi and Sophie. She also sent a note along telling me I could go ahead and use the skein to make one of the patterns or wait to see what she sends next! Hmmm.....
Speaking of mysteries. As you all know I am as much a book-a-holic as I am a yarn addict. So when I found the Whoduknit Knitalong. This is going to be set up just like the Knit the Classics Knitalong that I have been a part of recently. Fun!