Dragon's Orchid Garden

This time of year, I miss New England.  Though the weather has just turned to a slightly cooler shade of summer in central Florida, it's still subtropical.  There are no changing colors and falling leaves.  That happens here in the spring when the live oaks drop massive amounts of old brown leaves and bushels of acorns. Since we don't have the brightly colored maple, birch and elm leaves I grew up with, I knitted some leaves. From knitting  These can be used as dish or wash cloths, trivets, doilies, potholders, bookmarks, legal tender or replacement leaves for a bare-ass tree.  I found two different pattern sets on Ravelry .  I'm disappointed that I didn't find a great (free) pattern for a maple leaf, so I'll just have to make my own.  These patterns are great for beginning knitters.   The first leaves I knit were from a two pattern set by Tricksyknitter . From knitting I then found the Leaf Cloth Trio by Theresa Jones. From knittin...

I've been in love with dragons since I was a little girl.  I collect them in all sizes, shapes and materials.  I draw, paint, knit, or make them with Play-Doh .  I just finished this washcloth, made out of my stash of original Peaches and Creme cotton yarn, bought when the company was still based in North Carolina.   A Canadian company now owns the brand. From knitting From knitting I love knitting pictures!  This one was found on Ravelry .  You'll need to be a member to download it for free .  It's called Chinese Fireball Dragon by Michelle Wright.  The finished cloth is pictured with a dragon made from dyed hemp fiber.

This bookmark pattern was the most challenging so far.  I've done 6 others.  One of the challenging parts was remembering that I'm knitting most of it in a reverse stockingnette stitch, so that purls are in the front and knit stitches are the wrong side.  This makes the rib stitches that make up the stem of the flower and the ribs in the leaves really stand out.  The back side looks nice, too.  Another challenging part of this pattern was learning the correct way to YO or yarn over between knit and purl stitches.  If you don't do it the correct way, your yarn holes will close up.  The finished pattern can be found on Ravelry for free. One more challenge was translating the chart from my pencil and graph paper to a table with knitting symbols in Pages.  By now, I'm getting almost as good at typing in knitting symbols as I am at typing letters!  I got lots of practice with this one. The pattern is adapted from one in the book, The Essentia...

Last summer, I bought some yarn. Some really beautiful yarn. Not very much of it...just two balls. It was expensive at $13.00 for 60 meters. This always happens when I go to my LYS, Fiber Art, Inc . There's a forcefield that draws me first into the Noro room, then into the sock yarn room, then I begin wandering all of the other little rooms becoming more and more indecisive because there are just so many "shiny things", and I end up with an armload of yarns with no definate plans for their use. But they look really nice stacked into my antique cedar armoire and I WILL use them. They're insurance. The yarns and the patterns I've collected (my 3 inch binder is almost full, plus 2 dozen knitting books and this just since I restarted knitting in May 2009 with my sister's shawl as the first project) are and affirmation of life. I intend to use all of them someday, and I'll have to live forever in order to do so. The yarn I selected that day last summer was No...

A recent thread on Ravelry posed the question “What is your ultimate knitting pattern…something you’d like to knit before you die”. I’ve had my eye on one pattern since my cousin, Eric , turned me onto it. It’s a sweater from a Japanese pattern book, Couture Knit 13, Neat, Beautiful Knits . I mentioned it in the thread and was subsequently contacted by a new Ravelry friend who said a Japanese bookstore in New York near where she lived had the book and she could get it for me. I happily responded with my address and requested that she let me know how much total for the book and shipping, offering to send a check or pay her with Paypal. The next week, I received the beautiful book with a sweet note telling me not to worry about payment, that this was a gift. It’s one of the nicest things anyone, let alone someone I’ve never met in person, has ever done for me. I wrestled with the idea of sending her a check anyway, but instead baked a batch of cookies and sent them with the recipe and ...

I love books. I have the best job for someone who loves books, working in a library. I especially love books about knitting. I own some, and buy them only after checking them out from the library. If they have more than 2 or 3 patterns that I love, I’ll buy the book. It’s rare, in fact, I don’t think I ever have actually read a whole knitting pattern book from cover to cover. I did with this one. All I wanted was to find a hat pattern to go with a scarf I’m making for David. I found a gem of a book with a wonderful story; Hat Heads : 1 Man + 2 Knitting Needles = 50 Fun Hat Designs by Trond Anfinnsen with photography by Klaus Nilsen Skrudland. Trond, aka KnitKid , taught himself how to knit and began to knit hats for friends and family in his town of Stavanger in Norway . Each hat pattern is accompanied by a paragraph describing the person and how the hat was designed just for them. The photo portraits of the hat wearers by Klaus Nilsen Skrudland are compelling and beautiful. I feel ex...