Sally and I just returned from Knitting Camp.  I don’t have time for a full report, but I did want to share an FO that was part of the Camp experience!  The contest this year was At the Circus, or something like that.  Several of us went all in with elephants, including moi.  I adore Dumbo and knew right from the start that I wanted to knit him.  Who doesn’t cry when his momma is behind bars for protecting the little guy??

He stands just under six inches.  He started off with the body from Elefante – of which I have knit several.  I changed his trunk, eyes, head shape and of course, the ears!!  The eyes about did me in, but I like how he turned out.  I added a hat and ruffle to finish out his circus costume!  The competition this year was fierce, so he didn’t win, but I love him anyway. 🙂

Check out The Rainey Sisters Tip of the Week!

PS to All: Thanks for the nice comments!  The winning entries were absolutely BEYOND!  The winner knitted an entire clown suit from head to toe.  She gave a little speech and then said, “The question we should be asking is NOT how many clowns can fit in a car, but how many cars can fit in a clown!”  She proceeded to pull several TINY hand-knit cars from the sleeve of her costume!  Another person had a small knitted ballerina doing an actual high wire act!  It was crazy!!

PS to Julie – nothing really written “on my pattern” to share, but I did place a reenactment of my ear pattern on my Ravelry pattern page.  Cannot guarantee its accuracy, but it is close!

Circling back on a project.  Have you ever had to do that?  Almost every project?  Okay, then you’re like me!! 😉

This time around the circle I revisited my Circlet Shrug.

I loved the theory of the Circlet as described in this previous post, “What gives the Circlet its style is the seaming — you sew it so the armholes are relatively fitted.  It gives the illusion of an actual sleeve cap when worn.”

Okay, that’s great in theory.  Especially if you are a 20-something with pretty, thin arms.  I have old grandma arms.  When and how this happened is a mystery to me and quite horrifying!  I used to be known for my skinny arms!

I do not show my arms.  Ever.  At all.  Even in 90+ degree weather.  So that means wearing a shirt under my Circlet.  Wearing a shirt meant that the armhole opening was too tight – causing the sleeves to bunch in an unattractive manner.  I decided to open up the seam a bit to allow for the sleeves.

That created wings!  Because the Circlet has absolutely no shaping and is quite a dense fabric, the shoulders looked like a 747 on approach!!  Ugh.

So, I did a little pick up/cast off to tighten the top of the armhole opening:

It needed a little more tightening, but when I tried that it looked “gathered” at the top.  This is a workable compromise.  So Circlet is now wearable and arms discreetly covered.  Yay!!

PS to Alley – I picked up all the way around the armhole but at different rates.  I marked off the armhole into quarters.  Starting at the bottom of the armhole opening (with a size 4 needle), I picked up 3 sts for 4 rows for the 1st quarter, 1 st for every 2 rows for the 2nd and 3rd quarters, and back to 3 for 4 for the last quarter.  Then I just bound off as to purl using a size 5.

PS to Barbara: This won’t necessarily fix your wing problem.  With many vests with standard fit, the problem is that the shoulders are too wide.  If you tighten the circumference of the armhole, it will pull the vest down over the shoulder, but that will not give it the traditional fit you might want.  For that situation, the shoulder shaping needs to be cut in more.  That is a really common problem!!

Just hanging out in the heat.  Working on a stealth project and getting ready for Knitting Camp next week.  Just thought I would touch base to let you know that I am alive!!

Alive!!!  Al-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ve!!!!!

I spent this past weekend at the beautiful Norwegian Wood Retreat Center hosted by the lovely and gracious Deb Sorenson.  She bedazzled us with wonderful food!!  The other knitters staying there were really fun and great company.

The first evening I did my Herbert Niebling presentation for the people staying at the retreat center.  On Saturday, after a breakfast of scrambled egg BLT’s (!), we were joined by three additional knitters and tackled invisible stranding (shown in picture above, upper left).  Sunday, three different knitters joined us for Essential Shawl Techniques, including garter tab cast on, no end stripes, picot bind off, and i-cord bind off.  It was impossible not to be distracted by the non-stop bird action at the feeders!!

A special shout out to the delightful Gail, who came all the way from Florida just for the retreat!!  Okay, she was also visiting family in the Twin Cities…

We all decided that we are going to design a knitted bikini for the mature woman – it will have long sleeves, a turtleneck, and go all the way to the knees.  Woo hoo!

I will be returning to Norwegian Wood October 12-14 for another retreat.  Saturday will include finishing techniques.  On Sunday, we will knit up my little beaded Snowfall Hats in time for the holidays!!  Maybe I will have my sexy bikini finished by then!

Thank you for the nice birthday wishes!!  It is always nice to make it to another birthday…

I just finished a lengthy, kind of boring, project: Fading Point by Joji Locatelli.  I have made several of her patterns – she is very talented!  It is drying on the blocking board.

I used Fading Point Kit #12 from Primrose Yarn Co.  It is made up of five colors of their Adelaide Sock Yarn:

Color 1: The Picket Line or The Parade
Color 2: Crime of Passion
Color 3: Just a Girl
Color 4: Squeaky
Color 5: Romance Novel

I had to add an extra section to each half due to my tight gauge 🙁 so used a yarn from my stash to transition (Lost City Knits Merino Fingering in a beige).  I also switched colors 4 & 5 so that Color 4 would be at the center back of the shawl.  The color was such a pretty, speckled pink!!  I placed the beige between Colors 3 and 5.

Sharon F. asked to see the inside of my Farrell Hat, so I must comply!!

PS re: inside of hat: I did not show you the side where all the colors start and stop — definitely not as attractive!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BIG SISTER!

Let there be cake, flowers, yarn, and general merriment.  I wish I was there to share the big day!  You are my inspiration, best friend, and partner in crimes and misdemeanors.

Here’s one of my favorite photos of Susan (taken with my daughter).

:groan:  THAT is a tortured title if I ever saw one!!

Hi, everyone!  Am I the only person who thinks the yarn world has gone a little bit nuts?  $400 for sweater yarn.  $120 for hat yarn.  $250 for shawl yarn.

Then, you still have to (get to?) knit it!  Plus, I just heard about a knitting retreat that is $9500 for three days!  Is everyone a billionaire but me??

Okay, Susan, settle down.  Anyway, I just finished a cute little hat that I did not spend $120 to make.  I spent around $40.  Still a lot, but not in the billionaire range!  It is the Farrell Hat from the latest issue of Making.  The hat struck me right away, as it did my friend Kim.  We decided to buy Peerie Yarn – the new Brooklyn Tweed offering – and divide the skeins.  That is why it was cheaper!!

Reds sure photograph weird!  It looks absolutely electric in the picture — much more subdued in real life.  As I started this hat, I hated it.  I thought it was the ugliest hat I had ever seen.  But it has since grown on me.  I love it.  It has such a retro, Europe in the 40’s, crazy feel to it!!  I see myself wearing this quite a bit.  It is very “un-me,” but that is what I like about it.

The yarn was nice to work with and blocked beautifully.  🙂

PS to Pru: It IS a carnival!  That is such a good word to describe it!  And, yes, Sally and I are blatant and unapologetic enablers!  “You knew that when you took us in.”

Well, maybe a Niebling a year!  I just finished a Niebling-inspired shawl called “OD — Ovale Decke.”  It truly seemed like endless knitting and certainly an endless picot bindoff!!

I used Grinning Gargoyle Seda Sock in color Crater Lake from stash.  I would bet all kinds of money that I bought them in two separate years at Yarnover and did not know it!  It is a stunning, electrified blue.  If I had it to do over, I would have made a smaller size – one that just takes a single skein of sock yarn.  This one is a bit big even for my wearing preference!!

I also had an interesting experience yesterday.  I was contacted via Instagram by Kristy Glass who asked if she could interview me.  Weird, huh?  She has a very active podcast series going on YouTube (Kristy Glass Knits).

We met yesterday morning at her hotel for the interview.  She was very nice and easy to talk to.  We talked about my knitting journey over the past five decades and my knitting designs.  It should be ready to air next fall – I will let you know when!

PS to Kathy: Niebling didn’t design shawls per se — he designed table linens mostly.  But recently, a number of people have reimagined his designs as shawls because we just don’t use lacy tablecloths like they did in his day!!  People knit his full tablecloths in laceweight for a circular shawl, or rework them into crescent shapes like this one.

As I have said before, I love movies.  I have also described the inner struggle that occurs between my “mature female” self and the adolescent male that resides within.  It explains my love of Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead.  If given a choice, we really don’t have a way of predicting which of the two will win!!

Here is a case in point: two movies opened this weekend: Book Club and Deadpool 2.   So, which movie won???

First a recap of the contenders:

Book Club stars a who’s who of over-65 actors that we know and love: Diane Keaton (Annie Hall, Looking for Mr. Goodbar), Jane Fonda (Barbarella, They Shoot Horses Don’t They), Candice Bergen (Carnal Knowledge), and Mary Steenburgen (Goin’ South) for the women; Don Johnson (who looked amazing!), Andy Garcia (not bad either!), Richard Dreyfuss, etc. for the men.  Yes, I mentioned some of their old movies on purpose!!

The titular book club in the movie, at Jane Fonda’s insistence, embarks on reading the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy and it rocks their world.  Humor and romance ensue.

Deadpool 2 is the sequel to the first raunchy, violent comic book super-“hero” movie in the franchise, and stars Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, and Josh Brolin.  It definitely is a movie for the adolescent male!!  And I swear that the swan floatee in the picture below is taken directly from Book Club!!

Book Club won for two reasons: 1) I wanted to support a movie made for and about mature women and b) I watched Deadpool (1) with my daughter last night and have plans to go to the sequel NEXT week!!

I enjoyed the movie, along with the fairly large audience of 90% women of 60 years plus.  There were many knowing laughs and chuckles throughout the movie.  It was fairly predictable, but we didn’t care.  Diane Keaton looked 100 years old, but that is because she has not had work done.  Jane Fonda has had too much work done, but so did the character she was playing.  Mary Steenburgen looked her age, but all of the three mentioned really kept their figures over the years, which I could not relate to.  Candice Bergen has gained weight — she even admitted in an interview that she enjoys food and isn’t going to apologize for it now; she doesn’t care if she is heavier than she was when she was younger.  I related the most to her!  I care but apparently not enough to do anything about it!!

So, I recommend this light-hearted movie if you are a woman on the mature end of the spectrum.

As for knitting, I am still working on an endless shawl with endless rows of endless knitting, which when finished lead to the even more endless picot bind off!!

Minnesota in the Summer

Nothing is more beautiful then “upnorth” Minnesota!!

I will be teaching at a knitting retreat June 22-25 at the  Norwegian Wood Retreat Center in Princeton, MN.

Friday night I will do a presentation on Herbert Niebling – The Lace Genius, Saturday is an introduction to Invisible Stranding, and Sunday is devoted to Essential Shawl Techniques, such as garter tab cast on, no end stripes, picot bind off, etc.

I will also be there in October with different topics.  Overnight accommodations are available, or people can come to any of the events separately!  It would be amazing if some of you were there!!

June 2018 Knitting Retreat with Susan Rainey