Spin A Yarn for Ewe

I carved all of these yesterday. This one is my favorite.


I am glad we bought them 2 weeks ago or I probably would of forgot to buy them at all. The pumpkin patch is right down the street from my house and is really a Halloween tradition for us as well as most of the rest of the county. Of course my husband always thinks messing with the name is much fun, Bates Nut Farm. Switch the B and the N. I usually just roll my eyes at him since he likes to say it every time we go there.

I hope everyone has a safe and Happy Halloween.

Life is finally coming back to normal for us. Going to the market, watching TV instead of fire reports and finally getting enough sleep. School is still not back yet but will be on Wednesday and the air quality is getting better every day.

I took pictures of Icarus. My main knitting during the fires as I am still in the mostly stockinette section. The color of the yarn is so pretty and this is close to what it looks like in really life.


I also finished clue 4 of the Secret of the Stole.


This has been a fun knit and I love being able to keep up with the clues.

I still have yet to re-start the Halloween Mystery Shawl but plan to print out all the clues and do it later. I am also doing the same for the Mystic Waters Shawl. That one based on the photos I have seen so far is really beautiful. Plus of course I still have Hidcote on the needles. I have vowed to finish one of these before starting anything new.

So much lace so little time.

Wow, has it been a long week. I think yesterday was one of the most emotionally draining days of my life. It was day 4 of the evacuation for my parents and grandparents and we were waiting for word if they could go back home. My mom and I started the day on the computer trying to get the most up to date information. The first trip was to her local fire department website. It said that they would hopefully be letting people back in later that day and they also had a list of homes destroyed. This was a list we had been looking at closely as there were homes destroyed all around my parents. As we scrolled down looking at a list that was much longer then the night before we came to her street. Their address was on it. I felt horrible as getting bad news this way just felt cruel and since I was running the computer I felt even more responsible. We hugged and cried for a while then pulled it together as we wanted to be SURE before we said anything to my grandparents. No need to upset them if it was wrong and since we had been told the house was okay the day before we sure were hoping it was. We spent the next few hours calling any one my parents knew in the area who might have access to the mandatory evacuated area to please, please drive by and look. We found 1 man through his wife who said that she would hunt him down and send him to the house. It took a few hours but then we got the call. He and another friend of my parents were on the property and the house was STILL THERE! It was very, very close (within a few feet) but the house was still there. The landscaping was burnt and quite a few of the trees gone but really it survived undamaged. A detached studio/garage/guest house had the patio cover burnt but that was all. Both of the men (they are on the fire protection board for the area) said that the reason the house survived other then the fact that 4 firemen risked their lives to save it was because of the landscaping my parents had. My parents are huge fans of xeriscape/succulent/cactus and that is one of the reasons the house survived. Hard to believe but true. Here is what happens to succulents in a fire.

Yes, that is the edge of the house in that one above.

Verus the palm trees that burned to nothing.


They are definitely poster children for this type of landscaping saving homes. The fire departments around here are always saying it works but it is hard to believe until you see it. She plans to take lots of pictures. They were all able to leave and go home yesterday afternoon. My grandparents home was very safe and never in harms way so they had power, water and phones as soon as they got home. My parents went home to a house with none of that but the fact that it was standing was all they cared about. They were told they would have power within a couple of days but within an hour of getting home it was on. They are so thrilled and hope to hunt down and personally thank the firemen who worked so hard to save their home and all the others around them. There are still fires burning around here and until they are all out we won't feel completely safe but for now we are breathing a sigh of relief.

I did do some knitting but chose the easiest thing I had going since any concentration was on other stuff and Hidcote is too close to finishing to mess up now. I am way farther along on Icarus then I thought I would be and I finished Clue 3 of the Secret Stole before this all started so I am ready to tackle Clue 4 which comes out today. Hard to believe it is Friday as the last 4 days just seem to have melded into one big long horrible day.

Have a great weekend everyone and thanks so much for all the notes of support. It was nice to read them and know that others were out there thinking of us.

Thank you all so much for your notes for my family and myself. Every one is fine although we have been without internet access for over a day which has been terrible as the TV news in not always the most up to date info. We finally got it back so I thought I would post.

My parents and grandparents are still evacuated and probably will be until tomorrow at the earliest. It looks like their houses are still standing but my parents have had homes burn within 1 to 2 houses away from them so we are really hoping they did not sustain too much damage. My home is safe but fires are still burning all around just not close anymore since the winds have changed ALOT. The air quality is horrible and everyone is getting testy as it is hard not knowing what exactly is going on. I think once the evacuations are lifted even if they can not stay in their houses(due to power being out vs damage) it would be better just to KNOW something.

Thanks again and know that we are safe just really preoccupied. I barely know what day it is.

Please pray that we don't have to evacuate and for all the firefighters doing their best to save everyone.

11:53am The fire seems to be moving away from my house but right into the path of both my parents and grandparents. They are under MANDATORY evacuation. I am trying to get them to come here even if the drive is out of the way. Not sure we won't all have to leave from here later but so far so good.

4:05pm Most of my family is now here. Mike and my Dad went to get my Mom's car from where she left it outside the evacuation area. They are on their way back now and hopefully will be here soon just in case we have to leave here. I would feel less anxious if everyone was in one spot even if we had to leave it.

My yarn from Spritely Goods came and it is even better in person then on the monitor. I love the color and it smells so good! I don't know what Stephanie uses to rinse her yarn but boy does it smell nice.



What was a girl to do but wind one straight away and start knitting. This is going to be my "in the car" knitting as the Icarus shawl is really just stockinette for the majority of the beginning and the rest I can see as I come to it. Plus if you mess this one up it will be VERY obvious. I am using the pattern from IK Summer 2006 since I had it and I made the few (2) corrections that I heard about through Ravelry.

Back to my knitting as I just love this yarn.....

I finally have something cool to write about. I WON a contest! Me, who absolutely never wins anything actually won. And it was a great prize. First off let me tell you it was on Mobtown Review. I found this because I read Mama-E's blog. I blog I found totally randomly one day. She is reviewing Indie fiber artists and then they each offer up something to give away to the commenters. The best part was the reviews were for 3 great people 2 of which I had bought stuff from before and I got to pick which one I wanted. I picked Stephanie at Spritely Goods since after the review I ventured back to her sight and started drooling over her yarn all over again. She has a way with colors that really appeals to me. I went with this color. It was just one of those colors that I could not get out of my head. Something about it just made me HAVE to have it and I got enough to do a shawl with it since you all know my total dislike of knitting socks. I even have a pattern in mind that will be my version of socks since it involves lots of stockinette in the beginning and not much chart reading. Just what I need for those moments in the car or waiting for someone.

I also finished clue 2 of the Secret of the Stole. It is a nice not too complicated knit and the yarn and beads add just enough interest to keep me amused with it.


Now I just wait for the new yarn and work on Hidcote like a good little knitter.

My knitting has been getting the best of me lately. I decided that I would work on the Halloween Mystery Shawl during the day since it starts out small and grows and with Hidcote so big now I thought it would be best to leave that one as "at home" knitting. Sounded like a great plan until I started the mystery. It has sections in it that have pattern on both rows so no purl rows to "rest on" as I like to say. Seems fine until you have to purl 2 tog through the back loop and one of those stitches is a YO from the row below...I almost threw it across the room more than once. After much ripping and tinking of this blasted shawl I now have too many mistakes to live with and I have decided to give you all one shot of it before I rip it out and turn it into something else. See, I couldn't even make myself finish the last row I was on.

Best part is the yarn looks good. Better then I thought it would so thanks for all the compliments on it. You obviously knew better then I did. Now my choice is this. Do I rip it out and start over *shutter* as it is written or maybe start it over and just leave out the purl patterned rows making it look slightly different but really not too much *sounds do-able* or do I just start something new all together? I plan to print out the whole pattern so I can have it for later if that is what I decide, I can't let it win even if I do change those few rows to get through it.

In the meantime I have started and finished clue 1 of the Secret of the Stole .

It kind of looks like those little Lego flags the we have on the castle upstairs or maybe swimwear. The yarn is knitting up really nicely and the beads look great on it so this one is a winner. See look what no patterned purl rows does for a girl.

At least I was supposed to be seeing red. Since I finally broke down and joined the Halloween Mystery Shawl group I have been wanting to dye some of my zephyr red for the shawl. I got it all skeined, soaked and ready to dye. The skein looked great in the pot but when I took it out and rinsed it the color was terrible. Nothing like I had envisioned and the dye had totally exhausted too. So back to the dye pot as I could not bring myself to knit this very large and complicated shawl in a color I really did not like. This is what I got when I threw in some purple and another color red.

I think it looks a ton better but not really the blood/ruby red I was going for but I think it will look nice anyway. I'm not totally convinced I like it for this project but maybe it will grow on me.

I also decided to take Hidcote's picture again. I am almost through chart 6 of 10 but boy is this baby going to be big. I mean it gave finished measurements but I guess I just never envisioned it this large. It should be nice to have at least one really large shawl to wrap up in.

Each row has gotten so long that it sometimes takes me 15+ minutes to do just one so it is going to be a while before this is done but I really like working on it so that helps.