Moving Along

http://www.ravelry.com/projects/SpinningLara/tempesthttp://www.ravelry.com/groups/shalimar-yarnsAfter months of searching our friend Shannon and Rob found the perfect house.  They closed on it yesterday and  I went over to help them move out of their apartment.  They had planned on taking a couple of  days to move since the apartment lease wasn't up until the end of the month.  While we were loading the first boxes we ran into Young, one of our friends from knit group who lives in the same complex.  Young's husband is an exchange student at one of the local colleges and they have only lived in the US for about six months.  While we do sometimes stumble along with the language barrier, we all have a lot of fun together.  Young said hi and asked if it was moving day and then left and came rushing back with her husband, son and daughter.  They helped all day and even made room in their mini van to accommodate some of the smaller boxes and things.  We managed to get everything moved yesterday which was really exciting!  The only picture I have is the one Shannon took of Rob yesterday morning right after closing:

The porch stays shaded all day and I love all the different peaks of the roof.  I hope they have many years of happiness there!

Aside from helping with moving Andy and I had started our patio project.  The rail road ties were finally delivered this week.  We have the area laid out and hopefully will start laying the ties down this weekend.

Like most homes in this area, our yard is sloped (we live in what is known as the Hill City).  The slope makes it hard to have a place to sit outside comfortably.  The patio will be about 24' x 24' and three sides will be built up with the rail road ties.  We are going to fill it it in with dirt and then top it off with pretty stone.  There will be a landscape fabric barrier to hopefully prevent weeds from growing.

Tempest is coming along nicely.  I'm on the second sleeve and hope to have that done by the end of the weekend so I can block it and start seaming.  I think it's going to be calling it close to get it finished in time for TNNA next weekend.  I have nightmares about trying to seam it together in the car while Andy is driving though the winding mountains of West Virginia.  To top it all off, I don't have buttons for it yet.  The pattern calls for 14 buttons!  The only place in town with buttons is JoAnn's. I wish I had the foresight to shop for them at Maryland Sheep & Wool, but it's too late now!

Wentletrap is being test knitted by a group of wonderful knitters in The Testing Pool  on Ravelry.   Jan, Lyz, Bhama, Lydia, Tamsyn, Jenna, Margi and Ann have all offered to to test knit.  I'm really ecstatic to have such a talented bunch of ladies helping out!  The pattern will be released in the first part of July.

If you are wondering about the name, a Wentletrap is a type of sea snail that has a high spiraling shell. 

The stitch pattern I used reminded me of spiraling sea shells.  After searching for hours online I finally went to Wiki and searched for spiral sea shell and Wentletrap came up.  Wentletrap also means spiral staircase in Dutch which would work for this as well.

I had better get back to work.  I still have somethings that need to be finished up (besides Tempest) for TNNA.  Making mini-skeins for the Shalimar Yarns booth and putting together a few other goodies.  If you are going to be at TNNA in Columbus next weekend, be sure to stop by the Shalimar booth #130, 132 & 134.  I will be there all day on Saturday and Sunday morning.  I will also be at Sample It on Friday night. 

Que

How many projects should you have in your que on Ravelry?  I mean really, right now I have 533 things to knit in my que.  There are a lot of sweaters in there.  If I knitted 8 hours a day for the rest of my life Im not sure that I could knit all the items in my que.  It takes me about three evenings to knit a sock so potentially I could knit 52 pairs of socks in a year.  Provided that no frogging was involved and we all know how that goes.  I either need to stop adding things to my que (difficult as there are so many cute cardi's out there that are begging to be knit) or dedicate more time to knitting.  Right now I only have two projects on the needles, Tempest by Ann Weaver in Breathless Ore and Love Potion.  I'm thinking of adding one large stripe towards the top in Blue Raspberry but haven't committed to that yet.  I'm also working on the second sock for the new sock design.

Ive gotten really distracted by the needle felting.  Which is great, but it's really cutting into my knitting time.  I spent a week working on this owl.  She is close to life size. 

 

I'm also working on a large mushroom house for the gnomes from the last post.  While I did order a crazy number of couple of felting kit's Ive also been using some roving that I purchased at my first MDSW.  It came in a huge bag and wound up being courser than what I like to spin. I've tried to re home it several times and there haven't been any takers.  I'm so glad it stayed here because Ive really been having a blast needle felting it.  

Does anyone have fun plans for the weekend?  Tonight I'm making Wiener Schnitzel, German Potato Salad and cooked red cabbage.  We are going fishing either tomorrow or Sunday and I'm really hoping we can go to the movies and see Star Trek.  A few years ago a new theater was put in and it has stadium seating with arm rests that can flip up.  The seats are really comfortable and it's a great place to go on a hot summer day.  We are also working on plans for a new patio area.  I'll have progress pictures soon (I hope!).

PS I finished Ardelise but need to block it!  Yay!  That was a LOT of stockinette!  And did you see that Signature Needle Arts now has convertible needles?  They look super cool!