Podcasts about crochet along

Join Anne as she chats with Julia Madill about her design work, including a new book coming in September for crocheters: Every Way with Granny Crochet: 50 shapes in classic granny stitch. Be sure to stick around after for information about three upcoming events!  Links to Things Mentioned in the Podcast Julia Madill's website, Instagram, and Ravelry Preorder Every Way with Granny Crochet on Amazon (affiliate link) Pompom Magazine Crochet.com Stitch 'n Bitch, by Debbie Stoller (Did you know there is a version for crochet, too?) (affiliate links) Knitty The Yarn Harlot Sophie Scarf Stitch N'Pitch Hartford, August 17, 2024! I-91 Shop Hop 2024 -- There is no official website, but information can be found in this Facebook post. Makkin Our Way Through Shetland 2025 If you enjoyed this episode, please send it on to a friend! The advertisements at the beginning and end of the show are one of the ways I fund the podcast, which costs several hundred dollars a month. Amazon links are another way the bills get paid, as well as events like Stitch N'Pitch and the Shetland Hogmanay Yarn Box. Your support helps maintain the podcast as a way to spotlight heritage craft, boost the work of designers and authors, and encourage the use of natural fibers. Thank you!

In this episode, Anne sits down with crochet designer, Merrian Holland, who is a regular contributor to The Journal of Scottish Yarns. Merrian relates her experiences with fiber crafts, which began as a child in Germany and progressed along a path through graphic design and replica jewelry. Links to Things Mentioned in the Episode Order Issue 3 of The Journal of Scottish Yarns using code ITIKH3 or ITIKH3DIG for  £3 off the print or digital issue, respectively. The Yarn MAL 2023 continues until August 9, 2023, so there is still time to take part! Order the 2023 Shetland Hogmanay Yarn Box Find Merrian Holland at her website or on Instagram Green Elmbridge The Riverhouse Hookers Machair Tank Top Zakami Yarns Twine Bag Crochet stitch conversions UK/US Whichcraft Wools Unraveled/Farnham Maltings

But more importantly, we're scheming for our Archive KCAL projects! The Knit and Crochet Along will be running from March to May and we'd love for you to join us! Just use #ArchiveKCAL2022 or join in on Ravelry. Links to things we mention: Buzzfeed Quiz Winston cardigan by La Maison Rililie [Ravelry] 373 Cardigan by Pierrot Yarns [Ravelry] Firefall Toque by Amy Christoffers [Ravelry] Meg's Wrap by Julie Blagojevich[Ravelry] Mīlēt by Isolda Teague [Ravelry] Pearl and Plum Etsy Show notes with photos Support and follow us: Instagram Pearl and Plum Etsy Our Website Buy KCACY merch Buy us a Ko-fi

Kelly's “Tossing of The Stash” is in progress and we have a discussion of what to do with all that handspun! Plus, project updates and the announcement of our Crochet Along winners. Full notes with photos and links can be found in the podcast section of our shop website: TwoEwesFiberAdventures.com Join the community on Ravelry or become a patron and support the show on our Patreon Page. Transcript available at the end of the show notes. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Subscribe on Android or Subscribe on Google Podcasts Marsha's Projects Nanny Meier's Tea Cozy by Amelia Carlsen. I am using Cascade 220 Heather in Red Wine Heather (9489) and green Irelande (2429). I've knit about half of the second side. Pebblebrook Beanie by Wish Upon a Hook (Ravelry link). I started this beanie using Little Sheep in The Big Woods. I was trying to finish this for our Two Ewes Crochet Along, but after ripping it out three times, I admitted defeat and set the project aside. Meadow Stripe Socks using Patons Kroy Sock in the colorway, Meadow Stripes and Lang Yarns Jawoll Superwash fingering for the heels and toes. Finished the first sock and worked on the second sock. Quick Switch Hat by AbbyeKnits. My son liked the hat so much I cast on another for him using Meeker Street Olives Outerwear DK in the colorway Sage. Phrancko Designs crew neck from Phrancko.com by Frank Jernigan. I'm using my green and brown handspun merino. I joined under the arms and knit five stripe repeats (3 rows brown, 6 rows green). Looking at the amount of yarn I have left I was concerned I would not have enough for green. I called Kelly and we designed stripes using Fibonacci Sequence. The plan now for the stripe sequence will be: Four repeats of 3 brown, 6 green Three repeats of 5 brown, 6 green Two repeats of 8 brown, 6 green The ribbing will be brown. After the body is complete I will knit the collar in green and then assess the yarn situation and decide how to finish the sleeves. Kelly's Projects Last minute crocheting: I finished the Pebblebrook Beanie (Ravelry link) out of my Invictus club yarn from last year. It's a green and gray and yellow variegated yarn and it turned out great. It will join the other charity hats that I have to get sent out.  I also finished two crocheted Mother Bears. One was half done and I found it during the stash tossing and finished it up (Ravelry link). Then I got inspired to make one last one (Ravelry link) to go with the last tag I had. These need to get into the mail, too.  Two more crochet projects were finished for this episode. I made a cat bed (Ravelry link) using lots of my spirit yarn and then fulled it a little. The starting point for the pattern was Crochet Round Cat Bed by Humbug Designs (Ravelry link). This will go on the porch for Minnie to sleep on. Then I made an ear saver to use with my masks when I'm teaching. The pattern I used was One Button Mask Ear Saver by Robin Kline (Ravelry link). I wear it up near the top of my head, but you can also wear it behind your neck. I've already worn it for several hours and it was comfortable and stayed put. I'm still working on a pair of socks (Ravelry link) in Bob Ross Happy Little Mistakes yarn from Weird Sisters Wool Emporium in Aberdeen. I'm using the stitch pattern from Blueberry Waffle socks.  Finally, I started a sockhead hat (pattern by Kelly McClure) using some leftovers from the Rachel pullover.  Crochet Along Thank you to everyone who participated. Listen to the episode to hear who won a pattern of their choice up to $12.00 Winter Weave Along Starts October 15 and goes through the end of March. Two Ewes' Hand Dyed Cotton Yarn and Dishcloth Pattern Giveaway  January 13 - February 28 Drop by our Ravelry thread and let us know your favorite dishcloth pattern and you will be entered to win a skein of our hand-dyed cotton and a Two Ewes' dishcloth instructions. Never made a dishcloth? Tell us if you are a dishcloth newbie. Full Transcript Marsha 0:03 Hi, this is Marsha Kelly 0:04 and this is Kelly. Marsha 0:05 We are the Two Ewes of Two Ewes Fiber Adventures. Thanks for stopping by. Kelly 0:10 You'll hear about knitting, spinning, dyeing, crocheting, and just about anything else we can think of as a way to play with string. Marsha 0:17 We blog and post show notes at Two Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com Kelly 0:22 and we invite you to join our Two Ewes Fiber Adventures group on Ravelry. I'm 1hundredprojects Marsha 0:29 and I am betterinmotion. Kelly 0:31 We are both on Instagram and Ravelry. And we look forward to meeting you there. Both 0:36 Enjoy the Episode Marsha 0:42 Hi, Kelly. Kelly 0:43 Hi, Marsha. How are you? Marsha 0:45 I'm doing well. Kelly 0:46 I'm doing great too. I have been decluttering, purging. Marsha 0:52 You know you've been doing you've been tossing of the stash Kelly 0:55 Tossing of the stash. That's right. That is what actually I am doing. Marsha 0:58 Is any tossing going on? Or is it just been reorganizing the stash? Well, let's just talk about it. Okay, so tell me everything Kelly 1:05 Last time we... last time we recorded I think I had already started. I had taken everything downstairs and laid it out on the studio floor, all the knitting yarn from various places in the house, because I keep it in various places. I had dug stuff out. Then I decided I needed to move it upstairs to the spare room where I could close the door and nobody could see it. Nobody meaning Robert couldn't see it. Just because I wanted to leave it messy for a while. And he likes things cleaned up and neat. So yes, and he was cleaning the living room, taking down the tree throwing away Christmas ornaments. So we did do some some tossing of the Christmas ornaments. So you know I was in that mood. So I brought it all upstairs and I laid it out on a tablecloth. It's about the size of a double bed sheet, flat sheet. And then I started organizing it and I did a little bit more organizing today. It's been out for more than... well for two weeks essentially. It's been sitting here inspiring me and also making me wonder about myself! [laughing] Marsha 2:21 okay, well Dr. Marsha is here listen to it. So tell me all about it. Kelly 2:26 Okay, well, I decided to-- we talked a little bit about what how I should go about the organization process and and so the first thing I ended up doing was taking all of the commercial skeins, commercial hand dyed, well, just commercial skeins that I had purchased on purpose. I had obtained on purpose. And I put-- It ended up that -- I thought this was true. And I was right. It's a very small batch! Not quite as small as I thought. Because I still have all that Rauna. The Finnish yarn that we got crazy about the year I was making argyle socks and we got all these different color combinations. So I had quite a bit of that. I had quite a bit of that still unused, but it fits in-- I have this wooden, like rice basket I guess it's called. I got it at a garden show. It's a wooden basket that came from, I think it came from--they said it came from Vietnam or someplace. Anyway. It's not that big. And it fits all of it. Marsha 3:03 Mm hmm. Kelly 3:42 So that's my like, "I got this intentionally" kind of yarn. And then the rest of it is a combination of handspun, leftovers, some of which are handspun, and spirit yarn. And then a little bit. like a small amount of like farm yarn that I didn't include in the commercial skeins. It's all natural colors and it went-- it seemed like it went better with the batch of yarn that was all handspun so I put it in that batch. but I... you know... So I have. ..I have over 13 skeins of Rug Yarn plus extra balls leftover from previous rug projects. I have five skeins of extra bulky yarn. I have over six skeins of white handspun-- you know natural creme handspun. Seven skeins of cotton handspun for a cotton project. I have about six skeins of luxury-- what I would consider to be luxury yarn. Some of that is leftovers. There's silk and silk and cotton and silk and wool angora, and that kind of stuff. I have three skeins of handspun from commercial dyed braids. That's it. And lots of leftovers. Some Wensleydale skeins, some suffolk skeins, a bunch of CVM leftovers. Anyway, so what am I going to do with it? The problem with that is, what am I gonna do with it? You know, like I was thinking with the handspun like, I don't want to get rid of it. I mean, I don't want to throw it, right? I don't want to toss it. I want it to be used but when I think about using the rest of the yarn from all the handspun sweaters that I made, and I've got quite a bit of yarn, I think I have five handspun sweaters that I have leftovers for. And when I think about you know making a hat or I can make mitts or I can make a scarf. Like that feels like making an adult layette. [laughing] Marsha 6:19 Yes, funny! [laughing] Kelly 6:26 I just, I don't feel like that's an adult thing-- to wear a hat and a sweater and mitts and socks that all match. Marsha 6:37 Yeah. So well because it-- because I even sometimes question if I have on hand knit socks, hand knit sweater, hand knit hat. Like then put a scarf on it seems like it's too much. Like too much hand knit. And they don't even match. So if it's all matching like... and you don't want to make something for Robert because that's not cool having matching--husband and wife matching outfits. [laughing] Kelly 7:02 Out of the CVM that I made the Orcas run sweater, I did make him a hat with the Orca pattern on it, which he likes. But yeah, we don't actually dress alike! [laughing] I have made some charity hats with some leftover handspun but you know it's not washable. So anyway, that's kind of my my, my dilemma with this yarn. I like it and I want to use it but I don't know what I'm going to use it for. What I did do though, is that a lot of the partial skeins I did collect them all. And I put them into my mother bear kit for making Mother Bears and I had... I realized when I did that, that I had a half a bear in the bag. And I haven't made a mother bear in a really long time. And I realized why when I put the additional yarn into the bag. It's because I was making a bear and I was using like three skeins of different weird... some handspun leftovers to get to the right weight of yarn for the bear. You know it's holding two strands together holding three strands together, running out because I was using these little you know, hazelnut sized balls of yarn, and then having to splice in the new one. I thought, why was I making my life so hard? Why not when I get down to that little amount of yarn? Or if I have something that's really so fine that it doesn't make a good bear? Like why would I put it in the kit. So I... so I cleaned up that bear Mother Bear kit put in new, threw away some stuff from there, put in new yarn into the Mother Bear kit and then I actually got inspired to finish that bear and make it make another bear which that's getting into my projects. But I did get a little bit inspired by stuff. So that was good. But it does kind of show me just some kind of gaps in what I have or overages overages in skeins. Like do I really need this much of my leftovers? No, because I don't know what I'm gonna do with them. And why do I spin so much yarn for a sweater? I guess because I don't know how much I'm going to need and I don't want to run out. Kelly 7:02 Well, actually, I would say that's true. I for me, that's true. Okay, so right now I'm knitting with with my handspun which I'll talk about this project later on, but I didn't have enough for a sweater. I'm always trying to do enough for a sweater but I didn't have enough so I had to spin up another color to make stripes. So I mean I think too, with your spinning, you're not... You're spinning the yarn to be spinning the yarn. Kelly 7:10 Yeah Marsha 7:24 Not spinning the yarn necessarily to make a sweater. Isnt' it true? Kelly 8:40 Right. Marsha 8:40 You talked about this before is that the fiber tells you what it wants to be. What type of yarn it wants to be. And you spin that yarn and then you figure out what project right? You're just...you're caught up in the, you know, you're spinning yarn, you're not thinking about what to make Kelly 10:26 Yeah, and the difference too, is like, you're spinning braids. Marsha 10:32 Mm hmm. Kelly 10:33 And I'm just spinning what comes off my drum carder. Marsha 10:36 Right. Kelly 10:37 And so you know, if you have a full fleece, and you just card and card and card, then you feel like you have to spin everything you carded. And that might be more than what you need for this sweater. So I am not complaining at all! I have a wealth... A wealth of yarn, including a wealth of my own handspun. But it was good to see for example, with the Rug Yarn, like, Okay, I have really some really nice Rug Yarn. But a lot of it is leftover from a wall hanging project that I did that was in greens and grays. Mostly. And so that's what I have most of-- green and gray. And then I have that and a little bit of Burgundy. And then I have the combo spin that I did. That's more blues. But it's all really super dark. And I think I need something light. Because otherwise the values are all going to be the same and whatever pattern I do in a rug, a punch needle piece, is gonna... you won't really see the pattern, I think. Marsha 11:47 So they're too dark to overdye another color. Kelly 11:50 Yes. Marsha 11:52 Okay. Kelly 11:53 In fact, a lot of them are dark gray overdyed. Dark green, dark gray overdyed with burgundy. Yeah, yeah, they're too dark to overdye. So I just--I need to spin more rug yarn in a lighter color. [laughing] Marsha 12:09 Okay. So I'm going to inject here with a few... Dr. Marsha has a few comments. I'm not a licensed therapist. No, as you say. So we... Marsha 12:22 Marsha I'm going to interrupt you. However, you are a licensed yarn stasher. Marsha 12:32 Yes,[laughing]... some of the yarn from your... the adult layette yarn? [laughing] All that leftover sweater yarn and whatnot. Can-- and I don't know what the weight of it is. It's pretty fine. It's not like it's worsted weight. But anyway, here's my point, can it be combined to be my go-to project, the garter squish blanket. It can be combined in some ways to make doubled up or added to... let me just back up. This is not how you have to do the garter squish. But the idea is you have one main color that goes through the whole blanket that's worsted weight. And then you have you keep changing out the other worsted weight yarn that you're carrying along with it to make the stripes or the pattern or whatever you decide to do. But it doesn't have to be that way. You know, right. So I don't know, if you have enough yarn that could be enough of a background color? Or, like my case where I didn't have enough yarn. There was sort of that camel colored yarn that I was using as the background. But I didn't have enough it in the same shade to do the whole thing. So we did a gradient. Do you have enough of the handspun that could be the background color? That maybe you overdye to make it more similar and do like a gradient? And then you know what I'm getting at? Kelly 13:59 Yeah, yeah, Marsha 14:00 just need to spin more yarn to well, to use up the sweater bits. Kelly 14:08 Yeah, that's an idea. Marsha 14:11 If you have a lot of the... Because didn't you say one sweater you have like three skeins leftover? Kelly 14:18 Something like that. Marsha 14:21 Can it be.. is that the sort of terracotta color for dark green forest? Kelly 14:27 Yeah, I have three skeins of that plus a ball, plus another skein that's undyed of the exact same yarn. Marsha 14:36 So even though you have say--you have three possibly four skeins of that yarn dyed that terracotta color, can you overdye it so make something? Now it's a pretty deep terracotta but can you make one like brown and one burgundy or something and then use those as the contrasting color for a background color. Kelly 14:59 You Yeah, that's a good idea. That's a really good idea. Marsha 15:05 Because you sent me a picture of all these bits. Kelly 15:11 You can put it in the show notes if you want. Marsha 15:14 I'm looking at...you have a lot of natural colored yarns that maybe you could just dye. Well and what is that? So, this is not good podcasting because people cannot see this picture. But the picture of the... there's a whole bunch of natural colored yarn. That's undyed. It looks like it's your handspun undyed which I don't know what the yarn is. Okay, so I'm looking at the picture that shows the right hand side of the sheet in the lower right hand corner. Kelly 15:41 Oh, uh huh. Marsha 15:43 I don't know how much is there. But if you could just take all those and you could maybe dye that if that's enough for your background color. Kelly 15:49 That might be. There are six skeins. The two balls in the front of that picture are bulky, so they won't work. But there are six skeins of the Oxford that I spun this summer and three skeins of the Columbia that I spun the summer before, I think in the summer spin-in. So there are six skeins there. They're roughly the same, they're three ply, roughly the same weight. And also they have the same kind of the same feel to them. They're not identical, but they would go together in a project. That's a really good idea I hadn't thought about a blanket of handspun Kelly 15:50 Well that garter squish is just a great way to use up a lot of yarn, because you're using it held double, even if it's worsted weight, you're holding it double. Right? Kelly 16:39 And, and people had mentioned, people had been mentioning that, you know, like, oh, that sounds fun. And I thought it sounded fun, too. But the thing I always thought was I don't have enough. I don't... that sounds funny. I don't have enough of the same kind of thing to be able to do it. But I do if I think about my handspun in using the sweater leftovers. Marsha 17:01 Mm hmm. Kelly 17:02 I do have enough, I think, Oh, that's interesting. Okay. Marsha 17:07 And then I'm, I'm going to... I bought a pattern. So it's Lily Scrap Blanket. Kelly 17:13 Oh, I'm going to look it up, too. Marsha 17:15 The Designer is Jen Peck. And it's like a chevron pattern. It's knit with fingering weight. And I don't know what all... I mean, this may not work that great. And so what you do is you basically take all of your sock weight scraps, and you just wind them into one big ball. Just randomly wind all the colors into a big giant ball. And you just loosely knot them together. So you can either-- you can put them together like with a long tail and then choose to weave them in. Or you can put just a loose knot. And so when you get to that point, you can take it apart and rotate it if you want, you know, spit splice it. And so I'm looking at the pattern because I actually printed this out and I've been gathering up my yarn. It's a free pattern. Kelly 18:01 Yeah, I'm looking at it right now takes about 1000 to 1400 yards. Marsha 18:07 Yeah, so it's a nice pattern, because it's all... it makes a chevron. And as I say, I have been ...all my socks scraps I've been saving to make this blanket. And then also I have skeins of yarn --sock weight yarn-- that I bought that I don't think I'm ever going to make socks out of it. And so I was thinking just breaking those apart and putting them into the blanket. Kelly 18:34 Right. Marsha 18:35 But anyway, that's another idea. I don't know if it's the right weight. But maybe, Kelly 18:42 yeah, yeah, actually, that would work. Because all of my handspun, I mean, it's the same-- the Targi lamb is heavier, but the rest of my handspun is all about the same weight. Mm hmm. That's an interesting idea. Or holding them double. And then in some places using just one skein of a heavier yarn. Marsha 19:06 Because you know, the other thing, too, is that this is... I don't even think that they have gauge. Yeah, it says gauge is not important for this product. So it wouldn't. So you could just take and you could figure out what your... if you have a heavier weight yarn, you could just figure out how many stitches to the inch you're getting and then figure out, you know, how wide you want? How many you would want to cast on? Well, you know, that whole conversation we've had about using up yarn for the garter squish. I mean, I think the same idea with this is that you're probably not locked into a certain weight of yarn. Right? You'd have to just figure out Kelly 19:41 how to make whatever you're using roughly the same. Marsha 19:44 Right. And then also, didn't somebody in our crochet along did a sort of Chevron shaped blanket and that's crocheted. Yeah, so that's another thought. Kelly 19:54 Yeah. Yeah, it's a really nice. The chevron pattern is a really nice kind of traditional crochet pattern. It reminds me of my grandma's. She made millions, millions of Afghans out of that pattern. Okay, well, that's cool. That gives me some ideas. Marsha 20:14 It's better than putting it in a compost pile. Kelly 20:16 Yes, exactly. Marsha 20:19 And and also, you're getting a new trailer, you might need a blanket for the trailer. Kelly 20:23 Well, that's, that is something that I thought of, too. Yeah. And I want to finish that quilt. That's another thing I dug out was my pieced quilt top. Marsha 20:34 Mm hmm. Kelly 20:35 I think I want to finish that quilt for the trailer. So we'll see. Yeah, that's a good idea. I did get inspired to make one more thing. Moving into my projects. Besides the two bears, I did get inspired. And I used up quite a bit of yarn that have been hanging around for a while to make a cat bed for Minnie. She had been sleeping on a sample woven piece, a narrow piece that I had, we had just folded and positioned it, but it kind of looked messy. And so I made a basket inspired by some of the people in our crochet along. I made a basket for her out of some various old yarns from the weaving room and the early 2000s when those felted bags were kind of popular. Marsha 21:31 Mm hmm. Kelly 21:33 And I had some leftovers from that. And one of the yarns-- I did call you about this, but I wanted to tell people about the yarn that had cow hair in it. I thought that was pretty cool. Marsha 21:45 Yeah, we were gonna talk about this. Kelly 21:47 Yeah. And I didn't I didn't put that in the show notes. But I'll just I'll just say that there was this one singles yarn from Sweden. That yeah, that was like 20% Cow hair. And you looked something up on it. It suggested that it was Highland cow. So that was very interesting. But the main point of this is I got rid of probably...Let's see... I got rid of two balls and three pretty close to full partial skeins. So that made a big dent. One of those little piles that was laying on the tablecloth is gone. Totally gone, because I used it in this cat bed. So that's nice. Marsha 22:38 That's very good. Yeah. Kelly 22:40 And then I felted it so it's sitting on the sitting on the porch right now. So that's a... besides the two Mother Bears that was another finished project. So I finished... Well, I finished the Pebblebrook Beanie that I was working on last time out of the Invictus club yarn. And then I finished the two Mother Bears and I finished the cat bed. So I've been crocheting up a storm during my vacation from school. So it's been really nice. Marsha 23:08 Nice. Yeah. Kelly 23:11 Oh, and then one other crochet project that I did as as a nod to our crochet along which we'll talk about our winners later in the episode. I'm going to be teaching in the classroom on campus this semester, as everyone knows. I'm so excited. And I'm going to have to wear a mask and the masks don't really fit my face very well. And the ear loops, I always have to shorten them. And I usually will shorten them with a little knot. I tried twisting them but that didn't work very well. I tried shortening them, the ear loops, with a little knot. And that works okay, but it makes my ears stick out. And I don't need my ears to stick out any more than they already do. So my vanity! And I saw this ear saver, it's called One Button Mask Ear Saver. And it actually holds for me, I put it going up over the, kind of, the top back of my head. Kind of like the actual N95 masks have two elastics one goes behind your neck and one goes over your head. Marsha 24:25 Mm hmm. Kelly 24:26 And so I use it like that. It connects to the ear pieces, but then it straps across my head. And it works great. And I got to use a button from my button stash. Marsha 24:37 Yay! Very nice. Kelly 24:38 Because you know it's adjustable. You close it with a button. I wore it while I unpacked boxes and threw away stuff. Again another organizing and throwing away project. I worked for about four hours. One day while I unpacked things in my office at school, and it it didn't slip off. It was comfortable. I didn't have that ear pain that you sometimes get from wearing the mask for too long and I didn't have to really adjust it or anything. So it was nice and I get a nice tight fit. It feels like wearing one of those you know the N 95. Because it's actually holding on from the back of my head. So anyway really nice. That was my last crochet--most recent crochet project so... That did not use any stash to speak of. It's a very small project-- took me about an hour, including sewing on the button. So and then I'm working on the pair of socks that I was talking about last time out of the Bob Ross happy little mistakes. And the other thing I got inspired to do... Now this is with leftovers, but I promise never to wear it at the same time as I wear the sweater. [laughing] The the yarn is again, Invictus yarn. It's the Yak Luxe that I used for my Rachel sweater. Marsha 26:08 Mm hmm. Kelly 26:09 And then that yarn that you got me. Marsha 26:12 Oh, right. Kelly 26:12 I can't remember what it was called. But it was anyway, it's all in kind of blue green. Marsha 26:18 It was the yarn from Iceland from Iceland. Kelly 26:21 Yeah. And so anyway, I saw those scraps were sitting there. Pretty significant amounts were leftover. And so I put them all in a knitting bag. And I'm making a Sock Head Hat to replace the Sock Head hat that I have that I have been wearing since 2015. Marsha 26:45 Mm hmm. Kelly 26:47 And it's so faded that it's pretty much unrecognizable--the difference between the outside and the inside of the yarn. So I'm almost to the to the crown decreases on a sock head hat. Marsha 27:02 Whoa, nice. Kelly 27:02 Yeah. So it'll be nice. This will be for you know, going on walks and stuff. Not to match my sweater. AlthoughI guess I could but I don't know. I don't know about that. Marsha 27:13 There's no crime in wearing it to match. Yeah, yeah. What a knitting fashion patrols going to come and arrest you? [laughing] Kelly 27:19 Well, we'll see. Yeah, after I've laughed so much about adult layettes. [laughing] Oh, dear. So yeah, that's my new start-- this sock head pattern. So that's... so I've got two things on the go, the socks and this Sock Head hat pattern. And all the rest of my stuff for this week is finished objects. Marsha 27:46 Yay. Very nice. Kelly 27:48 Yeah. As you say, though, it's still in my house. Actually, the Mother Bears are going and the beanie is going so those are all those are all to be sent away. I haven't done it yet. Marsha 28:04 Well, let me ask you, I'm just going to go back to the tossing of the stash. Because the other thing too, I guess I wanted to ask is, do you even want to-- do you want to make anything out of that yarn? I mean,... Kelly 28:19 The yarn I've already knit with... mm hmm yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I don't want it to not be knitted. Marsha 28:31 That's another possibility is pass it along to someone else. Kelly 28:34 Yeah, yeah. And let it be their problem Marsha 28:40 Well, it may not be their problem, it's spirit yarn, right? Kelly 28:43 Exactly. Marsha 28:44 I don't think so negatively. Kelly 28:46 That's true. It would be there it would Marsha 28:48 Someone might really want it. Kelly 28:50 It would be their... I don't know it always feels like a great find when you when you find a good spirit yarn so so yeah, it'd be someone else's great find. Marsha 29:01 I'm gonna just say something... This has absolutely nothing to do with knitting but about what other people value or want that we don't want. And I don't know if they have this in the rest of the country but here in Seattle there's this Buy Nothing. It's Buy Nothing and then fill in your neighborhood. And so I live in the Maple Leaf Neighborhood so it's Buy Nothing Maple Leaf. And you cannot sell anything. It's all stuff that you give away for free or you can ask for things. And so I've been posting up things you know, like I got rid of a toaster. Like things that were duplicates that I didn't need, you know, like combining households. So it's surprising to me sometimes the things that I thought actually people would want-- nothing. Crickets. So I just bring it to the goodwill and and then I've also had a problem--and I hope I have no Buy Nothing Maple Leaf listeners listening to this--but sometimes it's really difficult to get people to come I'm in a timely manner to pick things up. And so then it'll be like seven days, and then I'll text and they're like, Oh yeah, yeah. And then they never show up and so I just take it to the goodwill. But I had all those Styrofoam pellets that you use as packing material, and I had been saving it. Because with the new deck, my thought was I was going to put in the bottom half, fill half the pots... I have very heavy concrete pots that were going to go on the deck and so to reduce the weight, I've heard that you actually put in styrofoam pellets in the bottom of your pot. Not loose, but I had bought like a mesh bags that I was going to fill the pellets and put in the bottom of the pots. I ended up not doing that because I used smaller pots. The bigger pots went elsewhere. So I had... I think I had eight trash bags of pellets. Kelly 30:50 Oh man! Marsha 30:51 You can't get rid of that stuff. It just goes in the... it can't be recycled, it just goes in the garbage. Yeah, and so I went to to UPS stores and they wouldn't take it because they can't take it anymore because of the pandemic. I went to a UPS and FedEx store and they wouldn't take it and so I thought I'm just going to post it up on Buy Nothing Maple Leaf. And within 20 minutes a guy said, I think we can use that at work. Let me check with my boss. He checks with his boss and he comes and picks it up that evening. Kelly 31:23 Wow! Marsha 31:23 He comes by and he picks up eight bags of this stuff and I was like all this stuff like it's so weird the stuff that I think has value nobody wants but the stuff that has like it's actually a burden to me. Kelly 31:35 It's acually garbage! Marsha 31:36 It's actually a huge burden to me. It is literally garbage. Well I don't want it to be garbage but if I was to dispose of it I would be considered garbage. But I thought somebody can use it, I just can't find anybody.And he was so prompt he was the fastest of any of my Buy Nothing people. Kelly 31:54 [laughing] Oh my gosh! Marsha 31:55 One man's junk is another man's treasure. Okay, but moving on the the infamous Nanny Meyer tea cozy for Brian. I'm halfway done with the second side. I do a couple rows a dy Kelly 32:09 Oh, yay, Marsha 32:09 So I'm making progress on that. Still working on my socks, nothing to report there. I'm three quarters of the way done with the Quick Switch hat by Abby Knits. The one I'm making for Ben the yarn is Meeker Street Olives Outerwear DK. So I'm working on that intermittently. So I have kind of moved on. What I'm really sort of obsessed with now is this phrancko.com sweater. I don't know what to call it. I'm just calling it my Phrancko Designs sweater or the striped sweater for Ben. But this one I'm making for my son, Ben. And just to remind people, it's the handspun in a kind of a barberpole green and brown and then a solid, three ply Brown. And I talked about this in the last episode that I knew I had measured Ben and entered all the information into phrancko.com. And printed out my pattern. And I forgot last Saturday to join their group, I completely forgot. So I'm going to try... Every Saturday at 2:30 they have a Zoom call. And I'm going to try and join that again. This Saturday, I made a note to myself, because I forgot last Saturday but to show them my progress. But what I started, the reason I had spun the solid brown is I didn't have enough of the brown and green. So I'm just gonna call it the green. But I didn't have enough of that to do an entire sweater. So I spun the brown and the idea, I was gonna do stripes. So Kelly, you and I had a big conversation about this because I had joined under the arms. And at that point, I started-- I did one stripe before I joined under the arms and then joined under the arms and I knit another four brown stripes separated by.... So my was my stripe sequence was going to be three brown, excuse me, three rows of brown, six rows of green, three rows of brown, six rows of green, and I was going to do that all the way through the sweater. But after doing five repeats of that, I got concerned about how much yarn I was going to have. I didn't think I'd have enough green to finish the whole sweater and the arms and the collar and everything. So I called you and we had a really great conversation and of course, your go-to striping sequence, right, which is the Fibonacci sequence. Kelly 34:44 Go Fibonacci. Marsha 34:46 So I ripped back and Kelly how should we describe this? Well, you explain Fibonacci. Kelly 34:53 Okay. So the Fibonacci sequence. It starts with one and then the second number to the sequence is also one. And then the third number of the sequence is two, because if you add one and one, you get two. And then the next number in the sequence, you take the two and add it to the previous number, the one, and you get three. And then three plus two is five. And so each number in the sequence is the sum of the two numbers prior. And all of those numbers are called Fibonacci numbers. You don't have to use them in order. But I like to use them in order. And so you have your stripe, you're using them for your stripe sizes, right? So three rows, a three row stripe is one size. A five row stripe is another size. That's another Fibonacci number. The next Fibonacci would be three and five is eight. So an eight row stripe would be another Fibonacci number. And then eight and five is 13. And so that's another Fibonacci number. And they get bigger as they... the stripes get bigger as they go. Marsha 36:04 Right Kelly 36:05 Depending on how many stripes, you know how many stripes you want, and how you organize them. So so tell us what you're doing, Marsha. Marsha 36:14 So first, I'm going to say that the green is considered my main color. So every stripe, brown stripe is separated by six rows of green, that's going to be consistent through the sweater, right? Kelly 36:27 Yeah. Marsha 36:28 But then my brown, I'm doing four stripes of brown with three rows of brown. So a three row, brown stripe four times, then a five row brown stripe three times, and then an eight row stripe twice, then the plan is to do six rows of the green, and then my ribbing will be all in the brown. And so the next sequence should be 13 rows, which I think is going to be enough for my ribbing. That's what we talked about. Yeah, that makes sense to what I'm saying now. And I think this is all going to work out perfectly. Because if we add up all these rows, it's 97 rows, which will be about what I need. That plus the yoke equals about 21 and a half inches. Kelly 37:34 Perfect. Marsha 37:35 I'm sorry, I said that wrong. Those stripes sequence plus the yoke equals 19 and a half inches which is what I need for the body before I start the ribbing. And then the ribbing will be the extra two inches to make the body length the 21 and a half inches. And I hope I'm saying that in a way that makes sense to people, that people can understand. Kelly 37:54 Yeah, I think you did. Although I mean, I was there with you when you were working it out. Marsha 37:59 I know! Kelly 38:00 But I think it'll be nice, because you'll have, you'll have four small stripes, and then you'll have three medium sized stripes. And then you'll have two large stripes, and then you'll have one really large stripe in the ribbing. And so it's kind of getting heavier. You know, the weight of the dark brown is getting heavier as you go down. It's getting less frequent, but they're getting, but the stripes are getting wider. So I think it'll look really nice. I have never been... I have to say I have never been disappointed by Fibonacci. Marsha 38:33 So I have my little cheat sheet that I will take a picture of and put in the show notes. Kelly 38:40 Oh, good. Marsha 38:41 Yeah, visually what I'm doing, and I've checked off, you know what I've done so far, people will see what I'm doing. It'll be obvious, I think when you see, when I take a picture of it and post in the show notes. And then the plan is when I finished the body, I'm going to go back and do the collar next in the green. And then we're going to do I'm going to do another assessment of the, of the yarn supply and then we're gonna have to figure out stripes for the the sleeves. And I'm not sure if I will just... I only have a bit of a dilemma, because well, that's not exactly true. I guess the sleeves are about the length...Well, the sleeves are about the length of the entire body. So that means my stripe sequence is going to be a little bit different. Because the entire body of the finished sweater is 21 and a half inches. A part of that is solid green. Right? The sleeves are 21 and a half inches of stripes. Mm hmm. So we're going to have to do something there. There's going to be another phone call. [laughing] Kelly 39:53 Another consultation. Marsha 39:55 Yes, a consultation. But I have... Yes. So I will have to talk... I will actually talk to Dr.Locke who really is a doctor of mathematics. So to help me through this, and because the math will work, right? Kelly 40:11 Yeah. Yeah. So your only constraint for the sleeves is going to be how much yarn you have left. Marsha 40:19 Yes. And so Ben may get a short sleeve sweater. He may have what they call like a wrist... Kelly 40:33 bracelet length! Marsha 40:34 Bracelet length Kelly 40:39 Oh my gosh. Well, I think you'll have it. I mean, I think you'll have enough it's just a matter of how you how you can figure it. Yeah. Marsha 40:48 Actually, I'm sort of laughing because he might actually wear a bracelet length sweater because he was home last weekend. And I said, what he was wearing, I said it's so bizarre but it's kind of stylish in its own way. Kelly 41:08 Oh, yeah? Marsha 41:10 So he had on like long underwear or something. He'd gone for a bike ride so he had on like, I don't know if it was long underwear or leggings or something. I guess you wouldn't call it leggings for men but it's like some sort of warm pants like... I guess long underwear. Socks that are... like he has these Christmas socks you know those those acrylic socks that you can buy that have like designs on them? He had some Santa socks on his Teva sandals, cut-off shorts over it like those Carhart work pants that he'd cut off. That's over it. And then he's drawn with like, permanent marker all over them. And then where their are holes? He's sewn up the holes, hand stitched up holes, and then... [laughing] a hand knit a hat that I had made for him. Oh, no, it was the... I was think it was the one I made out of sock scraps. No, it was the very first handspun. I made a hat for him. And my handspun is like rope. Kelly 42:17 Oh yes. The five pound hat! Marsha 42:20 The five pound hat and it has no life to it at all. It does is just saying it's just like sits on his head like a bucket hat. Yeah. And then something on the top and I've completely lost track of what was on the top. But anyway, he looks kind of stylish in sort of a bizarre way. So maybe he might wear a bracelet length sleeve. Kelly 42:42 Oh my gosh. Yeah. Marsha 42:43 Anyway. Kelly 42:44 Well, they don't get in the way. You know? If you have your sleeves a little shorter. Marsha 42:49 So then my last project is the beanie, the Pebblebrook Beanie by Wish Upon a hook. And I started this using Little Sheep in the Big Woods. And so I was... I started this...was going to try and finish it for the crochet along. But sadly, after I ripped it out for the third time I thought I can't. I can't rip it out. I can't do it again. And so it was...now I had 24 hours. And I thought you know what, it's okay. Even though it's it's our... It's like my crochet along, like ours that we're doing as part of our podcast. I I can't do it. I couldn't do it again. So it's all right. Kelly 43:40 Yeah. Next time. Marsha 43:42 I don't know the thing about is I did really well on the the brim. I got that figured out. I did really well. I had to call you about picking up the stitches, I guess I would say to start the... I have to say I don't know how we ever learned to knit or crochet without YouTube because I watched tons of tutorials about how to make the bobble. We talked. And I'm just like these bobbles are not working right. And I still was doing them wrong. And then I ripped it out. We had a conversation I ripped it out I started again... like that's not right. So I ripped it out and like that's when I thought I can't start again. So... Kelly 44:22 Yeah, the thing about crochet. I like charts, this doesn't have a chart. I like charts because the thing I always found the most difficult about crochet is where... which hole do you put your hook in? Marsha 44:35 Yes, right. Kelly 44:36 It's a it's a fabric full of holes. And then you have to figure out which hole is the right hole to put the hook into for the, you know, for the next stitch. And I always found that to be really perplexing. Marsha 44:50 And so with mine, my Bobbles were stacking on top of each other because I was putting... I was picking the wrong whole. So my bobblrd just stacked on top of each other, and like, that doesn't look right. And because they're supposed to sort of nestle into each other, so it ends up sort of looking like basket weaving, right? Kelly 45:09 Yeah. Marsha 45:10 So anyway, I did take a class years ago on crochet. And I made-- I did make a shawl. Kelly 45:18 You made the virus shawl. Marsha 45:20 Yeah, I made that. But I, I'm not that familiar with crochet. Like I've been looking at like sweaters and stuff, but I don't even know how you get gauge. I don't know how you-- like the hat is not that critical, but like I don't really know enough about crochet to do a sweater for sure. I need to at least figure out how to do the hat before I would move on to a sweater right? No, there's some great patterns out there in crochet you know, so Kelly 45:52 Yeah, Marsha 45:52 beautiful things! Kelly 45:54 Those are interesting to me because I never thought of crochet really as garments. You know, growing up my grandma crocheted blankets. She crocheted doilies, she crocheted those modular bedspreads out of little tiny, small hexagon things. You know, with crochet thread. But crochet in a garment, excepted a garment for a doll, you know, doll clothes, was not something that I had ever thought of. So that was new to me when you know, as an adult, I came back to crochet. Yeah, yeah. Marsha 46:30 Yeah, cuz I had sort of this sense that crochet was not particularly fashionable, you know, But it is, I'm completely wrong on that. It's, there's some really, really nice patterns. And so I would like to know more about it, but I need a bit more hand holding. Kelly 46:45 And I, I, I don't feel like I'm super comfortable with crochet. And I especially didn't a few years ago when we first started having the crochet along. But I have to admit, I did a lot of crocheting growing up, you know, I mean, like making doll clothes and doll blankets and blankets for stuffed animals and giant long strips that I didn't, you know, have a purpose for. I know, there was a lot... I did a lot of crocheting as a kid. And so the learning part of it, I don't really remember. I didn't learn all the details, but the kind of the sort of basics, you know, the kind of basics of crochet and the language of croche, I don't remember learning it. I just have known for a really long time. So yeah, so I, you know, that it's, it's challenging. Marsha 47:39 I learned the just the basics, like how to chain stitch. I didn't even know what the names were. My great aunt showed me. But I don't know how to increase and decrease and yeah, you know, so I am interested, though, and what I would say... What I do like about crochet, and I've said this before, when we were having a conversation many years ago in the podcast about crochet, is you only have one live stitch. So if you do make a mistake, it's really easy to get back and get back on track. Because you're not having to, you know, knit back stitch by stitch or rip it all out and then pick up those stitches. It's very easy to correct anything. To rip back and get started again. But not under a crochet along deadline. Kelly 48:32 Right. Marsha 48:34 Anyway, so that's it for me for projects. All right. So Kelly, we need to talk about the crochet along. Kelly 48:42 Yeah, it just finished up a couple of days ago. And we have some prizes. So we had one thread for chatter and finished objects. We had 14 people participating in the discussion. And there were 20 projects that were linked. I'm not counting them up. I'm just... there at the top of the Ravelry thread it talks aboutit, so if you link your project it counts it. Nine patterns were linked, and 84 total posts. So lots of people had multiple projects in the in the crochet along so I think it was a success. Marsha 49:25 And we had some new people participating. Kelly 49:27 We did and that's always fun. I like when we have a different kind of along and end up with some people that we haven't seen in the threads before. So that was a nice thing to see. Marsha 49:39 So let's just say, we have four winners, and each has won a pattern of their choice up to $12. So Kelly, do you want to announce the winners? Kelly 49:51 Sure. And winners should just get in touch with I guess me and then let me know the pattern that you want. Our first winner is JoyLaine1, Joy. She made a basket that was partially my inspiration for... she and Natalie's baskets were my inspiration for making the cat basket when I saw that pile of orange yarn that I had when I did the tossing of the stash. So she's our first winner. And then we have Shelly, Purpledogwood. She's the one that made all of the pumpkin and Santa hats. Marsha 50:43 Yes, Kelly 50:43 That we talked about last time. And then our third winner, Misnim, Missy. She's the one who inspired me to make the ear savers. She posted about making the ear savers. And then that reminded me that I had saved that pattern for the one with the buttons long ago, and that I needed to get busy on that for for my, my school semester, this coming up. And then finally, our last winner is SuperKip, Natalie. And she made quite a few things. We talked about her baby toy. And she made a moses basket that she is using for yarn and made quite a few things. So those are our four winners. So Joy and Shelly and Missy and Natalie, message me on Ravelry or email me, Two Ewes at Two Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com. And let me know what pattern you'd like. You've won the pattern of your choice. Congratulations! Marsha 51:56 Yes. Congratulations. And thank you for participating. It's fun. Well, what do I know? It was not fun for me. [laughing] Kelly 52:08 I'm sorry. But I do think it's a cool hat. And I do think you know, Marsha 52:15 I did too. But another time. Let's not go.. let's not go back there, right.[laughing] But anyway, just laughing! Kelly 52:25 And then we still have our winter weave along going on. It started in October, but it will go through the end, through the end of March. Marsha 52:37 So Kelly, we need to talk about our next giveaway that we're doing. Yes. So this is going to be this is inspired by the tossing of the stash. Kelly 52:48 Yes, it is. Marsha 52:50 So one of the things that you found in your stash is I don't know how many years ago it was that I had acquired a whole bunch of cotton yarn, mercerized cotton yarn. And we did a big dye-A-thon when I was at your house one summer. And we still.you found that you still have this cotton yarn in your stash, some of it because you have made dish cloths out of a lot of it. But we still have quite a bit, several skeins, quite a bit. So it is inspired our next giveaway which is we're going to put a thread on the Ravelry, our Ravelry group and just let us know your favorite dish cloth pattern. And you'll be entered to win a skein of our hand dyed cotton yarn. Hand dyed by the Two Ewes. And you'll also receive a Two Ewes Fiber Adventures dish cloth pattern. And if you've never made a dish cloth, just tell us if you're a dish cloth newbie, if you just just check in on that in the thread, and then we'll have a drawing for a skein of our hand dyed cotton yarn and a dishcloth pattern. So we're recording this on January 13. So it'll be posting in the next couple of days. So it'll start as soon as you hear this and it ends February 28. So go into the thread and let us know your favorite dish cloth pattern and or if you're a newbie, and you may be one of the lucky winners! Kelly 54:37 And I am going to... I'm going to lower expectations just a little bit about the dish cloth pattern. Because okay, because it's mostly just a stitch pattern. I'm not a pattern designer. You know, it won't be tech edited. I'll just let you know how I started. You know, what size needles I use, what the stitch pattern is that I use, and how I bind it off. Marsha 55:08 Okay, so it'll be... so yes, we will lower the bar on the pattern! Kelly 55:14 It's not a professionally designed and tech edited pattern. It's the the kind of pattern that your that your grandma would pass alongto you. Marsha 55:26 Yeah. When you're sitting next to each other on the sofa, Kelly 55:29 I'll send it to you on a scrap of paper, on the back of a receipt.[laughing] Oh, I'm sorry, no, it will be-- I will write it nicely. But yeah, it's not an official like designer kind of pattern because I'm not a pattern designer. And then one other thing that I just have to disclose about this yarn if you win it. Some of them-- because it was our--we were experimenting with dyeing cotton. Some of them have quite a bit of bleeding happening. And so if you're doing your dishes, the first time, you may find that the water turns, whatever color the dish cloth is. But after you've done that, first, you know, after you've done that first round of dishes, I can verify. Or if you don't want to deal with that you can just toss it in the washing machine before you even use it. Marsha 56:25 But not with your whites! Kelly 56:26 But not with your whites, correct. Yeah, toss it into a colored load. And it'll be... it'll be fine. But I just... Marsha 56:33 We really have-- we really have lowered the bar on this contest. Kelly 56:37 Well, it is my destashing really, right? Marsha 56:42 Yeah. You will be helping Kelly out. [laughing] Kelly 56:45 Yes. You will be getting cast off yarn! Doesn't that sound good? [laughing] Actually, I have to say I do love the dish cloths made out of this yarn. They're kind of stiff and scrubby. Because it's a firm yarn, you know. So they work really well. And you will like them. If you win this and you make one of those dish cloths, I think you will like it. So Alright. And then the last thing, we have some listener feedback. I just wanted to... I just wanted to to talk about...Caroline in Somerset, Southwest England, suggested because we had said, you know, what would people like to hear on the podcast in the coming year? She suggested that people might like to hear about yarn stores around the world, and maybe a bit of the history of the yarn store or the history of the town that they're in. And she told us about a yarn shop called All About the Yarn, she says its on a cobbled street called Catherine Hill. And yes, it is a hill. And it's so called because hundreds of years ago, Catherine Hill, the street is called that because hundreds of years ago, there was a chapel called St. Catherine's. So she gave us a first little snippet of information about the yarn shop and the street that the yarn shop is on. But I thought that was a good idea. And so we may we may turn that into something for the for the new year. So thanks for the idea Catherine. And then Irena emailed and said that she was so glad to hear us back that she had had thought perhaps we might not be coming back. She knows a lot of the podcasts that she listens to have you know, sort of disbanded. And so she was really glad to hear us coming back. And she did say she loved it when Marsha would go on long trips. So I think that will be in the not near future. Kelly 56:47 Yes, my travel buddy Kim and I have had many conversations about where we go next. But we're not quite ready to get on a plane yet. We're not quite ready. I don't know, it will happen. Right? But not right away. Yeah, not right away. Kelly 59:14 Yeah. Yeah. But it was nice to hear. It was nice to hear that Irena was was waiting for us to come back. And I have to also give a shout out to Kent of Kent on Instagram because when we posted the last episode... It's so funny when you know the listeners have kind of inside jokes. Because he commented on the Instagram posts that it was good that we were... that our episode was up because he had been sitting and refreshing his podcast app over and over. That gave me... that gave me a laugh. And then finally, Anna said you know, cut yourself some slack. That was her message to us because we were talking about missing episodes. She said, During the pandemic you are my company, you made my frustrations okay and normal. She said, Of course, she likes all the, you know, travels and conferences and knitting event talk. But she also likes hearing the frustrations of teaching online, dogs, and the isolation that was what most folks were going through. So she says, you keep it real. You kept it real, gave me an outside contact and reinforced all that was essential and made me laugh. So that was really nice. Thank you, Anna, for that comment. And yeah, we do, we are cutting ourselves some slack for the the difficulties of the past couple of couple of years, and probably some difficulties going forward. But yeah, we'll keep sharing. You'll hear. You'll hear me whine. [laughing] Marsha 1:00:54 I am going to take a picture here. I'm sitting here at my desk thinking about the dogs. I am going to take a picture. I'm sitting at the desk recording, and I'm just going to take a picture of Enzo laying on the bed, and I'm going to post this in the show notes. Kelly 1:01:09 Oh good. Marsha 1:01:09 Yeah. He cracks me up. You know, I think it's a poodle thing. I'm turning away from the microphone. Now. I think it's a poodle thing that they lay on their... Maybe all dogs do it. But they lay... he lays on his back. And then he has his head like twisted all the way back down almost to his hips kind of it looks so uncomfortable. Kelly 1:01:29 yeah, it's not every dog. I think it must be a poodle thing. Marsha 1:01:34 Because they're so floppy. Yeah. And yeah, Kelly 1:01:37 None of my dogs have ever laid like that. Marsha 1:01:43 Yeah, he's so funny. Very. He's so floppy. Anyway. That's a dog story. Well, I thought I have to say I thought it was really very, it felt really good to know that people missed us because...Well, I wasn't really feeling guilty. Because it's like life gets... we just are busy in life, you know, the teaching thing and blah, blah, blah, all of that. But the fact that people were like, Well, where are they? Refreshing the app! There were many comments about like, you know, Oh, good! You finally posted! We were getting worried. So that was nice. And it's also it's nice that that we have been.. we're still in the middle of the pandemic...but that people have found us so enjoyable during the pandemic too. Kelly 1:02:29 Yeah, it's nice, it's very nice to hear! It is nice to hear that. That it's a bright spot, right, for people. Marsha 1:02:37 Yeah, yeah, we're giving people something. I don't know. I don't know exactly what we're giving them. But we're giving them something. [laughing] Kelly 1:02:43 Yeah, and it's a bright spot for us too, I mean, I always look forward to Marsha 1:02:47 Oh, yeah. Kelly 1:02:47 To getting on and talking to all of you. Marsha 1:02:53 Yeah. Kelly 1:02:54 And in fact, we have more to say, we have more in the show notes this episode than we actually did in the episode. And that's happened to us the last probably three times. So yeah, that we've recorded. So. Yeah. Marsha 1:03:10 Yeah. So. Okay. Anything I think we need to say? Kelly 1:03:14 I think that's it.Okay, I'm off to professional development for two hours. Marsha 1:03:22 Ah, in person or online? Kelly 1:03:24 Zoom. Yeah, okay. So I'm really not off. I'm off to the downstairs. First I have to get dressed. And then I have to appear on Zoom for a professional development day. Marsha 1:03:37 All right. Well, I'm gonna wake the dog up and take him for a walk. Kelly 1:03:42 Oh, my goodness. [laughing] Marsha 1:03:47 He needs some exercise because he's got his pandemic five that we still haven't gotten off. So we're working on that. So well, all right, Kelly. We'll talk. I'll let you go. I'll let you get to your your zoom call and we'll talk in two weeks. Both 1:04:03 Alrighty, bye. Kelly 1:04:06 Thank you so much for listening. To subscribe to the podcast visit Two Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com. Marsha 1:04:13 Join us on our adventures on Ravelry and Instagram. I am betterinmotion and Kelly is 1hundredprojects. Kelly 1:04:21 Until next time, we're the Two Ewes Both 1:04:24 doing our part for world fleece! Transcribed by https://otter.ai

A spirit yarn start-a-palooza is underway! The stresses of life call for self-care and for the Two Ewes that means starting new projects. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Subscribe on Android or Subscribe on Google Podcasts Marsha's Projects Atlas (Ravelry link) by Jared Flood using Navia Tradition. The pattern is also available at his website. Still need to knit a swatch with #10 needles and then determine my next steps. I'm headed to the beach on November 15th for a week and I may bring this. Nanny Meier's Tea Cozy by Amelia Carlsen. I am using Cascade 220 Heather in Red Wine Heather (9489) and green Irelande (2429). Nothing to report here. Still waiting for Brian to measure his teapot so I know when to start decreasing for the top of the tea cozy. Garter Squish Blanket by Stephen West. I am getting close to the end. Started ball #9, and last, of the main color gradient and knitting with contrasting color #8 of 15. I'm making the contrasting color repeats shorter so I can be sure to use all 15 colors. Meadow Stripe Socks using Patons Kroy Sock in the colorway, Meadow Stripes. Working on these when I have a few minutes. The navy I plan to use for heels and toes is Lang Yarns Jawoll Superwash fingering. Cast on Quick Switch hat by Abbyeknits using Madelinetosh Tosh DK in the colorway Cousteau. Hat has a fun zig zag effect. Paving Mitts (Ravelry link) I'm thinking of making these crocheted mitts as part of our Crochet Along. Kelly's Projects I have a start-a-palooza!  I bought the pattern for the Pebblebrook Beanie by Wish Upon a Hook (Ravelry link). I'll be using it with my Knit Picks Brava worsted leftovers to make at least one multicolor hat, and if it's fun I can make many more. I have the equivalent of about 5 skeins leftover from the blanket. I started the Sundowner shawl by Tanja Steinbach. (Ravelry Link). I'm using NoCKRs spirit yarn. Wollmeise twin 80/20 in two different brown variegated colors.  I started a pair of socks in Bob Ross Happy Little Mistakes yarn from Weird Sisters Wool Emporium in Aberdeen. This is the yarn Marsha bought for me while we were in Seabrook.  I started and finished weaving a baby blanket using spirit yarn (Ravelry link) I used a twill pattern--nothing fancy--and was able to thread and weave in just a little more than one weekend.  I finished two more charity hats (Ravelry link). I have one or two more I can make with the yarn. It was also NoCKRs spirit yarn. Super Yarn Mart! German Town.  Speaking of Super Yarn Mart!, I couldn't figure out the exact vintage of the German Town yarn. But I found an obituary for the founder, Irving Hershey Gold from 2013 and Ellen Bloom's blog from 2006 reminiscing about the good old days of Super Yarn Mart!  "Super Yarn Mart was the ONLY place where we could find a variety of yarn to buy. Oh sure, you could find a few skeins at Woolworth's, Sears, Fedco and even the May Company, but Super Yarn Mart was the best. They even imported yarn from Europe! There were locations all over the Southland. The aisles were wide, the stores were huge. There were samples of afghans, sweaters, baby clothes hanging from the rafters. They gave you these patterns for free. Everything was pink. All of the ladies that worked there were old, wore lots of lipstick, drank coffee all day and smoked in the store. Ahh, yes...those were the days of acrylic heaven." Dark Green Forest (Ravelry link) by Christina Korber-Reith is at the stage where I have to make sure that the sleeves are the correct length before the ribbing. I think one sleeve is not the same length as the other--due to my counting issues possibly!). Once I've sorted out the length equality, I'll be ready to put on the ribbing and the knitting will be finished.  Crochet Crochet Along Dates November 1 through Jan 10. There is a crochet bundle in the Ravelry group. Winter Weave Along Starts October 15 and goes through the end of March.

We have a Crochet-A-Long starting and project updates and we reconnect after a hectic month. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Subscribe on Android or Subscribe on Google Podcasts Marsha's Projects Atlas (Ravelry link) by Jared Flood using Navia Tradition. The pattern is also available at his website. I have made the tiniest bit of movement. JoAnn (momdiggity) came to my house to offer help with my colorwork. She was a tremendous help and it was lovely to finally meet her. My plan is to knit a swatch with #10 needles and then determine my next steps.   Nanny Meier's Tea Cozy by Amelia Carlsen. I am using Cascade 220 Heather in Red Wine Heather (9489) and green Irelande (2429). Nothing to report here. Still waiting for Brian to measure his teapot so I know when to start decreasing for the top of the tea cozy.   Garter Squish Blanket by Stephen West. I am obsessed with this project! Knitting with main color #7 of a total of nine and started repeating the contrasting colors. I'm knitting #2 of the second set of contrasting colors.   Cast on a pair of basic socks using Patons Kroy Socks in the colorway Meadow Stripes. Kelly's Projects Faye's Flower Blanket, made with the Persian Tile Blanket pattern by Jane Crowfoot is done and delivered.    Another finished project, already mailed and no pictures! Fennec hat by Alicia Weisberg-Roberts and worsted booties from a free Bernat pattern. Used Invictus Yarns Captain Superwash in the Driftaway color. From the Heavyweight yarn club, September. After I finished those I used acrylic scraps from the blanket to make a slightly larger striped hat and a pumpkin hat.    Dark Green Forest by Christina Korber-Reith. The yarn is handspun and overdyed. It's a 3-ply made from CVM fleece from deep stash (2005 ish). Crochet Crochet Along Dates November 1 through Jan 10. The new Crochet Magazine, Moorit Magazine, has launched! We're having a Crochet-A-Long to celebrate Alyson Chu's great adventure! (Alyson of Keep Calm and Carry Yarn podcast).    If you need Crochet Along ideas: Tiny Spider by Anastasia Kirs. Crocheted with thread on 0.4 or 0.5 mm hook! Postmortem by Ann Wanamaker. It's a coffin shaped piece of crocheted lace with a skeleton inside. Ana Wanamaker has some interesting Victorian creepy doilies. If you like Blue Willow or Calamity Ware, check out the Deathware pattern. Marsha should make it to hang on Mark's wall of Blue Willow. Pebblebrook Beanie by Wish Upon a Hook has an interesting stitch pattern and would look good with multiple colors.  Bees in Clover by Michele duNaier I wear my Habitat Cardigan a lot! Daydream Shawl by Toni Lipsey. An Aran weight big chunky fringed shawl in Tunisian crochet. Check out all her patterns!  Winter Weave Along Starts October 15 and goes through the end of March.  

A slightly longer podcast this week, where we answer some questions from an instagram Q&A, talk about yarn, yarn and more yarn, The Crochet Sanctuary, designing and our next Crochet Along

Tree removal competes with Spring Break weaving and the stuffing of Frog and Toad for the content this week. You never know what you'll hear about on the Two Ewes show! Show notes with full transcript, photos, and links can be found in the podcast section of our shop website: TwoEwesFiberAdventures.com. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Subscribe on Android or Subscribe on Google Podcasts Marsha’s Projects Walk Along tee by Ankestrick (Ravelry link) Abington Mitts by Jennifer Lassonde (Ravelry link) Almost done. Just the thumb to finish. In the evenings I've been spinning the green and brown merino. Kelly’s Projects  Iced Matcha socks (Ravelry link) from the Coffee Socks Collection by Dots Dabbles Designs. I’m using Invictus Yarns Seraphic. It is a merino/cashmere/silk yarn in a gray blue purple tonal color. I want to knit more with this yarn base! I started stuffing Frog from Frog and Toad (Ravelry link) from frogandcast.com. I’m using the crushed walnut and it is staying inside and not coming through the fabric. Frog is currently sitting in a tumbler with a funnel in his head! I realized I should put the needles into the provisional cast on before I start filling them so I will be ready to kitchener the top. I anticipate it will be somewhat messy.  Canvas weave sampler (Ravelry link) from JST Online Guild. Throughout spring break I spent time weaving and watching the Canvas Weave videos of Season 5. I used the warp that I wound at Christmas and adapted the sampler threading to fit the number of threads I had. I wove a dresser scarf for the linen cupboard, 5 dishtowels, and a small hand towel.  I had Cesar Chavez day off and I got the Reading in Bed blanket (Ravelry link) threaded onto the loom and ready to start weaving. This is all using my handspun yarn. With 6 epi compared to 22 epi  and a 3 yard warp instead of a 7 yard warp it went really fast! Like the difference between a fingering weight sweater and an Aran weight sweater.  News/Other Extremities Knit/Crochet Along This KAL/CAL was inspired by the generous donation of these patterns: Abington Mitts, Jennifer Lassonde, Down Cellar Studio Coffee Socks Collection, Dotsdabbles Designs, Deborah It ends on April 25, 2021. Knit anything for your extremities (hands, arms, legs, feet). Transcript Marsha 00:03 Hi, this is Marsha   Kelly 00:04 and this is Kelly.   Marsha 00:05 We are the Two Ewes of Two Ewes Fiber Adventures. Thanks for stopping by.   Kelly 00:09 You'll hear about knitting, spinning, dyeing, crocheting, and just about anything else we can think of as a way to play with string.   Marsha 00:17 We blog and post show notes at Two Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com.   Kelly 00:22 And we invite you to join our Two Ewes Fiber Adventures group on Ravelry. I'm 1hudredprojects   Marsha 00:29 and I am betterinmotion. We are both on Instagram and Ravelry. And we look forward to meeting you there.   Both 00:35 Enjoy the episode.   Marsha 00:43 Hi, Kelly.   Kelly 00:44 Hey, Marsha. How's it going?   Marsha 00:45 Pretty good.   Kelly 00:47 Good.   Marsha 00:48 lots going on here.   Kelly 00:49 Yeah, nothing noisy, though. We waited till late enough that all the noise is gone.   Marsha 00:54 Yes. We were actually.. were scheduled to record yesterday but moved it to today because yesterday, I had the Alaskan yellow cedar   Kelly 01:06 bonsai!   Marsha 01:07 Yeah, the former so I just the former bonsai. So I think I talked about this. But in case I didn't a really quick story about this is when my parents bought this house in 1962, there was a Japanese garden between the two houses that actually belonged to the neighbors. And in that Japanese garden was a bonsaied Alaskan yellow cedar. That was maybe four feet tall. And years have passed.   Kelly 01:38 Yes, I can say because I was born in 1962. So yeah, 59 years have passed   Marsha 01:44 yes have passed. Anyway, it was about 40 feet tall, and had grown. There were originally five trunks. And two are removed. I was able to remove two of them a few years ago, because the reason I wanted to get rid of this tree is it had damaged the sewer line. And we had to put in a new sewer line, irrigation line, the new deck, and a new roof. So it does so much damage that it was-- it had to go. And here's the real reason. Last summer sitting on the new deck, I got hit twice by bird poop! Because the crows would hang out in the tree. That's the real reason. [laughing]   Kelly 02:28 Well, the palm tree next door, the date palm or? Yeah, I think it was like a date palm next door, was taken down yesterday, also. So we would have had tree work at one of our houses regardless. And Robert saw the owner of the house this morning. And he's like, what happened to the tree? And he said, Oh, it was old it had to go. Which there was nothing wrong with that palm tree. I'm not a particularly big fan of palm trees. But it was it was a nice--I mean, it was a pretty nice specimen. If you like palm trees. In your case, you really actually did have a good reason to get rid of the tree. Not just yeah,   Marsha 03:11 It had done so much damage. Yeah. And it is just, I mean, I'll put on it... I have not posted any pictures yet on Instagram. I'll post pictures and when people see... Yeah, you know what it was like, but it was kind of a an emotional day, just because I don't like cutting down trees. I mean, this was a, it was a spectacular tree. It had been beautiful at one time, but it's just so big and in completely the wrong place and cutting off light. So my bedroom is much lighter, the kitchen is much, much lighter. But mostly it was just the damage. And then, you know,   Kelly 03:49 Well and the fact that it was right next to the neighbor's garage, and pulling up things that it shouldn't   Marsha 03:55 Yeah, it's about a half inch from the neighbor's garage, you know. So anyway, it's been a long process, I won't go into the whole thing. But have you have to get a permit in the city of Seattle to have a tree taken down, especially a tree this size. And it was it was a long, a long journey. But they finally got the permit. And they came yesterday and cut the tree down. I got the estimate and signed the contract in August, last August. And I can-- got the -- I think was on Thursday or Friday of last week. I got the email from the company that was going to cut the tree down that they had received the permit and they had scheduled me gave me the date that the tree was scheduled to come down. I said that's great. And so then I call them on Monday to confirm because it's in the contract and I confirm, I confirm once again that they are bringing protection for my new deck. Because this tree is sandwiched between my deck, it's, it's about four inches from my deck, the base of the tree. And so I had confirmed that they were going to bring protection and put something down on the deck. And they arrived at nine o'clock in the morning with nothing, no plywood to put on the deck. And the guy who was-- I found out later was the manager of the crew was a little snippy with me, a little rude. And I was like... and I kind of have that feeling of like, What do I do? And I decided, you know, WWRD, what would Robert do? And Robert would go out there and tell him to stop until they got the plywood. So I went out there and I told them to stop. And they said, okay, and they stopped for a few minutes. And then I went back in the house, and I saw they were dropping branches again. So I went back out and I said they have to, I said, I told you to stop, you need to stop. I've called the company. And they are sending plywood and you need to-- I'm telling you--you need to wait until the plywood arrives. So they stood there on my deck. And I went and made a cup of coffee and I sat in my breakfast nook, which is right overlooking and I just sat in the window so they could see me and then they just stopped. They dropped--put all their tools down at that point and went and sat in their trucks.   Kelly 06:40 Cursing out Old Lady Failor   Marsha 06:42 Yes. But I, you know, like in the end, I want to say something sort of sexist. I... it... there's moments like this when I wish I had a man. But you know that because I sometimes feel being female. And now, you know, when...when I was... Well, I think it's always been this way, just being female, that I think that I'm discounted in some way and especially when I was younger. And then when you get older, you're discounted in another way. Right? And I...and it's...and so I just thought, you know, Robert would go out there and tell them no, you're stopping! Because they all said to me, Well, we have insurance to cover any damage to the deck. But my point is, I don't want to have any damage done. I don't want to go down that path of having to deal with it. I don't even want to deal with having a damaged deck.   Kelly 07:36 Why? Why would you want.. Yes. Why would you not take precautions rather than just say, Oh, I have insurance in case something happened?   Marsha 07:42 Yes!   Kelly 07:43 That does not make sense.   Marsha 07:45 Yeah. So yeah. So I'm glad I did it. And then I did go out afterwards... So I'm not gonna say the name of the company because they ended up being great. And the we had a rough start. But they once the plywood came, the guys got to work, there was a crew of five. And I was watching them. And it really is remarkable what they were doing because they have to climb up into the tree. And it's 40 feet. They're up there. 40 feet with rope. You've had tree work done. So you know   Kelly 08:14 my tree work, yes,endless tree work.   Marsha 08:17 And then they, you know, they tie every branch. Before they cut it it's tied onto a rope and then it's lowered down. So there's..it's not like they're just up there dropping wood, you know, they're very careful. And such a tight area that they had to work in with two houses and a garage and the infamous deck. So I went out at the same time they're doing all of this. First Mark and then later on Ben and I were working on the garage roof because we've had to do some patching because it was leaking. And so we were...that's another whole story for another episode of the podcast, but we're up there working on this roof. And I came down at one point. And while I was up there working, I got to thinking, I wonder if there was just like... Oh, I know what it was! It was when the the young woman from the company arrived in the pickup truck with the plywood. She then said to me, okay, now we're grinding out the stump, right? And I said, No, we're not because first of all, it was too expensive. But also, they couldn't.. if now that the deck is built, they can't get the machinery in there. And just to grind out the stump was going to be the same price as removing the tree. And it doesn't matter. It's an area once the my fence is up it's like a no man's land. Nobody goes over there. So I wasn't going to do that. And so then I started thinking about that. I thought, how come she didn't remember that I'm not having the the stump removed?   Marsha 09:43 So the young man who was the foreman of this group, this team that removed the tree I said to him, you know, when he had a quiet moment, he was smoking a cigarette, and I said, Hey, can we just talk for a minute? And I could just tell he's like, Oh my god, what's this woman want now? But I went, I said to him, I said, I just want to talk about this morning. And I said, I think we were both a little irritated with one another. And I said, I got to thinking, is it perhaps you were not getting any inf...? Were you given any information about the job before you arrived? And he said, No, I was given your address and told to cut down the Alaskan yellow cedar. He said, I had no idea that there was a deck. I had no idea that it was sandwiched between these two houses. I had no idea that it's like an inch from the the garage and three inches or four inches from your deck. He's had nothing. Yeah. So and he said, I came in you know, it's a dangerous job. And so his adrenaline gets a little up, which I understand after having watched them.   Kelly 10:43 and especially if you arrive and find all these obstacles that you have to be worried about.   Marsha 10:48 Exactly. And then he said, you know, and he said me, I apologize to you, too. He said, I was kind of rude to you. And he...and he was he was very rude to me! And I said, you know, I accept it. I said, that's fine. I said, I think we were both a little frustrated with one another. And he said, Yeah, yeah, he was not given any information about what his job was going to be. As I say, we figuratively, not literally, kissed and made up. [laughing]   Kelly 11:14 There was no kissing. [laughing]   Marsha 11:16 Yeah, there was no kissing   Kelly 11:17 No actual kissing that occurred!   Marsha 11:19 And he was a very... and, he started talking. He's a very interesting man. He's actually a certified arborist. And so we started talking about the other trees in the back garden and things that he said he would like to come back and, you know, work on them, because he said they they need some help, which they do. Yeah, they definitely do. They've, I mean, the whole garden needs some work. So anyway, it turned out fine.   Kelly 11:43 Well, and I, I can vouch for having an arborist do the work as opposed to just a tree service with the trees in our yard. But But I have to , you know, you said the tree was in the wrong place. So there was one arborist that we had that-- he's actually too busy now and working mostly on the Monterey Peninsula side of the county--and so we haven't been able to use him, but he was really good. And, and so one day, he was talking and he's like, you know, this... Robert had planted... We have Monterey Cypress, really large ones in the yard. And there were some babies. And so, you know, thinking sentimentally as you do, like, oh, we'd like to grow one of these babies to replace them. Because our cypresses are at the end of their life. And you know, the death of a tree could take 100 years, but they're definitely in the, the death side of their-- not necessarily tree hospice. But you know, they're on the downward slope of life, most. And some of them are gone, and have had to be removed. So anyway, Robert had planted one of these babies, and he's like, you don't want this tree here. You really don't want this tree here! Because by the time it gets to the point where it needs work, I'm going to be too old and you're going to be too old. So I started talking to him about like, well, what tree should we plant? And we have a lot of space. You know, there's quite a bit of space. Like, well, what tree would work?. And he reminded, he reminded me of me in the summer that I volunteered at the SPCA where people would come in to adopt a dog. And I would be like, read their application. Like, in my head. I knew they were going to adopt a dog. But in my head, I was like, No, no, this is not a good enough family. No, this is not good enough! And basically, there was no tree that was right for the space. He cared so much about the trees having the right habitat, that he he practically couldn't tell me a tree that I could plant to replace the cypresses because it would, it would like physically hurt him to be in the wrong place, right? To not have the habitat that it deserved, like the Monterey Cypresses deserve the habitat of highway one, where the wind is pruning them, and they can break all they want and they can have all these broken hangers. And you know, it doesn't matter, but the wind keeps them pruned. Anyway, it's just like, I couldn't get him to tell me like he was so so so... I don't know, just so reluctant to tell me a tree that would be right. I really can vouch for having an arborist. They do a great job making sure that the trees in your yard are not just cut right but that you know information about them.   Marsha 14:59 Yeah. So I even gave him cuttings. So he was excited about something that's in the garden. Yeah. So I gave him cuttings. So   Kelly 15:12 You know the other thing about about that job that I think about whenever we have...Here again, 15 minutes in, and we're still talking about trees! [laughing]   Marsha 15:21 More than that!   Kelly 15:24 But when I, when when we have three work done, I'll always think about, you know, like, as a job. Anybody who likes to climb, like Ben likes to climb. I don't know if he would like to climb trees, but you know, people who like climb, who like to work outside who like... I mean, there's there's some science involved to the arborist job. But there's also the working outside and the climbing and it just seems like an interesting... It seems like it would be an interesting career choice that people wouldn't necessarily think of.   Marsha 16:00 Well, and there's a there's a real skill set, because you have to know how things are going to fall.   Marsha 16:07 Right.   Kelly 16:07 How to cut so they grow the right direction.   Marsha 16:10 Oh, yeah.   Kelly 16:12 What to cut to make the tree not grow in a funky way?   Marsha 16:17 I was thinking, Well, I was just thinking, Yes, that's true. Yes, you have to... In fact, Ben has said that he is interested interested in that, too. You know, the, the being an arborist. But just watching these guys with the ropes, you know, going up there that you've got a chainsaw, so you have to be strong. But a lot of it is, is I think, sort of like what Ben, how Ben talks about rock climbing. It's not so much about strength, but it's about skill, you know, using using your body the right way and, and, and using your tools to um... what's the right word... is like leverage. Yeah, that's not the right word. I don't know. But you know, to, like, block and tackle.   Kelly 16:59 Right, right.   Marsha 16:59 If you just had a rope you couldn't move it, but if you have the block and tackle you can move something. Yeah, I was so thinking that way.   Kelly 17:05 It was a real problem solving.   Marsha 17:07 But the other thing is funny is like you were talking about, you know, it always hurts you a little bit to take a tree down.   Kelly 17:12 Yeah. Yeah, even the palm tree that I didn't like, I was sad to see it go.   Marsha 17:16 Yeah, and so it was, it was just, it was a difficult day, in a lot of ways. Because I had to go I had to channel Robert and and... you know. Or, as I say, pull up my big girl panties. And go out there and tell him to stop. It was kind of emotional, too, just because I don't like that--cutting down a tree. And honestly, if this tree had been in a different spot in the garden, it would still be there. Right? It just it was in the wrong spot. And I have another, that deodar cedar out in the front yard, which I will never get rid of. It's beautiful and I've spent a lot of money you know, having work done to it to make it..to keep it. And so it does hurt to get rid of it and so I was kind of emotional and when Ben finally arrived to help me with a roof and I said to him you know I'm just kind of emotional about the tree and I was all... And he says to me, Oh My God, grow a pair! [laughing]   Kelly 18:27 Someday he'll be sentimental about something.   Marsha 18:29 Yeah, he's not sentimenal now, he's too young. Right now he's too young to be sentimental about anything   Kelly 18:35 That's right.   Marsha 18:36 Mostly it's just the idea that I don't like cutting down a tree. Well, anyway,   Kelly 18:40 Well, you could plant another one.   Marsha 18:42 No, I'm not going to plant another one. [laughing]   Kelly 18:43 No, I don't mean in that spot. I mean you can plant another tree somewhere.   Marsha 18:48 Oh, I can plant another tree. Yes. Well actually what I really like to have is an apple tree   Kelly 18:54 so there you go.   Marsha 18:56 Okay, so Kelly!   Kelly 18:58 Knitting!   Marsha 18:58 I'm now looking at this is 20 minutes and 40 seconds of tree talk. So let's get on to   Kelly 19:08 There's fiber in wood!   Marsha 19:10 That's true. [laughing] So let's go on about projects. So I don't have very much so I think I'm just gonna go first.   Kelly 19:19 Okay. Do it.   Marsha 19:20 I don't have very much. So I have really nothing to report on the walk along tee. I've knit on it a little bit but I've not made very much progress because other things have been going on. And mostly I've been spinning. So every night I've been spinning on the the Merino in the green and then the bitter chocolate. And so I almost have enough now that I can start plying it.   Kelly 19:48 Oh cool!   Marsha 19:49 And then I am almost done with the second Abington Mitt by Jennifer Lassonde. I bound off the second mott. And I just now have to go and pick up the stitches for the thumb.   Kelly 20:07 Oh, you just have one thumb left to do that's it?   Marsha 20:10 One thumb. And it's only... I only have to pick up 12 stitches.   Kelly 20:13 Oh my gosh. Yeah.   Marsha 20:14 And and knit five rows. So yeah, I'm so close. Very hoping this will not be the like the skull. [laughing]   Kelly 20:24 Don't jinx yourself by saying that! [laughing]   Marsha 20:26 Yeah, so maybe tonight, I should just finish it so...   Kelly 20:30 Nice.   Marsha 20:31 Anyway, I like them a lot. So anyway, that's all I really have. Oh, that's it. I don't have much to report.   Kelly 20:39 All right. Well, I have a lot because last week was spring break. This week we have Cesar Chavez day. So I'm not sure why... I'm not going to get into a whole calendar and union discussion on top of the tree discussion, but I am not really sure why the union decided not to give us Easter week off as our spring break, because then   Marsha 21:05 Yeah, that's odd.   Kelly 21:06 Cesar Chavez day would have been in the middle of spring break, and not an additional holiday. But instead, they split the 16 week calendar into halves, and gave us spring break after week eight, which was the week before Easter week. So I had spring break, came back, now I have Cesar Chavez day off, and then go back to work. So weird. But anyway, the end result of it is great, because I got a lot of stuff done. So I have been working. In fact, I'm working right now on the Iced Matcha socks from the Coffee Socks Collection by Dotsdabbles Designs, and I finished the first sock. And I've got the... I'm at the top of the second sock, I've got the cuff finished. And then I'm starting on the pattern. And I think I mentioned this before, it's not really cable either way I thought it looked. It's more purl stitches. But it's really fun, really easy to memorize. And I also, I should take a picture of it showing the inside. Because even though it's... even though it's just done with purl stitches, that the design on the inside makes these ribs that are curvy. So you have this like, I don't know, they're like wobbly ribs. I really like the inside, I think I might make a sock that was wobbly ribbing. The outside is a three by one rib. It's...that's the base. And the pattern is a three by one rib. So the top of the sock is a three by one rib. So if you look on the inside, you have a one, one stockinette stitch going up, right. When you get out of the ribbing that one stockinette stitch curves in and then curves out and then curves back in and curves back out. And so you've got this really interesting, ribbed pattern on the inside that I would not have expected based on what's on the outside.   Marsha 23:12 Oh, that is so pretty.   Kelly 23:14 You would not expect even though it's just purls and knits on the backside makes that sort of wobbly rib.   Marsha 23:22 Mm hmm.   Kelly 23:23 So I think I might use this again and make socks inside out. Well, you know, inside out from this pattern. Yeah, and have that wobbly rib pattern. It's really pretty. So and I love the yarn. It's a it's got some heft to it because of the silk and maybe because of the cashmere. Nice and soft. And I love the color. It's a bluey-purple color. So anyway, Iced Matcha socks, Invictus yarn, Seraphic. And it's a Merino, cashmere silk yarn. And it's really nice. The other thing that I've been working on, I've basically finished all the knitting for Frog and Toad. And I got excited and started stuffing Frog with the crush walnuts-- walnut shells, and I figured out Okay, I'm gonna use a funnel because I don't want these things all over the place. And I put them into one of my really tall glasses. So he's sitting inside of a glass with a funnel in his head, like   Marsha 24:25 Like a specimen, right?   Kelly 24:26 Yeah! And he has a funnel, the open crevice of his head. Then, you know, his provisional cast on and I start stuffing him and I'm poking this stuffing down into those legs and poking into the arms and suddenly I realized, Oh My God! When I get the stuffing all the way up to the head, I have to be ready to knit him closed. You know, do my, my kitchener stitch. I haven't even picked up the provisional stitches. So I thought okay, Kelly, just stop. put this aside. Come back to it. Pick up all those stitches. And then you know, do the job, right? Don't just get excited that you can stuff...start stuffing him. So he, right now he's sitting in a glass on my kitchen table with a funnel in his head.   Marsha 25:15 I say like Doc Ricketts. [laughing]   Kelly 25:18 Like Doc Ricketts lab. [laughing] Yeah. So anyway, but all the clothes are done, I just have to fill them up, fill up Toad and kitchener the the head together. And that's, I think I might do that outside. Because that seems like it could be a very messy job with all those crushed walnut shells. So yeah, but they have to be done by Sunday. So I don't have a lot of time. But I have a little bit of time to get that finished. Because I'm gonna take them over to, I'm gonna take them over to Faye and take Kye his books on Easter. So drop those off. Do a drive-by, drive-by drop-off because I still-- I will have my second vaccine because I have it on Saturday. But you know, I mean, the full immunity doesn't happen for 14 days. So I'm still going to be careful when I see them. But I will drop it off on Easter. So that's Frog and Toad. And I'm already starting to forget how fiddly they were and thinking, Oh, I could make another set. I have a colleague whose daughter is the same age as Faye. And I thought, Oh, you know what? I should get another set of those books and make another Frog and Toad. I don't know if I'll do it, but but I am kind of forgetting the pain of the fiddly-ness. Oh, and then I have weaving!   Marsha 26:43 Mm hmm. I saw your post on Instagram. You've been busy. Mm hmm.   Kelly 26:48 Spring Break I declared myself a weaving retreat. I cleaned house Saturday and Sunday of spring break. I edited the podcast on Monday of spring break and did a little bit more housework. And laundry, I think. And then I declared the rest of spring break to be a weaving retreat. And so basically all I did was weave. The last day I didn't stop for lunch. I just wove. Like all day long, I wove. Dinner was on our own. You know, there was just me and Robert here and we just ate while we wanted. And I just wove all day the last day of my of my designated weaving retreat. So I did the canvas weave sampler from the Jane Stafford guild online. And what I turned it into was instead of doing just one long sampler I made the first part of it... was a... I called it a dresser scarf, like a little table runner, but for a dresser. And so I made a little and I don't know, is there another name for it?   Marsha 27:57 Well, runner, I guess but I don't know.   Kelly 28:00 Yeah.   Marsha 28:01 I don't know,   Kelly 28:02 Like a like a, a woven doily, you know. So anyway, I made a cover, a top table topper, dresser scarf for the cabinet that Robert has for the linens in the dining room.   Marsha 28:17 Mm hmm.   Kelly 28:18 And so it's a little wider than I would like it. And he expected it to, like, flow over the edges. And I didn't do that. I made it like stop at the top not hang over. So I did that first that was just plain canvas weave. And then it was bright white because I used the warp that I had put on--the warp that I had a wound at Christmas time that was white with red trim. And I wove it with white and then I tea-dyed it. So now it's beige and looks a lot better. So that was the first thing and then after that I made towels, and I made I think six towels altogether. Five dish towels and a hand towel and did a whole bunch of different experimenting and used a whole bunch of colors. I had just a fabulous time! I got them washed, washed them up, hemmed them up. The only thing that's not quite finished is I'm going to hand hem the thing I made for Robert and that's not--that is not done but the first hem is done like the the sewn... you know to get the raw edge out of the way and then I'm going to turn it and hem it by hand the last hem so.   Marsha 29:35 Wow, impressive.   Kelly 29:36 Yeah, it was.. that was a lot of weaving. I was tired.   Marsha 29:41 And it--was it sort of cathartic to just to do that after all of the the first half of the quarter?   Kelly 29:49 Oh yeah, I totally. I totally felt like making things is my mental health. Like just the ability to just stand there at the loom and just make stuff was... Yeah, it was it was so... rejuvenating, I guess would be the word. Yeah, it was! It was great. And I watched the Jane Stafford videos and I watched my, the knitting men video podcasts that I that I started watching a little while ago, I caught up on those and... Sweet Tea, No Shade and Needles at the Ready. And then I watched all the, you know, some other knitting podcasts, and I watched Netflix. And you know, just standing there at the loom with a computer going, and thinking, and just making, I just felt really, really good. So that was fun. And then I thought, Okay, well, weaving's gonna be on a hold for a little while. But I had a little extra time. So first, I wound the warp for the next Jane Stafford guild thing. She put out the information about what it was going to be and it was small, it's a scarf. And, and I thought, well, maybe I'll make it into a dish towels. And then I thought, No, just make a scarf, because it's not wide. It'll be fast. And you have yarn, so I wound the warp for that. So that's all ready to go as soon as she publishes the next episode, which is huck weaving. And then the Reading in Bed Blanket, I had the time to actually thread the loom with it. I yeah. But the reason is, after you know, weaving something with 300 and some odd ends, you know that you have to thread twice once through the dent and once through the hetal. And then you have to tie them all. There's a lot, there's a lot of threads, right?   Marsha 32:03 Mm hmm.   Kelly 32:04 The the blanket is, you know, like worsted weight yarn. And it's only six ends per inch as compared to 22 ends per inch. So that's a lot fewer threads. And then the warp is only not even three yards long. Because the blanket is going to be three feet wide, and five feet long. So it's not even two, the blanket is not even two yards long. And then you need a little bit for waste. So I think its like a two and a half or three yard warp. So really short. So I was able to thread it, Robert was able to help me wind it on it went really smoothly. It didn't take hardly any time at all. It felt like making you know, an Aran weight sweater after making a fingering weight sweater,   Marsha 32:58 a lace weight sweater?   33:00 Yeah, yeah. Going from size zero needles to size nine needles or something. It was really, it was really easy and fast to just do an evening. So a couple of evenings. So I got that I got that accomplished. And so I've got something to... I've got something ready to go to start weaving tomorrow, which I won't because tomorrow is a work day. But you know, I have something ready to weave on the loom and then I have something warped and ready to thread on my table loom once I get the instructions from the the Jane Stafford guild on how to weave it, so   Marsha 33:42 Okay,   Kelly 33:42 yeah,   Marsha 33:43 That's very nice   Kelly 33:44 My projects!   Marsha 33:47 Well, I was looking at Ravelry at your reading in bed blanket.   Kelly 33:51 I'm so happy with it.   Marsha 33:53 The colors are nice.   33:54 I did make a rookie mistake. I will, I will admit to a rookie mistake, even though I've been weaving for a while. When I was counting, I was organizing my-- I was doing it in three parts. And I thought, okay, I've got I've got 24 ends in each section. I knew how many ends I needed. But I was counting in a place where when I count once it was actually two warp threads. So I got about two thirds of the way through it. I got two sections done before I realized that every thread I counted was actually two warp threads.   Marsha 34:38 Mm hmm.   34:39 And I didn't need to go any further. In fact, I had already gone further than I needed to be because I went further than half. You know what I mean? If I was going to count everything, if I was going to count every two as one, I only needed to have half of it. So anyway, I won't explain how that happened it's kind of embarrassing that I even made that mistake but but so I you know so I stopped. And I have a little section of the warp that that I didn't use at all that I'm going to use for my weft I'm going to save it and if I have to use it for weft threads I will. But yeah it's really pretty on the loom I I'm really happy with the way it turned out.   Marsha 35:27 yeah. Well the colors are pretty, really nice   35:30 and it's all handspun   Marsha 35:32 mm hmm   35:33 and not all dyed by me. I think two of them are dyed by me and three of the-- three of the colors came that way. You know came dyed and two of them I dyed but it's... I'm going to be really happy with it when it's done. So I'll keep you posted once I start weaving   Marsha 35:50 Yeah. Really nice. And what else   Kelly 35:56 the Weave Along is ending!   Marsha 35:59 Oh no... well, is that it?   Kelly 36:00 Yeah, that's that's my projects   36:04 yes the weave along is about to end so quickly go in there and put your projects in there.   36:10 Yeah, actually by the time this gets posted it will be over   Marsha 36:15 Yeah, yeah,   36:16 By the time this episode is up and published it will be over. In the next episode we'll announce prizes and talk about... talk about sort of the highlights of the Winter Weave Along.   36:29 So um, we should also then talk about our Extremities Knit and Crochet Along. I'm making the Abington mitts for that and that ends April 25. So and that's it. Anything for your extremities which we've talked about in every single episode but we'll just briefly say it's hands, arms, legs, feet. So you can... and it does say even though it does say knit crochet along, you can weave you can macrame, you can...   Kelly 36:59 I haven't seen any macrame socks or hats or anything in there! [laughing]   Kelly 37:05 Or those friendship bracelets or I mean...Jewelry.   Kelly 37:08 Yeah, jewelry. Would work   Marsha 37:10 Yes, anything. So   Kelly 37:13 an ankle bracelet? Oh yeah, I need an ankle bracelet. I have beads. I should make myself an ankle bracelet--crochet an ankle bracelet with the beads I have.   37:25 So anyway, we will draw the winner after the 25th of April and I will have two winners. One will receive a copy of the Abington Mitts pattern and the other person will win the Coffee Socks Collection patterns.   37:41 So yeah, so thank you! Shout out to Jen, Boston Jen for the Abington mitts pattern and Dots Dabbles Designs, who is Deborah, for offering us the Coffee Socks Collection prize.   Marsha 37:58 Yeah. So Kelly, is there anything else we have to talk about?   Kelly 38:04 I don't think so. This was an amazingly short episode.   Marsha 38:10 Most of it was talking about trees. [laughing]   Kelly 38:17 Well, you know, sometimes you just don't have a lot. You don't have a lot of knitting going on. It has been I mean, I had a lot because it's spring break, but you've had a lot of construction stuff going on. So   38:30 yes, cuz I yeah, cuz I've got the Ballard house under construction right now or you know, the remodels. So I have a lot going on. So   Kelly 38:39 I do have one question.   Marsha 38:41 Yes.   38:41 I just thought of this. Have you been able to find a or been able to sign up for an appointment for a vaccine? Do you know?   38:52 No, I have not. I've actually I signed up for the... in Washington State, they have the Washington, what is it now?   39:02 Find your phase.   39:03 Oh, find your phase, find your phase dot wa dot org. I think it is anyway, the point is, I signed up for that. And I have received three emails. And so they send you an email and so for the... and it says, you get it. I got it like at nine o'clock in the morning, and there's there's a there's ... over the next three days, there's appointments available at these locations. And then you get in and you just start clicking on it and but nothing's available. There was nothing available at all. So then the three days pass I get another email for over the next three days. There's spots available at at all these locations. Go in there, nothing available. Got my third one. Their spots, they'll but all these locations and nothing's available. So I don't know. So you know, you were talking about your experience. It's sort of like getting concert. tickets. And so I've heard today that even though my medical insurance is not Kaiser Permanente, you can go to Kaiser Permanente and get a...go to their website and schedule an appointment. Okay, so I was going to... I was... Tonight, that was something that I was going to do is see if I can get an appointment. So what I'm finding is I fit the criteria now I'm eligible, but I can't find an appointment. And I think it's one of those things, you have to just, I think, really, what I need to do is just sit down and just start in the morning and just early in the morning and just start looking.   40:38 Yeah, where to get them? Yeah, ours, I mean, I always just looked at the county, the county website, that's where I started looking at the COVID data, because I was interested in, you know, how bad it was in Monterey County. And I started looking at that, and that's where I was looking for the vaccination information, but there's getting to be more and more supply. So   41:00 I think so. And I think that it's one of those things when you get the email, you can't wait three hours. Like I saw the email and well, I mean, when I looked at my email, when I first looked at my email, I saw Oh, I have an email and I realized it had been sent like, three or five hours before. That's just too late. Yeah, I have to just like every morning, like, just start checking my email.   41:19 Yeah or check the site that they tell you to go to, like, just bookmark the site and just go to it.   Marsha 41:26 Even when I... After I get the vaccine, I don't really think that I'm going to be going to restaurants and   Kelly 41:30 Rght. No.   41:31 I don't honestly, like sitting here right now, I have no idea when I'm gonna be going back. I mean, I feel like once I get the vaccine, I'm probably not going to go back. When am I going back?   Kelly 41:41 I don't know. Yeah.   41:42 Not really. I don't really have. I mean, I would like to go somewhere on a plane. I mean, because I want to go someplace. But I'd like to go back to the life the way it was when we got to travel and stuff, but I can't see myself getting on a plane.   Kelly 41:55 Right.Well, that'll take a while. Yeah,   41:58 So yeah. Anyway. Well, so yes, it's something that I need to work on. I think I need to be at be a bit more proactive or more on the ball with it, too. And I'm going to, you know, as soon as I get the email as soon as I, I mean, I need to start searching for the email, instead of just like, Oh, look, I got an email.   42:16 Yeah, well, and I had, you know, emails from colleagues. It'd be like, Oh, I was on the website. So I saw there's this many appointments available. You know, I had I had that sort of network.   Marsha 42:27 Yeah, yeah.Okay, well, um, since we have nothing else to talk about. I'm sure we could go on forever.   Kelly 42:34 But let's not. Yeah. [laughing]   Marsha 42:39 Okay, my dear. We will talk.   42:41 Yes. Bye, everyone. Bye, Marsha.   Marsha 42:43 Bye.   42:44 Thank you so much for listening. To subscribe to the podcast, visit Two Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com.   Marsha 42:51 Join us on our adventures on Ravelry and Instagram. I am betterinmotion and Kelly is 1hundred projects.   Kelly 42:59 Until next time, we're the Two Ewes   Both 43:02 doing our part for World Fleece!

Lots of tangents and a new KAL/CAL inspired by some new patterns for your hands and feet generously donated by the designers as prizes. Full show notes with photos and links can be found in the podcast section of our shop website: TwoEwesFiberAdventures.com. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Subscribe on Android or Subscribe on Google Podcasts Marsha’s Projects I’m still working on the pair of socks for myself using Drops Fabel Print that I bought in San Luis Obispo. I’m back to working on the Walk Along by AnkeStrick and I’m using Little Fish Stitches fingering. I was having problems where I was alternating skeins at the beginning of row which was at the back of the sweater. A huge thank you to MyBlueGirl and Sarahjhill for suggesting Helical knitting. This solves the problem of the messy looking change. I started a spinning project with olive green merino roving I bought at the Whidbey Island Weavers meet up in April 2019. Combining it with another merino I ordered from Paradise Fibers in Spokane, Washington in a dark brown called Bitter Chocolate. Making a 3 ply with two green and one brown single. Kelly’s Projects  Finished!  I hemmed the Christmas Candy dishtowels and put them away!  I also finished With Friends Pullover using the pattern Rachel by Josée Paquin.  It still needs ends woven in and blocking. I’m really happy with how it turned out and I’m looking forward to wearing it.  The Persian Tile Blanket is coming along, but I didn’t work on it as much in the last two weeks. Instead I started a pair of socks for Robert. I’m using leftovers of Leading Men Fiber Arts Show Stopper, Independent Will colorway. I had 90 grams left after using it for argyle socks for my brother-in-law. Not sure I’ll have enough but I’m planning to use toes and heels of a different yarn. Extremities Knit/Crochet Along This KAL/CAL was inspired by the generous donation of these patterns: Abington Mitts, Jennifer Lassonde, Down Cellar Studio Coffee Socks Collection, Dotsdabbles Designs, Deborah   It starts now (February 2021) and will end on April 25, 2021. Knit anything for your extremities (hands, arms, legs, feet). Some examples include socks, leg warmers, mitts,  mittens, gloves, and wristlets. There will be a giveaway thread in the Ravelry Group for you to post your FOs.  Winter Weave Along You can join in with your weaving projects anytime until March 31. We will have prizes, including a class generously donated by Erica at Weavolution. Check out this great website for weavers with projects, discussion, classes, and lots of resources. The website has a handy Weaving Calculator that you can use for project planning.

In this episode of the WeCrochet Podcast the team focuses on the crochet community. First, Heather, Sara and Katelyn come together for an impromptu healing session when they think about the last year and how it has changed how they look at community. Each has found ways to stay connected in a physically- and socially- distanced world. Thankfully they have crochet to keep them together (and this podcast). Next, Heather talks to Amber Millard and Lee Sartori from Stitch Together about their online community of monthly Crochet Alongs or CALs. Stitch Together is unique because this team of 8 designers works together to bring dynamic and premium patterns every month. They offer a Crochet Along pattern that they work on together with their global community. Lee and Amber share what they love most about their group.    Lastly Heather checks in with the Crochet Foundry team about their origins and their upcoming spring collection. Briana Kepner, Lorene Eppolite, and Pamela Stark share a passion for crochet, design, and community and design a quarterly collection of size-inclusive crochet garment patterns. Mentioned in this Episode: Stitch Together Tara Pullover | Stitch Together January CAL Tara Pullover Post  Divine Debris Coco Crochet Lee Temperature Blanket CAL Crochet Foundry Crochet Foundry Sincerely Pam Briana K Design Cre8tion Crochet Coconut Macaroon Sweater Dress by Michelle Moore Crochet Foundry on WeCrochet Facebook Live Crochet Foundry on WeCrochet Facebook Live on Youtube Macchiato Sweater Timestamps: 0:00  The introduction 0:14  Sara, Heather and Katelyn check in 13:32  Stitch Together with Amber and Lee 28:58  Come join our CAL 30:40 Crochet Foundry 54:30 Credits

On today's episode of the WeCrochet Podcast, we’re talking all about temperature blankets! Whether you're new to temperature blanket or do them every year, we are celebrating all the variations to this classic project. First up Sara and Heather chat about the weather and the idea of temperature blankets, which are a snapshot of weather trends in a given location over an entire year.  Then Katelyn gives Sara an overview of the who, what, when, where and why of temperature blankets, with lots of helpful hints about how to organize your temperature blanket yarn, picking a fiber to use, and more. Katelyn loves temperature blankets but she also loves something else. Find out in this episode. Finally Heather talks to Toni Lipsey, the crochet designer behind TL Yarn Crafts, who designed our Temperature blanket Crochet Along. Toni brought the temperature blanket back into favor with crocheters, and she shares the ways she's debunked common misconceptions, paving the way for many people to create stylish temperature blankets that they'll be proud to curl up with at the end of the year. Toni and Heather also come up with the 2020 slogan of the year. Join the Crochet ALong: Document your year in color when you make the Bias Granny Temperature Blanket using a curated palette in Swish worsted yarn. Each granny square is joined as you go for a comfy, oversized throw blanket. Adjust the colors and temperature gauge to fit your local weather range. By New Year's Eve, your new favorite blanket will be complete, complete with 365 happy memories. Mentioned in this Episode: WeCrochet Magazine Issue 5 Crocheting A Temperature Blanket Crocheting A Temperature Blanket: Picking Colors and Yarn Crocheting A Temperature Blanket Choosing a Location and a Time Period Crocheting A Temperature Blanket: Picking Stitch Patterns and Yarn Storage CAL Link Bias Granny Temperature Blanket TL Yarn Crafts Swish Worsted Comfy Worsted Wool of the Andes (Superwash) Mighty Stitch Shine Palette CotLin Brava Timestamps:0:00 The Opening with Sara and Heather 5:37 Katelyn and Sara 15:00 Heather and Toni 40:25 Credits

Welcome to the WeCrochet Podcast! Host, Heather Mann talks to Brand Director Sara Dudek about her crafting journey and what brings her WeCrochet. From making bags to working for other crafting brands, Sara has come a long way. Then Heather and Sara talk about what a Crochet Along is and the importance of community. 

The WeCrochet Podcast will come out in early January 2020, but in the meantime, check out this short sneak peek, in which you will learn all about our Brava Beanie Crochet Along (CAL), from designing the Brava Beanie pattern, to how to participate in the CAL. Also, meet Regan, the WeCrochet photographer.  Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss a thing!

Are you looking for a way to get involved in the crochet community? If so, you should definitely consider joining a crochet along! A “CAL” is an organized event that breaks a project down into bite-sided chunks, provides accountability so you are sure to finish and it gives you the opportunity to connect with other crochet lovers. If you’re a designer – well, a crochet along is the perfect way to get people excited about your project! Today’s Guest Today I’ll be joined by Csilla, Love Crochet team member and sweetest lady on the planet! Csilla and I met a The post BHP040: What You Need to Know About a Crochet Along appeared first on B.Hooked Crochet | Knitting.

This week Kelly has two finished projects! She finished her Crochet-Along project, the Happy Hippopotamus by Heidi Bears. This was an excellent pattern and the finished hippo is soooooooo darling! Also finished (but not yet blocked or worn) is the Color Affection, a shawl designed by Veera Valimaki. Kelly had a skein of heavy fingering and 4 skeins of DK and used them all, creating a shawl that is ENORMOUS! It will be a challenge to figure out how to wear it or where to put it once out of the cold :-) The colors are great together and it used some 5+ year old stash, so it is a clear win! Kelly's current projects all require some knitting repair, so let's not talk about those. ;-) Marsha isn't finished with her Lanata Cardigan, but she is close. Once sleeve cuffs are on, it's done. She is very happy with the sweater's design (by Amy Christoffers) and with the fabric she got from the German yarn that she used. She also continues to work on her brother Mark's Crazy Scarf from the Stonehedge Crazy yarn. She is also close to finishing her Stripe Study Shawl, another one of the designs from Veera Valimaki. In the spinning arena, Kelly is carding a lot! She has challenged herself to make significant progress in processing fleeces that are 5 or more years old. Since this is the last month of the challenge, she has put on the speed! No finished weight estimates yet, but her fiber stash was over 50 lbs at the start of this quarter. Marsha has been on a learning curve for spinning Lincoln. As a long wool, it is different from what she has spun before. Also, she is hand processing it and spinning from the lock. She is thinking of using it for a blanket, but will wait until the yarn is finished to determine a use. Lincoln is an excellent fleece for rugs, bags and other high wear uses that don't require "next-to-skin softness," but do require a stable and "unbouncy" yarn. Here are examples of some (pre-Ravelry) projects that Kelly has made with Lincoln and Lincoln crosses over the years. Leftovers from these projects are destined to be used in a punch-needle rug hooking project one day soon. Marsha was a finisher in the frigid Seattle Marathon the weekend after Thanksgiving.  Despite the cold and some challenges to her training in the month before the event she finished! Hurray!!! Kelly talks a little about the Locke family eggnog recipe and the revised version that can be made in a kitchen bowl rather than a bathtub!  

The Two Ewes continue to shine a spotlight on Front Range Bags by Nancy Totten.  Nancy has generously offered a project bag from her shop to a lucky Two Ewes listener.  Kelly has one of her bags in SF Giants fabric and it's great!  High quality, nice and roomy, and lots of handy features. It was the perfect bag for the Crackerjack Cowl project during baseball season. To enter, take a look in the Front Range Bags shop and report back to the contest thread in the Ravelry group.  Tell us which bag you like best (exclusive of the custom orders) and let us know about your favorite features in the project bags you use. A winner will randomly selected during our podcast episode 30.  Thank you Nancy!  We appreciate the opportunity to spotlight your bags and your shop! This week Marsha and Kelly record separately due to busy schedules.  Marsha has finished her Crochet-Along project, the Virus Shawl.  Marsha also finished her son's Tricolor Socks made of her handspun from last winter.  He turned 18 earlier this month so she finished the socks for his birthday.  He bought himself a birthday present that is every mother's nightmare!  A motorcycle, which he is using to transport his bicycle! Marsha is currently working on a scarf for her brother from the Stonehedge Fiber Mill Crazy that she bought in Portland.  She is also using the yarn that she created at Yarnia in Portland.  She is making the Stripe Study Shawl by Vera Valimaki. Kelly has no finished projects and very little knit or crochet progress. The one project that got some time was the crochet hippo that she is making for our Crochet-Along.  She has been doing lots of fiber work, though.  She is spinning Wensleydale for her Aunt's vest.  She is finally able to spin on the Salish Spinner and has been using it to spin a bulky yarn from the CVM fleece.  She is also carding a very old, gray fleece of medium weight from a sheep named Charlotte.  All of this fiber activity is a result of cleaning up and organizing her large fleece stash.   At the end of the episode we talk BOOKS!  Marsha reviews three books that she has added to her fiber reference library.  The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook and the Field Guide to Fleece, both by Carol Ekarius and Deborah Robson and Hand Dyeing Yarn and Fleece by Gail Callahan. Kelly reviews a book that was generously sent to her by Interweave/F+W.  Simple Woven Garments: 20+ Projects to Weave & Wear (Interweave/F+W; $26.99; May 2015).  "This book is a pattern and idea book for creating uncomplicated woven shapes and turning them into highly wearable, everyday fashions."

In Episode 25 we discuss the purpose of Marsha's visit to Kelly....The Monterey County Fair Wool Auction!  This is a great destination for all knitters, spinners, and wool lovers!     Kelly discusses attending the judging that occurred the week prior to the auction. She explains the history of the wool auction, the judging categories and the criteria that the judge used. She also talks about how the wool is classified-the Bradford (or spinning count) system, the American blood system, and micron measurement.   Marsha and Kelly discuss what they were looking for in fleeces, how they decided what to bid on, and the stress and strategies of a live auction!   If you are interested in an upcoming wool judging, Lambtown in Dixon, California will have their judging at 10:00 on Saturday, October 3, 2015.  Mark Eidman is the judge there, too.   Don't forget about the Crochet-Along that starts on October 1.  Information is in the Ravelry group.