Fave Fiber Fun

It's Friday and time for another Fave Five.  I might even throw in another one or two fiber fun items this week.  This has been the week of knitting.  Must be the fact that the air is getting cooler perhaps but I find that I've been putting in some extra hours of knitting time.  Hence my Fave Five post this week will be centered mainly around some projects either completed or in the works.

1.  220 Fingerless Mitts - I finished these this week and they were completed in just a day.  They are really a fun knit and one that is easily accomplished.  I used a two-ply alpaca which was pretty rustic.  In fact, it still had bits of hay stuck to it and I found I had to stop now and again to pick out the "bonus" material.  Ha!

2.  Fronds Fingerless Mitts designed by Monica Jines  - My current fascination with fingerless gloves continues and so I just cast on for another pair.  This one has a bit of a lace pattern on one side and I'm using a marvelous deep red yarn hand-dyed by the Sanguine Gryphon artist.  It uses fingering weight yarn and so far, it has been a lot of fun to work up.

3.  Willow Cowl designed by Amelia Lyon - As the temperatures start to drop, there is nothing like a soft, cozy cowl to keep a lady warm.  This is the Willow Cowl and I knit it out of Mini Mochi yarn in a caramel colorway.  I love Mini Mochi.  It is so soft and the colors blend and shift in such a nice, subtle way.  This cowl was a cinch to knit.  The only tricky part was the picot edge at the beginning and the end.  You have to knit up a ways and then you fold it in such a way that you are catching stitches, creating a "hem" effect which leaves the picot part that you actually knit about halfway up in your initial section now on the edge of your cowl.  It was a good technique to practice.

4.  Green Peas Shawl designed by Kathy Nies - this pattern was designed by my friend, Kathy who also is the owner of my local yarn shop.   It works up with just one skein of Araucania Trauco Cashmere yarn.  It has worked up quickly and I'm just getting ready to start the final section.  Once it is blocked I'll have my first Christmas present completed.

5.  Carol Adams Block of the Great American Aran Afghan - I've completed another square for my Great American Aran Afghan.  Par for the course, I couldn't get through one block without making a mistake.  In this case, I missed a cable cross-over at one point but I wasn't about to go back and redo it.  I'll just call it part of the charm of being handmade.  It was actually a pretty easy square and I enjoyed doing it.  I'm thinking it might be a fun pattern to use for a pillow front.

6.  "Desperate Romantics" from BBC - while I've been doing all that knitting, I've been enjoying this BBC show on DVD.  If you haven't seen it, I can highly recommend it.  It follows three actual Pre-Raphaelite painters - Rossetti, Hunt, and Millais.  Other historical people wind through the drama as well, including the painter and art critic,  John Ruskin and William Morris as well as the models who became muses to these painters.  Since I started out in college as an art major and ended up majoring in English with my concentration in English Literature and also majored in Theatre, I found this production fascinating.  Let's face it, people with an artistic temperament are many things but never dull and this show really points that up.  The glimpse into England of that time frame and the relationship between these three painters is just excellent.  Very well acted.   (Just a little disclaimer here - after watching all the episodes:  When I posted the original post, I'd only watched the first 3 episodes of the six.  I still really like the show but have to warn you that it does get rather "earthy" in quite a few spots.  I wouldn't watch it around anyone other than my spouse, if you get my drift.  But it does really stay pretty true to the nature of life among the artists of the day and the artists' models and the "working women" of London.)

7.  Last, but not least, I have to leave you with a picture of my little "sweet pea", Mika.  I'm a Holstein gal and it looks like Mika is taking after her Nana.  She's sure growing, isn't she?  I can't wait to see her in person come December.

If you'd like to write about your own Friday's Fave Five, visit Susanne's blog at Living to Tell the Story.   She hosts us each Friday and it's a great way to reflect back over your past week or to focus on the week to come.