My Happy Holidays

2013 is gone and the new year is upon us. My December holidays have finished up; I spent some quality time with family celebrating Christmas and Boxing Day, but New Years Eve found me sick at home with a cold. I have more exciting events lined up over the next few weeks, but right now I feel refreshed and ready to tackle this new year!

I travelled up north to visit my wonderful in-laws for Christmas. We have had a new addition to the family in the last few weeks, and it was wonderful getting to meet my new niece as well seeing how much my nephew has grown.

My husband and I treated my mother-in-law to a pair of 'Christmas stockings' (aka - we filled my husband's hiking socks up with presents)... we gave her of toys and hand-spun (of course)!

We brought up presents for the kids too - my favourite gift was the giant circus tent we set up in the living room!

Cameron worked on some of his own hobbies while I knitted. He paints miniature gaming figures and models in his spare time, and he finished up an 'army' of steampunk ladies while we were on holiday... you can check out his blog if you would like to see more!

My visits up north always include a lot of snow, shortbread and time to knit. I usually have a few goals planned I wish to achieve while I am on 'Christmas Break', and this year I got a few new projects finished and started.

I FINALLY finished the Goat Coat! I seamed it Christmas Day and blocked it the next morning. It felt terrific to be to share the final moments of creation of this project with my father-in-law, who tracked me down the original mountain goat hide I used in this project. I don't have any final photos yet - this project will be getting it's very own blog post in the near future - but you can check out my last work-in-progress photo below...

I also worked on a few new patterns that have been simmering in the back of my mind the last few months. I shouldn't be giving away any details yet, but I think you should be able to expect two hats and a cowl in the near future! One of the hats is knit with one skein of SweetGeorgia Yarns Superwash Worsted yarn which I completed while riding on my mother-in-law's stationary bike - I needed to work off some of those molasses cookies!

The other two projects are made with some beautiful alpaca and shetland wool that I have been graciously supplied with from an independent company in the states. I just love working with this material... I really forward to finally finishing up these designs!

The last project I was able to start was another sweater in my own hand-spun. On my second day dyeing at SweetGeorgia, I accidentally dyed an entire pound of Merino Bamboo Silk a little too blotchy. However, I feel in love with the incorrect dye job and bought the whole lot of roving. I spun the entire pound spun it as a sport weight two ply yarn a few months ago, and I finally had the chance to turn it into the garment I wanted. I cast on a Talamh cardigan on Christmas Day, and I finished the body on New Years Eve. I am hoping it will only take a few days to finish off the sleeves...? More photos will be coming soon!

Happy New Year everyone! I will be hitting the spinning wheel again very shortly and I can't wait to start off 2014 with a look into some new fibres...

Cheers!
- Grace

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Wow, it has been a long time since I have had a chance to post something! Life lately has been very busy, but also very productive! I have been left with very limited time to jump onto a computer...

I have managed to ply up all my Spinzilla yarn! I am very, very happy with the results. I chain-plied most of the bobbins so I could keep some nice stripes in my final yarn. There were two bobbins of very similar colourways that decided to blend together... it made a very busy but funky kinda yarn!

I am working five days a week now at SweetGeorgia, and I am having a blast. Lately I have been diving into some 'media' related tasks as well as my regular dyeing and packaging duties. I am teaching classes two evenings a week to a terrific group of gals, and although I am having a great time, I now know that I should not book myself so full next year. Speaking of which, I am going to work out my new teaching schedules for 2014 soon - I will keep you posted with details as soon as I have them!

SweetGeorgia had a booth at KnitCity this year, and that was a whirlwind of excitement too. It was fantastic seeing old friends, catching up with students and talking to customers. You can check out more details here on the SweetGeorgia blog (Liisa wrote an excellent recap of the event!)

And finally... what have I been doing at home lately? Sampling, sampling, sampling and getting together class material. I learn a lot from this process, but it is also very time consuming and doesn't give me much exciting stuff to post about!

The Goat Coat has returned to my knitting bag. I had to hit the 'pause' button on it for a while because I has made some serious counting errors, and the idea of restarting a project that requires a cast-on edge of 600 stitches made me a sad little girl. But I finally frogged the old project and now it's back on the needles - mistake free (for now). Maybe I will get it done by Christmas...?!

What's next? I desperately need to update my Raverly pages. It's been months since I have properly documented my spinning and knitting projects, so that is high on my list of things to do. Then I have a few half-finished bobbins I would like to clean up. I have the beginnings of a hat design on my needles that I would like to published early next year too! But for now, all of this must come after preparing for my current set of classes and finishing up Christmas presents.

I will post again sooner next time - I promise! I think life is going to slow down a bit over the next few weeks, which should give me more time for photography, spinning and working on the computer.

Cheers!
- Grace

The Spinzilla Spin Ins!

Spinzilla is an event in which spinner's from all over the world join teams and compete against each other, but we on Team SweetGeorgia wanted to do what we could to make the experience as special as possbile for our own members!

Felicia put together some fantastic 'goodie bags' for everyone on our team - wow! Buttons, fibre, chocolate, gift certificates! Oh my!

We also had a few 'spin-ins' at the studio - spinners from all around the Vancouver area came out the studio last Tuesday and Thursday nights to hang out and get some spinning done!

We had a very full house on Tuesday...

Fewer people could make it out on Thursday, but we still had a great, productive time!

I have more photos too - you can check out the entire album here!   (Thanks Ginny for sharing the photos you took too!)

What's next? Another meetup on Monday night! We will be announcing our own Team SweetGeorgia winners! And we'll have a chance to show off some of our plyed yarn too!

Cheers!
- Grace

My Personal Spinzilla Results!

Whew! This has been a lonnnng and exciting week! I have been spinning up a storm and I took that lovely trip back to my mom's house for a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend in Victoria. Yes!

So, I will summarize all the spinning I have accomplished between 9pm (PST) on Sunday October 6th until 9pm Sunday October 13th...

Bobbin #1
Fibre Type: Panda
Colourway: “London Town” (from the SweetGeorgia Fibre Club August 2012). 
Weight: 115 grams 
523 yards

Bobbin #2
Fibre Type: Merino Bamboo Silk
Colourway: “Brushfire and Tumbleweed” (from the SweetGeorgia Fibre Club August 2013). 
Weight: 117 grams 
508 yards

Bobbin #3
Fibre Type: Superwash BFL
Colourway: “Vampire Christmas” (from the SweetGeorgia Fibre Club December 2011). 
Weight: 111 grams 
411 yards

Bobbin #4
Fibre Type: Superwash BFL + Nylon
Colourway: “Indian Summer” (from the SweetGeorgia Fibre Club September 2013). 
Weight: 118 grams 
318 yards
**Final bobbin is photographed with bobbin #5 below**

Bobbin #5
Fibre Type: Polworth +Silk
Colourway: “What Lurks Beneath...” ( the SweetGeorgia Spinzilla limited edition colour). 
Weight: 116 grams 
549 yards

Bobbin #6
Fibre Type: Panda
Colourway: “Waterfall” (from the SweetGeorgia Fibre Club July 2013). 
Weight: 122 grams 
451 yards

Bobbin #7
Fibre Type: Unknown, but does contain mohair
Colourway: “Unknown” (from the SweetGeorgia yarns studio). 
Weight: 112 grams 
560 yards

Bobbin #8
Fibre Type: Superwash Merino and Nylon
Colourway: “Autumn Wind” (from the SweetGeorgia Fibre Club October 2013). 
Weight: 118 grams 
274 yards
**I have greyed out this images so as not to spoil the colour for club members! I will update these photos once I think most people have had a chance to get thier club packages!**

Spindle #1
Fibre Type: Panda
Colourway: “November Rain” (from the SweetGeorgia Fibre Club November 2012). 
Weight: 22 grams 
137 yards

Soooo... my grand total for the week is 3,731 yards!

My husband has kindly pointed out that is 3.41163 kilometres. Wow.

Now, I better get plying...

Cheers!
And happy Thanksgiving everyone!
- Grace

Ready for SpinZilla!

Spinzilla is upon us now, and I am sitting in front of my wheel every second I can!

Spinzilla is an event organized by TNNA in which spinners from all over North American join teams to compete to see who can spin the most yardage in one week!

I have been lucky enough to have been asked to 'captain' my team, Team SweetGeorgia Yarns! We are a lively crew from all parts of Canada and America, and it has been a blast working with them so far! Felicia has generously sponsored some incredible in-house gifts and prizes, we have developed our own custom colourway for the event, and we are hosting a couple of "Spin-In" nights this week so spinners from anywhere in Vancouver can drop in and hang out with us! So exciting!

Spinning kicked off at 9pm last night. I watched some Breaking Bad (I'm still on Season 3, no spoilers please!), poured a glass of wine and had some chocolate to accompany my first braid of spinning - 4 ounces of Panda fibre in the "London Town" colourway. I have decided to take advantage of all this spinning time to play with many of the SweetGeorgia Fibre Club colours I haven't felt brave enough to tackle yet!

I continued working on this spinning this morning as well, and I hope to be done this first 4 ounces before lunch. Wish me luck - I think photo updates will be often, but the written aspect of my blog posts will be cut short - I can't spend that much time in front of the computer this week!

Cheers!
- Grace