Yes, this was supposed to be a post about my Crooked Rail Fence quilt. But I got distracted. It all started out innocently enough, when I thought I’d tidy up my sewing room a little bit. I put away some fabric and thread, dusted a bit and tossed some papers and other such things. Then I remembered that I had cleared off a small shelf on my computer desk with the idea of setting out some pretty beads on it, so I could enjoy looking at them even if I wasn’t using them for anything at the moment.

So, I pulled out the plastic bin full to bursting with beads and beading stuff and opened it up. And was confronted with a mess of bags and packets and kits and storage bins and tools and heaven knows what else. Once upon a time, I had carefully sorted and labelled all of the beads I had into stacking plastic containers. They all fit nicely into the bin, along with my little kit of tools. And then, well, I sort of stopped. Two trips to the International Quilt Festival in Houston, and a few visits to bead shops, an Oasis Bead Show, and the Creativ Festival later, and what I now had was a big, cluttered bin whose lid no longer closed.

I hope you will believe that my failure to take “before” pictures of this mess was forgetfulness and not shame. In my rush of rediscovery, I just dumped everything out on the ironing board and dived right in.

Here is a picture of what was left of the mess after most of it was sorted. Just imagine this, only about twenty times worse, and you come close to what it was when I started.

Now, look at this:

All the pretty beads (almost), put into bins and looking pretty and sparkly on my shelf. Doesn’t that look better?

Allow me to show you a sample of the abundance that sits up there:

There are seed beads, Delicas, and bugle beads in many sizes and colours. Most of these were bought to use for embellishing quilts, and for some bead weaving. These are just some of them, there are actually a few more stacks of containers on the shelf. My main source for these was That Bead Lady in Newmarket, and also NLM Glass Arts.

There are crystals – including some from Swarovski.

And some pearls (I think they are all Swarovski, too, with crystal centres).

Czech glass beads in a variety of shapes, sizes and colours. Most of these were purchased at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, most of them from Raven’s Journey.

Some gemstones: rose quartz (the pale pink), rhodonite (the dark pink) and garnet. Most of these ones came from the Manhattan Bead Company.

These are clay beads from Colombia, from Colombian Craft Connection, that I bought at the International Quilt Festival in 2007.

I have an assortment of beads made from wood, and coco shell. The beads in the lower right container are acid-etched fossilized Palm wood from Burma, from Hands of the Hills (also from the IQF in Houston). Most of the coco beads were bought at the local Wal-Mart (yeah, really).

I even have a few painted glass beads, and lampwork beads. The bottom two varieties are borosilicate glass lampwork beads from Unicorne Beads.

And finally, there is a small assortment of larger stone beads. These would be beautiful as centre features in a necklace, don’t you think?

Of course, it would be hard to do much with all of these beads without some materials for stringing, bead weaving or wirework. And I have a bunch of those things, too. And not pictured are a small assortment of findings and jump rings in various metals and sizes.

I have actually taken a few classes in bead embroidery, beading, wirework and chain maille, but it’s been a while. I think it’s something that I should get back to. Now that I’ve been enjoying all of this eye candy, I feel a desire to put some of it to use.

So, you see what I mean? Ooo, shiny:

Last weekend I went on a quilting retreat. This was through my quilting guild, and was the sort of retreat in which everyone works on their own projects (as opposed to group projects, or taking classes). It was a lot of fun, and also quite productive.

We stayed in three chalets in Blue Mountain, near Collingwood, Ontario. Each chalet held 8 of us (although they would sleep more, we could really only fit 8 of us, with sewing machines, around the large dining table).

This is the chalet that my group stayed in. It’s on three levels, with bedrooms and bathrooms on the main and basement levels, and a large, open living room, kitchen and dining room upstairs.

Here is a view of the Blue Mountain ski slopes, taken from our second-level deck. We had a lovely view.

We set up our machines on the dining table. Here are (from l-r) Anne, Elaine and Trish already at work.

The set-up from another angle – Anne and Marjorie are at work in this one. My spot is just to the right of Anne, with the little machine with the plastic bin sitting just behind it. I worked on a long-standing UFO, an off-kilter take on a scrappy rail fence quilt. I’ll write about it in a separate post.

Here you can see some of the other work areas we had set up. The ironing station, a table for cutting, and Elaine’s very cool portable design wall. In this picture it is showing off Marjorie’s quilt top, but it did lots of other work over the weekend.

Of course, it was not all work and no play. We had a lot of fun, ate a lot of food, and drank a little wine. Here Paulette and Marjorie are setting up some lunch for us on Saturday – we barely made a dent in it!

Eating lunch around the big coffee table are (from l-r) Elaine, Trish, Anne, Karen and Audrey. Do we look like we are having fun? Well, we sure were.

We had a relaxed drive up, stopping in Cookstown for lunch and a stop at the Country Concessions Quilt Shop there. We arrived at the chalets early Friday afternoon and spent Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday morning working on our projects. On Saturday morning, some of the group took off for a visit to a local quilt shop. At various other times, people went for walks, or visited the rest of our group in the other two chalets. In addition to working on my quilt, I also managed to get some knitting and spindle spinning done. It was a very successful weekend get-away!

First there was the yarn. A yarn that called out to me one fine afternoon at the yarn shop. “Buy me” it said. It also said a few other things – things about the ocean, the waves, the surf. It told me it wanted to be something special. So I bought it.

Then there was the pattern. “Knit me” it said. It spoke to me of the ocean, the waves, the surf. It told me it was the perfect pattern for the yarn. It charmed me with promises of the perfect project – simple, quick and right in every way.

So I started knitting the pattern. I wanted it to be more than just a scarf, so I made it wide. It looked lovely – like everything I had dreamed of. It looked wavy and frothy and like the ocean.

I got a large section of it knit. But something wasn’t feeling quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but eventually it started to become clear. I was running out of yarn. I weighed what was left in the ball, and the yarn was half gone. I measured what I’d knit so far, and it was about 35 cm long. The most drastic blocking in the universe wasn’t going to turn this into a wrap. So I ripped the whole thing out.

On the second try, I cast on fewer stitches. I also used larger needles. This time I breezed through the entire ball of yarn in just a couple of weeks. This, for me, is fast knitting. It was looking pretty good. I was happy. I cast off, wove in the ends, and laid the wrap out on the floor to take a picture of it. And then I noticed it – the big “oops.” About half-way along I’d missed a row. Suddenly the right side of the wrap had become the wrong side. Half of the wrap faced the wrong way around.

No longer was my yarn whispering to me. No longer was the pattern wooing me. They’d somehow joined together and conspired to mock me. What had I done to incite their wrath? I still don’t know.

Well, what else could I do? I unwove the yarn end, and ripped back to the row where I’d made the mistake. I rewound that half of the yarn onto my swift, and then back into a ball. And I started knitting once again.

This time I finished without mistakes. The wrap that didn’t want to be knit was knit – and every inch of that lovely yarn had been knit not once, but twice.

It finished at a respectable 89 cm (35 inches) long by 25 cm (10 inches) wide before blocking, and 120 cm (47 inches) long by 25 cm (10 inches) wide after blocking.

It’s quite large enough to wear as a wrap. And it also works as a scarf.

And overall, I do still think that it is a proper marriage of yarn and pattern, which still whispers to me of the waves and the surf (at least it does when it’s in the mood).

The details:

Yarn: Fleece Artist Sea Wool, a blend of 70% Merino and 30% Seacell, in fingering weight (colour name unknown) 1 skein.

Pattern: Morning Surf Scarf, by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer (Ravelry link)

Needles: 4.0 mm

Worked (the second time) at 46 stitches wide, and 25.5 repeats long.

Worked (the first time, for anyone wondering) at 76 stitches wide, on 3.5 mm needles.

Yes, there was stuff purchased at Rhinebeck this year – not as much as last year, since I haven’t used all of that up yet – but some stuff all the same. See? Here it is:

But before going into detail about the purchases, I did receive a couple of gifts. Maryw1968 made these cute little cupcake bags for a bunch of us in the Very Longest Thread (since nicknamed “Fred” – long story). Thanks again, Mary!

And my Rhinebeck Roomie, Pixisis, made me these lovely socks. They’re made from yarn from last year’s Rhinebeck, and she made us both a pair so we match! Thanks again, Pixisis – you rawk! (The pattern is Welsh Traveling Socks, by Sheri Franz)

Now, the yarn:

First up, two skeins of Brooks Farm Yarn in a wool/silk blend in worsted weight, called Four Play, which I want to use to knit the Riverbanks hood from Fall 2009 Knitty. One skein of Holiday Yarns sock yarn in a colour called Bruised Ego.

Two skeins of this Holiday Yarns sock yarn in a lovely rust “Yarn Fairy” (i.e. not a regular) colour, and a kit to make the Tsarina of Tsocks Imbas. I had to buy both skeins of the rust sock yarn, because Gwynivar said it matched my hair (it wasn’t my fault, honest).

I picked up some roving from Gnomespun Yarns – actually a combed top in a colour called Emerald Depths.

And to practice spinning while on the trip, I just had to buy another spindle – this one is from Jesh. You can see my practice spinning, using a bit of roving also purchased from the Holiday Yarns booth.

I also brought home a pretty little project bag from the Ravelry party that contained a ball of KnitPicks yarn, a couple of cute little sample skeins, another bag from namaste and some coupons and hand-outs.

All-in-all a pretty good haul, if I might say so myself.

Last weekend was my second trip to the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, New York, the event lovingly referred to simply as “Rhinebeck.” It was another fun weekend of yarn, fibre, chilly weather and most importantly people. A time to meet up with the friends who normally reside in my computer, in my Ravelry group, CPaAGg (the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Group group).

I once again took the “Maple Leaf” train from Toronto to Rhinecliff station, this time without the excitement of a train breakdown adding extra hours to the already long (11.5 hours) ride. It was a boring ride, but I whiled away the hours knitting a sock and listening to an audio book (“I Can See You” by Karen Rose, a good mystery story).

I didn’t take nearly as many pictures this year as I had last year, although the event was well-documented over-all between the lot of us. Once again we hung out a lot at the Holiday Yarns/Tsarina of Tsocks booth, where Gwynivar and the Tsarina herself extended their hospitality to us.

Here are Pixisis, Brewergnome (of Gnomespun Yarns), and Honeychild, in the booth. Brewergnome was kind enough to teach both Honeychild and I how to spin with a drop spindle, which was both kind and smart, as now I have need of his pretty fibre for further spinning practice.

We all attended the Ravelry meet-up on Saturday. The weather was not as bad as they’d been predicting – we even had some sunshine. It was chilly, but we were prepared this year, with layers of woollens to keep us warm. This is Knitterotica, ZaftigWendy and Physsijim at the meet-up. ZW and Physsijim came all the way from Texas to join us this year. It was so amazing to meet them in person! Knitterotica and her husband, MrKnitterotica, came all the way from California for the second time. It makes my little train ride pale in comparison.

Saturday night was the Ravelry party, held once again at the Elks Lodge in Red Hook. They were a lot better prepared this year for the hordes who descended on them, with bigger heated tents, and off-site parking with a shuttle bus running back and forth.

It was fun to sit and catch up with everyone, write entries into the travelling VLT (The Very Longest Thread, provided for us once again by Pixisis), eat snacks, and not win any door prizes (well, not me, at least).

That’s the Ravelry crew announcing the winners, with mascot Bob off to the right. Bob was a great hit all weekend, his head designed, knit and worn by the lovely designer Ysolda Teague.

Zuzusunshine provided us with lots of cupcakes and home-brewed beer again this year – thanks!!! Here she is handing out some cupcakes at the Ravelry meet-up. Where would we be without cupcakes?

Some other highlights this year were: lining up for half an hour for Artichokes French, which was made more pleasant by the company of Knitterotica, MrKnitterotica, Sedonaknits, Knittingfiddler and Potteryfreak, and others of our group who passed by from time to time and stopped to chat (yes, the artichokes were very good); getting encouragement and spinning tips from SandiWiseheart and Habitrot when they were at the Holiday Yarns booth on Sunday; going out for dinner on Sunday evening with Jesh, Pixisis, Knitterotica and MrKnitterotica for a great meal and some fun with photography on the way back; sitting in the hotel lobby with the gang, knitting, spinning and being serenaded by MrKnitterotica (a very talented singer and musician). Lots of fond memories. It was also great to meet in person a few more folks from CPaAG – it’s always so cool to match faces with ravatars, and to discover that we are all just the same in person as we are online. (And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ve used everyone’s Ravelry names here).

I did also do some shopping over the weekend, but I haven’t taken pictures of my purchases yet. The next post will be about the Rhinebeck Stuff.

The only downside to this whole event (aside from it being too short) was the Swinebeck Flu – quite a few of us came home to sore throats, coughs and fevers and took to our beds, myself included. We will remember this one as the Year of the Hamthrax! *cough, cough*