Happy Labor Day!

To all my American friends, Happy Labor Day!  I hope everyone has a fun but safe weekend. 

Knit Picks is celebrating the weekend with a 25% off sitewide sale.  Just use coupon code SAVEBIG.

Enjoy and happy knitting!

Fall Fever

I'm suffering from a serious case of fall fever.

While unpacking my booth setup stuff after the county fair last weekend, I set the cup of fake leaves down in a random corner of the room for a lack of a better place to store them.  They looked so lonely, I added a pumpkin.  And now I officially have fall fever.  I want candy corn, bonfires, jeans, boots, flannel shirts, and did I mention, candy corn?  I love candy corn.

The fair was a success, despite it incredibly hot and humid.  From my booth alone, I saw three different people get loaded into ambulances, presumably from heat related issues.  It was hot!  Naturally, no one was in the mood to buy wool hats but I did sell tons of pumpkins.  Despite the heat, it was a successful day.  My booth neighbor, Winnie from Sweet Threads, was a lifesaver.  There wasn't room in my booth for the fan I'd brought but Winnie had a spare and aimed it at me for the entire event.  Thank you Winnie!

I've been pretty lazy since getting home from the fair.

All I've managed to accomplish craft-wise is to bind off a scrap shawl I was knitting and I started a granny rectangle blanket.

I'm loving the granny rectangle, although I can't crochet for more than about 30 minutes a day or my hand feels like it's going to fall off. Crochet bothers my carpal tunnel.  Anyway....  

I've never crocheted an official granny rectangle before.  I've always just made two (or more) squares, sewn them together then granny stitched around them to create a rectangle.  This time, I watched a you tube video to learn how to do it correctly and I love the results.  I'm already afraid I'm going to run out of yarn though.  I may have grossly miscalculated how much I'd need.  The blanket may end up being a weirdly large table runner.  We'll see.

As for the scarf, it's another simple scrap Palette garter stitched scarf.  Every row is a different color and I leave a little extra yarn hanging off the ends to become fringe.  Super simple to knit and a great way to use up little bits of mis-matched left over yarns.  I've made a zillion of them and will most likely make a zillion more.

And that has pretty much been my week.  I hope your week has been as relaxing and frivolous as mine has been.

Happy knitting!

Deby

I hope that all of you in Deby's path made it through safely.  I love LOVE a good storm and well, Deby was a bit of a let down here.  I didn't even break out a single bottle of hurricane booze, nor did I eat all my hurricane snacks.

I spent Thursday, day one of Deby here in Virginia, knitting outside.  I am SO thankful for our covered porch. I absolutely love sitting outside when it's raining.  Thursday's rain was straight down rain with no wind so it was perfect for deck sitting. 

While I knit and watched it rain, I also read The Last One by Will Dean.  O. M. G.!  If you like psychological horror, it's a must read. A MUST read! There's nothing jumping out at you, there are no ghosts or bogeymen, but it is absolutely terrifying and I couldn't put it down.  Best book I've read in a long time. (And no, I'm not an affiliate, I just really, really liked the book.)

We did end up loosing one small, dead tree in the storm.  Other than being dead, I have no idea why it fell.  We never had any wind.  And oddly, the big, giant dead tree that leans a little more each day is still standing.  Other than putting a dent in our yard, the big one is located in a spot where it won't cause any property damage when it falls so we keep waiting for a storm to take it out instead of having to pay a fortune to have it cut down.  Maybe in the next storm....

I finished the hat I was knitting and added two pompoms.  And now, we just wait for the last tendrils of Deby to pass by tonight and pray that all of the flooding to the west of us stays to the west of us and doesn't flow downstream and flood us tomorrow.  That's what happened during Gaston, a storm that passed through in August twenty years ago and caused major flooding the next day due to the runoff.  Fingers crossed.

Happy knitting!

Market Prepping

I'm still market prepping and haven't done any personal knitting in what feels like a very long time.  Sadly, it doesn't make for very interesting blog fodder.  The severe thunderstorm we are in the midst of isn't helping any with the photos either.  At least we still have power.  It was off for a bit during last night's storm.

Today I have been finishing various things I've made.  Stuffing things, weaving in ends, that kind of thing.

Have any of you ever needed the 5 lb box of poly-fil?  I kept going through the large bags of it so I finally broke down and bought the more economical giant box.  It scared me when I opened it because as soon as I cut a hole in the bag inside the box, the poly-fil just started growing and growing and growing.  It was spewing out like a volcano.  I've used about a foot worth in height and there's still no pushing it back into the box.  I just have to keep using it up before I can reseal the box.  Shouldn't be a problem though.  I still have Lots of items to stuff.

I also have lots of hats and gloves to tag.  I bought these tags back in the winter, just after Christmas I think, but I've never attached them to anything.  Yes, I'm a bad shop owner and haven't listed anything new in ages.  I really like these tags though and was super excited to find that they sent me an extra 50 tags!  I ordered the rectangles and they sent me the rectangles I ordered plus 50 of the ovals, or at least what I'm calling ovals. If you are in the market for tags, I bought mine from RiseTailor Studio on Etsy.  (No affiliate, just happy with my tags.)  Shipping took a while, I can't remember how long exactly, but I do remember they arrived several weeks earlier than expected.

And just because I'm excited that I'm all legal now...

I have a business license, a banner and a tent to hang it from.  At least I hope I have a tent.  I have a very heavy tent bag.  I just haven't tried to take the tent out of the bag and set it up yet.  It's been back in the upper 90's and 4 gazillion percent humidity so the tent has remained in it's bag in the middle of the living room.  I'm going to have to start calling it an art sculpture if I don't do something about it soon.

Okay, time for me to get back to stuffing and weaving in ends.

Happy knitting!