Hearth & Home Wk 7

This week was Linda's birthday. Karen made delicious chocolate cupcakes with chocolate filling. We worked with alternative yarn: plarn and the VHS tape. Linda demonstrated how to fuse plarn. A few things to keep in mind when fusing plarn is to set the iron on "wool" or hotter, put the plarn between parchment paper, keep the iron moving, and let the plarn cool down completely before cutting. Even though the piece is melted together, it is still important to cut the edges for a clean line. Also the plarn will shrink in one direction more than the other similar to felting.

Diana is selling the cute felted soap on the right for $8.
It makes a nice gift.

ATC Night
Next week will be ATC Night. Eight or Nine ladies plan to trade ATCs in Dec. We can work on ATCs or catch up on our many fun projects.

Potholders
The week after next will be potholder night. You will need to bring 300 yds of wool in a main color and a little bit of a contrasting color for stripes or checks, size 6 needles on 16 inch circulars, size 7 needles for the i-cord trim, size 6 dpns, and a size H or 8 crochet hook.

Diana made this potholder for Linda's sample.

Presidents Challenge
Louise will purchase the Cascade 220 this week. The colors are black, flesh tone, gray, and off white. Presidents are still available. Linda will write out the pattern for shoes, stockings, and knickers for the first 5 presidents. Congratulations to Pat who won last week's trivia question. This week's question is who was the first president to be born in a hospital.

Cynthia made this celebrity icon of Jesus.

Gloves and Mittens
The Salvation Army will be collecting any kind of hand wear during the month of Nov. to give to the homeless during the holidays. Linda will collect any we knit during the Christmas party.

Comfort Dolls
If you would like to knit a comfort doll for the next shipment, please finish by mid Nov. Sandy's church will be sending a package to missionaries in Africa at the end of Nov.

Holiday Gift for Jake
For this year's gift for Jake, we will be putting together a gift basket of goodies and knitted items. A sign up sheet will be available next week so there will not be so many duplicates. Linda did some snooping and found out that Jake likes chocolate, caramels, but no fruit-flavored items. His favorite color is navy blue. His shoe size is 13 or 11 inches.

Vickie knitted and felted this bag.

She also made a knitted dishcloth, crochet dishcloth, a little bag, and a heating pad.

 

Linda and Sandy's bottle cozy. And, Sandy's plarn project.

Cynthia made these socks for her grandmother.

She knitted her teddy bear some clothes.

Sue knitted this sweater with yarn called Nautica.

Karen made a dishcloth and four bottle cozies.

She also crocheted this table top adding bottle caps.

A cowl by Louise

Linda also showed us cute ideas from two catalogs: Uncommon Goods and At West End. Claudia shared a book that she checked out from the library using natural fibers called "Aware Knits."

Knit and be happy!

Hearth & Home Wk 6

We received a whole lot of handouts this week: patterns for coasters and placemats using alternative materials, potholders, the ruffled bottle sleeve, and patterns for two sessions. Bring all copies in order to class next week so we can check that nothing is missing. Several projects were going on this week: the linen panel, the dishcloth, and the bottle sleeve.

Kelly's dishcloth

Next Week

We will work with alternative materials. For the VHS coaster, bring a VHS tape and size 6 needles. One tape will make millions of coasters.

To make the plarn coaster, bring 8 or 9 shopping bags and size 9 needles. The plarn placemat takes 54 shopping bags. Linda will also show us how to fuse the plarn either next week or the week after.

The week after next, we will begin potholders.

Presidential Challenge

In response to the yarn feedback, the class fund will be used to order black, gray, and offwhite as well as flesh tone. Linda said offwhite is better than white. The rest of the books ordered by Linda L. will be brought to class next week. Linda L. and Sandy won last week's trivia. This week's trivia is which presdient has never voted in an election until he ran for office.

Charity Knitting

Linda found out that the Salvation Army is collecting gloves and mittens for the homeless to be given during the Christmas holiday. Linda thought this would be a good project for us. She said to use the glove/mitten pattern that we received about a year ago (I think from Knit Picks). She will find out when they are due.

Claudia spun and dyed her own wool using elderberries.

We decided to give our Comfort Dolls to Sandy. Her church sends baby sets to missionaries in Africa (Mali) on a regular basis. They then hand them out to children in a hospital. These dolls are made by Karen M. and Irene.

Teri crocheted sleeves on a short sleeve shirt. The pattern is from the Double Stitch Twins book.

Other News
The bus for Stitches West has been reserved. The cost is $45. We still don't know if Ernie will be our bus driver. Reservations start Dec. 1. Knotty Knitters get to sign up first.

Diane has muslin pieces to share for the ATC cards.
The game, "Last Knitter Standing" arrived for the Christmas party. The authors want pictures from us while playing the game.

Creative Urges, a craft and gift shop near Monkey Cat, is moving to old town Auburn near where Gypsy Wind use to be. They are having a 50% off sale before their move.

Linda's husband is teaching a broom class this Saturday. The cost is $45 including materials. This broom is well made and will last for years. Call Linda for details.

Happy knitting!

Hearth & Home Wk 5

Happy birthday October knitters! This week Linda demonstrated how to cross stitch on the linen panels we knitted.

Linda asked us if we wanted to start a new project next week. The class was divided. So, Linda will bring a fast project that we can do in class, the wine cozy. This is a good stash buster. Bring leftover sock yarn and size 3 dpns. It is knitted in the round. She also showed us the future projects using melted plarn and video tape.

She asked us if we wanted a night for ATCs. I think we decided to wait a couple of weeks to give everyone time to knit a piece, 2-1/2 by 3-1/2. Teri found an ATC rubber stamp and donated it to the class. She also donated an ink pad, cardboard backing, and plastic sleeves. Thank you, Teri!

Adopt a President
There are about 13 presidents left without an owner. Please adopt one or two. Louise ordered the skin tone color Cascade 220. Linda would like feedback on other colors that we might use a lot such as black or brown, etc. She also suggested that we use Mountain Mist for the stuffing.

Congratulations to Sandy and Linda L. for answering last week's presidential trivia questions. This week's question is: who was the shortest president and how short was he?

Candi and Diana brought their celebrity dolls, Amelia Earhart and Barbara Eden

Stitches West
Linda reserved a bus for Saturday, Feb. 25. We can start signing up for the bus in Dec. The check for the bus will not be cashed until Feb. 1, but it will hold your seat.

Linda L. suggested that we all wear the same shirt such as a T-shirt with a silk screen design. Diana suggested that we have a shirt with "Knotty Knitters" in rhinestone and "Auburn" in a stitch. Both ladies will look into this for us. We will vote on a color. Some colors suggested were black, turquoise, red, royal blue, lime, hot pink, and purple.

Our Future
We will stay with ARD until May. Linda will decide later whether to stay with ARD or return to Placer School for Adults for the Fall session. She would like to spend time calculating the numbers for the fee to make it reasonable for everyone.

Some of Linda's projects come from these two books.

 

Rosemary's gloves

Lynette's Comfort Dolls

Karen M. is back from vacation. She bought buffalo yarn in Oklahoma. It costs $69.99.

Cynthia made these color print outs on the computer. She emailed them to the group this week.

 

These are for the side panels or handles. Thank you, Cynthia!

Diane mentioned that a couple of parents at her school is selling dyed yarn. The website is www.ladybugfiber.etsy.com.

Diana will be at the Peddlar's Fair this Sunday in Roseville. She will have a booth near the entrance. The time is from 8 am to 3 pm at the Antique Grove on Harding right next to Clam Jumpers. She also mentioned that Auburn will have its Fall Festival at Rec Park on Saturday. She will be dressed as a fairy at that event.

Happy knitting!

Hearth & Home Wk 4

This week was a knit night. We were going to learn how to cross stitch on the linen panels we knitted, but there were no panels that were blocked to work from and most of us were not done. It was postponed until next week. Linda gave us a copy of the Knit cross stitch pattern that she magnified and brought color pencil for us to make the pattern easier to see. During the Show n Tell, a few of the ladies said that they tried knitting a panel but decided to give it up after several tries. Linda suggested that we make smaller sizes as a sampler or for the ATCs instead of panels.

By the way, Cynthia is looking into finding a rubber stamp for the back of the ATC cards. There were no stamps at Michael's or Joanne's. (On a side note: Cynthia has three utube videos of her cat online: Saddie's in the shower; Saddie on Lacey's? chair; Saddie's love of concrete.)

We received several patterns in a packet for future projects: several dishcloths and Swiffer cover. Most of them use cotton yarn.

Library Display
We found out that the waiting list to display the fingerpuppets at the Auburn library is a year long, and the new Rocklin library does not have a display case. Linda will take a few of the fingerpuppets relating to children's stories to the Foresthill library; the rest took our fingerpuppets home.

Needle Cases for Sale
Leslie Rogers made some cute needle cases that can be purchased for $18.

Items for Class
We have $298 in our fund. Linda proposed that we purchase the following items:

1. A game called Last Knitters Standing, $24.95 from Pattern Works.
2. Several skeins of flesh-color Cascade 220 yarn for our presidential challenge. (There are several presidents left to be taken. So far, only one knitter in Linda's morning class has signed up.)

Linda L. is taking orders on books about all the presidents (except the present one) written by Mike Venezia. Each book is about one president and costs $7.95. Linda P brought two to show us, and Linda L. and Irene thought they were informative and entertaining. She is placing the order this Saturday morning.

Presidential Trivia
Linda will have a couple of questions for us every week, so we can learn about the presidents while we knit them.

1. Name the presidents that were generals.
2. How many counties are named after Washington? (Hint: Think no more than the 50 states.)

Stitches West
Linda asked for a show of hands for anyone interested in going to Stitches West next Feb. Most of the ladies were interested.

What To Do
Linda shared with us that she has had three sleepless nights this week. Last week there were a couple of disgruntled ARD staff members that didn't like our class using the copy machine free of charge. Linda received an email from ARD saying that they will charge her 25 cents per copy from now on. The next day, after Linda replied to their email, they changed the date to starting in January. This is a very high cost, and Linda's integrity was in question. She contacted Placer School for Adults to check if we can switch back. After some thought, Linda decided to finish her contract with ARD instead of breaking it after this session so she does not burn any bridges. She asked for our opinion. Here were some ideas suggested:

• Diana and Cynthia said that they will print handouts at home. (We can use our fund to pay them for ink.)
• Cynthia volunteered to bring her printer to class.
• The class can take turns making copies each week.
• Linda can scan the handouts and email them to us.

We told her that we would honor her decision. Linda suggested that we (as individuals) not use the copy machine at ARD from now on.

Sandy's gloves

Linda B's gloves

Judith's market bag

Diana made this hat for her daughter.

Linda B's gloves and bag; Nancy's bag

Claudia's bag

Debi's scarves using novelty yarn bought in Cambria.

Diane brought her celebrity icon of Linda.

3 bags of wool were dropped off for our use. Great for spinning or stuffing.

Happy knitting!