Monthly Archives: January 2013

Second plied yarn of the year

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This is the first skein of yarn from Shale’s 2012 fleeces. She’s BFL and a wee smidge of merino, camel, and silk were blended in. I’m spinning a 3-ply yarn as is my usual wont and it’s fluffed up just beautifully after a soak and a thwack.

Yarned by You: Sabine Gallery

This was supposed to go out yesterday, but I set it to publish on the wrong date! Bummer!

As you’re reading this, I’m on my way to visit Susie at the farm to help out with the Spring 2013 yarn & pattern line photo shoot. I’m super excited to get an exclusive sneak peek at what’s in store for the spring season and have been reminiscing over last spring’s yarns and patterns, so I thought this week we’d take a look at what you’ve made with last season’s Sabine!

Jazzy-J-Stitches made this Lynden in 08 Foliage. Lynden was designed by Marie Grace Smith for the Sabine pattern line. I particularly like the cable detail that runs down the sleeves!

Marrow5 crocheted this cable hat in 11 Deep Blue Sea. At first glance I was fooled into thinking that those were knit cables, but they’re actually crocheted ones!

Okay, this next one wasn’t made by you. It was actually made by ME! When my friend HowdyPandowdy announced that she was having a baby girl, I couldn’t resist knitting her this Concentric Circle’s cardigan that I’ve loved ever since it was first published. The main color is 01 Fettucini with accents in 05 Posy and 12 Sirius. HowdyPandowdy graciously took this picture of her little one and allowed me to use it.

This Bramble Wrap, knit in the suggested colorway #10 Icicle, was made for the Close Knit Sisters shop! It is located in North Conway, NH, should you wish to stop by and visit the wrap! Again, it was designed by Marie Grace Smith.

This sweet baby blanket was knit by AbbyLauren for her niece, (woops, surprise!) nephew. I’m sure that he appreciated this Wool Leaves.

M1-M2-M3-43Me made this Amari in 04 Berry Farm & 02 Butterscotch. In order to make it larger, she both worked until she ran out of the main color and increased needle sizes as she worked toward the lace edging. A knit-along for Amari was hosted in the JMF group, as it is another pattern that Marie Grace Smith designed for the 2012 Spring yarn & pattern line.

I have adored the Chelsea Skirt since it came out in 2010. Why didn’t I think of making it in Sabine myself? knitterdre definitely had the right idea by making it in 08 Foliage!

jdunsmore knitted this Aspen, designed by (guess who?) Marie Grace Smith. The main color is 12 Sirius, with: Berry Farm, Posy, Deep Blue Sea, Sea Glass, and Limeade as accent colors.

This last one is one that I modeled myself and makes me think back fondly on the cold day, little sleep, and hard work I did last year! I can’t wait to get back to the farm and slip into a sweater designed for June in a cold January day and pretend that my lips aren’t turning blue and my teeth aren’t chattering! Or think up new storylines for the photographs! Or eat some of Susie’s Best Chicken Noodle Soup in the Universe.

I’ll even try to convince Susie to let me show you some sneak peeks! And if time allows I’ll take some photos of the farm of my own to share with you.

Susie texted me to let me know that the internet was down at the farm. I’m hoping it’ll be back by the time I arrive so I can share my adventure with you!

You can find Sabine, and the rest of the JMG yarns, in a LYS near you by clicking here then clicking “find a store,” inputting your zip code and selecting Juniper Moon Farm as the yarn brand.

Probably something you would like…

When I got home from Texas, amongst the mountain of mail waiting for me was a package from my friend Carole Pivarnik containing a copy of her new book Doggitude. It is a lovely book of watercolor portraits of real dog, each accompanied with an original haiku and a bio of the dog. The combination of elements really captures the  individual personalities of each dog in a very intimate and beautiful way.

Doggitude: What Dogs REALLY Think–In 17 Sassy Syllables

It’s an awesome book- full stop- but it’s made even awesomer by the fact that JMF’s Gnocchi is one of the 17 featured pups.

Isn’t his portrait gorgeous? I’ve seen Gnocchi with this exact look on his face a hundred times. Carole is madly talented.

To read Gnocchi’s haiku and bio you will have to order the book. Believe me, you will be very happy that you did.

Simple suppers

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One of my favorite winter meals on a busy day is baked potatoes. You can dress them up so many different ways and a little extra heat when it’s 10 degrees out does not go amiss. Last night I topped ours with mozzarella, sauteed mushrooms, and onions. Yum!

January Events

January is shaping up to be quite the month for me. First there is Winter Wool Fest in Wamego, KS on January 12th, hosted by The Wicked Witch. My yarn will be available for sale, and hopefully a bunch of new spinning fiber. I have some Falkland on order, I hope it gets here in time!

Speaking of spinning fiber, I am teaching my first ever spinning class this month. It’s an intro class, so bring your wheel if you have one and if you don’t and you still want to take the class, we can track one down for you to try out, just let me know before hand.

Intro to Wheel Spinning January 17th, 2013
Time: 6-9pm
Fee: $30
Materials: At least 4 oz fiber to spin, spinning wheel, bobbins. (Some fiber will be available for purchase at the class) Learn the basics of spinning on your own spinning wheel. Don’t have a wheel, but want to learn? Contact us to see if we might be able to find you one.

And some other awesome news, a couple of friends of mine stumbled on to a local farm that raises Tunis sheep. I bought some of her fleeces and because of these friends, have my first ever appointment at a mill. Sometime this spring I will have some homegrown Tunis roving available. It’s gorgeous stuff. I can’t wait to show you.

Some Favorite 2012 Pictures …

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Resolved

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Any reading resolutions for the new year? Reading more? (Reading less?) Reading better books? Bigger books? More series? More relaxing books?

And hey, feel free to talk about any other resolutions you might have, too … or why you choose NOT to have any.

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

And also–don’t forget, folks–sometimes WordPress’s spam filter seems to decide that a lot of perfectly valid answers are spam. I periodically check throughout the day for lost comments. But, PLEASE–if your comment doesn’t show, don’t post it four more times in the hopes that one of them will go through. I get very, very tired trying to sort out the duplicates (grin).


2012 in Review: Knitting & Designing

crk coverI’ve stated before I’m not a big fan of resolutions.  That said, I do like looking back over the year and seeing what I have accomplished (or not!).

The biggest news, for me:  California Revival Knits came out!

I’m so proud of it.  It’s garnered some really wonderful reviews — Knitty, Vogue, various podcasts to include Knit 1, ♡ Too & The Knit Girllls.  Scroll down to the bottom of this page to see some of the reviews.

Kathy Cadigan did absolutely gorgeous photography (that’s her lovely daughter Morgan on the cover).  Kathy is just so talented, and I’m so lucky she did the photography.

And as I’ve learned this year, the work doesn’t stop once it’s in print, lol.  I’ve done a few trunk shows and book signings (everywhere from here in Los Angeles to Chicago!), and am planning more for 2013.  For example, I’ll be doing demos and displaying projects from the book Saturday February 1th  at Madrona.

I also published Autumn Nostalgia for the MFPP in September.  It’s a nice mix of projects – stranded mitts (TailGate Mitts), cabled cowl (Applejack, shown on the cover, left), and textured cardi hat (Farewell Summer).

Cover Sept 2012 MFPP Autumn Nostalgia Stephannie Tallent

Fresh Designs: Men came out — my Abalone Cove hat pattern, a fun honeycomb cable variation hat (which can be worn by women and kids as well!), is included.  I’ll be posting a few more pics when I get the sample back to really show off the cables.

I did the Byzantine Cowl for Kate at Dragonfly Fibers.  It’ll be coming out this year in my Ravelry store & through Deep South Fibers.

Peacock Feather & Burnished Brass side

The Lagniappe Mitts & Cuff pattern is the pattern I use for my beading class.

One more new pattern this year was published — the fingerless version of Ravens in Snow.  I don’t really like to go back & redo patterns (too many new things to work on!), but I wasn’t done with the Ravens stitch pattern.  I love how these fingerless mitts turned out!

ravens in snow fingerless tree

What I can’t show are the designs for the next book;  the four designs I did myself for Hitch; the design I did for an upcoming DeFarge book;  the socks & mitts for the Cooperative Press sock club (coming soon!); and the designs to be released later this year for a yarn company (two of which I finished, the third I’m still working on).

Oh, and Hitch?  It morphed from being a small ebook done by yours truly, to a 30 pattern collection created by a plethora of incredibly talented designers, curated by me.  We’re in the final bits of tech editing before it all goes to layout.

I also taught at Madrona; taught beading at Knitculture here in Los Angeles; visited Rhinebeck, Stitches West, & Stitches Midwest for book signings; and attended TNNA in the winter in Phoenix and summer in Columbus.

A Delicious (and Peppy) New Year

Right before Christmas Paul spent some time staying with his parents while on a work trip to NYC.

When he came back, he brought with him a crazy wonderful gift from his parents:

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A beautiful Kitchenaid espresso machine.

Wowza!

We have spent the holiday in a caffeine – fueled burst of deliciousness.  As for the kids, they have a new favorite: steamers (steamed and frothed milk with flavored syrup).

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I may be a little jacked up on caffeine right now, but I can’t enough enough of the little shots of espresso Paul has been making me, sweetened with a bit of sugar and mixed with frothed heavy cream.

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So decadently brilliant.

My waistline doesn’t stand a chance.


Tagged: food

Resolutions-ish

First of all, thank you all for the lovely comments on yesterday’s post. It was wonderful to hear from so many of you and feel supported and loved. Very uplifting.

To answer some of questions, being back at the farm doesn’t mean that I am better. We’re working on it, but I don’t think I will “better” for a long, long time. I am still pretty weak, still losing weight, although the rate has slowed. I am wearing a sweater that I haven’t worn since college, one that I lent to Amy’s 9-year-old daughter last year.

I didn’t quite realize how frail I look until I saw Amy and Paul’s faces yesterday when they saw me after two months. I am somewhat confident that eventually I will be healthy and thriving again, but not tomorrow, or next month, or the months after that. It’s going to be a process.

In the meantime, I have (finally) come to the conclusion that I am going to have to make some major changes to streamline and simplify my life. I have been struggling and fighting with this decision for months and I thought that giving in to this disease would be giving up, something I am loathe to do under any circumstances. Instead, making the decision to give some things up has felt incredibly freeing, like an enormous weight has been lifted from my chest and I can breath again. For the first time in a very long time, I can imagine what the future might look like, and that is incredibly hopeful.

I don’t have any real news to report at this point- no decisions have been made. But I know there will be changes and I am okay with that now. I hope you’ll be okay with it too.

And now, on to resolutions! I have only two this year, and they are more like goals than resolutions.

The first was inspired by a conversation with my sister Carrie. She and my mom had offered to help me with something and I turned them down, as I am want to do. When the task proved so difficult that it drove me to sobbing, body-racking tears, my sister asked why I hadn’t just taken them up on their offer to help me in the first place. I answered, through gasps and sobs, that I thought they only offered to be nice, that they didn’t really want to do it.

My sister countered that if that hadn’t wanted to do it they wouldn’t have offered. I replied, “What do you mean? I offer to do things I don’t want to do all the time!” And Carrie said, “Well stop.”

Please don’t think I’m completely moronic when I tell you that this was a revelation to me. I sort of thought everyone agreed or offered to do things they didn’t want to do all the time. Apparently they don’t. And from here on out, neither do I. I am going to start saying no.  At least, I’m going to try.

The other resolution is a small thing really. I was at the doctor’s office the other day and I looked down and noticed that my nails were a mess. All different crazy lengths and in need of filing. And then I decided that, after 40 years of not being able to grow long and lovely fingernails, I am never going to. I’ve been trimming my nails short every Monday since then.

Do you make resolutions? And do you keep them?

P.S. The internet is down at the farm so please forgive if you are awaiting an email from me. I’ll be going into town to blog and check emails until it’s back, but we have a big photo shoot scheduled for this weekend with lots of friends coming in from out-of-town to help out, so it may be hit or miss.