Category Archives: Knitted in the past

Dandelions

This is the first real spring I ever experienced and I love it! All the sudden changes of nature around me, the flowers and the different shades of green the trees are so busy creating, make me very happy!

In Israel we say that if you over sleep during the alleged spring or fall you are going to miss them and in Arizona, although we managed to catch the beautiful wildflowers in bloom a few times, it is really always summer – if you ask my humble opinion.

I really like all those Dandelions that seem to grow everywhere and I don’t quite understand why people don’t like them.

Last Saturday we went on a road trip to Vermont and to the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival where I bought the most colorful yarn from the Green Mountain Spinnery; Unfortunately they don’t show on their website the two colors I chose for my Ulmus – The minute I saw this shawl on Kirsten blog, I knew I must knit it.

The Dandelions in the green grass look just like my yarns!

The Dandelions in the green grass look just like my yarns!

While driving in Vermont, I realised the yarns I chose look just like the Dandelions in the medows if you catch them with the sun on them from the right direction, so very lovely:

The start of the shawl with its name origin

The start of the shawl with its name origin

Those colors and the pattern make knitting Dandelions a very happy mission and the shawl grew quite a bit during our long drive from Vermont back to Toronto yesterday:

My Dandelions Shawl has relatives in Toronto too!

My Dandelions Shawl has relatives in Toronto too!


I hope I will manage to finish it in time as it is a present for an upcoming event!

More about our trip and the festival which was actually my first ever real wool festival, in the very near future.

Snow Shoes – Arizona Style

Yes, the white stuff is real snow!

Snow Shoes, Arizona Style :)

For Valentine Day weekend, we went up north and stayed in a lovely Bed and Breakfast in Williams, AZ . On Saturday morning, it snowed so we went to check out the Grand Canyon to see how it looks in white:

Snow in the Grand Canyon, Valentine Day, 2009

Snow in the Grand Canyon, Valentine Day, 2009

Unlike the lady above, we were quite cold:

Snow in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, February 14, 2009

Snow in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, February 14, 2009

And at long last had a chance to put some of my knitting creations to good use. Beside those you can see in the photo above, some others were hidden inside our shoes:

Some of my knitted socks in use

Some of my knitted socks in use

The day was clear and sunny but quite cold and the icicles will prove it was not my Arizonan exaggeration:

Icicles hanging from the roof of El Tovar Lodge, Grand Canyon, AZ

Icicles hanging from the roof of El Tovar Lodge, Grand Canyon, AZ

And if you are wondering about my meshushim: after about a week of knitting meshushim all the time, even I had to admit there is no way I can knit 400 or even 200 of them before March 27, so I put it aside and since then I am trying to knit a shawl for my mother’s 80 birthday, I am not happy with anything I knit, but I keep trying!


The Temptations of Noro

To break the monotony of my cowl addiction I succumbed to Noro colors again:

Noro Colors Too

While knitting the scarf I worried a lot. I thought it will turn out weird or dull, I  kept rewinding the skeins to check the colors combinations I can get.

But at the end of it all, I am really pleased with the result:

Most of Noro More

Noro is an old love of mine. I first met this corruption in a lovely boutique yarn in Tel Aviv in 1986 (oooppps, now you know how old I am,,,), I immediately fell in love with the color combinations and the softness of this yarn. Yes, the first yarn of Noro that I ever used was extremely soft, I don’t remember the name of it but it had a high content of angora and it was outrageously expensive. I still have the sweater I knitted from it:

Old Noro Sweater 1

although it doesn’t fit me anymore. It looks quite new as I didn’t wear it much, angora was never very suitable to the weather I live in – my kind of luck!

Old Noro Sweater 1

So when I saw Noro again in my LYS a few years ago when I returned to knitting, I couldn’t resist it and made my feather and fan shawl from it – to tell you the truth, I was quite disappointed when I knitted the shawl, the yarn had many knots in it and I remembered a much softer yarn but the shawl itself is beautiful so I was happy. This time when I knitted the scarf, again it was not the most pleasant yarn to knit with but I love the result so I guess I will keep going for more Noro.

My Noro Striped Scarf 2 Large