Progress!

Look! Progress! I've been plugging away at my Double Bordered Scarf from Victorian Lace Today and it is slowly growing. I'm coming to think of it as my escapism project. Whenever something gets too hard or boring or overwhelming, time for the simple and yet complicated looking scarf! The cashmere yarn is soooooo wonderful feeling. I waffle between really liking the colors and only sort of liking the colors.


I went to the Appalachian Heritage Festival on Saturday. It was the first year for this event but they had a pretty good turn out of vendors. It gave me a chance to do a lot of Christmas shopping. I also went a tad nuts over lotions and handmade soaps. One vendor had lotion bars that can sit out on their own little dishes. I chose a French Vanilla bar and dragonfly dish for Mom (she loves dragonflies) and a tube of Coconut Cream lotion for me. I was sorely tempted by the sheep dishes. You can't even imagine how wonderful this lotion smells. I might have to get on their website and order more. Then another vendor had chocolate hand lotion. It smells like you are putting the most delicious hot chocolate on your hands without the whole risk of burning yourself. Probably shouldn't use these when I am hungry, huh?

The many different vendors, demonstrators and animals were very interesting. I would have taken pictures but my camera doesn't have any batteries. One of the llamas looked very disgruntled by all of the people. There were so many spinners around and so much roving. I bought my first little bit of roving, 2 oz of Shetland from a ewe called Faith. I'll play with this once I know a little bit more about spinning. Speaking of spinning, there were so many spindles, wheels and roving there. Very interesting :)

There was also yarn there but I didn't buy much of it. Just this skein of sock yarn in OSU colors for Dad. This yarn is 70% superwash wool and 30% seacell and feels like silk. It should be a lot of fun to knit up.


I also got a couple of jars of honey for Christmas presents. It is amazing the kinds of things you can learn at these festival things. Two ladies were talking to the man selling the honey telling him about how they put honey on cuts and burns and it helped heal it right up. He said that many studies have shown how honey is a natural antiseptic. I also learned that the lighter honey is the honey gathered in spring. The darker kind is gathered in fall. He had just harvested the fall honey that I bought a couple of days before. Talk about fresh! He was also talking to another person about how taking local honey each day can really help with allergies.

In other news, I received the yarn for and cast on yesterday for the Brennan Cardigan. Don't you find making the sleeves last seems like they take forever? You are so close to being finished with the sweater and then you still have to finish a huge chunk of knitting. So this time, I cast on for the sleeves first rather than last. I've already finished all of the ribbing and almost finished with the increases. It's kind of amazing how quickly they are going. Guess if you are determined, things will go faster. I've also been practicing my backwards knitting for this project so I don't have to keep turning it back and forth. Very helpful :)