October 15-halfway thru October already....

I just looked at my last blog and cannot believe it was Oct. 1st. I was very busy painting the railings on my deck before it got cold and I just barely made it before the flakes started to fly. Today is a gorgeous autumn day, crisp with blue skies and lots of sun. I hope to get in my garden today and tomorrow to clean it up. I still am working on the wallpaper paste in the front hall. Got a bid to clean and paint it for $500. A little too much. I'll keep working on the wallpaper past.

Before it got cold I was able to plant some Peonies. These are very special peonies! They originated from my Grandmother's garden in south Minneapolis. My grandparents had built this house originally as a garage, from what I've been told, and it became their house. They had 7 children, plus any long term visiting relatives and my grandparents living in this two bedroom house. UNBELIEVABLE BY TODAYS STANDARD.

I loved that house. We all loved that house. I think because we all felt warm and welcome there and my grandparents loved us. It had small back hall to enter from so you kept the cold out of the rest of the house. It had a large kitchen, which was half of the house on the main level and the other half was the living room. It had a great stairway leading to the upstairs with a landing halfway up. We played in this area alot cuz it was private from the adults. The upstairs had two large rooms also. One for my Grandparents room and a bathroom at the front of the house and a large closet. The other room had one closet and beds for the grandchildren. All seven children slept in this room with one closet. They had beds all over the floor and each child had very few clothes.

The ceilings in the bedrooms all slanted down so you had to be careful sitting up in the morning or you would bump your head. It was an amazing house. It also had a basement where grandma washed clothes in the old washer with the wringer used for squeezing the water out of the clothes and one tub with rinse water in it. Then you would haul the clothese up to dry outside on the line. It was unfinished down there and spidery. The furnace had those big round tubes running the heat through the house. Grandpa had a work bench down there and a cellar for all the canning they did. A root cellar! Somehow they had gotten a chest freezer down there. I guess they cut a hole in the floor upstairs and lowered it into the basement. Grandpa and my Uncles were hunters so they needed someplace for all that meat and chickens.

Every sunday Grandma would fix dinner for whoever showed up. The grandchildren usually spent every weekend at their house. It had a huge front yard with walnut trees and a lilac hedge and one whole side of the front yard (there was no back yard) was flowers. All kinds of flowers but that is where I got the Peonies from. I will take these with me when I move from this house and will pass them down to the children. I have six plants and I sure hope they all come up next spring.

I also learned to knit, embroider, rug hook and sew in this house. My grandma was the original Martha Stewart and I learned a great deal from her. I still miss her.

Enough, back to knitting. I started Dan's sweater this week. A top down pattern from "Pure and Simple" out of Aurora 8. I finished mittens for Ellie cuz it got cold so fast I thought I better get them done. I've been playing with needle felting again. I'm making some little elves and trees. I'll get a photo up here soon when I get them done.

I did more dye work this week. I got some new corriedale and decided to dye up some green, brown and blue. I also did a multi colored batch and may try to card this today on the carder.

Barbara has been making new samples and Denise came in yesterday to pick up more yarn to make samples. Barbara designed a new hat out of Adagio from Skacel and Denise is working on a neck gator, socks and felted purses.

Socks are back with a vengence this year. Creative Fibers has a great selection of sock patterns by "City Sheep", our in house pattern line by Kris and Barbara. They are lovely patterns and can be seen on our website. We will use some of these for "Sock of The Month Club", which is off to a great start.

Today is "Spinning With Shelley" day at the shop. It's always such a great time. We have a very unique group of people who come to spin and knit. Whenever it is nice enough we sit outside, but today may be an inside day.

Matt and Mike are back from Taos with lots to share. The Taos Fiber Festival was smaller than Shepherd's harvest but had some incredible vendors. Matt brought samples and business cards so I can contact the vendors he thought were great and try to get some of their product for the shop. After seeing the Navajo Weaving and dyeing Matt is really interested in knowing more about this process. Hopefully we can have a Navajo weaving class this winter. Then we can have a Natural dye class to follow up on that. I think Matt and Mike should buy a farm to feed Creative Fibers their products, like, Llamas, Alpacas, Several types of sheep fiber and natural dyes. We could become a co-op. Anybody else interested? I think I'll bring that up today.

I have the most incredible customers visiting my shop. A hot tip from a customer yesterday. She said she works on her computer all day, so her hand is in one position all day, when she goes home in the evening to knit she uses this hand in a different position and it somehow loosens up the tendons for her. AMAZING! Keep Knitting.