I haven't done any posting for awhile but just realized if you wish to go back to the beginning you can click on the 2008 archives and start at the beginning!  I hope you do.  Shirley

Hi everyone -- I want to welcome those of my friends from  the Knitting  Paradise forum -- especially the KP Tea Party members.   

If you are interested in seeing my work, this blog opened in 2008 and if you scroll  down each page until you reach the start of the blog you can see my complete blog with all the different works i have done over the past few years - especially pictures of my Arizona     projects and my Thread Painting and quilted wall hangings- then recently the knitting and crochet projects. 

Welcome to you all - I hope you enjoy my blog.  Shirley                    

and here are some more

and more--------

I also received a wonderful yarn bowl from my hubby for my birthday, and my dear friend Deb made me one as well so I am very lucky.

here is the one from Hubby-- he bought it on a trip to Cochrane and I like the shape and size. I also made a crochet Stashbuster bag which is really quite handy.

Here are some warm, cozy slippers that was part of a workshop on KP (knitting Paradise).

I have been doing a lot of designing - especially sweaters and have had fun with it. The two below are my Waterfall tops which have become a popular workshop class.  they are comfortable and slimming (I do need that!)

 This is an afghan I made for Hayley - she loves purple, pink and wanted a flower afghan. The blue was made for my son's mother in law Frances, who loves blue.  I also made a knitted afghan for my dil in bright sunrise colors.   As you can see I have managed to keep busy.

Some of my projects for 2012

I have been doing a lot of knitting and crochet this past 2 years.  here are more of  my projects.here is my latest coat of many colors which I taught in a workshop - we just finished and some pretty nice sweaters were knitted.

I have made a crochet or knitted afghan for all my family and a friend, as well as lots of other little
projects.

Hi everyone, I am back after quite a time away

Hi everyone -- it has been awhile since I  have posted.  I have been knitting up a storm on Knitting Paradise and have opened another workshop section, much like Learningfa with quilting.  I still haven't touched my sewing machine since Rob died -for some reason  I have lost heart for doing art quilts.

We have had a very heavy three years, but FINALLY things are starting to look up.  Pat is doing very well, thankfully, and so am I so  life is so much better than it has been for the last 4 years.

I am doing a lot of designing and am teaching a coat of many colors cardigan, as well as a top down waterfall top  both my designs.  Also going to be teaching a crochet afghan workshop in the new year.

I am keeping busy with the new section.  I learned with the quilting forum(learningfa) that people are anxious to learn and people are willing to teach, and there is a place to put both together.

It is nice to be back and I hope to drop in more often.   Not sure how this new blogger works, but will likely be able to figure it out.

Bye for now,  Shirley       http://www.knittingparadise.com

finished my ribbed top pullover

I just finished a new pullover in  worsted weight yarn -- the yoke is done in ribbing - I changed the pattern quite a bit and am happy with the results.  I am also working away on an afghan-so am keeping busy.

Hat and scarf for my Grand daughter.

She arrived for a visit over the  weekend (sleepover) and the hat and scarf I knit for her last year looked very small so 'we' decided I would do her a new set.  This is what we ended up with.

She has started knitting - and has done 2 dishcloths and is working on a scarf - amazing.

ANOTHER KNIT ALONG SWEATER! LOVE IT!

Here is another finished pullover from our LETS DESIGN A COAT OF MANYCOLORS which
we made on a wonderful knitting and crochet group - Knitting Paradise.  

We are going to do another knit along in the NEWYear and there is lots of interest.  These sweaters don't follow a pattern - we use number of stitches to the inch,measurements and ideas!  I am so pleased with the way they are turning out.  There should be 5 or 6 more finished in the NEW Year as well as a lot of new members starting.

We are also going to do a Knit along with a top down pattern (see my bomber jackets).   so much fun.

Shirley

Another sweater from my Knit along group.

Look at the wonderful job Dana Kay did -- especially the yoke.  She also put a hood on her sweater. some of the work coming out of  the Knitting Paradise forum for this Knit along is absolutely wonderful.  I am going to do another one in the NEw Year.

REMEMBERANCE DAY 2011

Today is Remembrance Day here in Canada and other Commonwealth countries, I believe.

Please take special time to remember our fallen heroes and the families and loved ones who
are carrying on without them.

Shirley

I am a proud Canadian and....

-next week is the Canadian Remembrance day -- 

 Lest we Forget 

  It is funny

 how it took someone in England to put it into words......

 Salute to a brave and modest nation - Kevin Myers , 'The Sunday

 Telegraph'LONDON :

 Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan , probably

 almost no one outside their home country had been aware that

 Canadian troops

 are deployed in the region.

 And as always, Canada will bury its dead, just as the rest of

 the world, as

 always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly

 everything Canada ever does.. It seems that Canada 's historic

 mission is to

 come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete

 strangers, and

 then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored.

 Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of

 the hall,

waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire

 breaks out, she

 suffers serious

 injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes,

 there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped

 glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.

That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American

continent with the United States , and for being a selfless friend of Britain

 in two global conflicts.

 For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions one foot in 

the old world and an address in the new one,

 and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the

 gratitude it deserved.

 Yet it's purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom

 in two world

 wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10% of

 Canada 's entire population of seven million people served in the armed

 forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied

 victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers

 in the entire British order of battle.

 Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright

 neglect, it's unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular

 memory as somehow or other the work of the 'British.'

 The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began

 the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the

 Atlanticagainst U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships

 participated in the

 Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went

 ashore on D-Day alone.

 Canada finished the war with the third-largest navy and the

 fourth largest air force in the world. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime

 indifference as it had the previous time.

 Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only

 if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign in

 which the United States had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness

 which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a

 separateCanadian identity.

 So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in

 Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are

 Canadian. Thus Mary

 Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox,

 William Shatner,

 Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter,

 Mike Weir and

 Dan Aykroyd Michael Buble, Justin Bieber have in the popular perception become American, and

 ChristopherPlummer, British.

 It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian

 ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably

 Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable

 to find any takers.

> Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the

 achievements of

 its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely

 unaware ofthem. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by

 anyone else - that 1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the

 world'speacekeeping forces.

 Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest

peacekeepers on Earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six

 on non-UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.

 Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular non-

 Canadianimagination was the sorry affair in Somalia , in which

 out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment

 was then disbanded in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-

 abasement for which,

 naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.

 So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless

 friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan?

 Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac , Canada repeatedly does honourable things

 for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it

 remainssomething of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for

 which Canadians

 should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost. This past

 year more

 grieving Canadian families knew that cost all too tragically well.

  Lest we forget

Christmas presents

I have my Christmas presents nearly finished -- and have enjoyed every moment !   It has been interesting to  do knitting again after many years of fabric work.  I hope to get back to my fabric landscapes and thread painting after Christmas.    

We are both (my husband and I) doing very very well and I am so thankful that he has come through
serious surgery and is back to being himself again.     I am swimming at least  3 mornings a week (water exercises) and after swimming a group of us have coffee in the condo clubhouse.  Our kids live nearby and our 8 year old grand daughter is only  l5 minutes away.  Life is good.   Shirley

Scarf Shawl.

I used a size  15 mm (l9 US) needle and a size  7mm needle  and did  the 'condo' stitch for this shawl.

I then crochet a fancy border along the bottom two sides.  It can also  be worn as a shoulder shawl.

Lots of fun!

new slippers -

I just finished these -- easy to make and nice and warm.  I will wear them over my knitted worsted socks this winter as our floors always seem cold to me.   I made the pair this afternoon.  Pattern is a bit confusing but once you figure it out it  works out quickly.  lots of fun

here is some more of my fabric and thread painting work

I got very interested in thread painting and also decided to fool around with photo shop and the first picture is a result.  All these are l2" square pieces done on heavy web (timtex)  Such fun!

I will be going back to doing these after Christmas once my knitting projects are finished.

Shirley

Some of my art quilts

I have spent the last l5 years doing Fabric Art quilts and just this past year have taken a break and am now working on some of my own knitting designs.  I am going to post a few of my quilts  in the next while and I hope you enjoy them.   Shirley-

Another " coat of many colors"

Here is another finished sweater from my workshop on " Knitting Paradise"-  We each figured out
our stitch numbers for our sizesl- and away we go!   I am really happy with the way these are turning out.   If you want to check out the forum  the link is attached.  I am having fun knitting for now but will likely return to art quilts sometime soon.   I have some projects for Christmas to finish first.

If any of you are knitters you should join Knitting Paradise -- it is a great place and all problems are solved! (ask me how I know!)

Class I am teaching - first completed sweater!

drawings for a sweater I am teaching on Knitting Paradise

 

ONE OF A KIND FIBER ARTS

http://www.knittingtipsonline.com/home.html

KNITTING LINKS

ONE OF A KIND FIBER ARTS: Finished my red sweater

ONE OF A KIND FIBER ARTS: Finished my red sweater

Finished my red sweater

and am quite happy with it. I used variegated yarn for the bottom portion this time -- so much easier than the intarsia method. I also just found a poncho I made last year. I designed 2 rectangles and put it together. then I crochet the neck. very warm.

My work over the past 5 years --

First of all - I am thinking of all of you on the Eastern Seaboard and hope you made it through the hurricane safely.

I am still knitting and have been fortunate enough to find a wonderful on line group KNITTING PARADISE - I have posted my blog address on this site and some of them are visiting and are interested in my previous work .

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN MY OTHER WORK -- just scroll to the bottom of this page and click on

" older work" - go way back and you will see pretty well everything I have done for the past 5 years. I just checked out the posts and find it hard to believe myself the journey I have taken.

Some of the things I had forgotten. Thanks to my new readers for their interest and to my old

artquilt friends -- I hope to get going again soon but right now have Christmas Knitting projects I want to finish. Shirley

I finished another

Underwater coral scene -- It is the first time I have worked on my wall hangings for sometime and it was fun to do this one. I had started it last year so it is nice to get it finished.

It is rough edged applique and thread painting, with some hand dyed fabric.

I hope you enjoy it!