What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Well, I sure hope I actually get a summer vacation, but it was the next best thing starting Friday evening when Aisha and I headed out to our friend Nancy’s cabin for the Athens County Knitters’ retreat.  Nancy lives about 20 minutes from here, out on one of the wonderful green and leafy hillsides that surround my home, and the cabin is nestled in amongst those trees, well back from the road and it was like being in another world.

Mostly we knitted and ate, and ate and knitted, and laughed and then knitted some more.  But I also managed to:

Paint a yarn bell.  We painted plain terracotta flower pots, oriented upside down so that we could put a ball of yarn under it, feeding the thread through the drainage hole at the top.  The yarn doesn’t get away in all the mad knitting that can then ensue.  Mine features happy giraffes, rose bushes, and fish bones hiding in the dirt below.

I also finished a snail from the Hansigurumi book, and made a raccoon-fox from the new OddBod Knitting book (they are on the pieces I’ve been sewing for the Next Big Project):

And I got some new to me shoes from Nancy’s mother (like the Sweet Potato Queens, who are all named Tammy, all the Athens County Knitters are named Nancy)

Then today Natalie came over and I worked on my adirondack chair (warning, obligatory bead content ahead):

The back of the chair (worked on over several months)

Detail of chair back, including some wonderful stoneware faces from Earthenwood Studios, bone beads and ceramic alien heads.

And the seat of the chair, in process, including a jumbo malachite cabochon and more stoneware and bone beads.  I am hoping to have this finished for our Innovative Art Alliance show.  We are hanging the show on May 30. 

So there you have it, what I did on my summer vacation, as such.  I hope you all had a great weekend!