Category: Uncategorized

Travels, Uncategorized

10 Great Things to See in Washington DC

bethanngormong

1. Where all the action happens.

2. Your Senators and Representatives

Senator Todd Young

Senator Mike Braun

3. Flowers growing out of a cracks in the pavement.

Fame flower

4. Rooftop gardens. (Eat your veggies, people.)

The vegetable garden above the AFBF office

A green rooftop garden

5. The view from the POV Rooftop Bar at the W Washington DC Hotel

The Treasury Building with the White House behind it.

6. The basement tunnels of the Capital and congressional buildings.

The basement ceiling in the cafeteria of the Rayburn House Office building.

7. The Monuments and the mall. (They served free ice cream one afternoon. Yum!)

The Washington Monument

8. George Washington’s mansion at Mount Vernon

9. The Potomac. (Sorry about the head in the way.)

10. The flowers at Mount Vernon

The purple Hollyhock bushes

A fragrant Magnolia tree

A Lilac chaste bush or Sage tree

Hydrangea bush

I owe Indiana Farm Bureau a huge thank you for sponsoring and leading this trip.

Off My Needles, Uncategorized

London Cowl

bethanngormong

I’d say my yarn stash is too large, but is that really possible? Let’s just say it’s a stash room. One of the “benefits?” of this room is the hidden area of ufo’s .

I stumbled upon one this week, a curtain. A WOOL/CASHMERE blend curtain! What?! Why?!

So I started knitting it in the round and turned it into a funky cowl.

img_2233

Pattern adapted from: Bubble Cafe Curtain

Yarn: ??? I have no idea. This has been stashed for years, the ball band long lost.

Handknits, Off My Needles, Uncategorized

Nupunzal Scarf

bethanngormong

Hand knit shawlDo you every have a project that you like and hate at the same time? That was this project for me. I like the colors, the stripes, the yarn, the pattern; but I don’t like the final product. And I had a hard time starting it. I think my problem with the beginning of it was that I began it while with other knitters. We all started it at the same time, on an outing with food and drink, conversation and beautiful scenery. I couldn’t concentrate on the pattern enough to understand it. So I kept making mistakes, on after another. It was frustrating.

I persevered.  It’s finished. And I don’t like the end result. So I’m still frustrated. It should be something I love. But the yarn just didn’t work with the pattern. And I’m really tempted to tink it all to use the yarn for socks. I made the most beautiful pair of socks out of a ball of the same yarn. It’s very tempting…but all those hours on the shawl. And the pattern is so cool!

Decisions! What would you do? keep the shawl as is? Give it away? Tink it and knit socks? Knit the shawl again with different yarn?

Hand knit shawl

Uncategorized

Sunflower Dyepot Accident

bethanngormong

Hand dyed yarn with sunflower hulls
Sunflower seeds hand dyed yarn

I started to boil some sunflower seeds to roast, and suddenly realized I had a dye pot! (I took a wool dying class recently, and have been itching to make some pretty yarn.)

So…I grabbed some Knit Picks Bare yarn and soaked it in a mordant of alum and cream of tartar. After simmering the seeds for 1 hour I removed them from the pot and submerged the yarn. When I took out the yarn, oh, it was such an amazing shade of brown! It’s drying now, and will become a special hat.

Watch for more detail to come.