me bad blogger

and ABCer, so i will kill K and L all at once.

karol lindquist- my basket teacher, my friend :-)

karol and her daughter timalyne

photo jeff allen

i cannot believe we first met in 1996! i was lucky enough to take a class that october with karol on nantucket. over the years, we have become good friends, so much so that dd and i spent our whole vacation at bobby and karol's house this june.

karol is an exquisite basket maker, she will be the featured artist at the northeast basket maker's guild this autumn. and her nest of baskets in this year's exhibit at the nantucket lightship basket museum is my favorite ;-) we also make a good team, each pushing each other's creativity to new highs.












basket photos jeff allen

karol's workshop is fantastic, how many baskets have been taught in that shop? how many wonderful memories have been made?

every morning, weather permitting, karol goes for a long bike ride, usually the polpis route. her legs are like iron! can you see the quarterboard on the building behind her? that's karol's workshop.

karol and bobby are still kinda hippies, and i love them for it :-) they have one tv, in their bedroom, so we all pile upstairs to watch crazy movies, poor bobby gets the floor, the girls get the bed. this year it was pioneer quest and the darling buds of may. the knitting in bed reminds me so much of the grandmas in the original willy wonka.

this year she asked me to make a tote basket for a shop model. we added an extension onto an oval mold to make it taller. i got to finish the basket and put 2 coats of oil finish on before we left, but karol will have to add the leather handles.

i love you bobby and karol!

help! i've created a monster!

fiber monster that is ;-)



after dd finished spinning the bfl roving (she had to hurry to finish before we left for nantucket), we brainstormed on what she should knit with her beautiful first handspun.
the yarn is so gorgeous, she decided to knit a simple garter stitch scarf, to show off the colors and texture best.



the girl is a machine! she knit the whole scarf in 2 days :-)


so off to sheep to shore, nantucket's yarn store. dd picked out a pattern, cool hemp ponchette, by lanaknits designs. took us ages to choose the yarn mostly since i didn't want to spend a small fortune in the end, she chose cascade 220, so it would be a little warmer than the hemp shown in the pattern. the cascade is a lovely heathered brown, color #9446.


holy cwap, dd whipped the whole thing out in 2 days! have to wait til we get home to block and sew up the edge.

back to sheep to shore, heh heh, now we picked out 2 skeins of koigu for socks. hopefully this will take her a little longer. i see my stash dwindling and dwindling once she gets her hands on it. do they make padlocks for large rubbermaids?

dd says spinning is her addiction, thank god my wheels will be in good hands!

my knitting has taken a back seat to baskets. brought 2 unfinished baskets with me. poor things, they just need the finishing touches....


oh, i forgot, and toasting marshmallows at the beach.

warms the cockles of my heart!

dd asked me to teach her how to spin! i had brought the van eaton fold-n-tote down to fort lauderdale, one of my other friends had expressed an interest in learning.

out came the wheel and some plain vanilla wool.

omg, dd got the hang of spinning in about 5 minutes ;-0
zipped right through thr plain vanilla, so i had to break out the 8 oz. of hand dyed firesong bfl (301-854-4848) that i had been holding on to from ms$w 2005. a worthy cause.

dd spun all afternoon,

she spun after dinner,



she spun til midnight. next moning on comes a new bobbin and more spinning.
yesterday afternoon came the plying. i didn't bring a niddy noddy, so we have no idea of the yardage.

dd and i are on our way to nantucket this morning, maybe she'll knit a scarf, and have enough left over for a hat :-)

you know live in red neck country when your daughter spends the weekend mudding. memorial day weekend. before and after.





















i'm blogging from the airport, how cool is that?