Q – Two women had a strong influence in my upbringing; my mom and my grandmother. Both highly creative women in different media. One habit we have because of them; always carry a notepad in your purse because you never know what you’ll see when out-and-about that desperately needs to be written down. I have a couple of my grandmothers old, beat-up notepads. Ugly brown, but when I open them up and see my grandmother’s notes they are priceless. I’m brought back to my childhood, I can see her jotting down notes as we are out. She had notes about recipes, sketches about beading ideas, creations with yarn ideas, etc. Her hand were always busy creating something! I wish I had one of mom’s notepads. She designed such wonderful clothes for my sisters and me. Her notepad was filled with sewing ideas; such wonderful little dresses filled the pages. I was quite envious when one of the dresses was for a sister and not me!
There is nothing more wonderful than walking into a yarn, quilt or fabric store and seeing all the models on display. Fingers itching to do something new. We especially love it when the yarn stores have a tag hanging from the display identifying the pattern and it’s free! These are the notes for Curls and my trip to the Northwest, collected from various yarn stores, the majority of the free ones came from Yellow House Yarns in Puyallup:
Free Downloads:
Ravelry
Mara shawl – Amy Hendrix
Moon River Scarf – Susanna IC
Annis shawl – Susanna IC
Gaia Shoulder Hug – Anne Carroll Gilmour
Madrid laced wristlets – Alexandra Brinck (any one up by Puyallup, this was a class at Yellow House Yarns)
Ginkgo Shoulderette Shawl – Maggie Magalie – If you love ginkgo leaves you must visit Marjorie Moser’s blog she silkscreens and dyes the most fabulous items.
Urchin hat – Ysolda Teague
Advent-Calender-Scarf 2011 with beads – Kristin Benecken
Matilde Shawl – Chiara Chiavacci
Knitty
Bitterroot shawl with beads – Rosemary (Romi) Hill – I love her patterns!
Crystal Palace Yarns
Jasmine Lace Fingerless Mitts – Adrienne Fong
Not free, but wonderful:
Snapdragon Tam – Ysolda Teague
Monica scarf – Trudy Van Stralen
Traveling Woman – Liz Abinante
Entwined Cowl – Taniis Gray – stay tuned, we’re not going to buy the pattern but we’ve got a “BIG” idea
Trousseau shawl – Carol Feller
This was free in February, but looks as if it is not now.
Berry Tam – Lijuan Jing
Also jotted down were titles of books and patterns that we liked. One was “Scandinavian Slippers and Socks” which Curls bought. We are knitting the Norwegian Star slipper pattern.
I found I spent the most money for yarns in Yellow House Yarns since they had so many models and the patterns were free. I figured free patterns = more yarn! I like that math! Very smart marketing on their part! This is just a sampling of the notes we took on our trip. Doesn’t include the sewing ideas which will be a different post. So, what’s in your notepad?
Now go and have yourself a fun-filled, crafty day!
Curls and Q 