I stayed up late on Halloween loading this kiln. I love how my little turkey bowl came out. Somewhere in the kiln is a matching plate. Definitely using these on the Thanksgiving table this year. I think need to make more next year and have them at shows. There are a whole lot of gnomes in here and I love how whimsical the ones I can see are.

Also in this kiln are a number of mugs I've made for my colleagues.

I'm a little obsessed with cables at the moment. They look amazing and they are actually really easy. You might remember from my Antique Rose Cabled Throw that I learned from this page on BeThinx.

I had 3 skeins of Worsted Tweed American Ewe Yarn from CeCe's Wool in Adella's Olive. I had the 8 oz skeins and used almost every bit of all 3 for this tunic. It's oversized both wide and long to be super comfy for fall and winter.




This pattern uses a 5 mm hook. You're going to cast on in multiples of 10 + 7. I actually cast on and did the first few rows a couple of times before I settled on 67 for my cast on. This gave me a panel that is approximately 22 inches wide. For cables every other row will be single crochet all the way across. The rest of this pattern repeats every 6 rows.

Stitches:
ch - chain
sc - single crochet
hdc - half double crochet
fpdc - front post double crochet
fptc - front post triple crochet





Front and Back Panels (make 2):

Row 1: sc in the second stitch from the hook, sc all the way across
Row 2: ch 1, * sc, sc, fpdc, fpdc, sc, sc, fpdc, fpdc, fpdc, fpdc. Repeat from * until you get to the last 6 stitches. sc, sc, fpdc, fpdc, sc, sc
Row 3: ch 1, sc all the way across
Row 4: ch 1, * sc, sc, fpdc, fpdc, sc, sc, fpdc, fpdc, fpdc, fpdc. Repeat from * until you get to the last 6 stitches. sc, sc, fpdc, fpdc, sc, sc
Row 3: ch 1, sc all the way across


Here comes the fancy cable part

Row 5: ch 1, sc, sc, * fpdc, fpdc, sc, sc, skip the first two fpdc, fptc, fptc. Now behind the two fptc you just did go back to the first stitch you skipped and fptc, fptc in the second stitch you skipped, sc in the stitch next to the first fptc you did, sc. Repeat from * until you get to the last 4 stitches. fpdc, fpdc, sc, sc
Row 6: ch 1, sc all the way across

That's it that's all you need to create these amazing looking cables.

Repeat rows 2-6 until you get your desired length. I repeated this 11 times ending on a non crossover row for a total of 77 rows. I decided that I wanted the seem to line up without the crossover, but you could absolutely end on that if that's your desired look.




Put the two panels together cable side in and pin. Leave yourself 8 inches for the arm holes and 9.5 for the neck. Sew up the sides and across the top. I decided to start about 2 inches from the bottom, but that's just a stylistic choice.

Next you're going to add the sleeves. I decided that having cables on every row in the sleeves would be far too busy. I also decided I wanted a slightly looser stitch than doing sc for the sleeves so I went with hdc.

I always start in the arm pit with my sleeves to hide the seems and the reductions in rows.

Row 1: ch 2, hdc around the arm picking up 38 stitches, slip stitch to join
Row 2: ch 2, hdc around, slip stitch to join.
Row 3-11: repeat row 2


I find that if I don't do a stitch in the ch stitch that my rows reduce by 1 stitch each round. As you work through rows 2-11 you want to reduce from 38 stitches to 32 stitches for row 12.

Row 12: ch 1, * sc, sc, fpdc, fpdc, sc, sc, fpdc, fpdc, fpdc, fpdc. Repeat from * until you get to the last 2 stitches. sc, sc, slip stitch to join
Row 13: sc all the way around, slip stitch to join
Row 14: ch 1, * sc, sc, fpdc, fpdc, sc, sc, fpdc, fpdc, fpdc, fpdc. Repeat from * until you get to the last 2 stitches. sc, sc, slip stitch to join

Row 15: sc all the way around, slip stitch to join
Row 16:ch 1, * sc, sc, fpdc, fpdc, sc, sc, skip the first two fpdc, fptc, fptc. Now behind the two fptc you just did go back to the first stitch you skipped and fptc, fptc in the second stitch you skipped. Repeat from * until you get to the last 2 stitches. sc, sc, slip stitch to join
Row 17: sc all the way around, slip stitch to join
Row 18-27: ch 2, hdc around, slip stitch to join.
Weave in all your ends.




I actually wanted to make this into a turtleneck, but alas I ran out of yarn so I just did one round around with sc and used the last of the ends that I had.

I'm really pleased with how this turned out and am looking forward for it to be chilly enough to get cozy in this.




I'm already working on my next cabled pattern. I had another skein of this yarn, but in Antique Rose. My original plan was to use it as an accent color, but it just didn't work out where the accent color worked so scarf it is! I'm trying out the Double Cabled Square and I'm loving it.

I am a bit of a fly by the seat of my pants crocheter. I never follow other people's patterns exactly. I never do guage. I make patterns up and then play yarn chicken to get to the end. Sometimes I lose at yarn chicken and have to alter my patterns as I'm making them.

All that said - I still think I make some pretty cool things. I have improved immensely over the last few years. A good part of that I think has been making my own designs vs following others. Having to at least have a lose plan for what I'm doing has made me more conscious of what I'm doing. I kind of relate that to what's happened with all the electronic maps. Before I could just plug stuff into Google Maps, I would think about my route. Now because I can just plug it in I do. Sometimes Google takes you a way that is not ideal.

This was true when we were on our way up to the Finger Lakes earlier this month. Did we get to our destination - yes? Could we have stayed on 81 longer and not made 50 turns at night on small back roads - yes!

What got me thinking about this is my new cable sweater I'm making. For some reason when I crochet with cables it comes out as a rhombus. I don't know if this always happens or it's just me. However, I do know that this is when I should block. So this is me blocking my cable sweater before I sew it together so it doesn't look all wonky. Maybe I should do this more often :)

I had some pieces that didn't fit into the last firing that I wanted to take to the art show. This isn't a full kiln, but it still has what I hope are some amazing pieces. The pumpkins look awesome!!

This past weekend was the Havre de Grace Art Festival. It was it's 59th year. I learned from some other vendors while I was there that a few things have changed in the last few years.

First the amazing - I won 3rd place in the pottery category! I didn't even know there were prizes for pottery. Most other shows only do prizes for the fine arts so I was super excited by this. I just started getting my work out there and selling it over the last year so this was really nice recognition.


My booth was in Concord Park which is a relatively new park for the city. It's only been in the last 2 years that this park has been a part of the festival. We did have a good number of people coming from local or downtown that would come into the park and I was perfectly situated right where this park started. However, I heard several people comment that the walk from Tydings Park to Concord was farther than they thought. I also don't believe that the signage was great because there were several people who said they heard people talking about this park, but did not see signs.
This is my booth setup from day 1.




I also don't believe that the festival was well advertized. It used to be in August, but since it can be oppressively hot in MD in August they moved it. Many people who came into my booth were local or were visiting the area and were directed to the park by locals. I had heard that in years past the fair would get 10,000 people. We probably had somewhere between 1,000-2,000. I did not sell as many of my larger items as I usually do, but I did sell a good number of smaller items and had a good fair. I felt for some of the other vendors who only sold high ticket items and struggled to make their costs back.




The weather was gorgeous on Saturday. I got there really early and was able to see the sunrise on the Susquehanna River. I met some great people both other exhibitors and people who came into my booth. Sunday was not so nice. It was windy in the morning then it was just a little cloudy and cold. We had everything crossed that the rain would hold out until after we were done, but it started to pour around 2pm.
Selling pottery I'm fairly lucky because getting wet is not a problem. I just had to move my bags/wrapping paper and business cards further in the tent. It stopped raining for a while and I was able to make some end of show sales with some people on their way out of the park who just couldn't get some of my pieces out of their heads.




This is the first time I've done an overnight show at a public place. The tent that I purchased only came with one sidewall so when we setup on Friday we just took over the tent, tables, and shelves. On Saturday we brought the pottery over. Craig's job on Saturday was to figure out a wall solution where we could close the tent up (which he did with tarps and zip ties). Can you see the flaw in this?

The flaw in this is that we didn't have to pack everything in the car to get it over. There was a moment when we were packing up that I worried - is it all going to fit? It didn't help that it was raining while we were packing so we were trying to get it into the car as quick as possible vs waiting for everything to be packed up before we packed it in.

One more bin and we would have had a problem, but we did manage to squeeze it all in. A lesson for next time...