Tea for Two

My tea chest is all set up and fully stocked.  Yesterday we put up the shelf for my tea cups and tea pot (the shelf is actually centered over the tea chest - but I'm off to the side - parallax is real).  Unique Sheep fans may recognize the two cups hanging from the hooks from past Sip and Stitch clubs.  Bruce and I have gotten in to the habit of sharing a pot of tea when we get home from work.  Today it is Vienna Cinnamon from Tea Forte - one of my favorite places to buy teas.  That is a box of Tea Forte tea, with some of their cute little pyramids arranged in front, on the top of the chest, and those canisters in the top left compartment (hiding the cocoa canisters) are all Tea Forte teas.  Sip and Stitch Club fans will recognize the bags in the bottom right.

Ice Box Tea Chest - Stocked!

And here it is all stocked, and ready to brew a cuppa - Stash Mango Passionfruit today.  And look, there is still room.  Well, actually that empty shelf is for my Sip 'n Stitch teas.  I ordered some air tight canisters for them.  I thought they would look nicer than the brown bags.

Ice Box Tea Chest

I have an embarrassing amount of tea in my cupboards and clustered on my kitchen counter and of course I've signed up (again) for The Unique Sheep's Stitch 'n Sip Tea Club.  I do enjoy tea but I haven't had a good way of making myself a cup, but for Christmas I got a great little tea kettle (I saw the same one on Sherlock)

and lately I've gotten in to the habit of having a cup of tea when I get home from work.  Naturally I decided that I needed a better way to keep my tea stash, which led to the purchase in the first photo - a 1930's Ice Box.  Originally I was thinking a baker's rack or a hutch, and I did see a darling primitive hutch at the Antique Outlet that we went to, but the Ice Box was the first thing I saw when I walked in to the store, and after an hour of wandering, that is what I decided on.  It has all of it's original shelving.  The ice goes in the compartment on the left, and the pipe in the bottom left hand compartment drains the melted ice to the drip pan that goes underneath.

Of course Jasmine had to investigate

Pineapple - Finished!

I finished this shawl up last Sunday night, and blocked it Monday.  It isn't as much of a crescent as the other two shawls, which made it a little harder to get a beauty shot of it.

This just doesn't do justice to this shawl.  Then last night the best way to display it on my dress maker dummy occurred to me.  Now if I made a one shouldered dress in silk and dyed it to match...

Pattern:  Vidalia Lace Shawl by Alina Appasov
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Verve in Pineapple
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Pineapple - Lace Pattern Done

I finished up the lace pattern last night.  The pattern does not call for the eyelet row, but I like the way it sets the lace off from the short row stockinette section, so I added it.  I did the same thing on the Gr-orange shawl.  I'm going to do the first two short rows, which establish the pattern, and then set this aside and finish up my second crochet block.  The works in progress are piling up again.  I received my yarn for the Open Eye Tunic, Camp Loopy Project 2 starts tomorrow, and I need to finish my Wavelettes shawl.  I am not quite done with the first half of that one.  I will confess that I got distracted by the combination of Unique Sheep yarns and Alina Appasov's crescent shawl patterns.  The basic pattern would be an easy one to modify, and it is filling my head with all sorts of possibilities.

Pattern:  Vidalia Lace Shawl by Alina Appasov
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Verve in Pineapple
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Gr-orange - Finished!

I love these patterns, even the long cast on.  I finished this one this morning, and have already cast on another crescent shawl by the same designer with the Pineapple colorway.  I ended up with 18 grams of skein 1 left over on this one, but decided not to do any more lace layers.  I like this one just the way it is, although I did add eyelet rows between the lace pattern and the short row section, and also at the neck edge.  Instead, the leftover yarn is going into my crochet block leftover stash.  It is a silver gray and pretty uniform.  Skein 1 of the Pesto colorway was a little too variegated to do that with.  One of the other things I love about these patterns is their compactness.  Everything is on one pattern page, very neatly laid out.

Pattern:  Indian Feathers by Alina Appasov
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Tinsel Toes in Gr-orange
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Gr-orange

As soon as Pesto was on the blocking mats I wound up the skeins of Gr-orange and cast on Indian Feathers, another Alina Appasov pattern.  This time I used a long tailed cast on, and way over estimated how much yarn I needed, which is preferable to underestimating.  This pattern is actually intended for a lace weight yarn, but there are several projects that did it in fingering weight.  It also has nupps, which I am replacing with beads.  Right now I am trying to decide on a bead color.  I think I may end up going with the clear beads that I used on my Crushed Tart.

Pattern:  Indian Feathers by Alina Appasov
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Tinsel Toes in Gr-orange
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Pesto - Lace Part Done

I finished up the lace portion of my Peridot Necklace Lace Shawl, which I have renamed Pesto, after the yarn color, cause I am silly like that.  As I was working on this yesterday it occurred to me that I had another 4 skein gradiance set that would look good in this pattern so off I went to dig it out of my stash.  Now, you have to understand that while most of my stash is cataloged and organized and in nice plastic containers there has been some overflow in the last year or two which has accumulated in piles in various places around the house.  The latest pile up is in the room that would be a formal dining room, if we did any formal dining.  I dug into the project bag that I thought I had put the yarn in and came up with another set.

This is Gr-orange on Tinsel Toes, and after some thinking I realized that it must have been a Sip 'n Stitch Tea Club shipment.  I dug into another project bag and found the original set that I was thinking of.

This set is Pineapple, which is one of my favorite snacks, and was also a Sip 'n Stitch Tea Club shipment.  The yarn is Verve, which is the same yarn as Pesto.  When I turn this into a shawl, I will start with the first skein, the dark green, and end with the yellow.

Pattern:  Peridot Necklace Lace Shawl by Alina Appasov
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Verve in Pesto
Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Latest Club Arrivals

So I think that I have may have mentioned that I belong to a lot of clubs.  Some might say that I have a problem.  I prefer to believe that I am merely doing my bit to help stimulate the economy and support independent artists.  And can you really have too much yarn?  Really?  After all, it keeps me off the streets and out of the pool halls.  And I can take the beautiful yarn that someone else has created and turn it into another beautiful thing that is also functional.  As habits go, I think that mine is a pretty good one.  Of course, all the clubs that I belong to mean that there are always wonderful surprises in my mailbox.  Well, not always, but often enough to keep me smiling and happy, and today I hit the jackpot.  Two lovely surprises in the mail box today.

First, the latest Sip 'n Stitch offering from The Unique Sheep.  Have I mentioned lately how much I love The Unique Sheep?  I belong to almost every club that they offer, the only one that I've passed on is the mini-skein club, mostly because I haven't been bitten by the hexapuff bug.  And I love their mystery knit alongs.  I am eagerly awaiting the start of the next knit along - Le Petit Prince. But back to the Sip 'n Stitch.

The coffee this time has chocolate.  The yarn is Pashmi in Red Eye Gravy.  And check out that cute little ceramic dish from Cats Paw Pottery.  I'm not sure what I'll use the little dish for, but I'm sure I'll find some use for it.  I love the extras that they include.

The other shipment that I received was the latest Flavour series offering from Zen Yarn Garden and Woolgirl.  This is their third offering - Cranberry Sweets - and the picture does not do justice to the yarn color, it is such a luscious red, it really does look good enough to eat.

Plus there are cranberry jelly candies and a matching stitch marker.  You could probably see things better if I had unpacked them all, but I wanted to show you the package just as it was pulled out of the box so that you understand the extra lengths that Woolgirl goes with her clubs.