I'm still here & Name this shawl

Things have been a little busy around here. More so than usual. What's been happening?

Trying to stay warm. We've been having January weather around here for weeks now. Our daytime highs haven't gotten out of the teens or low 20's lately. (Our normal daytime high temp is supposed to be 39. We've been no where near that lately.) The roads are icy and it's snowed almost every day. It's doing it again. :-(

For the last 3-4 weeks, I've been working on some articles for a college professor I've known for 25 years. The extra money is nice but it's left me little time to work on anything else. Not even knitting! Eeek! We finally finished up at almost 11 pm earlier this week. I've been catching up since. Finally, I'm getting a few minutes to update my blog.

Feeling guilty that I haven't had time to make cat toys for the toy jar at my vet's office. I can see that empty toy jar and cat owners looking for toys to give their babies for Christmas and it's empty! And feeling guilty that I didn't get any items delivered for the Pet Refuge Holiday Bazaar that is happening today. I swear I need to clone myself! (Or get some other people interested in helping make cat toys and stuff for the shelter. I've even tried to bribe them with free yarn and patterns to knit/crochet toys without success.)

I have two more lace shawl designs to finish writing up. They're both the wing shape like Fire Bird and Love Bird. One has a different lace border and the other is all over lace. I'm looking for a name for this shawl in the picture. Leave a comment with your suggestion(s) or submit it on my Simply SimpleKnits group on Ravelry. I've started a thread there to collect name suggestions. Remember, the person who submits the name I use for the pattern gets a free copy. This shawl is knit with my handspun Targhee wool from combed top hand dyed by my friend Liz (Chocolate Princess). I forget how much I like to knit with handspun!

The SquiddyCat toy pattern is now available as a free pattern download through Ravelry. I won't be posting it as a free pattern here on my blog. If you click the link in the sidebar, it will take you to Ravelry to download a copy. Not a Ravelry member? Go sign up now! Ravelry membership has hit about 230,000 knitters/crocheters.

I did manage to finish a spinning project this week. I finished spinning some grab bag wool I got from the Dyepot. This is over 1,000 yards or 7 ounces of luscious wool in a light fingering weight. I have an idea of what I might knit with this.

I knit myself a pair of Dzonba slippers in the black superwash wool I won in Mambocat's blog contest. (See my earlier post about this.) Dummy me, knit 2 pairs of these from felting wool. Washed one pair when they got ratty looking and...guess what? They're kid sized now. The other pair isn't looking so good either. It's been so cold I've need both wool socks and wool slippers to keep my feet warm.

After I finished the slippers last night (and put them immediately on my feet LOL!), I cast on for a hat with some odd bits of cream and green handspun yarn. Not sure if I have enough to finish the hat. Not a problem, I'll just spin up a little more of the cream if needed. LOL!

My fiber arts group is working on plans for an all-day retreat to be held in January. I'm helping with the planning and may teach a mini class at the retreat.

I've agreed to teach a class on the Fire Bird Shawl at a local yarn shop in January. Dates to be determined. The class will be two class sessions one week apart. I dropped a sample shawl and pattern off at the shop as a display to advertise the class.