Queen Bee Knits

Knitting, Living, Loving, Baking, Tips, Tools and Idle Chatter

Friday. My Favorite Day

Posted on September 20, 2025 by Queen Bee Knits

My husband took this shot before I dragged my sorry butt out of bed this morning. I was so comfortable and cozy. Anywhoooo … he’s the better photographer in the family and caught the sunrise just as the sun was peeking up over the horizon across the lake. Our hummingbirds are gone, we haven’t seen any since the day we got home from the beach. Our mornings are a little bit less fun without them. But we still have our baby loon. It was fishing this morning with a parent and it was so quiet that we could hear them “talking” to each other. We are so lucky to be able to witness these things and realize that not everyone else does.

I’ve been working on two sweaters this week and am trying to finish them both before we leave for Colorado next week. I’ve got one that’s a commission for a client, you’ve seen it before, it’s a salmon-y peach fingering weight superwash wool from Urban Girl Yarns. The colorway has the same name as my client’s granddaughter for which the sweater is being made. The yarn is gorgeous. I’m using the pattern, Sorento Cardigan, and the pattern is well-written and clear. A classic cardigan. I’ve finished the body of the sweater and have started the sleeves. I’m knitting two at a time so they’re the same and they’re both done at the same time.

The sleeves are started at the cuff and knitted up to the shoulder and they’ll be sewn into the cardigan. The button band and placket are knitted on as you work up the body so there’s not a lot of finishing. I also put the photo of the buttons I’ve chosen up on my social media to see what people like. Your thoughts? I think the top and middle one are in the lead. The client would like them to be natural materials (these are not) and prefers mother of pearl. I’ll see what I can find.

I’m hoping to have it done and in the mail to Louisiana by the end of September or early October at the latest. Thus freeing me up to cast on more projects. I have a plan to clean up and organize my stash again. It’s gotten out of hand and I am losing track of the projects that I had planned to use with the yarns that I’ve stashed. AND now that we have two grand-babies, double the knitting pleasure! I certainly have some yarn to knit for the kiddos. I also have two grand-nephews to make hats and mittens for (at least).

I’ve also been working on my Vanilla Sweater with the kit that I purchased from the Wooly Thistle. I love the wooly wool yarn. It’s such a gorgeous color. I’m on sleeve island here, too. This sweater, however, is knitted in the round, top-down, and the sleeves are picked up and knitted down to the cuffs. I’ve gotten a few inches done today while I was teaching classes.

I wanted to leave you with a knitting teacher’s tip. I use locking stitch markers to mark my indreases and decreases. In this case, I’m increasing on the Sorento cardigan for my client. I mark the row that I increased in and then I can count the rows (purl bumps) until I reach the number of rows where I need to increase again. On my Vanilla sweater, I am decreasing one stitch on either side of the BOR. I mark the decrease round so I can count rounds more easily and keep track of the decreases, too. My size is asking for 9 decreases plus a couple more and I can easily count how many I have as I go.

We are in a severe drought here in Central Maine. Our lakes are low and the lake associations are asking people who have boat lifts to check their boats. Our lake is the last in a chain of seven lakes and ponds so they all flow into our lake and our lake is dammed at one end. There isn’t enough water to flow out of the other lakes or into ours. It’s pretty dire and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon. We need rain! Know any rain dances?

Gone knitting!

Did You Miss Me?

Posted on September 13, 2025 by Queen Bee Knits

I’m baaack! It was a chilly wake-up this morning but we spent at least a bit of time out on the porch with our coffee. Hubby wore a hat to bed last night and was still wearing it this morning. We’ve been on our annual family vacation to Weekapaug, Rhode Island and it was good.

When my kids were little my mom used to rent a cottage at Weekapaug for a month. When she passed away she left me a little bit of money and I wanted to do something as a family to remember her … and so, at the suggestion of my kids, we found a cottage to rent for a week at the end of the season (beginning of the low season) that can hold all of us. This was our fourth year back and it was just as good as all the rest of the years. Maybe better. Beach buttons, beach boxes, fabulous sunsets, lots of good beach time (even though the weather was a bit chillier than past years) and good time together. That’s what we love most.

Since Weekapaug is, for the most part, a summer community, most of the restaurants are closed and the what shops are still open, are open weekends. We visited Watch Hill a couple of times for ice cream at the Annex (peach was mom’s favorite and has become a favorite of all of us, too.) We watched the Watch Hill historic “flying horses” carousel, we visited the Fantastic Umbrella Factory with an umbrella in the rain, played games almost every night and just enjoyed being together and away from jobs, work and television.

I did precious little knitting but I did get a little bit done! I have been working down the body of my Vanilla Sweater by Corine Tomlinson at the Wooly Thistle. I bought this as a kit with enough Rauma Garn Finull (fingering weight wool) and the pattern for the sweater as part of the Wooly Thistle’s Sweater KAL 2025. I’ve separated the sleeves and am about 8 inches down the body … the pattern says 10 inches and I may have to go a bit further. It’s almost time to try it on. I completely fell in love with this color which is completely out of my comfort zone but I am really excited to wear it and it’s cool enough now, at least in the morning, to wear it.

I also brought along my Murmuration Socks by Summer Lee from the Sock Project book. I have the heel turned and the gusset decreased and I’m working my way down the foot of the first sock. I love this yarn, another color that’s out of my normal color zone. How adventurous I’m getting in my “old age”!

I also brought along some Plymouth Encore with which I made my granddaughter a couple of headbands because she said she’d like some purple sparkly mittens. I cast them on and got them finished just after we arrived home. I had knit the first mitten and it was about a half inch too short in the hand so I frogged back to before the decreases and knit to about 4 1/2 inches beyond the cuff before decreasing and these should fit better. I also made her the little string, a 3-stitch i-cord) so that she won’t lose her mittens at school. They’re pretty cute and we’ll bring them to NYC when we go to babysit in October.

I brought everything zucchini to the beach – zucchini bread, banana zucchini muffins, and chocolate zucchini muffins, and I still have shredded zucchini in the freezer. We also brought Maine peaches, blueberries and apples (and brought some back home, too.)

We saw a huge flock of migrating swifts one day at the beach. They were fascinating to watch. We had a couple of monarch caterpillars on some milkweed in the garden and the little one grew exponentially over the course of the week. I brought a craft project – paint and cut out egg containers to paint caterpillars. Next time I’ll make the caterpillars shorter, “our” collective attention spans weren’t into it. We saw a Bald Eagle at the pickle ball courts and a swan flying along the coast at the beach. The beautiful berries were abundant … I still don’t know what they are … and I want to see if I can find a yarn dyer to make a Weekapaug, RI colorway with the berries’ colors. They’re so pretty!

It was a wonderful week and I’m so grateful that all of my kids and their families: dogs, and significant others and the grandest granddaughter took the time out of their busy lives to spend a week at the beach with us. We love being able to provide a week in one of our favorite places and hope we’ll be invited to rent there again next year.

AND just like that we’re back home. Another place we love to be. Our calendar is full heading out of September and into October as we’re heading to Denver so that I can meet our new grandson and then to New York to babysit so my daughter, Kate, can rehearse to go into the off Broadway show, Heathers. We also hope to see the new interactive production at the Shed where my daughter, Libet, works. We’ll be there a good long time and the baby is in school weekdays so we can spend some time “playing” in the city and I can visit a yarn shop or two.

Gone knitting.

Cleaned up & Ready to Stay-cation

Posted on July 14, 2025 by Queen Bee Knits

We have “finished” our cleaning up and are ready for our company to arrive … well, I have one more window to wash and a cake to bake. As soon as my 9am meeting is over, it’s into the kitchen for me and while the cake bakes, I’ll wash the window and water the plants!

Yesterday we ran out to run a couple of errands. We’ve gotten a new mattress for our room on Saturday. The delivery guys helped us move our old bed to the guest room and the old guest room bed to the guest cottage. I have found new bedding for our bed and have washed all the new guest room bedding. AND I made up the three beds up on the third floor because we’re about to have a house full & that’s always the most fun! The quilt I made for our old bed is in the dryer and then the guest room bed will be ready, too. My brother and sister-in-love and their son and his family are coming up for a night. The cake is to celebrate all of their birthdays that were in May. We may have bought some mini-whoopie pies, too, because it’s Maine and I’ll bet the kids have never had one.

For a while the guest room mattress and boxspring was in our living room and there were several pictures that needed to be pulled off the wall to bring the beds down and up. That was another whole process because who knew that cobwebs gather on the backs of photographs? I have now taken down all of the photos on all of the stairway walls, cleaned the glass, dusted the frames and wiped down the walls, too. AND the curiosity cabinet full of old stuff from the old house has been cleaned and the dead “Christmas” lights have been thrown away. The stairs have been swept and damp mopped … if we only had time to paint the walls! HA! HA!

The yard is blooming! The Shasta daisies and hydrangeas are full-blooming in white and one of my irises is blooming. The black-eyed Susans are just about ready to pop, too! Our gardens are full of weeds but they look happy this summer. The veggies I planted a couple of weeks ago are growing and we keep watering them in hopes that we weren’t too late. Last summer we had tomatoes when our granddaughter arrived. Not so, this year. Oh well, we’ll watch them grow and care for them. Maybe we can plant some seeds for peas or beans when the garlic is pulled.

As for knitting, you know I haven’t stopped. There’s not a day that I’ve missed. I’ve been really focused on my Big Love now that the Anker’s Summer Shirt is finished. I’m just a tubular bind off away from finishing the body and have two sleeves after that. Near enough to feeling really good about two summer sweaters and planning the next ones to attack! She doesn’t photograph well right now but I’ll share a photo as soon as I get her bound off.

I started a self-imposed sock club at the store copying The Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, because I have way too much single skeins of sock yarns. AND a lot of bits and bobs of sock yarns, too. Stephanie tucked away 12 hanks of sock yarn and a pattern for each pair and picks a bag each month to make. I decided that I’m going to knit through the new Summer Lee Sock Project book and use up as much as I can and then I’ll add a few more. I want to try Laura Nelkin’s Larch Peds, I got a free pattern from the Wooly Thistle for a pair of socks (in my sock yarn kit! OMG! See below!) and I have a couple of other socks I’ve marked as “need to knit” in my Ravelry favorites.

I started on the first sock this week after I finished my vanilla mystery socks (they’re for my daughter who likes my socks). I’m using stashed ends of yarn. The green and blue are both Trekking Sport yarn from a former project that I didn’t finish. (Imagine that!) I have plenty of the blue and green to make a pair of shortie socks. I had my US 1.5 DPNs out and started the first sock with them. They’re a bit looser than I would prefer. Guess I need to follow the pattern suggestion of US 1 for a better fit, but it’s all good. I’m zipping down the foot of the first sock.

I jumped off the deep end when I decided to buy two kits from the Wooly Thistle. I’ve been wanting to visit their new store in New Hampshire (turns out it’s right near where my father was born) but when they offered their summer sock yarn kits, I couldn’t stop myself. Since I work in a yarn shop, I buy almost all of my yarn there. When I do buy yarn elsewhere, I buy only yarns that we don’t carry at Yardgoods Yarn. Rambler in the rusty orange, is TWTs own yarn. Biches et Bouches I’ve never knitted with (it’s the two shades of orange) and then there’s the green Exmoor Sock by John Arbon Textiles. Last there’s a blue Schoppel Admiral. Strangely enough, I realized only this week that we do carry this yarn and I had already bought a ball in white for my SISC. So, now I have two colorways of the same yarn and that’s fine, too. With this kit I received a download for a sock pattern and a couple of cute stickers and a notions box all with the adorable otter theme.

I also may have purchased Corrine’s Vanilla Sweater kit which included the download of the pattern and a bunch of the beautiful golden brownish greenish wool yarn by Rauma. I am so excited to get started on this sweater! I think I really HAVE to knit the black linen tank that I have yarn for and can wear this summer before I cast on my Vanilla sweater but I am so excited and I love, love, love the color. The yarn is a fingering weight Norwegian wool and it’s a wooly wool that will bloom when it’s blocked. Yummy. AND the project bag from TWT is absolutely one of my favorite store bags ever, especially the quote on the back, “All knitting is good knitting!” AMEN!

Gone knitting!