A lot has happened............

View from my window.

View from my window.

 January 18th  I went to Vogue Knitting Live in NYC.  It is not a long trip for me but I treated myself to a weekend in the city.  The hotel was in the center of Times Square and I was on the 26th floor.   I could lay in bed with the Australian Open on TV, listen to my knitting podcasts and check out the internet all at the same time.  OK, maybe not everyone's idea of heaven, but for me at that time it was mine.

  

Brenda Dayne and me.

I made a few purchases  in the Marketplace.  I know my loot doesn't look very exciting, but I was thrilled.  No yarn, since I haven't used the yarn I bought last year.  I did want to buy a felted bag from juliahilbrandt.  I had seen her at Rhinebeck and decided after it was too late that I had to have one of her bags.  I also saw pattern keepers from erin.lane.  After hearing about them on a podcast I bought one from her etsy shop for a gift and immediately regreted not buying one for myself.  I was thrilled to see them at VKL, ok so I had to pay NY sales tax but no shipping.  I loved the Dragonfly Fibers logo so I had to buy something from them.  Their yarn was gorgeous but I just bought some hand salve. 
The classes and the caliber of instructors are what is really special about VKL.  I just took 2 classes this year, that way I would have time to practice what I learned.  I was thrilled to meet the grand dame of podcasting, Brenda Dayne and learn from her Toe Up Socks, yet again another method.
I also took a Brioche class  from Nancy Marchant, the authority on the brioche stitch.  I never managed to take the time to explore it on my own, and she really spelled it out.  I just have to take the time to practice on my own.  However...

The day I came home from VKL, I went straight to the emergency room where my father had been taken that morning.  We were told he was anemic and they gave him 3 pints of blood.  His already compomised kidneys were not able to handle the stress.  After a few days he was moved into hospice in the same hospital and quietly passed away on January 29th.  He lived a wonderfull full life of 99 years.  I blogged in November about my parents celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary.  Since this is a knitting blog I won't go on about my father's accomplishments and how important he was to me and how proud I was of him, but I will leave you with a couple of photos.

Jack English doing what he loved best.

John A. English, a life well lived.

If you would like to know more about my father you can read his obituary.

I have gotten a lot of knitting done in the last 4 weeks but I will save that for another post. 
However, none of the knitting has included toe up socks or brioche, that would have taken more concentration than I was able to give.