A Little Goddess

A member of our guild passed away last year; she was a student of goddess representations in textiles all over the world.  Her name was Mary B. Kelly.

We decided to make some goddesses for a little "shrine" as it were for her.  I copied a graph of one of the embroideries out of one of her books and executed it in knitting.  The blue yarn is indigo dyed. To get it to stand I added triangular gusetts at the bottom and weighted it with some small stones at the bottom. The top is stuffed with wool 

I love the fact that she is holding trees and looks a bit like she is giving birth!

Mary wrote a number of books on the subject, here are covers of a few, many are available on amazon.  

Knitting for Syria in 2016

I did a fair amount of knitting to donate to Syria in 2016 and posted on some of it before.  Since then, I have completed two more sweaters and a blanket.  The Ravelry group "Hats and more for war-torn Syria" was my happy find.  These sweaters are collected by the Salaam Cultural Center in Seattle and distributed to Syrian refugees abroad. 

Elizabeth Zimmerman's baby surprise jacket has been my touchstone for these sweaters. 

Here are a few more completed this year

The yarn in this one is Harrisville Shetland

This one is larger, knit from Studio Donegal Tweed in worsted weight, acquired during my trip to Ireland. It wasn't wide enough so I added a crocheted band for the buttons which turned out to look really good!

And this is a wool blanket done in squares from the last of the yarn from a friend. Two friends and I dyed the yarns at different times, some synthetic dyes and some natural, as the yarn was white which is not practical. I was not the only knitter so I can't take full credit. It's about 5' x 5'. There are different gauges but all squares are 6" x  6". I alternated directions of the garter stitch in sewing it up, thinking that that might make it a bit sturdier.