Who knew there was such a thing as tag sale knitting?  If there wasn’t before, there is now and I’ll tell you why.  But let me get to that in a minute.  Whew! It was a busy busy weekend!

My mom came for a visit on Friday to spend the weekend.   Friday afternoon was spent making signs for our upcoming tag sale on Sunday.  On Saturday she took my Mystic Spiral Hat class at The Spinning Room with two other ladies. 

Here is their progress after the two hour class:

I know it doesn’t look like much, but the hardest part of this hat is the very fussy beginning where there are only two stitches on each of 4 needles.  There was a lot of starting over going on and getting used to the fiddle-y-ness.  My mom’s is the sage green one on the right.  She used this wonderful new-to-the-shop yarn by Juniper Moon Farm, Tenzing, which is 85% merino and 15% yak.  Yes, yak.  It is a very nice, soft yarn and you only need one ball to make this hat!  And here it is on lovely display:

After class, it was time for the fun task of getting everything priced and organized for the tag sale the next day.  Then we drove around hanging up all the signs.

Ok, we did not need to drive to hang up that particular sign.  But, you get the idea.  Who knew it would take so incredibly long to get things organized?  Probably you did, but I thought it would be a breeze and take just few minutes.    Later on, thought, we had time to relax and my mom made more progress on her hat:

Then Sunday was the day.  Let me pause here to say, yes, we had a tag sale only on a Sunday.  My mother-in-law informed me that her friend said that the best days to have a tag sale around here are Friday and Saturday.  That was seconded by my friend Lisa who is a tag-sale-having veteran.  However.  I often teach knitting on Saturdays and had classes scheduled for the next couple Saturdays, as well as plans to go to fiber festivals on some other upcoming Saturdays, and didn’t want to wait until far into October when it gets so cold, so this Sunday it was.  By the way, yes, there are such things as fiber festivals and yes, they take precedence over tag sales. You’ll be reading about my visits to them soon!

That being said, Sunday was the day.  We got up very early to set everything up.  My mentor, Martha, said that you should group things attractively so:

Plus it was a gorgeous day, so everyone would be out tag-saling right?

Wrong.  The sale started at 8am and we had our first browser at 7:30.  She was looking for jewelry, postcards or old books about our area of New York.   We had none of the above.  No sale.  Didn’t bode well.

Ultimately, everyone was right.  Not a terribly busy day.  Didn’t sell much.  But my mom had a great time, talking up the customers that did come.  And in the many hours of down time, we knit.  Bet you were wondering when I was going to get around to that. 

My mom’s hat was coming along nicely and she was so happy to finally be able to get the knitting off the double pointed needles and onto the circular needle by the time she went home.

Over the course of the weekend, i got a lot done on my Ecuador sweater.  I had promised to knit something else so I would have something interesting to show you, but, really, this was the easiest thing for me to knit that I could put down and pick back up repeatedly without getting the pattern messed up.    I did make a lot of progress since you last saw it.

Last time:

This time:

I love how it is coming out and can’t wait to finish it.  But, I’m going to work on something else for a little while.  Maybe my Bloody Mary Cardigan.  Or start my latest obsession,  the EZ 100th Anniversary Pi Shawl: Camping, which I’m aiming to finish and enter in the Altamont Fair next August.   I’m trying to plan ahead.  “EZ” stands for Elizabeth Zimmerman and I’ll talk more about her when I show you my shawl-in-progress.  In the meantime, click on that link up there to see some pictures.

AND, Sunday was also my mom’s birthday!  I gave her the Windward scarf that I recently finished.  It was always going to be for her, from the minute I picked out the pattern, but I couldn’t say so since I was blogging about it and knitting it in front of her!  She loves it: