Knit Mammoth Sunflower from 50 Sunflowers + More

Thanks everyone for entering the Donegal Tweed contest. And thank you to Tahki Yarns for supplying their gorgeous Donegal Tweed. 

I have picked the winner randomly and it is LauraT and I have contacted her via email. There were so many great comments and what I can tell is that flowers and blooms play a special part in so many of your lives. 

I thank you for sharing your thoughts and lives here. I know that it takes time out of your busy day to enter and go through the hassle of typing those code letters. And I know many of you never enter because of that. So thank you for responding so great to these giveaways.

In particular, I want to point you to a few of the really amazing stories you wrote. 

This one from "angoramanagement" was great.

This one from anonymous.

This one from Theresa.

This one from Ana brought tears to my eyes.

As did this one from Pamela.

This one about sunflowers bringing together a family in a time of loss.

Here is a knitted version of a Mammoth Sunflower from my new book 50 Sunflowers. The gold and the back side green was made in Valley Yarns Northampton. The orange petals and the very center Chartreuse was made of odds and ends of my Julia yarn.This sunflower was also stuffed similar to the one I shared the other day.

Another note - I have been madly working on re-doing my website with Mary at FunctionFirst Design. I have had the same website design since 2002 when Lori Gayle kindly designed it and put me on the web. I cannot believe it has been so many years. When Lori first designed the site, websites did not sell anything. My site was designed to be informational. It has functioned beautifully but recently I have been looking at it - knowing it needed a change.

Mary and I have been working behind the scenes here getting the new site organized. She's doing the coding which is so far beyond me. I'm doing the design and the uploading of photos, articles, and all the copy. Talk about a lot of time and work and sitting on my butt staring at the computer. If you want to have a look at the old one - check it out here. In a few days, it will be gone. My site (not the blog) will go down for a couple days while we work out many of the kinks of the new site. I cannot wait for the new one to go up so I can share it with all of you. Progress.

I'll leave you all with a photo of a new lamb born to a yearling ewe. Babies are still coming.  

My thoughts go out to the great City of Boston and all of us in the State of Massachusetts on this very sad day.