Anne Blayney
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anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Anne Blayney
@anniebeeknits.bsky.social
300 followers 360 following 260 posts
Textiles, social justice, neurospices, a cozy life, and my dog.
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anniebeeknits.bsky.social
The first flowers of spring! Purple crocus (crocuses? crocusses? croci?) peeking up in our front yard, and snowdrops suddenly filling our neighbour's yard. Isn't it incredible how much hope those little petals hold?
A handful of little purple crocuses blooming, with a few other green shoots promising more to come. There's a skeleton of a maple leaf curled up on the ground in the midst of the cluster of blooms. A cluster of white snowdrops in the sunshine. They're pushing up through a mass of dead brown leaves, and they're such a punch of bright happy colour against the dark, drab ground.
March 17, 2025 at 10:27 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Proof that I still remember what I'm doing! 😜😅
A yellow swatch of Tunisian crochet, made with fingering weight yarn held double. My left hand is spreading the fabric to keep it from rolling too much while I take the photo.
March 13, 2025 at 6:56 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
File under: reasons not to store your scrap yarn 🧶 on the wall directly above the laundry hamper. 🤦‍♀️ Glad this was a load of mostly towels and none have been dyed pink!
A pile of wet laundry, pulled from the washing machine. The entire load is tangled up in some very lovely hot pink merino silk yarn.
March 11, 2025 at 5:22 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
And the sweet counter filled with treats to take home for Ramadan or just for pleasure!
The front of house is beautifully decorated with a modern style, lots of gold and clean lines, and comfortable velvet dining chairs at sleek black tables. The whole counter is filled with huge trays of baklava and other sweets. Some of the packed up trays of sweets to go, with mahmoul and baklava and all kinds of things I couldn't begin to name. All look delicious but I'd need a whole vial of insulin to taste-test them all!
March 8, 2025 at 8:35 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
More of the goodies -- again see alt text for description and notes.
Paul's chicken mandi. It's half a grilled chicken, laid on a bed of seasoned rice, and topped with toasted almonds. He was making the happiest noises while eating -- the best testimonial! Lynda's smoked meat sandwich, with a side of fries and salad. (The fries are crispy and are so good dipped in garlic toum!) My halloumi plate. Crispy grilled halloumi slices on a bed of fries with salad. So tasty. A sampling of their sweets, which we shared! There are pistachio fingers (the green cylinders at the top of the plate); "mussels" in the middle of the plate, which were delicious phyllo shells with a sweet rich cheese and nut filling; Turkish baklava ("it's like baklava but better" according to one of the owners) on the right; and cashew and hazelnut squares with finely shredded phyllo at the bottom left. All exquisite.
March 8, 2025 at 8:35 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Kitchener-Waterloo folks, please go check out Palmyra Grill and Desserts on Lancaster (nr Ammar Halal). Hard to open a Syrian restaurant during Ramadan, but wow, their food is phenomenal and they are so kind. Details of dishes in the alt text.
My husband, a white man in a rust tee and a grey hoodie, pulls an excited face and gives two thumbs up to his loaded beef plate (which he later described as Syrian poutine). My in-laws, a white couple in their 70s, getting excited to dig into their lunches. My MIL has a Syrian smoked meat sandwich and my FIL had a chicken mandi (half a her bed and spiced chicken over rice). All of our meals came with a bowl of lemony lentil soup with some pita crisps on the side. Light and delicious! My husband's loaded beef plate. It has waffle cut fries, shawarma beef, and a spicy cheese sauce, plus various picked veg on the side.
March 8, 2025 at 8:35 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Advance polls are fantastic. In and out in minutes, despite our voter cards not having arrived yet. Everyone was cheerful, and also there was a service dog so I got to vote WITH A DOG for the first time. #Ontario, please #VOTE YOUR HEARTS OUT. (And vote Doug out!!!)
A middle-aged white couple stands against a doorway in a brick wall, where bright yellow signs announce an Elections Ontario voting location. The woman, on the left, is shorter, and wears a bright cobalt coat, purse, and handknit hat; the man, on the right, is taller, and wears a chocolate brown puffer coat and a striped brown handknit hat. Both wear grey face masks.
February 21, 2025 at 10:30 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Here's the finished #SkyKAL hat, blocking on my taped-up balloon head. This is the Gro Hat by Fiber Tales, knit in WoolDreamers Manchelopis 🧶. It's a bluer shade of teal than it looks here, I swear! (Pro tip: weaving in ends with unspun yarn? Use a crochet hook rather than a darning needle.)
A knitted teal hat, with a deep ribbed brim and leaf motifs made of lifted stitches, stretched over a balloon, balanced on a glass to keep it upright. It's sitting on a kitchen counter, with kitchen tools and other clutter in the background.
February 11, 2025 at 11:12 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
This is a perfectly normal thing to do, right? 🧶 Preparing to block my #SkyKAL knit hat, and trying to get the balloon to be similarly proportioned to my head.
A white balloon is sitting balanced on a glass on a kitchen island. There is masking tape wrapped around the balloon to constrain its size and reshape it into a more elongated form. There is a fabric retractable tape measure sitting on the countertop in front of the balloon, so I could measure the circumference and make sure I was blocking to fit my head.
February 11, 2025 at 11:07 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Home from a really lovely weekend at my parents'. Had three friends join us today to make a GIANT batch of marmalade, eat hearty stew, play raucous games of crokinole, knit, spoil the dog, and peruse Dad's multi-bookcase library of field guides. (See alt text for marmalade process notes because 🤓.)
Three big mixing bowls on a kitchen table. The one nearest the camera has cooked orange segments, seeds and all. We cook the seville oranges in an instant pot, just covered with water; then we drain the segments (saving the juice). We take those, use a spoon to separate the pulp from the peel, so we can process them separately. The second bowl, top left in the image, has the orange "guts", which we process with a food mill to salvage all the goodness while removing the seeds and fibrous bits. The third bowl, top right in the image, has the peel, which we've sliced into strips a few millimetres wide. (Later, we take the cooking liquid, the peel, and the milled "guts", add sugar, and boil until the temperature reaches 104.5 degrees C., but that's not shown here.) Four people sitting around a dining table playing crokinole and eating snacks. Crokinole is a Canadian game that's a bit like a board-game sized version of curling. You flick wooden pieces across a board, trying to get them into the centre position, while your opponent tries to knock your pieces out of the way. This is made more difficult by the addition of 8 nails or pegs in the board, which form a ring around the centre, and bounce your shots in all directions, and providing places for your opponent's pieces to shelter from your attack angles. A hand holding up a large jar of orange marmalade to the light coming through a window. There's a snowy scene in the background, outside the window, and inside there are various green plants soaking up the light, but they're all out of focus. The marmalade jar is in crisp focus, and the light shining through the orange jam really makes it glow. The pieces of orange peel are distributed nicely through the jam, not floating like they have done in some of our previous batches!
February 10, 2025 at 2:36 AM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
My favourite of your stripe designs will always be Linear Moods. @gobsmackedyarn.bsky.social was kind enough to custom dye yarn for me in appropriate portions, and it's the floatiest, snuggliest blanket of a shawl! (It's laceweight so it's HYUUUUGE, in the best way.)
A white woman with brown hair, blue eyes, and a black face mask, wearing a striped shawl made of a teal-to-green gradient and a pink-to-purple gradient. A kite-shaped knit shawl in progress, sitting on a paved patio. One side of the shawl is deep teal fading to lighter green, and the other side is light pink fading to deep pinky purple; each side has stripes of the colour from the other side shot through it. The shawl is still on the needles and the cakes of yarn are sitting in the space of the unfinished edge. My feet, in birkenstocks, are visible at the bottom of the photo.
February 7, 2025 at 9:42 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Honestly? Spending as much time as possible with this bean, listening to her breathing in her sleep. Daytime feels like a firehose, so evenings of peaceful cuddles and quiet are helpful.
A black dachshund mix, sound asleep on a couch. There's a teal velvet pillow propped up on the arm of the couch, and she's sprawled out across it, with her stumpy legs out in front of her, and her paws crossed in mid-air. The face of a black dachshund mix dog, sound asleep. She's completely asleep, and there's a sliver of pink tongue sticking out of her mouth because she nurses in her dreams even though she's 8 years old. She is a Very Good Girl.
February 7, 2025 at 3:06 AM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Something gentle for tonight: the soft snores of a sleeping dog. Volume up, and listen/watch as many times through as you need. Sweet dreams, Coco.
February 2, 2025 at 6:00 AM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Well then. I clicked through to the tool and understood maybe half of the words used to even describe the process, nevermind the process itself, so I guess I won't be setting up custom feeds in a hurry. 😖
Screenshot from the Bluesky help page: How can I create a custom feed? Developers can use our feed generator starter kit to create a custom feed. Eventually, we will provide better tooling such that anyone, including non-developers, can build custom feeds.
February 1, 2025 at 3:49 AM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Alright, I'll jump into the #SkyKAL too. I have a Gro Hat on the needles, in a tealy-blue-y colour of Wool Dreamers Machelopis (unspun yarn). Right now I'm just working through the ribbing and getting to know the yarn, but a fun stitch pattern is coming up soon! #KnitSky #knit🧶
A close-up of one-by-one ribbing, worked in a slightly heathered, rustic yarn in a shade that might be teal or blue depending on the light and the camera. My left thumb is visible in the top corner of the picture, mainly as a marker of scale and a cheat for making my camera's colour balance more accurate (as a contrast to the yarn). The yarn looks pretty normal, all knit up. Maybe a little unevenly thick and thin, but nothing unusual. Before being knit, though, it's made of two parallel slender strands of unspun roving.
February 1, 2025 at 3:26 AM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
He was so delighted. It was pretty low effort on my part (little post-its taped to snack-sized bars, with a big post-it on the front of the box) -- not the influencer-style "look what I whipped up with my Cricut and this adorable reusable advent calendar"! But so happy-making! 🥰
A box of snack-sized chocolates with a big sticky note taped to it. The note says "Baseball Countdown" and has little star stickers on it, like teachers use for rewards. There are four of the little chocolate bars next to the box, each with a small sticky note taped around it, with a handwritten number on each. The box and chocolates are sitting on a desk in front of a computer keyboard and speakers.
January 30, 2025 at 2:03 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
It's so very January.

But I have the essentials:
Face mask
Handknit custom-dyed shawl ( @gobsmackedyarn.bsky.social + @xandypeters.bsky.social)
An excellent coat
And not shown:
A handmade top underneath
Handknit angora-merino mittens
Good boots
And not far to go!
A white woman in a grey KN95 face mask, a cobalt blue parka with a furry hood pulled around her face, and a pink, purple, and teal striped shawl peeking out from under the coat. The fur on the hood has caught a lot of snowflakes, and the bare tree and snowy road in the background make it clear that it's winter in Canada.
January 29, 2025 at 5:53 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Casting on tonight with a new-to-me yarn experience. This is Wool Dreamers Manchelopis and it's unspun. Drifts apart like nobody's business if you tug on it, but #knit up it's surprisingly stable. 🧶 And soft, though I gather Manchega sheep are bred more for meat than wool. #knitsky
A closeup of a big "plate" of teal yarn, with the cast-on of a hat brim sitting on top of it. The yarn is made up of two parallel piles, neither of them having any twist. They are light as air, with a jumble of wool fibres in each ply. The plies just run alongside each other, though each knit stitch adds a tiny amount of twist as you form the loop around the needle.
January 28, 2025 at 12:44 AM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
It's fun being a cyborg and getting to install firmware updates.

#t1d #typeonediabetes #insulinpump
An insulin pump sitting on a laptop keyboard. The pump is plugged in via a micro USB cable, and the screen says "Do not unplug your pump during update."
January 27, 2025 at 9:19 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
We like it bitter and chunky. Sometimes with peaty single malt. And plentiful. (I think we made nearly 50L last year...)
Last year's marmalade. A hand holds a jar up to a window, with a snowy view outside. The daylight shines through the jam.
January 26, 2025 at 8:27 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Hooray! We have Seville oranges and marmalade can happen! Ever since @kateatherley.bsky.social posted about finding some in Toronto, I've been calling around grocery stores in KW to find them locally. (Farm Boy Waterloo just got them this week.) Now to fix a date with my dad for marmaladening.
Most of a case of Seville oranges, sitting on a kitchen counter. This year's batch are not warty looking, but they're still not pretty oranges. Funny how Sevilles vary so much, year on year.
January 26, 2025 at 6:18 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
I need all the light I can get these days. This is Laura Nelkin's Starry Light pattern, knit extra big since I had a long string of lights. It now lives on my textile wall, with wool felt garlands and more lights. #knitsky #knit What's the weirdest thing you've knit with? 🧶
A 6-pointed star, knitted from the centre out with a long copper-wire strand of fairy lights. It's about 12" or 20cm tip to tip. It's hanging against a softly glowing backdrop: a layer of cheesecloth and more lights, and then layers of garlands. There's a garland made of triangles of multi-coloured felt, sewn together like a flying-geese quilt pattern; and there are at least two garlands made of rainbow coloured wool felt balls strung on white cotton yarn. The whole thing speaks of softness and warmth and light, and it's my sensory wall in my living room.
January 24, 2025 at 9:14 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
The aforementioned brownies. 🤤
A closeup of a pan of brownies, sitting on a cooling rack.
January 20, 2025 at 5:13 PM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Knit faster, Coco. Dad's never going to get his @kateatherley.bsky.social hat in @coriand3r.bsky.social yarn if you keep sleeping on the job.

(It's me, I'm the one not knitting.)
A black dog is asleep on her back, arms (forelegs?) akimbo, on a couch. A hat in progress is propped against her leg, but she's snoring. Not much help with the knitting.
January 19, 2025 at 4:11 AM
anniebeeknits.bsky.social
Got to offer some technical help with both presentation equipment AND embroidery stitches at the tatreez workshop today. So lovely to see my fabulous teachers and their gorgeous embroidery samples again! We made new stitchers today and raised funds for Palestine. 🪡💪🍉
Two Palestinian women smile at the camera after teaching a tatreez workshop in Canada. They are carrying bags of supplies, and one has a poster-sized selfie frame that she's carrying by putting her head and one arm through it. A closeup of a vintage Palestinian thobe. The background fabric is deep navy, and panels are embroidered in gold cross stitches, with a few deep red embellishments. There's a clever scalloped edging worked around the cuffs of the sleeves. A closeup of a newly completed, still unframed piece of tatreez. It's a long panel (maybe 1.5 meters) of cream cloth. There are horizontal bands, each with a different colour scheme and motif, and beside each band is a square tile in Kufic script naming the city or region that the motif came from. Each band is about 8 cm tall, and 25 cm wide, with the name tile just to the right in a tidy column. A white woman with brown hair and a black face mask, wearing a keffiyeh, has her arm raised awkwardly to press the arrow keys on a laptop that's on a tall cart beside her, a long with a projector. She's looking off camera to monitor what's on the projection screen.
January 19, 2025 at 12:42 AM