Spiffy!

The internet hates me.

2008-09-26T11:02:00.002-07:00

Have you ever logged on to the handy interweb with a list of things to do--things you've done before, things that are perfectly easy--and had your brain turn to goo and suddenly every single thing you do starts a landslide of events that just gets worse and worse and worse so that the 3 things you need to do end up taking 10 times as long?

That's me today. I swear I don't know what it going on. I used to do tech support. I was very good at it, too. Sometimes my brain just doesn't want to use logic and reasoning, I guess. Sheesh.

Anyway. Yeah. One of the things I needed to do was post here. You would think that would be easy, but I turned it into a 20 minute affair just to get here.

I'm going to blame my cold. Yes. It's the cold.

Anyway, I have a few updates. First of all, I'm restarting the JustDishcloths mailing list. So, if you love dishcloths, but hate getting 500 emails, check us out.

The second thing is that I've decided to move my online store to Etsy. I'm just in the beginning stages of that right now, but I plan to put my patterns up for sale as well as some finished objects and stitch markers. Perhaps even some of my other projects. (Did I mention I'm making soap now?) Anyway, my goal is to have it up and running by next week. I'll post here when it's ready.

I was going to update on some crafty things, too, but, seriously, I fried my brain today. I will have to come back and post about that later.

I really shouldn't start projects at 11pm.

2008-06-14T00:48:00.002-07:00

I'm several months ahead of my Knitter's Almanac project. It helps that I'm skipping all the fair isle and the projects for summer are small.

Anyway, I thought I'd pick up a new project using the Gedifra Florida that I picked up for $2 a ball while at Webs on my trip back to MA for Reunion. It's a DK and I've been wanting to do a cheap-and-chearful shawl with some DK for a while now. So much faster to knit when you can use 8s instead of 5s.

So, I cast on for A Handsome Triangle from Victorian Lace Today. And I had to frog at 8 rows, because I realized that it was terribly lopsided. I was working purely from the chart, only I failed to notice that the chart was only half the shawl and I needed to work to one side and then work backwards.

Ok, problem solved. I cast on again.

Only, this time with 4 increases per row instead of 2, the shape of the shawl was decidedly not triangular. Perhaps it would block out? I soldiered on.

Then, I noticed that the photograph in the book looked NOTHING like what I was doing. I had a large, basically stockinette section at the beginning, and the photo in the book had the lace starting right away. What the heck? Why would they include a graph that didn't have you start the lace until 22 rows in when the sample had the lace start right away?

I checked double checked the errata page on the XRX books website to see if they'd fixed the graph, and nope. Surely they would have caught something like that by now. So, again, I picked up the sticks and determined to finish the first repeat of the lace pattern.

This is when I really got frustrated. Not only was it not triangular, not only was my lace starting too high up, but now the lace actually looked NOTHING like the lace in the sample. I was ready to give up. I figured I must be doing something fundamentally wrong with how I was reading the graph. It was the first time I'd used a graph that you had to read backwards and forwards, so perhaps I needed to reverse some stitches or something. I checked the information in the back and it seemed like I was doing it right.

So, I googled. And I found several photos, but one looked like the sample, and the other looked like mine, and I didn't know what was going on. So, I checked on Ravelry. And while I was looking at an example there, it all finally clicked. Though you start by casting on only 4 stitches, this pattern does, indeed, start at the NECK, not at the bottom point. And so, the reason why I didn't see the large stockinette section was because it was not in the close-up of the shawl. And the reason why it wasn't triangular is because the increases are actually making the hypotenuse. And the reason why my lace looked NOTHING like the pattern was because I'm knitting it upside-down

Good gravy. All of this probably would have been apparent had I started it after dinner instead of late at night while watching The Prestige on cable.

Sometimes, you just have to make an executive decision.

2008-03-11T21:13:00.002-07:00

I'm thinking of knitting Jaden (without the ties, with the neckline brought in a bit and without the top ridge since there will be no ties) using Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece. I have a bunch of white left from the pillows I made for the book, so I should be able to get away with just buying a few more skeins, which would mean that I could pay for most of it on my Webs gift card and finally get rid of it. (I've lost enough gift cards in my time to have a hefty paranoia about losing them before I can spend them.)

The thought is to knit it in white so I can wear it for Alumnae Parade at my 10 year reunion in May. I figure I should be able to find a basic, white, A-line skirt to go with it, right? If not, maybe I could make one without much panic.

I say all this now. Wait until May rolls around and we'll see how much I'm freaking out then.

Also, all of this means that I'm bailing on the EZ Knitter's Almanac project for this month. I have a hearty hatred for fair-isle, and while I'm LOVING the yarn (oh, the softness), I've knit on it TWICE so far and the month is 1/3rd gone. That's a grand total of about 2.5 inches on the body. It's just not going to happen. I have purged and reorganized 3 rooms of my house and gotten halfway through the morass that is our office/workout room/craft room JUST to justify NOT working on the Chainmail Sweater for March. It's the only project in the Almanac that I'm really not a fan of, so I'm going to go ahead and take a pass. I feel a little guilty about skipping it, to be honest, but I'm not being graded, no one is paying me, I'm not going to get fired. It's a personal goal and if it's something that is going to make me nuts in a bad way, then I should be ok with not doing it. So, yeah. I am ok with skipping it. It's not like the sweater is going to sit in a corner and cry because I'm not working on it.

Anyway, all of this leaves me with another problem, which is that I don't really want to start on it right away. I've gone down a size since the year started, and I hope to be down another by May. I don't know that it will happen or not, which is kind of the issue. If I'm going to put all the time into knitting the sweater, I want it to fit. So, I'm thinking I need to just not start it until maybe mid-April and see how things stand. In the meantime, I do believe I shall move on to the April project from the Almanac so that I can have it done and out of the way to free up the time to knit Jaden.

That's February done then.

2008-02-29T20:23:00.003-07:00

Ta-da!

I managed to make my way through all the February projects with time to spare! I finished the last of the work last night. I didn't need the leap-day afterall, but it's given me time to blog about it in the same month I finished them, so that's nice.

First, the Double Knitting Pad

This was worked up with double stranded Cascade 220 superwash. I originally cast on wider than the pattern called for, but worked it shorter, because I realized I wouldn't have enough time to finish everything for the month if I worked it up as long as I wanted to. So, in the end it ended up the dimensions the pattern called for, but worked sideways instead of longways.

Double knitting is a fun trick, but knitting in the round is MUCH easier. I managed to make my way through with only 3 spots where I didn't slip the stitches properly. They didn't effect the look of project, so I didn't bother to rip back. I'm sure the baby who ends up with it won't mind.

It's very squooshy. I think it'll make a great tummy pad, and the wool is machine washable, so it can get as much drool as the baby can dish out.

Next we have the shawl:

This was knit up in Valley Yarns 8/2 Merino Cashmere. It was all on one cone and still had the machine oil on it, but after I finished and washed it, the yarn didn't fluff up much. If anything, it shrank a bit in the water and I had to really stretch it to get it back to size. It didn't felt at all, it just relaxed in on itself. I was worried that I'd run out of yarn on the cone, so I stopped when the pattern told me to, even though I thought it might be a bit small on my wide shoulders. And, it is. but it's still warm and I love it and if I never do wear it as a shawl, it will make a nice lapghan or baby blanket.
She didn't give directions for the lace pattern she used in the book, so I just picked out a simple diamond lace pattern. With the simplicity of the pattern and the tweediness of the yarn, it looks very rustic to me. When I put it on, I feel like I should be coercing a couple of children into my candy house to take a look at my stove. *cackle*

Ahem... Moving on... Next was the Baby Sweater on Two Needles:

Worked up in a sport-weight wool/alpaca blend, I think this is my favorite project of the month. Love. It. It's a yoke-down sweater and the only seams to sew at the end are the sleeves. Brilliant. The lace pattern was really simple and this was a super-fast knit. It'd be a great gift if you know a mom who is into vintage baby gear.

Finally, the longies:

I wanted to knit these in the same yarn as the sweater, but the directions called for 3 oz and I only had 2 5/8 or something like that. In the end, it would have been enough, but there was no way to know that at the time. One thing that has been frustrating about this Knitter's Almanac project so far has been that she is so vague about yarn requirements. I'm so used to dealing with yardages that getting it in ounces is making me a bit batty.

Back to the matter at hand, though, these were also very fast. In the book, they have feet. I left the feet off, because not all babies have tiny feet (like all the babies in my family) and since I'm note sure if I'm donating these yet, I didn't want someone to end up with them and have them be an annoyance to the baby wearing them. Still, the pattern went very fast as it was all stockinette in the round, but there was enough shaping involved to keep it interesting. I'd definitely do these again.

Like I said, I finished it all Thursday night, which meant that Thursday night and today I was able to work on the January Aran Sweater some more:

I'm 16 rounds into it at this point and you can really see the patterns emerging. The 5-stitch cable is really cool. It seems to lie flatter than a 4- or 8-stitch cable. I'm not in love with the yarn, but I'm glad to finally have a use for it. It should be very warm when it's done.

Tomorrow, I'll start swatching for the Chainmail Sweater, which is the project for March. I'll be using the SWTC Optimum DK that Jenny gave me a while back. I have juuuust enough of the silver and plenty of the other two colors. I'm so glad to have a use for this stuff, because it is so heavenly to work with.

Ooooh, the smooshy goodness. I am having a hard time not casting on for this baby right now... Must work on January sweater some more... Must resist.... optim... wool...

Shawl? Check!

2008-02-21T14:17:00.002-07:00

The shawl finised and is currently blocked out on our living room floor. I'm having a heck of a time keeping the girls off of it. Kai is old enough to have a healthy fear of touching something that's being blocked, but Abby is still learning.

I'm not sure now, post-blocking, if it was the exact same yarn as that Yarn Harlot entry that Jenny saw. It didn't seem to bloom as much, and while it lost some of it's dye in the soak, it didn't fade nearly as much as hers seemed to. But, I dunno, the color differences may be accounted for by photography. I wasn't able to get a before shot of the shawl, because I can't find the camera. An after shot is going to have to wait a while, too, I guess.

I'm not positive, but I think that it's going to be a touch too small for me to wear without fiddling with it a lot. I'm not a big shawl wearer in general, so I don't think I'll have the patience for one that needs to be adjusted all the time. It is, however, a good size for a baby blanket, so if it does turn out to be less than comfortable, I'm sure I could gift it away no problem. This assessment was pre-blocking, though, so it might be a bit looser on the other end.

It's funny how the oil wasn't all that apparent to me when I was knitting with it, but the second I put it in the soaking water, it got VERY slick. I can't really assess the softness at this point, either. Still waiting for it to dry.

Last night, I cast on for the baby sweater on 2 needles. I'm knitting it according to her pattern except that I'm only planning on putting on the top 3 buttons, so I only need to worry about that many button holes. I've knit the garter stitch top and one repeat of the pattern. I'm using some DK weight wool/alpaca blend that I've had for ages. It's creamsicle colored! Sa-weet! It's part of the wool mom bought at Webs ages ago that was packaged for sale in Russia, so I have no idea what the "real" brand is, but it's very soft and I love it to bits. I'm glad to finally have a use for it. I've tried trading it away before, because I was sad to see it sitting there unused for so long, but I don't think anyone was willing to take a change on yarn when they don't know it's true origin and can't touch it in person.

I'm thinking there is no way I'm going to get this sweater and the longies done by the end of the month. It's just too much knitting. Next month is a sweater, but I believe it calls for worsted weight yarn and March has 31 days, so I may be ok. If not, later in the summer, things slow down a bit. I'm still aiming to get it all done!

Lizzie, why you play me like that?

2008-02-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

Progress on the Knitter's Almanac front.

I'm 8 rounds in to the January sweater. Last night, I cast off the baby pad. This morning I moved on to the second February project, which is a lace shawl.

Oh, shawl... you shall be conquered yet.

Elizabeth Zimmerman is... how shall we say it... a litle vague? After writing about Shetland wool and how it comes in many different sizes, she then offers up a pattern for a shawl, calling for 10 oz of Shetland wool that knits to 4 stitches to the inch when knit loosely on size 5-8 needles.

A-what now?

Could she possibly be more vague?!

I poked around online a bit and came up with nothing, so I posted for help on the LiveJournal knitting community and Cynthia pointed me to Ravelry (dur) where a woman had made several different versions of the same shawl using lots of different yarns. Seeing that made it ok for me to not freak about the yarn so much and I started stash diving.

I pulled out some DK cotton in a very, very bright blue-green and some loverly alpaca that I didn't have enough of in one color, but I could do stripes of brown, green and purple. Neither one of those options really floated my boat, so I made my way to the office where I've stashed all my to-destash yarns. I found a cone of 80/20 merino/cashmere blend in a dk-ish 2-ply. I'd bought it a long time ago from Webs when my mom sent me a gift card for Christmas one year. It was on major-can't-pass-up markdown, so I got a cone of it. It's a very rich brown with flecks of orange and barker brown in it. I loved the color, loved the fiber, and it was on sale, so I ordered it.

And then it arrived. Hrm. It wasn't what I was expecting. It was coarser than I thought, and the plies weren't wound very tight. I was enough of a nice-yarn noob to not realize that it had been created for weaving and machine knitting. Once it's washed, it should soften up quite a bit. However, once I learned that tidbit, I wasn't really in the mood to knit with it anymore. And so it's sat in the stash for at least 3 years at this point.

When I saw it this morning, little bells went off and I knew it was going to become this shawl. I sat down with some DPNs to get started. I did a gauge swatch on 8's and it was slightly below what it called for, so I grabbed some 9's and jumped in.

It begins with a crochet cast on that has you make a loop and then pull up additional loops through that first loop and leave them on the hook. You transfer them all on to your DPNs and start knitting from there. You only start with 8 stitches. Divided up on 4 DPNs. I tell you, it is a miracle I didn't impale myself during the first 4 rounds. After that, the flailing needles settled into a square and I could carry on without risk of bodily injury. At 64 stitches, I can transfer them to a 16" circ, but I'm only at 56 so far. Close.

I need to stop at that point, though, because another vaguary of Madame Liz is that she tells you to just pick a lace pattern, make sure it's centered in the 4 panels, and start in on it. So before I can go much farther, I need to settle on a lace pattern, too. I suppose I could go a few more inches without one, but I do like the look of the sample in the book where it starts from almost the center. Thank goodness for stitch guides.

This year of the Knitter's Almanac may be my undoing.

So what are you doing craftwise, anyway?

2008-01-31T16:35:00.001-07:00

Good question.

It was to be The Year of Lace. I have a metric ton of laceweight yarn. I have a set of knitpicks Harmony needles that are pointy and slightly grippy and have a little hole where I can attach a life line. I have many, many lace projects marked in several books.

Then, I made the mistake of starting my year of lace early with a project that was very simple. It was simple. It still is simple. However, it requires a knitted on border.

Knitted-on borders can bite my butt. They are tedious and boring. I started one night and haven't picked it up since. I would rather lose a toe nail to an angrily slammed door than continue with the knitted on border.

So, what then? All my lace projects for the year have knitted on borders. My aversion to starting any more lace projects has been so strong that I haven't been doing much knitting or crochet at all lately.

Last year I did all I could to knit from stash, which was great, but my stash has only dwindled slightly because people have given me more yarn. So I still have tons of wool that has gone unused. (Yeah, ok, fine, I bought some, too, but not nearly as much as in past years.)

And then yesterday, I picked up my copy of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac. And, it hit me. This year will be the Year of Elizabeth. The book contains many projects, and most of them are challenging in their own way. Several sweaters, socks, mittens, hats, baby things, heck, even tights if you can believe it. And, the best part is that ALL of the projects call for yarn that I can pull from my stash. There are a few projects in the book that I would neither wear nor expect anyone around me to wear (Srsly, wool tights in AZ?) but would make excellent donations to LDS Humanitarian Services or Afghans for Afghans. A lot of my wool that is hanging around in the stash doing nothing has been earmarked for charity knitting anyway. So, hopefully I can kill three birds with one stone: further deplete the stash, continue with my charity knitting, and pick up some really solid skills from Ms. EZ.

I am starting late, so it's going to be a bit of a push to get caught up. This month, the project was an Aran sweater, knit in the round, steeked for the arms, with an option of steeking it to make a cardigan. I've decided to forgo the cardigan option and am making it up with some old Patons Ballybrae I got from my mother's stash a long time ago. It's a very sturdy wool, suitable for outer layers. It's tweedy with a purple base and pink and white bits in it, so it's not particularly 'of the now' colorwise, but it should to very well for an Afghan winter.

I hit a stumbling block yesterday when I couldn't find my lovely Harmony needles anywhere, but I got cast on with some old circs I had lying around. And I began to knit. And I messed up in the count somehow and tore it all out and re-cast on. I wish I was exagerating when I say that I repeated this process 6 times yesterday before finally giving up past midnight and going to bed. The Year of Elizabeth had a rather dismal start.

This morning I got myself up and going. I even found my needles. They were in a Webs bag hanging on our bedroom door that has been there for so long that I'd stopped seeing it anymore. When we got back from the park, I cast on again and began to knit the first round. This time, though, as I cast on, I put a stitch marker between each of the 4 pattern repeats and Voila, I made it through the first round with no problems. I am on my way!

It's not the most conducive project for knit club or even watching TV, though I think once I have the pattern down better, I'll be able to do the latter. So, tonight at knit club, I plan to cast on for the baby blanket project for February and I'll have both on the needles to work on as the situation permits.

Incidentally, the projects for February are a baby sweater, footy-pants, and bonnety-hat thing, a baby pad (like a small blanket) and a large baby blanket/shawl. So, I'll still be getting some lace in through the year. There are quite a bit of projects, though... Later in the year it drops off a bit and I'm hoping to get caught up to schedule at that point, but for now I just don't want to get farther than the month behind I already am.

Where ya been, Anne?

2008-01-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

So, I haven't been around, yadda, yadda.

Lemme 'splain.

For those of you new around here, and even those of you not new around here who are wondering why I haven't been posting so much, I'll fill you in.

Many of you know that my husband was in a serious car accident over the summer. He is fully recovered, has been for months now, and we've been moving forward just fine. Some things got put on hold, so after his recovery, we spent a lot of time trying to get caught up on those things, which we are about done with at this point.

But somewhere in all of that, I went through an attitude shift. Before his accident, I found nothing more entertaining that a bit of snark. I prefered that it be good-natured snark, but if it dipped into the negative at times, as long as it was funny, I'd be laughing. That's not the case anymore.

I'm not saying I've lost my sense of humor. I still laugh at the absurd, the wry, the comical. It just hit me in a very real way that life is an incredibly fragile and beautiful thing. It could all be over in an instant, which is something I knew before the accident, but hadn't fully internalized. Suddenly, I was presented with a reality that included losing a great deal of my blessings. Not just my husband, which would have been horrible in and of itself, but a whole lifestyle that I really do enjoy. I love that I can homeschool my girls. I love that I don't have to work and can be a stay-at-home mom. There is nothing that better suits me at this point in my progression. I adore watching my kids grow. Why would I complain about their shortcomings? My husband works so hard for us. Why would I knock him for it? My house may not be a mansion, but it keeps us out of the elements, maintains a fairly regulated temperature, and contains more than enough physical goods to keep us comfortable. How is there anything wrong with that?

And as far as the people around me are concerned, I am of the opinion that there is nothing more pointless than sitting around and discussing their faults. We all have faults, but I think most of us have far more good qualities than bad. And since we all have faults, why sit around pointing out the faults of others? What an extreme waste of time. We could be enjoying people for their good qualities instead of focusing on the bad when they aren't around. The funny thing is that when people are busy complaining about others, they don't realize that it is just making themselves look malicious and untrustworthy. I know I didn't.

I feel like I need to enjoy my family more. I feel like I need to be in more positive places. I feel less like I need to be 'important' in the eyes of others. People can take me as I am or they can move on. I don't feel the need to blog about my craft, I feel the need to do my craft. And even that I don't feel the need to do as obsessively anymore. I feel like I've found a balance that is serving me well at the moment.

Things are just different now, and I'm quite enjoying it.

The afore mentioned yarn sell-off post

2007-11-29T23:58:00.000-07:00

Prices are roughly 25% off what I paid for them if the stickers are still on them, or if I can remember what I paid. Otherwise, they are 25% off the MSRP from yarndex.com. Prices rounded to the nearest 25 cents to make it easy.

Email me what you'd like to annilita at gmail dot com and include your zip code. Buyer pays for shipping + delivery confirmation. I won't add anything for packaging or whatever. I don’t mind shipping overseas.

Buyer pays for any paypal fees if necessary. In addition to Paypal, I will accept gift cards to Ikea, Target, or Home Depot.

Disclaimers: We are a smoke-free/pet-free home, however some of the yarn is from swaps with homes that did have cats and it’s all been stored together, so if you are super sensitive, you may want to avoid this swap. Also, remember monitor colors can alter the true color of the yarn, so it may not be precisely the shade you expect when it arrives. When the color is dramatically off, I try to offer comparisons to help you visualize the real color.

Cascade Cloud 9 - $5.50 per skein. 13 skeins available. 50.50 merino/angora blend.109 yards per skein. Worsted Weight.

Alpaca Super Fine - $4 per skein. Brown and a pale dusty rose. They work well together color-wise. 100% alpaca sport-weight. 50gr (yardage not given on label)

Worsted Weight Wool – Kettle-dyed, cannot remember the dyer. $8 100% wool, single-ply, pre-felted. Unknown yardage.

Plymouth Yarn: Bristol Yarn Gallery King George - $6 each, 2 available. 45% baby alpaca, 45% merino, 10% cashmere. Worsted, 105 yards

Inca Wool – $5 each. 100% wool. 2 teal, one gold, one peachy-orange. (Two are missing labels, but are full skeins.) Packaged for sale to a company in Russia who reneged, so the labels are in Russian. Sport weight, 167 meters. Great for fair isle projects.

Alpaca Country Fina - $5 each. 3 creamscicle available (a heathered orange) 20% alpaca, 80% wool. Sport Weight. This was packaged for a company in Russia who reneged on the order, so the label is in Russian. 150 meters. Great for fair isle. The balls no longer have the ball bands on them, but they are all complete skeins and I have the labels that go on them and can include them for you.

SOLD -- Alpaca Country Fina - $5 each. 8 full skeins of forest green available, 2 partial skeins that total more than one skein together, but I’ll count both as one skein for $5. See yarn information above .

Alpaca Country Fina - $4 each 5 full skeins of white, all wound into balls or partially wound. See yarn information above.

The following are Alpaca Country Fina that I Kool-aid dyed. See yarn info above. $7 a hank. I have the ball bands with the yarn information on them to include with these:

Lemonade (2 available)

Orange (5 available)

Mixed Berry (4 available)

Cherry (2 available) On my monitor, the color is off in this shot and I can’t get it to look right. The color is actually a standard, crayola red.

Cherry-lite (2 available) These are the same color as the ones above, but not as saturated. The color is slightly variegated from white to red.

Pink lemonade (1 available)

Fruit Punch (2 available) On my monitor, these look more orange than they are in person. They are very pink, variegated to white.

Lion Brand Knitting Worsted. -- $4 This is a ‘vintage’ hank in very good condition. 4 oz. No yardage given, but there is a lot of yarn here, possibly enough for a full scarf on size 9 needles.

SWTC Optimum - $9.75 per skein. 10 balls silver, 5 balls pink, 7 balls purple available
100% wool. DK weight 2-ply. This is, without a doubt, the softest wool yarn you will ever touch. I have some cashmere in my stash, and this yarn is actually softer than my $50 a hank cashmere. 154 yards per hank. I use these for heirloom-type baby gifts and there is always a lot of ooh-ing and aah-ing about how soft it is. I think the silver and pink work especially well together for fair-isle patterns.

Berroco Plush - $6.25 per ball. 3 balls solid, 3 balls variegated available. 100% nylon. There is a pattern for a baby/toddler dress on the Berroco website that calls for this yarn. I just didn’t get it knit before my daughter got too big for it.

Sirdar Snuggly Bubbly – ($6 per ball. 4 balls dark purple, 2 balls cream [in photo], 1 ball light purple, 1 ball white [not in photo] available.) Slubby worsted, 100% Nylon. Very soft. Good for durable, yet still cutesie baby clothes, toys or blankies.140 yards.

Pure Gold Double Knitting - $4. 100% Courtelle, which I believe is a proprietary name for acrylic. This is a soft, smoochy acrylic, though. Worsted Weight. 220 yards.
Remnants of a fluffy boa-type yarn. $.50 (Good for the cupcake tops in One Skein)

Butterfly Mercerized Cotton - $7.25 per hank 100% mercerized cotton. DK weight. 1 purple, 1 pink available. Mauve is SOLD. 230 meters

Zephyr Wool -- $10 for both. Two hanks of deep cherry red, hand dyed with kool-aid dyes. Sport weight, I don’t remember the yardage. Certainly enough for a hat, possibly enough for a lacey scarf. 54 gr total weight.

Cascade Pima Tencel – $3.75 each. 1 green, 3 blue (one wound into cake) available 50% cotton, 50% tencel 109 yards each, dk weight

Peace Fleece – 30% mohair, 70% wool, worsted, 2 ply, 200 yards.
SOLD -- Hank: $5.50
Blue cake: $2.25 (half a hank)
Black cake: $2.25 (slightly more than half a hank)

Bernat Boa- $1 100% polyester. 71 yards.

Wisdom Yarns Poems - $5 thick/thin worsted 100% wool, 109 yards

Sensations Whisper - $2. 15% wool, 43% nylon, 42% acrylic. 71 yards

Skacel Fuego - $6.25 each. 2 grey, 2 blue. 80% mohair, 20% wool. Fuzzy lace-weight. 110 m. per ball.

Filatura Di Crosa - $3 each. 4 available. 68% wool/32% cotton. Slubby, single-ply worsted. 109 yards.

Valley Fibers 2/4 Merino-Cashmere - $15. 80% merino, 20% cashmere. 830 yards per pound. Cone weighs 1lb, 2oz, including the cone. It’s not particularly soft on the cone, but I was assured by the folks at Webs that it would soften up once it has been washed.

Fun Fur - $.50 each. Half skeins of pink, brown and white.

SOLD -- Debbie Bliss Pure Silk - $10 each. 1 grape, 1 green. 100% silk. 125 m. Sport/dk weight.

SOLD -- Village Spinning Inca Organic Cotton - $10.50 for the cream hank, $5.25 for the green (half a hank). 100% organic cotton, thick-thin worsted weight yarn. Approx 325 yards cream, 165 yards green.

Heirloom Breeze - $4 for both. 30% wool, 69.9% cotton, .4% lycra. Worsted Weight.

Brazil Kokon - $1.50 each. 65% cotton, 35% viscose. Thick/thin DK weight.

Bernat Cottontots - $3. 100% cotton, worsted weight. 4 oz.

Patons Beehive Baby - $1.50. 100% acrylic. Sport weight. 286 yards.

Shaffhauser - $2. 100% Superwash wool. Light worsted, 110 yards.

Mission Falls 1824 cotton. - $3 each. 2 purple, 1 black available. 100% cotton, worsted weight, 84 yards each.

Laines Du Nord Giunco – $4 each. 100% Superwash wool. Worsted Weight. 137 yards.

SOLD -- Cleckheaton Country 8-ply - $3 each. (15 available. 3 more available that were partially knit and then frogged and rewound for $2.50 each.) 100% wool. Worsted. 106 yards.

Cascade 220 Superwash. $7 each. 100% Superwash wool. Worsted. 220 yards per ball.
Go to http://cascadeyarns.com/cascade-superwash.asp to see colors.
Color 801 – 4 available.
Color 818 – 3 available.
Color 862 – 4 available.
Color 867 – 1 available.
Color 872 – 2 available.

Wassup, people?

2007-11-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

So, life has been interesting lately. And I mean that both sincerely and in quotes; 'interesting'.

Lately, I've been much more content in my role as Parent, Wife and Mother. Home has just been very comfortable and less with the crazy-making. I don't think the kids have changed in any developmental milestone way to make this the case. (If anything, Abby has turned a corner into a she-demon stage recently and I'm ready for that to end anytime now, kthx) I think I've just been more on top of things and being more on top of things has made things more positive and doable.

School is going very well. We're in a nice routine. Kai is plugging along. Abby has taken an interest in the v.Smile and preschool computer games and is sitting in one some of Kai's lessons, so she's starting to pick up on things she's had no interest in before. Kai's such the little scholar (the little hyperactive scholar of doom) that she's been a very good example for Abby in that way.

So, yeah. We were plugging along just fine and then, whammo, Adam was laid off. He works for a construction company, so we had been expecting it, but we thought it was months away still. There was about 24 hours of panic and then another job landed in his lap. He should be starting Mondey, which means no break in the paychecks, though he will be making less while he trains in the new company. Still, it's enough for us to live on, so I'm happy. Christmas was going to be mellow this year anyway and we should be able to put together enough money as we need it to finish the rennovations. Things are positive.

On the crafting front, I've finished the body of my first lace shawl, but knitting the border on it has been freakin' me out, so I'm only about 1/10th of the way around it. I've knit up a few quick and easy gifts for Christmas. Currently, I'm test knitting the contest entries for the Just Dishcloths mailing lists. They are lovely and I can't wait to send them out to people.

I started teaching a crochet class for the women at church. We only meet once a month and at the first class I taught them to do a singel crochet dishcloth. This month, we're going to do a half-double crochet scarf with button accents on the end and I'm providing them with the yarn. We're going to use the SWTC Optimum that Jenny gave me a while back. I love it and want to spread the joy that is super-soft Optimum.

During the 24 hour freak-out over Adam being unemployed, I did something I'd been planning on doing for months now and went through the yarn stash and pulled out everything I've been meaning to trade away to put it up for sale to try to get some extra money that way. As I was finishing the photos, he came home and told me he had a job, so I didn't need to sell the yarn, but I figured what the heck, I'd been wanting to do it anyway. So, look out for that here soon. There are a few pieces from Ikea I was wanting for the new room that would have to be backburnered for ages, but if I can offload enough of my stash, I may be able to get them sooner rather than later. Then I can tell people that this is the house that yarn furnished.

Windows and Gimp are your Fair Isle Friend.

2007-10-11T23:50:00.000-07:00

So, everyone was picking on me tonight at knit club, because I haven't updated in a while. Seriously, they ALL ganged up on me.

Or did they just mention it?

One or the other... Anyway, yeah. I'm plugging along. I've been working on the mittens some more. In theory, they are supposed to go in the mail in a few days, but they may be a bit late.

The fair isle was puckering a lot, so I frogged the first mitten 4 times, but I think I have it good enough now that any puckering will block out of it. We shall see.

I'm calling the pattern Norwegian Chaos, because it's, obviously, inspired by traditional Norwegian mittens, but one mitten had a butterfly and the other will have a hurricane symbol. I was having a doozy of a time graphing out the hurricane symbol, until I found a site that does actual size knitters graph paper. I printed out a page at the guage of my project. Then I found an image of a hurricane symbol and saved it to my desktop. I opened it in GIMP and resized the image to be the size of the space I had to fit it in on the graph paper and printed it out. I taped the hurricane symbol up on the window, then taped the graph paper in place above it and traced the shape on it. Voila, easy-peasey fair-isle graphing.

In the meantime, when I don't feel like doing the fair-isle, I've been working on the Backyard Leaves scarf. Oh, the cashmere is like buttah. Picking it up this time has been a lot easier than before. Goofs are rarer and easier to correct. Working from the graph has been cake this time. I'm really, really enjoying the project now that it's not such a struggle. Already I'm 5 repeats through the 22 the pattern calls for. I think that it's going to be shorter than I was hoping, though, so I'll probably aim for 26 or 28 repeats instead. Also, the project is coming out much poofier than I expected. I'm not sure how much of it is going to come out with the blocking. I may have to poke around on Ravelry for some advice regarding that.

I AM THE MASTER OF ALL I ATTEMPT! BOW BEFORE ME!

2007-09-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

I AM THE MASTER OF ALL I ATTEMPT! BOW BEFORE ME!
Yeah, yeah, it's been a while. My 3 readers should be used to that by now. In the interim, I took the girls back to visit family, Adam has continued to heal nicely, the renovations are progressing, and the garden is ready to be rototilled this evening. It's been busy. What can I say?

Oh, I know what I can say: BEHOLD MY MIGHT AND POWER!!!

Muahahahahahaaaa!!!

Sorry.

I'm feeling a little self-inflated at the moment in all things yarnish. For you see, last night, I mastered (I use the term to mean "learned" not "able to teach a course") continental knitting, fair-isle, and knitting with one color in each hand. All at the same time.

Adam was sitting across from me and looked over ad saw me knitting fair-isle with one color in each hand and had the gaul to not leap from his seat and kneel before me in awe. In fact, I think what he did was glance over, think, "Is she still knitting?" and look back at the Yankees-Boston game. (WAY TO POP FLY THE GAME AWAY, BIG PAPI!) And so, I decided he needed to be schooled. It went something like this:

"Adam, look what I'm doing! I finally figured out continental knitting."
*blank stare*
"And now I can knit fair-isle, because I can hold a different colored yarn in either hand."
*slightly impressed "hmm" sort of look*
"Isn't it amazing?"
*uhhhhhh-how-should-I-react-so-I-can-look-back-at-the-game face*
"I AM THE MASTER OF ALL I ATTEMPT!! BEHOLD MY GREATNESS!!"
*wondering where the nearest psych ward is*

I tell you, it is a good thing I derive an income, however meagre, from doing this or Adam would have made the call last night and I'd be waking up in a pretty, pink, padded cell right now.

But seriously, I'm totally thrilled by this. The world of fair isle is finally open to me! Yay!

And what was I working on, you ask? Well, I'm part of a mitten exchange and my partner is a math geek. So, I designed a Norwegian-esque pattern that has a butterfly on one mitten and a hurricane symbol on the other. It's witty. It was the suggestion of one of the readers of my personal blog and he's a math geek, too, so I'm trusting his judgement. And where is my progress? After all, I managed to get half a mitten done last night, so where's a photo?

Well, you'll have to wait, because I frogged the whole thing. See, I was knitting it with a 100% wool dk that I'd kool-aid dyed red and a white 80/20 alpaca wool blend. And though the labels claimed the same gauge, they were not the same in practice, so it was all nubbly. Also, I discovered that either due to myself or fair-isle in general, the gauge got much tighter when I started the fair-isle section, so I'm going to start over, using a green 80/20 instead of the red wool so the yarn wpi is the same AND will be going up a needle size when I start the chart to try to combat the tightness.

I knew it was going to be a problem by half way through the first chart row, but I was so drunk on power that I couldn't stop myself.

So, that's awesomeness #1.

Awesomeness #2 is that I just scored this in a swap:

$20 worth of yarn I'm never going to use, plus a $25 gift certificate to Knitpicks is getting me that sweet knitting bag. While I love my "Will knit for tattoos" bag more than life itself, sometimes it's not big enough and sometimes I need to be more covert with my knitting, and this should do the trick quite nicely.

And finally, awesomeness #3:

Saturday, I was in, in all places, KMart and saw something that prompted the urge to design again. It will be a tote bag. And it will be the most awesome bag ever toted. I just have to finish the 97,000 other things that must be done before I can start working on it.

Ugh.

2007-08-10T23:01:00.000-07:00

You know what is not fun? Knitting a scarf lengthwise, finding a mistake three rwos back that can't be fixed by dropping stitches and reknitting, frogging those rows, and then putting 376 stitches back on the needles.

Oh. Man.

This better be one awesome scarf when I'm done with it.

Directionless

2007-07-31T20:36:00.000-07:00

My knitting has been kind of flaily over the last few days. We've had so many people come check in on Adam that I started picking up my Fiber Trends dishcloth and working on it while we chatted. The pattern is easily memorized, so it was fairly mindless. I wasn't really into the pattern, though, and it took me 5 or 6 days to finish the one cloth. And really, I need to invest 5 minutes in the finish work for it to be really done.

I finished a dishcloth for the Just Dishcloths list at knit club on Saturday.

I'd like to get a jump on Christmas projects. And I'd like to plow through my bulky yarns. And I need to get my head in the proper space to send in an afghan proposal, but I'm not quite there yet and my wrist is still recovering from the Month Of Constant Crochet. And I really, desperately want to make something for myself.

I have the misti alpaca chunky from Linda and I cast on about 5 times for the Ribs and Ruffles Scarf, but I wanted it wider and longer. Ok, yarn-wise as I have twice the yarn it calls for, but I wanted to modify the ruffles at the beginning so they were a bit looser and I couldn't get the math right and I want MINDLESS WORK.

So, I pulled out One Skein and I think I'm going to try the Single Cable Scarf using the chunky and size 13 needles. It's a really, REALLY narrow scarf in the yarn it calls for, and I'm hoping the chunky/13 combo will pump it up to at least 5 inches across. If so, I'm just going to knit until both hanks are used up and maybe by then I'll be ready to swing back into the land of the creative and responsible, but not yet. Mindless is the name of the game for a little while longer yet.

Crafty update

2007-07-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

I have been knitting the last few days. (I seriously need a break from crochet!) I don't have any attention span, though. I started Wheelie from Knitty the other day, and then my husband asked me if I was an old lady. Hello, 113 means FIRE HOT steering wheels, thank you! And it's my car! I can cozy my car if I want to! But, yeah, it put me off a little. So then I started in on some dishcloths from a Fiber Trends pattern that I got in a swap, using a skein of hemp-blend that I got from my NSFY partner. It's fairly mindless, but I don't feel like picking it up again.

If I continue this way, I'm going to be back up to over 20 UFOs again, and no one wants that. So I think I'm going to devote myself to house projects and staring blankly into space instead. (It's an underrated pastime!)

Miss Pink commissioned a button for the Just Dishcloths group. Check it out! It has a knitting needle and a crochet hook incorporated in the lettering. It's pretty much the best button ever:

Please steal it, load it to your photo hosting site, and put it up on your blog. Spread the word!

The return of the absent blogger

2007-07-27T08:27:00.001-07:00

I have been awol for the most part the last month. First, I was working myself to tendonitis trying to get the projects for the book done. Which I did, thank you!

Then, we loaded the girls in the car and took them to Disneyland for 4 days. Which was awesome. Disneyland with small children is quite an experience. And the girls are completely obsessive about Princesses now. Send help.

Then, the day after we got back, my husband was on his way to scout camp and his truck was t-boned by a girl who was apparently trying to gun it to make it into the street between my husband and the guy behind him, but she misjudged and clipped the back of his truck, which sent it not only spinning, but then flipping, pinning my husband half out his window with the roof of the truck resting on his chest. (Yes, he had his seatbelt on. They aren't so great in roll overs, though, apparently.)

Yeah. That wasn't so cool.

He was air evaced to Scottsdale, where he spent a night in the ICU and another night in the normal ward. He has 6 broken ribs, a fractured skull, and a broken scapula. But, as someone put it, he was one more quarter-turn away from being dead, so we're thankful it wasn't a whole lot worse. Since then, I've been dealing with doctors and insurance companies and visitors, and as of yesterday a lawyer, on top of helping him get better, which, thankfully, he is doing pretty well. The ribs still give him a lot of greif, but as long as he doesn't run out of his pain meds, it's not crippling pain, and he's able to shower and get dressed and putter about on his own now. Considering the alternative, we're well pleased.

So, yeah. Then I figured, well, while he was gone to camp I was going to paint Kai's room, so since he's puttering around ok, I'll go ahead and do that. And I spent the next 48 hours days painting and reorganizing her room. And it looks great, but I probably should have put it off, because it was the last straw, I think, and all the insanity of the last 3 weeks is starting to hit me in a big way. Really, I'd be happy spending the next 2 days in bed. Not really an option. Instead, today I'm going to start tackling the office/craft room because I KNOW there are things burried in here that need to go back to the library and I have to get this room sorted before we start school again for the year, and now that Adam is out of commission for another 4-6 weeks, there is no way the addition is going to be ready, so we're going to have to make due with the space we have. Which means I'll have to go to the storage unit and go through things and only bring back what we will actually use for the first few months of school. Which means sorting through boxes when it's 106 degrees out.

Can you tell I'm stressed? A little? A smidge? At least it's transformed to a sort of constant, low-grade stress instead of the total freak-out stress of last week. Babysteps.

I think I'm going to end this here and start another post that isn't so depressing...

Yet more progress.

2007-07-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

So, long time, no post. I've been working hard on getting my projects done so I can get them in the mail. I think that 3 of the pattern sets and the FOs will be ready to ship off by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest. That will leave me to devote my full attention to the final project. I'm still ok on time. I may be mailing it from our Disneyland trip after finishing it on the drive over, but I am still ok on time.

This afternoon, I checked to make sure my assembly concept for the pillows was sound. And it was. So, thank heavens for small miracles! I didn't actually get to assemble them, I just know now that what I was planning to do is a-ok and can stop worrying about it. So, I turned my full attention to weaving in ends. *snore* 3 hours later, and I'm about 2/3rds done. There are a lot of ends to weave in. A lot. Like, over 250. Not all on one item, mind, but still. Normally, I'd just work over them, to be honest, but some of the color contrasts were too much and I wanted to make sure that the ends were well and truly on the wrong side of the work.

So, it's all moving along.

If anyone out there has been meaning to join my new and spangly chatter-free dishcloth lists, now is the time. July 8th will be the day we start our first knit cloth, and July 22nd will be the crochet cloth. Check it out:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustDishcloths/

The only posts allowed on the group will be when I send out the pattern bits. No forwarded jokes, yarn reviews, OMGWALMARTISN'TSELLINGYARN panic letters, or "I'M DONE!" emails.

Just. Dishcloths. Says it right there in the name. Join up. You know you want to.

I got my handy-dandy list of TNNA retailers in the mail the other day and found 2 shops I didn't know existed in two towns I was already planning on visiting while back to see family next month. One is in Shelburne Falls and the other in Sturbridge. I don't know if we'll make it to the one in Sturbridge, because if I remember correctly, Old Sturbridge Village is a bit removed from the town itself and I'm not sure the kids will want to go after walking around in 1780 all day, but I really hope to make it to the one in Shelburne Falls. That, plus Webs and the new shop in Greenfield that Mom is in love with, and I should have my yarn needs well and truly met on this trip. Especially since I'm no-yarn-fo-a-yearing. *ahem*

Also, there is a store in Brewster out on the Cape called "Town-Ho Needleworks." Hi-lar-i-ous.

Beware smaller sizes of Crochet Lites

2007-06-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

So, the whole light-up crochet hook thing seems to be on the rise. I got some from friends who got them in their goodie bags at Stitch'n'Pitch and don't crochet. I thought the idea was great, because I like to crochet in the car while my husband drives and this way I don't need a light on when it gets dark. Brilliant.

Then while I was at TNNA, the company rep pointed out that they are also great when you are working with dark yarns, because it helps you see the stitches. Well THAT was an amazing discovery, as I'm in the middle of a black-yarn heavy project and am sick of sitting under a bright light all the time.

So, while I was at the LYS last week, I picked up an F hook. Last night at SnB, I had forgotten my normal F-hook in the car, but realized I had the Crochet Lite F hook in my bag, so I pulled it out to give it a try for the first time.

That lasted for about 3 seconds. The clear plastic shaft that forms the hook part gets gradually larger toward the handle, so an F-hook STARTS as an F-hook, but it only remains an F for about 1/4 of an inch. After that, it goes up in size to, I'm guessing, about an I. So, unless you form all your stitches riiiiiight up against the hook and hold your yarn extremely close to the stitch so you can YO, your stitches will end up being as large as if you were working with a much larger hook. I assume it's because the handles all have to be a certain size to accomodate the batteries, and they didn't think to resize the opening to the handle and just figured they could taper the hook part because the engineer had never crocheted before. The larger hooks don't seem to have this problem, but I have an F and a D that are basically useless as an F and a D. I might be able to get away with using them for a pattern that uses a larger hook with a thin yarn, but other than that, they are pretty much useless.

So, take caution when buying these and look at the hook shaft. If they are still tapering by the time they reach the handle, they aren't the size they claim to be. If they've evened off before then and are straight by the time they reach the handle, you should be good to go. It's a shame, because the idea of these is brilliant.

Progress

2007-06-18T08:01:00.000-07:00

We have been rather busy around Chez Spiff this weekend. Adam traded in the Blazer for a Camry on Saturday. His brother was in town for a class reunion, and he and sister (who graduated the same year) decided to skip out and come party at our house. (Or, you know, eat pizza and chat.) And then yesterday it was Father's Day, which meant church followed by copious amounts of napping.

I managed to be productive none-the-less. I have reached the halfway point on the second project and am waiting on the last of the yarn to arrive before I can finish. So, I picked up project three and am about to finish the first of 3 patterns that that entails. Project three moves along much faster than project two, so I'm feeling less worried about the deadline now.

Today's schedule is comprised of grocery shopping, crocheting, feeding children, school, crocheting, making dinner, family home evening (we will be playing "cardboard games" tonight, per Kai's request), with a bit of crocheting to round it all off.

Oh, the gifties!

2007-06-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

I've been having some lovely yarn days these past few days. Two days ago, I got the box of yarn from Cascade for the afghan for Lark:

Squooshy, yarny goodness delivered right to my door! The ease! The convenience! The sheer magnitude of 24 skeins of yarn in one massive box!

Abby, ok, ABBY, the 2-year old who is obsessed with my knitting and crochet, went into spasms of giggles and gleeful squeeling. She is 2, guys. I am sensing a stash addict emerging. Kai was excited, too, but more because it's fun to get stuff from the UPS man. Abby was in total bliss over the yarn. She was standing on the chair next to the table while I checked the color numbers and snagged two hanks and started waving them around over her head and squeeling, "Look, Mommy! Look at the yarn! Are you making something for meeEEEEEeee?!"

So, yeah. Abby will get the afghan when it's done and photographed and returned. Green and brown aren't exactly little girl colors, but she is always just desperate to get something I made, and it's been a while.

Then, yesterday, I got the box of yarn from Patons for the kitchen set. This one came in an itty-bitty box, but was still just as thrilling to get.

Paton's Grace in Champagne and Cardinal. Oooh-la-la. This arrived during Quite Time, so Abby doesn't know about it yet, and so there were no hysterics when it arrived.

Also, the day before yesterday, I received my box from my No Sheep for You partner.

Elsebeth Lavold's Cotton Patine in a lovely purple. I love EL's yarns, and hadn't used this one yet, so it was quite a treat. She also included some lovely cube beads and two little green kitty face beads. The latter are totally becoming stitch markers! For me! For me! The former, I'm going to incorporate into some wire jewelry, I think. I got Annie Modessit's wire jewelry book at TNNA and there are quite a few designs I've been wanting to try. I've done a bit of wire crochet, but haven't tried any wire knitting yet.

So, THANK YOU, NSFY pal! It was a lovely suprise and completely perfect! :)

Then, to top off the Week of the Yarn, we had knit club last night, and Linda totally spoiled me for my birthday. She gave me two of the light up crochet hooks from Crochet Lite that I'm totally in love with. (Not only are they great for using in the dark, but when working with dark yarns, too. I tried to find an F at the Fiber Factory for the pillow covers I'm making, because black Cotton Fleece is so difficult to see, and it was the only size they didn't have! Oh noes!) And then, to top it off, two hanks of Misti Alpaca Chunky in a sort of pea soupy/lime color.

Oh man, can I just remind you all how much I long for sheets made of alpaca and a maid to clean them for me? I believe that it is the fiber used to make the angelic robes of the saints. (Some might think cashmere or silk, but I think God is more frugal than that. Why pay the big bucks when alpaca is so fabulous and affordable?) I keep holding the hanks against my head and smooshing it. You know what it feels like? Boobs. I'm going to say it. Hanks of Misti Alpaca Chunky have the same smooshability and softness of boobs. Resting your head against one is like being 4 again and snuggling against your mom when you get a booboo.

They should use that as a marketing point somehow. I wonder if describing a yarn as boob-like would increase sales to men? They'd want it packed in brown paper bags for the trip home so no one would know they'd bought the boob yarn.

And in the interest of full disclosure, Linda told me they had other colors and she wouldn't be offended if I swapped it out. While the lime is LOVELY, I thought I'd take a look, because it was kind of pale for coloring, and I wanted to see Tempe Yarn and Fiber now that it is in its new location. So, I packed up the girls and we went over and they had some RED that was amazing! So, I ended up switching colors after all, because I figured if it was for my birthday, I was definitely going to use it on ME and the red looked better against my skin. So, THANK YOU, LINDA for thinking of me and for the smooshy goodness of alpaca!!

Who has got the button?!

2007-06-13T06:40:00.000-07:00

Buttons are crazy expensive. $3.50 doesn't sound bad until you need 9 of them. I tried contacting a wholesaler even and that was only slightly better, because they have better buttons, so their wholesale prices were about as much as the plastic round ones at Joanns anyway. I wish I'd know this when I was in college, because I would have taken some classes in button design and manufacture. (I don't know that Smith offered it, but maybe I could have found it at UMass through the 5-college exchange?)

I found some yesterday at Fiber Factory that are smaller than I wanted, but will work in a pinch. I wish the wire crochet buttons I attempted would work, but like Jenny said, when the wire is thin enough to work with, it's not durable enough to hold it's shape. I'm still thinking of getting some round, flats in the wood department of Michael's and having Adam drill holes in them for me. A layer of spray sealer and voila--button!

The nonstop work on the projects caused a bit of tendonitis or bursitis or just general wrist pain the other day, and I had to go get a wrist splint. I've been taking it slower and it seems to have left me for now. I need to get cracking, though.

I remembered to take Kai to her class yesterday. I had to speak with the TA afterward, because apparently, she just had melt-down after melt-down the whole time. Her cousin was in the class with her, and I drove her home for my SIL, and the whole way, she was telling me in great detail what Kai had done wrong and I couldn't get her to stop. By the time we dropped her off, Kai was feeling pretty low, and I spent the rest of the day pumping her up again. I thought she was cool again, until she wandered out of her room after bedtime and I sent her back telling her we'd had a great day and it was time for bed, and she turned around and said, "Mom. I had an awful time today." *sigh* Being 4 is hard.

Slacker, slacker

2007-06-09T17:58:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't come through on the photos, but what can I say? I've been a bit over whelmed. I would love for this to be a blog that is updated daily with photos and quips and information, but srsly, this deadline is looming in a big way. And if my priorities are really family/life/work, then blogging about those things is going to be the least of my worries when things are nuts. I don't have to have the most spiffilicious craft blog on the planet. It's mainly for my own records anyway.

I've been crocheting at least 6 hours a day for the last week. The projects I'm making for the book are very time consuming. I'm so very pleased with how they are turning out, but man are they taking a long time. I'm leaving the afghan for last, not because it's the biggest project, but because it's on a large hook and should go faster than the smaller projects I have planned that require construction time, too.

The bathmat is done. I have to weave in 2 ends and that's it. I've started on the pillows, and they are the project that is taking so much longer than I had planned that I'm getting nervous. But I am making progress and I'm hoping that by the time I run out of the yarn I have, the yarn Brown Sheep is sending me will have arrived.

I know I've gushed about it on my LJ, but allow me to gush here, too: Yarn companies? Are sending me yarn. For free! To use for the projects I'm making for the books! That little lesson was the best thing I heard at TNNA. Yay, yarn for free! Patons, Brown Sheep, and Cascade are all graciously providing yarn. So, go buy lots from them for supporting designers!

Anyway, enough for now. Back to hooking.

Yarny goodness from TNNA

2007-06-05T06:58:00.000-07:00

Michelle wanted to see pictures of what I picked up at TNNA. I will take those today and hopefully have them up by tomorrow. I wasn't allowed to take photos at the event, because there was quite a bit of stuff that hadn't been "released" yet. And some of that stuff I have samples to play with, but some of it they weren't even giving away yet. So, I'll tell you about those first and you can start seeing pictures tomorrow.

First of all, SWTC has some gorgeous yarns coming out. One is called Yin/Yang. The Yin yarn is a standard yarn in some lovely colors. (I didn't get a handout on the yarns so I can't tell you what the content was. Darn!) It looked like a merino, but since it's coming from SWTC, I'm guessing there is some soy or corn mixed in. Anyway, as I said, lovely colors, very soft, nice handle and drape. Beautiful. The Yang version is the same as the Yin, but it has sequins. And I know what you're thinking--AHH! NOVELTY YARN! But no! The sequins were small enough and placed well so that it wasn't sequin over-load. The plan with the yin/yang combination is that they can be used together so you can make a sweater in mostly Yin, and then use the Yang as accents and not have to deal with attaching sequins yourself. I would give you a link, but this yarn is so new it's not even on the website yet.

Along the same lines, The Alpaca Yarn Company had this beautiful yarn called Glimmer. I'm trying to remember now if it was a lace or a dk weight, but the thing about it was that it has a strand of holographic fiber spun with it. And some yarn companies who shall remain nameless *coughcoughLionWoolEasecoughcough* have used this poorly in the past. The holographic strand is too thick and ends up being glaringly obvious to the eye and pokey against the skin. Glimmer's holographic thread is so thin that the samples they had knit up for display looked like they'd been danced upon by Tinkerbell. They had a very understated sparkle to them that looked like pixie dust. I was completely smitten with that yarn. It's perfect for evening wear items or a formal piece or a out-on-the-town item for people who still want to shine, but don't want to look like they coated themselves in Elmer's glue and rolled around in the glitter. And the best thing was that because the thread was so fine, it didn't interfere with the softness of the alpaca.

TNNA, baby!

2007-06-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

Well, THAT was an experience!

I got to Columbus in one piece and settled in to the hotel no problem. When I arrived, there was a massive mixed-flower bouquet, candle, and jar of bubble bath waiting for me from Adam. (Did I mention I was traveling on my birthday? He's such a sweetie.) I had dinner in the hotel restaurant and took a piece of cake back to my room to snack on later. And then ate it right away. *ahem* It was my birthday, people! Cake!

The mall was right next to my hotel and I had had plans to go get a new shirt to wear to TNNA the following day, only to find that the mall closed at 7. (My flight arrived at 7:15.) Seriously. Columbus is the state capitol and everything was closed by 7. Made. No. Sense.

I called Jamie and talked to her while I finished putting the lining in my bag and sewed in the handles. I think I finished at about 11 and tried to go to sleep then, but didn't actually fall asleep until 1. Curse you, time change!

At 6 am, someone dropped a breakfast tray in the hall and I couldn't fall back to sleep. So, I gave up at 7 and got up and got ready. At which point, I realized I'd forgotten to bring socks. I got myself together, took my bag downstairs and checked it at the front desk and asked if they knew where I could buy socks.

Sure! But none of the places open until 10!

Le sigh... So, I went out and got a taxi and headed over to the convention center in sneakers with no socks and a boring ole v-neck shirt. Oh, the humanity!

But wait! I had been dropped off at the wrong corner of the convention center and had to walk through the building and found an Ohio State Spirit shop! And they were open! I scored myself a sweet pair of bright red knee socks with large, white Os all over there. Sha-weet! I said a silent prayer of thanks that my pants were long enough to cover my socks completely and made my way to the convention itself.

Oh. My. There was a wall of fiber. A wall of yarn, mine for the stroking. And then there was a long double row of tables with mini-exhibits of different products and yarns. So many things to touch... But I was hungry and needed fuel and there were mini hoards around both of these exhibits, so I grabbed myself a smoothie and sat down at a table and was soon joined by a handful of women from a yarn shop in Indiana who were there to order. The owner didn't seem like she knew what to make of me, but I had a nice time chatting with her sister, who came with her every year for the heck of it.

When 10 rolled around and the doors opened, the mini-hoards made their way in and I took the opportunity to go through the mini displays and grope yarns and poke at gadgets, then I headed in to the event.

If I had to estimate, I would guess the floor space at about 2 or 2 and a half football fields large. Having never played football, I can't be expected to be completely accurate about that, but that's what it seemed like to me. Half of the space was for needlepoint things and the other half was for yarny things, with a few booths from each discipline mixed in on the other's side.

The first booth I sidled up to was the Mission Falls 1824 booth. It was staffed by an older man who looked like he was still getting settled, so I almost passed it by. But I went back and stepped in and had a looksie at the back wall of yarn and mentioned to the man that I was a designer. His response was, "Oh! Well, grab a ball and see what you can make of it!"

!!!!!

Crack to addicts, people. Crack. To. Addicts.

I made my way down that aisle, which happened to also house SWTC, who had a 6-stall space set up with GORGEOUS displays and holy dookie this amazing yarn they are coming out with that has SEQUINS, but they aren't insane sequins, and they also sell a version of the yarn without the sequins, so you can use the sequined version as just an accent if you want. I told them the lady who approached me that I was from Mesa and we chatted a bit and I handed her my flyer with my designs on it and she got very excited about one of them, and took it over to another lady who also got excited about it and came over and said she wanted to buy the pattern and she'd send me the yarn when she got back to make it up for them in Karaoke.

!!!!!

15 minutes into the event and I've learned that I can get whole skeins of free yarn AND I've sold a pattern.

I thanked them muchly and exchanged info and then moved on to the next booth that was taken by Conjoined Creations, which is a yarn producer in Cave Creek. So I said hi to them, too, as a valley local and we talked. They had some gorgeous yarns and when I told them I was the head of the Mesa Stitch'n'Bitch, they offered to come over and sell us some of their discontinued yarns and seconds. Yay!

From there I moved on a bit more methodically through the yarn side of the room, stopping to see who had crochet pattern support and offer my flier to all who would take it. The smaller yarn companies were very open to crochet submissions, and the large yarn companies were very eager to provide yarn support for any patterns that were to be published in a book or magazine. Both bits of information were excellent to hear!

I saw amazing things. Wonderful yarns that are coming out that have a "normal" yarn base, with a bit of sparkle or sequins or beading. They weren't "novelty" yarns, but they added a bit of sumthin-sumthin to the projects. I touched acrylics and acrylic blends that felt like fine merino. (There is no reason for acrylic to be harsh and scratchy and plasticy in feel. That is all the result of yarn companies pandering to the tastes of knitters of the 30's and 40's for whom rough, coarse wool meant projects would be durable, and they created their acrylics to appeal to people who thought things had to be coarse to be long wearing. They are FINALLY catching on to the fact that people really aren't interested in that any more and want SOFT and durable yarns.) I saw a lot of yarns with soy and corn components to them. Lost of exotic fibers; yak, qiviuk, buffalo, all trying to increase their footprint. (Did you know that buffalo doesn't felt OR stretch?!)

I saw Amy Butler bags suitable for knitting projects, a new bag from Namaste that looks like a yoga bag, book mock-ups (Saw the Crochet Me book!! It is BEAUTIFUL!), lots and lots of product distributors who appeared to be selling the same sets of things. Clover has these cute little "critter" pouches coming out that are rubbery animal shapes that have a zipper around their equator. They killed me.

Just before my meeting with Nicole from Lark, I found a book distributor that was giving away free books! Well, that just opened a whole new door of possibilities. ;)

I meet with Nicole and it was very positive. We talked about what was missing from the crochet books on the market and how gaps could be filled (more intermediate and advanced, kthx!) and she picked my brain on resources and what I saw as the up-and-coming trends. She then told me how to pitch my own book proposal to the company and asked if I had any ideas. I didn't have anything, like, OMGEXCITING in mind. I'd been thinking about it, but nothing wonderful had been cropping up for me in the last week or so.

But that changed later in the day...

Anyway, we ended the meeting and I went on my way for a few minutes before spotting a knit designer and had my first gap-jawed celebrity spotting of the day. Then I had to call Amanda, at which point I turned into a stupid, giggling 13-year old for about 10 minutes. It was the first time in 4 hours when I didn't have to be "on" and the whole "holy crap, I can't beleive I'm at TNNA!" swept over me in a big way.

When I was finished gushing, I pulled myself together and headed back out onto the floor. I stumbled upon Kim Werker doing a book signing and stopped to say hi real quick. She was at the book with the woman who taught Teach Yourself Visually: Handspinning and I got a little geeked out by her, too.

Moving on, I found myself at a book signing for Annie Modesitt's new book, but had to run off before I got a copy, because I had my meeting with Kim. Still, slack-jawed gawping occured from my spot in line while I was there.

I so need help.

Kim and I went out to the coffee klauch and got some food and I met 2 other designers (Amy Swenson & Robyn Chachula) in the line. Kim and I sat and chatted for a while and then headed back in. She was in high demand, so I said goodbye and went to check in with some people she recommended that I go name-drop with. Oh, but before that, on the way in she sidled up to a group of 4 people and introduced me.

And, folks, they were... huge. I got a "hi, nice to meet you" out, but all 4 of them were people I'd seen on TV or recognized from multiple author-bios on various books. Big books. Books with major publisher backing and signing tours. I nearly shriveled up into a little piece of fluff before bursting forth into a burst of gushing and twittering and self-idiot-making. Luckily, we moved on tout-suite before I was given the opportunity to either shrivel or burst. I left Kim at the Interweave booth and went and made a few contacts she had recommended.

I had enough time to make it to the last of the yarn booths that were intermingled with the needlepoint booths before moving outside to catch the cab back to the hotel.

So, what was my overall impression?

People in the knitting/crocheting/yarn world? They are nice. Now, this might seem like an odd revelation. I mean, knitting and crochet is inherently a kind thing to do. Taking the time to make something by hand, for yourself or for someone else, is an act of kindness. But it's never really sunk in for me before this even how open and kind and helpful the people in the industry are. I was at the Karabella yarn booth(s)... Ok, now if there is a yarn company out there that says high-end, New York Couture to me, it's Karabella. I started by speaking to a rep, who was very New York Chic, but insanely nice, offered yarn support anytime, willing to chat with this new-to-the-industry designer, and then waves... oh my gosh, I'm going to type this... Berta Karapetyan over to show me the sweater she designed in the company's yarn. And Berta then went on to whip out her brand, spanking new book, and flip through it with me and show off little details and yarn choices.

Ok, I'm there in my boring, v-neck t-shirt, sneakers, red Ohoi State fan store socks, a bag bulging with freebies, hair that's all out of sorts because I forgot my products at home, clutching my little "I'm a designer, Love me!" flyers in my hand, and

Berta Karapetyan

Is flipping through her book with me and talking to me like I know what the hell I'm doing there.

A few minutes later, I was walking down the aisle again and feeling a little misty about it all, to be honest.

To see someone like (yes, I'm typing it again) Berta Karapetyan so excited and eager to show off what she's done to a little fledgling designer like me and to realize that all around me everyone was behaving this way was just overwhelming.

Because design isn't supposed to be that way. It's supposed to be competitive and cut-throat and you guard your techniques and you scoff at those beneath you, right?

I just didn't know how to process all this. Jane freakin' SOWERBY was at a booth near there chatting with a lady about lace like they were long-time knit club pals.

I had the owner of Alpaca with a Twist turn into a giggling 16-year old as she told me about Kim Werker buying a crocheted shawl off of her at an event to publish in Interweave Crochet!

The freebies were great. It was nice to get away. But the number one BIG THING that I took away from this conference is the realization that industry people WANT designers to be successful. They want you to be doing good work and they are open to seeing your ideas and willing to support you on the way. It's not an imposition to contact publishers and yarn companies with patterns. They are hungry for it. It all sent my brain to swirling, to be honest.

And then, it was time to leave. And leave I did. But the story does not end there. I made it to the airport about an hour before they started boarding (I could have stayed longer!) and called Adam and talked for a bit. He had to go to a homeowner meeting and I started flipping through a magazine.

And WHAM! It hit me. A book idea slapped me upside my skull. I whipped out my notebook and in about 5 minutes, I'd jotted down 18 projects. By the end of my first flight, I'd gotten it up to 22. When I think about it, I can see the photography and layout in my head. (I know not to get married to that, though!) The projects include a few beginner, but for the most part they are intermediate and advanced projects. I know what yarns I want to use for about half of them. But, it's big and I still have a few things to learn about the process of designing a whole book on my own before I take this to a publisher.

I arrived home sore from the knees down, with bruises on both shoulders and my left inner-elbow from carrying a couple of VERY heavy bags all day, tired like whoa and badly in need of a shower, but I am so very, very glad I went.

So, yeah. I VERY nice 36 hours.

I will survive! Please, please, let me survive!

2007-05-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

I swear, it will be a miracle if I make it through the next 4 days without my head exploding.

But one bit of the oh-my-gosh-please-don't-let-it-get-me stress is over, baby. OVER!

That particular bit of stress being the relaunch of my crafty little selling site. My major source of pride in this relaunch is the addition of these awesome tile magnets. I so don't want to sell them, but, seriously, how many magnets can my poor little fridge hold?

Check it out! http://www.thisisspiffy.com

Now I need to:

Finish knitting a bag strap.
Assemble the bag.
Go to Joanns for fabric.
Line the bag.
Prepare a portfolio for TNNA.
Prepare mini-portfolio, self-promotional hand-outs for TNNA.
Pack.
Read up on what I can't take with me on the plane.
Try and find an itty-bitty bottle of saline for my contacts, because I really don't want to have to check a bag.
Get the order in to Webs for the yarn for the projects for the publisher.
Keep the house chaos at bay.
Not go crazy.
Not make children crazy.
Not make husband crazy.

Oh, my. It is all possible, right?

UGH! I just remembered that Adam is cutting the hole in the wall today. And I need a haircut. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Well, it's official!

2007-05-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

I am (or will be as soon as I get the contract printed out and mailed in) an Official Crochet Designer.

I heard back from the people at the publishing company today and they picked up 4 of my designs for an upcoming household crochet book.

Yay! I would like to thank my husband for his patience at finding yarn all over the house, being shushed while I count, and willingness to engage in sidetrips to yarn shops while on vacation. The kids have been great at not touching mommy's work and only doodling on the blank pages of my design journal, so thanks for that. The wonderful people at Crochet Me, who gave me the foolish notion that other people would be interested in my designs in the first place. The ladies at knit club who put up with my incessant chatter about it all, especially Miss Pink and Linda who have hooked me up with yarn and encouragement countless times. And, of course, The Academy!

New Dishcloth Group

2007-05-28T20:55:00.000-07:00

I, like many knitters I know, can be rather obsessive about dishcloths. I like them mainly because they are a great way to try out stitch patterns. I don't really NEED dishcloths myself. I prefer sponges, truth be told. But still. They are fun and quick. At first I enjoyed the dishcloth mailing list where you get a few lines of the pattern at a time and get to see the pattern unfold as the days progress. It's a mini mystery and the small doses can make overwhelming patterns seems much more doable.

However.

And it's a big-H However.

For some reason, dishcloth mailing lists are plagued with off-topic posts. I occasionally end up deleting bits of the pattern on accident when I'm trying to get rid of all the fluff emails, which is so very frustrating. I mean, I'm glad that some people out there have found a bit of community on the list and that's all well and good, but, really people, I just want to knit some funky swatches, and 20+ off-topic emails a day gets old fast.

So, I'm starting my own list. C'mon and join in if you like. Looking at my schedule I think I'll be able to start sending out patterns in mid-August. (Summer is crazy, and I'm going on 2 trips between now and then, so I'm trying to be realistic.) In the meantime, I'm going to be sussing out the first few patterns and spreading the word. Feel free to spread the word yourself if you like. This group will have zero fluff. The only emails you will get from the list will be the bits of patterns. A dishcloth list that is JUST dishcloths. The patterns will be available in the archives after the knit-along is over. The first pattern of the month will be a knitting pattern, the second a crochet pattern. We're going to start easy in both areas, so if you are a beginner in either area, this should be good practice for you.

Incidentally, I don't plan on doing many, if any, of the knit/purl picture cloths. I, personally, find them kind of boring to work on, and I get really annoyed when I finish one only to find that it's something I care nothing about. The vast majority of the cloths on this list will be ones that strengthen your technical abilities: lace, relief patterns, cables, etc.

You can find the group here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustDishcloths

You'll need a yahoo id to join the group. If you don't already have a yahoo id, you can sign up at http://groups.yahoo.com It's free and easy to do, and once you've gotten the id and told them what email address you want your group mail sent to, you won't have to log on again if you don't want to, so it's not a big, scary techno-thing you need to learn how to navigate. Just follow the links and do what it tells you to do.

If you are oh-so excited and want to start stocking up on yarn, I'll tell you now that while many people prefer kitchen cotton, I personally prefer a dk weight cotton, as I find it dries faster and isn't as big and floppy while I'm working with it. I get my DK cotton from recycling cotton sweaters, but Patons Grace works well, too. Some standard worsted weight kitchen cottons are peaches and cream or sugar'n'creme.

So, there you have it. Join up! Spread the word!

Well, it's official.

2007-05-25T08:44:00.001-07:00

I'm going to TNNA this year. Woohoo! It's part business related travel and part birthday present. It's going to be a whirlwind trip, flying in Friday and leaving Saturday evening, but it's 36 hours of me-time and that's a good thing.

Knit club was fun last night. Jenny made it and Linda was there and we had a new face in the form of Tristan. Tristan has been undergoing a lot of education recently on the existance of local knit clubs and other yarn stores. So, she found us! And then we had someone walk by while we were there and she crochets and needs help, so she's going to be coming next week.

Crap is relative.

2007-05-22T22:53:00.000-07:00

A little while back, I signed up for a Crap Yarn Swap on Swap-Bot. The premise of the swap was, I thought, genius. You send $10 of yarn that has been loitering around the edges of your stash so long that you have come to loathe it. You can't think of a single thing to make with it, and you're sick of the sight of it. Off it goes to your partner. In the meantime, you get crap yarn from your upstream pal. And you, with your fresh eyes, look at your upstream partner's crap and make it into something for your downstream partner.

Brilliant, right?

RIGHT!

This was such a fantastic swap. I can't even tell you how pleased I was with the whole experience.

For my contribution of yarn, I sent of a partial skein of mohair/acrylic blend and a mystery mohair that I'd used to make a poncho for Kai last year and had no idea what to do with what was left. That yarn was seriously starting to feel like a noose, because there was a LOT left and I was feeling some major yarn guilt for not putting it to good use. So, yay, I got rid of guilt yarn! Joy!

My upstream partner was extremely generous. She sent me way more than $10 worth of yarn. She sent a skein of elann Sonata, Sinfonia, Elsebeth Lavold Angora, Bernat Boucle and Nora. (I can't remember the manufacturer of Nora, but it was that train-track style yarn with a squiggle of multi-colored wool in between.)

I poked through my downstream partner's profile and saw she needed a bag for her knitting, so I thought that would be a safe project. I thought I'd use the boucle paired with one of the cottons, but I didn't like how it looked with the colors I had, so I did some stash diving and came out with two balls of Cotton Tots in black and used it with the boucle. I just knit a large rectangle on 10.5 needles until I had a yard of the Cotton Tots left to use for seaming. I folded the bag in half and seamed up the sides and added gussets 1" in on either side of the bottom of the bag.

(Ooh, look! Renovation mess in the background!)

While diving for fabric to line it with, I came up with a flour sack I'd been saving and after reseaming it and lopping off a few inches from the top and bottom, it fit the bag perfectly with the design lining up exactly in the interior. Eeeexcellent... My plan was working... I attached some rattan handles with a bit of grosgrain ribbon, added a snap closure and called it good.

I had tried using some of the Sinfonia and Nora to make a dragonfly motif to go on the front of the bag, as my partner said she liked dragonflies and I thought the Nora would work well for the wings. However, it didn't work with the bulky yarn and looked like dookie, so I left it off. Instead, I used to Sinfonia and the Sonata to make star shaped washcloths for her.

I used the pattern for Beth's Little Star Afghan with an h hook and stopping at the 7th row of the pattern. They came out cute, if I do say so myself. I think I may whip up a bunch for my girls to use with the yarn from the sweater I recycled. They took all of maybe 30 minutes to make each of them. I heart crochet.

With the Angora (oooooh, angora--even as a blend--was so lovely to work with!), I decided to make up some fingerless gloves--another thing my partner had on her wish list. So, I started googling for patterns. Only I couldn't find any that would work with the limited yardage of the Angora. And then I found these. I double stranded the Angora to get the proper weight and used some of the remaining Boucle for the wrists. It was a simple pattern and they worked up easily. I'm not in love with the Boucle. It looks ok, but the difference in feel from the Angora was very noticeable. Unfortunately, I didn't have anything in my stash that would be any better, so they went off as is. I wouldn't be the least bit offended if my swap partner decided to snip the cuffs off and rework them.

So all of those went off the other day and should arrive in the next day or two if they haven't already. In the end, I couldn't figure out anything to do with the Nora. I never really "got" the whole novelty yarn craze and my lack of experience working with the funky stuff ended up kicking my butt. I sent it along with the FOs and figured that the 2 balls of cotton tots I pulled out of my own stash made it ok that I didn't use one of the balls of crap yarn that was sent to me.

And what did I get for a finished item from my upstream pal? Dress-up clothes for the kids!

An apron, 2 crowns and a clutch for them to use to play Cinderella. She left the crowns unfinished so I could size them to their heads, which I thought was very clever. She had quite a challenge with the yarn. I know I wouldn't have come up with anything half as cute. The apron is especially adorable, I think, and it's large enough that it fits them more like a skirt at this point. They LOVE their crowns. Abby went to get dressed this morning and came out with a t-shirt, a long skirt of Kai's that touched the ground on her, and her crown. A little princess, ready to head to Target!

Thank you, partner!!

I would absolutely do another swap like this again. It already has me looking at my own stash with a more discerning eye.

Walk all over me, why don'tcha?

2007-05-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

I made a rug last month.

Pattern: My own, using my handy-dandy Harmony Stitch Guides.
Yarn: Some old Aunt Lydia's Rug Yarn that was given to me by my mom.
Comments: I... well, it's a rug, right? Utilitarian and all that. I'm not all that woohoo about it, because I really don't like the colors, but I had the yarn and I was sick of having it in my stash, so I made it to use up the yarn. I was willing to overlook the blah factor of the colors, because it is utilitarian, but you know what? It's not even functioning well as a rug. Yeah, the yarn is a bulky acrylic spun up to be a real workhorse yarn. But, one thing about acrylic is that it's got very little heft to it. And so this rug is constantly getting kicked about and folded over on itself and I'm always having to set it right again. I don't want to use it on the linoleum areas in the house, because it would be too slippery AND folding all over itself and being generally a nuisance. If I had pets, I'd consider using it as a mat under their food dishes, but really, this rug has turned out to be fairly useless. I think it's going to Goodwill. Not only that, but I have a knitted rug on the needles right now with the same yarn that I think is going to Goodwill with it. Maybe someone else will come up with a better use for the yarn.

It's a shame, because I like the look of the stitch pattern as a rug, but I think it would have turned out better in a bulky, rough, wool yarn, possibly felted slightly in some colors that suit my house a bit more. Eh. Live and learn. Perhaps when all the dust of the rennovation has settled and we have the new flooring in, I'll give it a try again in some Peace Fleece.

I'm alive! (So far.)

2007-05-19T17:47:00.000-07:00

Well, it's time I poke my head above the construction dust and reassure people that I am still alive. Things are moving along well, thanks to the week long visit from my dad, during which time he put in about 10 hours of work a day on various projects. My dad is the hardest worker I know. Rome wasn't built in a day simply because my dad hadn't been born yet.

I've taken tons of photos and plan to share this week. Lots of crafting, LOTS of home improvements. So, let's begin shall we?

Today, I bring you the progress on the bathroom. Along with the tale of woe. I know many of you have heard this already so just skip to the photos if you've heard it all before. Let's recap:

Tile Man came and continued to work on the bathroom. There was a mix-up with the floor tile, but we just thought it meant it would take another day or two for it to be done. Also, he apparently didn't figure into his estimate some of the minor drywall work that needed to be done to finish the tile. So, that added some time, too, while Adam finished that. (We asked him to give us a quote where Adam had to do nothing else in order for the tile to be done. And he didn't. Or he changed his mind or something. I really hate how contractors can hold you hostage with your house.) Also, he called on the Saturday after he started work wondering if the floor tile was in, because he was moving to California the following day and would come lay it for us if it was in. A-wha?! Adam nearly lost it completely at that point, but we called and figured out that we had had a bad game of Telephone going on where we would say something and he thought we knew and he would say something and we thought he meant something different. So, we couldn't hold that against him even though it would have been nice had he outright told us at least once rather than assuming we knew he was leaving the state.

*ahem* I'm letting the frustration get me all out of order. He put the wall tile in and after the big misunderstanding, he came back from California the following week for a day to lay the floor tile and fix a few things he'd screwed up. When I went in to see the tile after he'd left, (i.e. gone back to California) I noticed that he'd laid the entire floor of the shower stall 1/4 inch below the lip of the drain. So the water couldn't drain. There would have always been a puddle. We ended up having to rip it all up and starting over. That damaged the sheets of tile, so when we reinstall it, we will have to piece in tiles one by one in several spots.

Seriously frustrating. These are the BIG issues we had with the guy. There were plenty of minor things that we just grinned and ignored. We paid him way too much for what he did. Between my mom's home renovation 15 years ago and this experience, I have no trust for contractors anymore. At all.

Anyway, the walls look lovely. Let's see some photos!

First, the photos from before Tile Guy came:

This shot shows the icky floor tile.

This shot gives you a look at the walls for the shower stall.

And, after:

The shower stall. The floor of the stall is white just because Adam used white concrete to raise the floor level before putting the tile in again. It's still not been retiled yet. Isn't the wall tile pretty, though?! I'm totally blissed out with how it turned out. The blue tiles are 1" tumbled glass. LOVE it!

The new floor. I wanted to have black grout so that it looked like a 30's bathroom, but Tile Guy wouldn't do it, because black grout will bleed into the tiles. I don't know what they did differently in the 30's, but I wasn't going to argue. I just wanted it done. (Also, Adam ended up grouting it, because of the mix-up with the floor tile and Tile Guy moving.)

Since these photos were taken, the toilet, sink pedestal, and shelves have been reinstalled. Adam is getting close to being done with that room, though, so instead of doing more in-progress shots, I'll take more photos when it's all done.

The next post will be crafty again, I promise!

Slideshows may be annoying, but they are really fast to put together and post!

2007-05-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

Here are all the scary "before" photos from the bathroom. (Click that sentence. Then I had to click to option to go full size before it would play for me.) I believe we started this in January '06. So, a year and a half of bathroom limbo and we're close to being done. Finally. I will post pictures of the tile in progress when I have a few more spare moments. In the meantime, I think you can agree that this room really, really needed some attention.

I cannot think of a subject today.

2007-05-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

I have been so busy in the last month that my head is starting to spin round backwards. I do have photos. I just have no time to edit and post them. And that's been getting in the way of my posting anything, but I'm starting to forget things about my crafty projects, so I need to get them down despite the lack of photos.

First, I finished the afghan I was making for the afghan for Afghans Mother's Day drive. It's packed up with a baby sweater I made for my daughter when she was a baby and she never wore and I think 7 hats for adults and babies and will go out in today's mail if I can make it to the PO in time.

Second, I'm taking part in a crap yarn swap over at swap-bot.com. It's a two part swap. You send some crap yarn from your stash--not necessarily crap but something that has been in your stash for ages and you can't figure out how to use--to your swap partner. Your swap partner then uses that yarn to make something for their swap partner. My shipment of yarn arrived on Saturday from my swap partner and a) she sent me a ton of stuff and b) it was, for the most part, fairly awesome stuff. There were a couple of hanks of novelty yarn (ok, I will classify that as the crap. ;) ), but in addition to that, there were 2 different balls of mercerized DK weight cotton, and a hank of ANGORA/WOOL blend! Hi! Angora!!

So, I looked at it all and there were some yarns that clearly would work with some and some that would work with others, but nothing was coming to me idea-wise as a way that I could use everything. I went to my downstream partner's info page and tried to get some inspiration there and was coming up empty.

And then it hit me. I had a couple of hanks of crap yarn in my own stash that I'd been struggling to find a use for. (It didn't go to my swap partner in the first phase, because if I had sent her all the yarn from my stash that I didn't know how to use, she would have gotten a very, very large box.) So, I went and got those two balls, which, incidentally were black, mercerized cotton, and double stranding it with the hank of black Bernat Soft Boucle that came in my package, I started knitting a stockinette rectangle. And, immediately, I was really, really happy with what I saw. The mercerized cotton toned down the boucle-ness of the boucle and makes it look much more sophisticated. I don't want to say what the rectangle will eventually become, because there aren't many people in the swap and it wouldn't be all that hard for my downstream partner to find my blog. So stay tuned on that.

It occured to me, also, that 2 of the other yarns that were sent to me could be used to create a motif of something that my downstream partner says she's very into. So I found a free pattern to make said motif in thread and I'm going to upsize it to work with the yarn I have to put on the project when it's done. I think this is going to turn into a project I'm sad to see go. I'm so glad I signed up for this swap, because I would never, never, never have bought two of the three yarns I'm using in this project, but the premise of the swap made me work with what I got and I think it's going to be something really great. While I was digging around to get the yarn out of my own stash, I was already looking at what I had with more appreciation.

And finally, my Dad is arriving for a visit on Saturday. The Tile Guy messed up the tile in my shower stall right before he left town and so we had to rip it all up and my husband will be redoing it after work throughout the week. And, Wednesday we start framing in the play room to turn it into a bedroom and the carport to turn it into a dining/homeschool room. I need to purge the playroom and figure out how to arrange furniture so that it's out of the way, but our house is livable. While all this is going on, the deadline for the swatches for the book projects are fast approaching. I'm hoping to have all the swatches for one of the projects done by tonight, another project done by tomorrow providing the yarn arrives, and then spend two days each on the swatches for the last two things. My life can be very boring and mellow for months on end and then WHAMO everything will hit at once like this. So, bear with me, but I know right now that I will be MIA for the next few weeks.

Now I feel bad about being all slackery

2007-05-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

I was blogtipped today! My slacker, slacker blog was blog tipped! Oh, the kick in the pants that was!!

I haven't been posting the last week, because I have been so. very. busy. We had the means to finish decorating our bedroom, so I jumped at that. But that can't just be an easy task. Oh no. Not when you are a vintage-loving cheapskate like myself. Finishing off a room means scouring the Target clearance shelves and driving to every thrift store in town looking for something juuuuuuuust right. Luckily, it all panned out. I'm waiting on some curtains that were out of stock at Target, but other than that, the room is done. Yay!

We've been living in a semi-limbo, too, with the tile in our second bathroom. We had one of those situations you hear about where two people come together with person A thinking person B knows something and so never says it outright. And person B occaisionally says something that reinforces this belief to person A. But really, person B knows nothing and so one day, they both have a rude awakening. In our case, Tile Guy assumed that we knew that he was moving to California the day aftrer our bathroom was supposed to be done. Unfortunately, some of the tile had to be special ordered, which meant that it would take another week before it could be finished. It was a rather large assumption, and one that left our bathroom 2 days from finished and everything that should be IN my bathroom in the middle of our very small bedroom instead. The situation has all been sorted out. He's coming back tomorrow to finish it. But in the meantime, getting ready in the morning takes almost twice as long and crawling into bed at night is akin to walking through a mine field.

On the craft side of things, I have nothing exciting to share at the moment. Well, at least not with pictures.

I finished Gina's Fat Bottomed Bag for her birthday. It. Was. Amazing. As much as I loved the first one, I totally adored the one I made for Gina. And when we were done, I took the girls to the mall and Kai helped me pick out a flower pin for it that was absolutely perfect. And then I wrapped it up in the back of the Blazer in the mall parking lot and we drove it right over to Gina. And I didn't have the camera. So I have not one single photo. I am totally bummed, and plan to fix that the next time I see her, so stay tuned. I'll give the stats now and then when I have photos, I'll add them to this post.

The Stats:
Fat Bottomed Bag for Gina
Pattern: Fat Bottomed Bag from The Happy Hooker (Modified Green Version, see below)
Yarn: One and maybe a quarter hank of Peace Fleece worsted in Siberian Midnight.
Hook: H
Notions and Sundry: 2 6-inch round bamboo handles, a flower broach from Dillards (because I get my PF so cheap, the broach ended up costing as much as the combined costs of the rest of the supplies for the bag!), fabric for lining.
Modifications: The yarn for this was a bit thinner than the yarn the bag called for. So, I used a smaller hook, worked the increases for 2 more rows, the non-increase portion for 2 more rows, and the decreases for 2 more rows. Then I measured guage and realized that even though it was thinner yarn, I was still on guage. Go figure. Still, it was ever so slightly larger and I really liked it that size, so I'm not complaining. Plus Gina just had her third baby not long ago, so now there is room for a diaper and some wipes if she wants to travel light. Also, while working on it, it dawned on me that wool may not be the best choice, given it's propensities to stretch, so when I lined it, I didn't just line the pouch part at the bottom, but also the tabs that fold over the bamboo handles. It made the bag feel very solidly build and durable. It was very, very hard to give this one away.

At the moment, I'm working on a highly practical, super simple afghan for Afghans for Afghans' Mother's Day drive. I was trying desperately to get it done before some new yarn arrived on my door, and didn't quite make it. It needs to be finished asap, though, so I can ship it off in time, so I'm hoping I can wrap it up in 2 days. I'm doing it as a single crochet granny, but just working around instead of stopping and turning, so I don't have to pay any attention to it. But now that I'm 10" or so from being done, it's taking longer and longer to make it around as the square builds. So 2 days may be optimistic.

And, new yarn at my door? Could it be so? Aren't I supposed to be doing No Yarn for a Year? (ahem... sort of?) Why am I not hiding my head in shame? Well, I feel like sharing today, so I'll let you in on something. Shortly after the last Crochet Me went live, I was contacted by a publisher putting together a pattern book on crochet for the home, and inviting me to submit. After I finished squeeing, I put together a 5-item proposal. (Did I mention we're redoing the decor in our house? I was already planning 4 of the 5 things anyway, so her timing was fabulous.) She liked 4 of the 5 ideas, so I've been swatching and sketching and drawing and frogging and figuring and pulling my hair out and ordering yarn and waiting for yarn and basically trying not to go nuts. I'm still in the process of being accepted, but really, just being invited is a big, flattering step for me. Some of the yarn arrived yesterday and was the WRONG SIZE and I nearly fell over dead on the spot and their customer service was already closed for the day. (One of the joys of living in Arizona...) So I'll be dealing with that today and crossing my fingers that the correct yarn will arrive in time for the swatch deadline.

And that, my friends, is the last week in a nutshell. Today I need to run to the post office and do some yard work and then get crackin' again on the project backlog and sroject swatches. I will someday post pictures again, I promise. I don't suppose there is some young, hopefuly photographer/web designer out there who would like to come get me caught up on my photography, edit it, and add it to my posts?

No one?

Not even for cookies?

Oops...

2007-04-24T22:36:00.000-07:00

So much for updating regularly. Once a week is still regular, right?

Things have been busy. What can I say? The last 36 or so hours, the girls have had a stomach something-or-other and so I've been doing lots of laundry and cleaning lots of carpeting and patting two lethargic little girls on the head and reassuring them that things will get better.

While doing all that, Tile Man came and preped the bathroom to receive its tile. After 2 years, it's looking like I should have a completely finished bathroom by the end of next week.

And there was much rejoicing!

And, on top of both of those things, I've had some good stuff going on that I don't really want to talk about yet. But it has to do with meeting one of my major crafty goals for the year and will involve quite a bit of work between now and the end of next month. So, I'm not going to have tons to report for the next 6 weeks or so.

I have managed to figure out some of the issues with my camera (Thanks, Michelle!) and my business website should relaunch soon and I should be able to get some more photos up in the next day or two of some more FOs. Namely, a few more adult-sized hats and some baby hats for Afghans for Afghans. And, right now I'm in-progress on my SIL's birthday present. It's another Fat Bottomed Bag from The Happy Hooker, but I'm making it in Peace Fleece this time with a smaller hook. I wasn't all that excited about it to start with, because I couldn't figure out how to embellish this particular color of PF that was the only one I had enough of to make the bag. But then it dawned on me, and I'm totally excited can can't wait to finish it to show it off and really, really want to make another for myself. Ugh.

Pictures soon!

Photos!

2007-04-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

Ok, I got some good shots of my finished projects. Still no luck on the stitch markers, but I think I know what the problem is now and will tackle them later.

Ok, the bag:

The Stats:
Pattern: Fat Bottom Bag from The Happy Hooker (the gold version)
Yarn: 2.5 hanks of Cascade Fun in color 0280 used with a thread of white, size 30 crochet cotton.
Hook: I
Other bits and pieces: vintage plastic handles, Pin from Claire's Boutiques ICING line, white fabric scraps for lining.

This project worked up fast and was very easy. Lining was the roughest part, but just because I don't do well with gathers. To cut out the lining, before making the tabs to attach the handles to the bag, I put a piece of folded fabric on my cutting mat, folded the bag in half and laid it down on the fabric, and then used my rotary cutter to cut the fabric about 1/2 of an inch away from the bag edges all the way around. I seamed the bottom "curve" of the fabric, then hemmed the sides and top. Then, I tried to do tucks on one side, but got the measurements a bit off, so for the other side, I just did gathers so I could adjust as I go. And I don't stress about it being different on either side of the lining, because it's just for me and how many people are going to see the inside of my bag?

My only beef with this bag is a minor one, and that's that when you set it down, it flops all over the place and comes open. That's an easy thing to fix, though. I'll be sewing a snap into the lining to take care of that.

I am totally smitten with this bag. I wore jeans and a t-shirt to go to the yarn shop yesterday and I took this bag with me even though it was way more glam than I was. I just love it to bits.

The hat:

Pattern: A free one from Jimmy Beans Wool.
Yarn: A strand of Reynolds Lite Lopi in natural, and a strand of some verigated wool that I have forgotten the name of that I got from Ms. Pink sometime last year. It was leftover from the bag she made for her One Skein swap partner. I ran out of it about 10 yards from the end, so the crown is a strand of the lopi and a strand of SWTC's Optimum in Turquoise. It coordinated, and the motteling made it less noticable.
Needles: 10.5 US
Notes: I only knit 4 rows between the first and second decrease rows, because I knew I was going to be close.

This is a great pattern for bulky wool, or if you want to make a scrappy hat with a couple of strands of worsted. It's very thick and warm, and it worked up in about 2 hours. Maybe 3. It's going off to Afghans for Afghans for their Mother's Day drive.

I'm not a slacker! I swear!

2007-04-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's been a few days. I think the whole camera-exploding thing threw me off. And now, I'm having a really difficult time figuring out how to get good shots from our new camera, so I've been spending a lot of time fighting with that. But I've still been knitting and crocheting.

I started and finished a Fat Bottom Bag from The Happy Hooker, designed by Julie Holetz. Click her name and you'll see her website, which opens with a photo of the bag. But mine is made in a totally different yarn, in the "gold bag" style from the book and I can't wait to get a decent shot of it to share, because I luuuuurve it.

Also, I've decided to work through my scrap box and make up some stuff for charity. I started crocheting a hat, ran out of yarn, frogged it, started again with a larger hook because it was so stiff anyway, ran out again, frogged it, and then knit it. I finished it last night while watching a TiVoed 24 and had 1 yard to spare. *phew* Then I cast on for a baby hat and should finish that today.

But REALLY my goal for today is to figure out where in my house/yard I can get proper lighting to make the new camera happy so I can get photos of all those FOs and get the shots I need to relaunch This Is Spiffy!, since that was supposed to happen days ago.

Oh, and also, Crochet Me went live the other day and the response to my Reduction Tote has been so positive and encouraging. Thanks, everyone, for all the warm fuzzies.

Ok, off to fight with the camera!

Let's talk here, people.

2007-04-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

Ok, you all need to learn to crochet.

And not just you, Ms. Pink. I'm talking to all y'all.

Let's discuss:

1. Crocheting is faster than knitting. It's practically instant gratification. Last night, I sat down and crocheted a cotton washcloth in an hour. AN HOUR.

2. It uses 1/3rd more yarn per square inch than knitting. This might sound like a negative, but:

3. Couple 1 and 2 and you get to use more of your fabulous yarns. Which, in turn, allows you to feed your fiber obsession without feeling like a crazy cat woman. And since as far as I know, there is no Yarnaholics Annonymous, there are many out there who need to keep their stash movin'.

4. It is very much in style at the moment. Don't believe me? Check out Interweave Crochet. Or Crochet!(But don't let the yarns they use fool you. They seem to have a knack for hiding good designs under questionably chosen yarns.) Pick up a copy of The Happy Hooker. Oh, and don't forget Crochet Me. FREE, fashionable patterns for all skill levels, yo. Have you seen the new edition? Or old ones, for that matter?

5. You only have one stitch live at a time. If you hook falls out, the whole thing doesn't fall apart before your eyes. Frogging is less stressful. It's easier to transport without worrying about your needles jabbing through your bag or dropping stitches.

6. Crocheted lace? Infinitely easier than knitted lace, if just for the reasons mentioned in #5.

Skeptical? Check out the stores the next time you are there: embelishments, trims, skirts, hats, accessories, sweaters, ponchos, wraps, etc, etc. Despite the fashion industry classifying them all as "knits", much of what you're seeing is actually crochet. I'm not going to say "it's not your grandmother's crochet!" because, you know what? It is. A lot of the stuff out there is based on styles that were around in Grandma's time. They have been tweaked and made in better yarns with up-to-date styles and they are fabulous. Think there is no way for "grandma's" fashions to be brought up to date? What, you think wedges and a-line skirts popped out of a designer's brain, fully-formed, last year? Now, I'm not anti-knitting. In fact, for the last year, the majority of what I've done has been knitting, mainly because it finally clicked and so I've been enjoying the novelty of it. But, crochet is always my first love.

No real update. A video instead.

2007-04-12T08:05:00.000-07:00

I have cast on 3 times so far for the linen kitchen sheers. I just am not paying close enough attention to the pattern is all. Do, you know, that makes it slow going.

Since that is all I have to report, I'm linking to a video. It's by Billy Reid. His stuff is hillarious and can be found on YouTube or at Very Tasteful.

The big finish!

2007-04-10T08:30:00.000-07:00

I haven't had any FOs to share lately because they were all sitting and waiting to be lined at the end of the knitathon, or it was the massive and never ending project known as Kai's Blankie.

First, the FOs:

4 iPod sized and 1 Nano sized pouch. Since I started these... uh... last year... we have gotten rubbery iPod covers, so I think these will become notions pouches.

Abby got to pick one of them, because I feel badly that her blankie isn't going to be done for ages and she wants something I made soooooo much

These were inspired by a pattern in the Cool Girl's Guide to Knitting, though I didn't actually use the pattern when I sat down to make them. The nano cozy has a garter border on the edges and for the flap, I just changed from stockinette to seed stitch. They were all knit on tiny needles, though it's been so long I forget the sizes. The larger pouches were made with Sockatta, the green pouch is a cotton yarn from a recycled Gap sweater. They were lined with muslin and have snap closures with a button from the button box on the outside.

The other big FO is the 8-cabeled bag:

My first cabling project. I started this at about this time last year in a class at the LYS. The yarn is hand-dyed 100% wool, dyed by the LYS owner. The pattern she wrote up was horrible--missing steps, wrong row counts, no gauge (which meant having to buy another hank at the last minute, which didn't work for me as she was out of my colors and I ended up frogging one side and reknitting it with the shade closest to what I already had.) I did learn how to cable while in the class, though, so that's all I was after. I just figured out her pattern as best I could and got it to work. I got the lining material a month after I finished knitting it. And then it sat in pieces until the knitathon, when I dug it out and assembled it and lined it. And was reminded once more that the finishing work really isn't as painful as I tell myself.

And, remember, not only did I learn to cable on this project, but I also did my first invisible seam:

Yay!

There is no clasp or snap in this bag yet. I'm not sure if I'm going to put one in. I'm going to live with it for a bit and see how it works and if I don't like it without one, I'll add it later.

Of my remaining UFOs, the one that got the most attention in the last 26 days was Kai's Blankie of DOOOOOM.

Before:

After:

As you can see, I'm another full color repeat and maybe 1/3rd more into it. It's lying on the treadmill if that helps you figure out scale. I thought I only had one more cake of yarn left, but in addition to what is there there is one more cake twice the size. Which is good, because this sucker is way wider than I meant for it to be. If needs be, the stripes will just be vertical instead of horozontal, but I'd like for it to at least be square.

So, that's my big finish to the knitathon. I'm going to be a good girl and continue to plug along on Kai's blankie during any knitting time I may have today, but then tomorrow I'm casting it aside for some other projects! Variety is the spice of life and I have ONLY 7 projects on the needles now. What kind of variety is THAT?

Yawn

2007-04-09T23:05:00.000-07:00

Well, it almost didn't happen. I have been struggling with a sore throat and/or allergies for the last couple of days. (I'm still not sure if it's a different reaction to seasonal allergies than I've had in the past or if it's a virus of some sort.) I was going to pack it in and not worry about getting the linings in and focus on projects that were mindless and repetitive. Productive yes, but not anything that would be finished in time for the end of the knitathon tomorrow.

Well, I bit the bullet. I did all the handsewing this evening to attach the linings in the ipod cozies/pouches and the 8-cable bag. Cue the trumptets, because that means 11 finished objects! Can I get a w00t?

That still leaves 7 other projects needing to be finished, but when you're starting with 18 that's some pretty awesome progress. My little UFO cubbies are looking very spartan.

I will try to get some photos up tomorrow. We have a spangly, new digital camera and I don't quite have it figured out yet, but I will try!

Looking forward, I'm going to use some linen I got in a swap to try and get some shears knit up for the kitchen window. I think there is a pattern in Mason Dixon Knitting (maybe?) for some shears with random yarn-overs that looked interesting. I don't have the book, though, and I don't think I'd really need it to knit a couple of rectangles with random yarn overs, so I'm just going to wing it and see what happens. I'd also like to start in on a lace project from Victorian Lace Today. And I have a pair of wrist warmers I want to make, but I'm waiting on the yarn. (I bought a skein on vacation, realized it wouldn't be enough, so used a gift certificate from Webs to get another skein. All completely kosher with my NYFAY rules, right? Right?!)

The NYFAY community on LiveJournal is talking about making May a UFO busting month, so I need to get more stuff I want to do on the needles. Cheating? Moi?

Posting in my craft blog on a weekend! My stars and garters!

2007-04-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

I just had to share that I spent my evening marooned at home sewing all the linings for the ipod cozies and the green and brown cabeled bag. I should be able to get them all hand sewn in by the 10th. There are some snaps to be sewn on, too. It may be tight.

But if I do get it done, it will make eleven FOs for the knitathon. One more than my goal.

Woot! There's a party over here! There's a party over there!

In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably share that I was trimming the excess selvedge from an iPod lining when I accidentally snipped the linning bit itself. So, I threw that lining away and I'm NOT redoing it. That iPod cozy will get a snap and will become a pouch for the girls to use for dress up. Maybe I'll chain a cord for it or something. I'm so sick of sewing, though, there is no way I'm making another tonight.

Also, this is a reminder to be careful with your scissors. I'm lucky it wasn't a piece of my clothing. I'm going to have to start sewing in the nude.

Also, I just got word that the hubster has procured a new camera, so photo posts should be returning soon! Yay!

Newly Updated Swap Post

2007-04-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

My terms and conditions:

1. The dollar amounts are what I think is a fair trade value, not what I'd like to be paid. If you want my stuff and don't have anything I want in trade, I'll gladly take gift certificates or you can order things for me. I don't know why, but trading seems so much better than taking cash. I'm not completely anal about the trade amounts, but I would like the trade items to be within a dollar or two of each other so no one feels ookie about the trade.

2. Since these are all books, I'll be shipping via media mail with delivery confirmation.

3. I prefer to ship to the US only, but if you are in a different country and simply MUST have something, I'll most likely swap. My only condition is that if I'm sending you 5 pounds of books and you're ordering something online for me or sending me a pound of yarn that would make the shipping totals dramatically different, that you increase the swap value a bit to make things fair.

4. I will only swap for items from smoke-free homes. If you are a smoker or live with one and want something, please order something off my wish list in exchange.

5. Email me at annilita at gmail dot c o m and let me know what you would like and what you have to offer and we'll work it out. :) I like for my trades to be settled on within 2 days, so please try and reply quickly so things aren't left hanging.

Things I'd like, in order of preference:

600-2000+ yards of lace- or fingering-weight yarn in natural fiber blends. (Some mohair content is ok, but I'm not looking for epecially fuzzy yarns.) Cherry Tree Hill Laceweight Merino is always cool, but I'd like to try some Lisa Souza and Knit Picks laceweights, too. I'm partial to blues/greys/purples/blacks as well as "burnt" shades of orange, red, and yellow. Natural shades are cool, too.

Other nicer quality yarns. Make me an offer. I'm not really into felting, and I live in Arizona, so while I enjoy working with wool, I'm looking to branch out into other fibers. Cotton, silk, hemp, linen, etc. Those fibers blended with wool or acrylic is fine, too. I'm not a fan of yarns made mainly of man-made fibers. And I will still take wools, they just need to be softy-soft. And I rarely (as in, "have never yet") turn down alpaca, llama, or cashmere. I'd definitely take some Cotton Fleece in primary colors, white, or black. DB Cashmerino would be cool, depending on the color.

Gift cards to Webs (yarn.com). Oh, Webs, how I love thee...

On to the swap:

The Versatile Doily (1980) 23 projects. $2

Crochet: Special designs for Babies, Women, & Home (1977) 40 patterns $2

2 newspaper inserts from the Phoenix, AZ area. Undated. Either early 40's or 50's (no mention of the war, so I'm guessing they are from before or after.) Mainly just a catalog chock-full of items people could order patterns for. Great for inspiration and history buffs. Each has a free pattern inside, both are crochet patterns, but one has directions for small decorative painting or sewing items, too. $2 for both.

Crochet Patterns Sept/Oct, 1990 $2

Bedspreads, (1939) $3

The Complete Book of Crochet (1973) 32 projects, hardcover in excellent condition. A lot of lace crochet. With some modifications/updates, the fashions in the book would be in style. $3

Women's Household Crochet, Summer 1985. Some cute patterns, interesting look at pre-internet world (pen pal requests, tips, etc.) Cover coming off a bit. $1

6 Magic Crochet Magazines:
June 1986,
April 2003, December 2003
August 2003, June 2003
February 2003 (NOT SHOWN -- 3 Ways to Welcome Baby, 4 Big Projects of Great Beauty, Get Ready for Spring with a Lace Top and a Parasol. -- In good condition, my camera just died before I got a shot of it.)
Lots and lots and lots of thread crochet. Doilies, bedspreads, table cloths, accessories. Originally $4 each, asking $2 each or take them all for $10.

2 issues of Women's Circle Crochet. Summer 1982, Fall 1985 The cover of the Summer issue is split down the seam and the original owner cut the address label off. $3 for both.

Knit One, Bear Two: for the bear with nothing to wear. (1983) Patterns for teddy bear sweaters. $2

Special Baby Outfits (1992) 4 outfits (bonnet, top, bottom, booties) to knit for baby. Really cute outfits for boys and girls. $3

Create with Beads (1972) Great beading book. Hardcover. Lots of projects. $3

Working with Wool: A Few Ins and Outs. Undated. Info on sewing with wool fabrics and proper care of wool. $1

~~The Miniature Book of Napkin Folding. (1990) $1~~

Leaflets on gift baskets and gift wrapping. Sent as an enticement to subscribe to get more. Will give for free to anyone who is doing a swap and wants them. The "post-its" are printed right on the booklets.

Country Style, Spring 1987 $1

Floral Doilies (1950) $3

Baby Afghans 4 to Knit and Crochet (1989) $2

Baby Book: Knit and Crochet in Wool, Cotton, Nylon (1952) Quintessential 50's baby outfits. The cuteness factor is HIGH. TONS of patterns. A previous owner sewed around the binding staples and then secured them with tape. No idea why. $4

Spinnovations: Fashions from cradle to crib. (1979) It's baby stuff, so of course most of it is still cute and in style. Babies have it so easy. 24 patterns, knit and crochet. $3

Family Circle Easy Knitting Plus Crochet, Holiday 2003 -- My camera died it's last death before I could get a photo of this one. It's got some light cover wear, but otherwise in good condition. Originally $5.99, asking $3 in trade.

Nothing super exciting.

2007-04-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

Kai got sick the day after we got back. She is better now, but we're just getting settled in post-trip as a result.

I have knit very little since we got back, so I have nothing to really report. Most of what I have been doing was on Kai's purple and pink blankie. I've made it through a second repeat of the pink and am in the middle of a purple repeat, so I think that puts me at twice the length of the "before knitathon" photo I posted.

Adam got back from his meeting early, because they neglected to tell people it was canceled this month. So I was able to make it to the last hour of knit club after all. Linda took me on a tour of her communty's ammenities area and they are hooked up! Knit club is going to be a par-tay this month! Or we'll just sit out on the patio. You know, one or the other.

When I thought I wasn't going last night, I made some strawberry freezer jam. It's the first time I've made it. It is delicious! I'm eating jam on everything today. (Which should be interesting, because we have left-over pizza.) It only took an hour to make from prep to finish, so I may just cross over to the dark side of making out own jam from now on.

Oh, man.

2007-04-03T18:38:00.000-07:00

So, I'm sticking with my whole no yarn for a year thing fairly well. The stash is dwindling crazy cat lady levels instead of the crazy, drooling cat lady levels where it started.

But I'm sitting here listening to Saturday's episode of Ready Set Knit (link in the side bar), which is the radio show/podcast from Webs. They are talking about their anniversay sale. Cascade 220 is under $5. FIVE DOLLARS! And one of their Valley yarns is 60% off!!

I'm just telling myself that I just had my vacation buying and they WILL have

OH CRAP! CLASSIC ELITE BAM BOO FOR $5.29!!!

*sigh* They WILL have their anniversary sale next year. They will. Honest. I can resist.

Ok, I'm skipping the rest of this podcast. It's going to kill me.

Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig.

2007-04-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

We made it home in one piece. San Diego was lots of fun. I found 3 yarn stores, but only two were open and only one was full of nice people. I was a bad no-yarn-for-a-yearer and a bad knitathoner, but it was vacation so none of it counts.

I will post more tomorrow. Right now, I have to go rotae laundry and do some yard work. It's going to be hotter than Hades here all too soon so it'd got to be done asap!

Last of the UFOs

2007-03-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

This is the last thing from the UFO list (that I can show you now):

It's a little throw rug I'm making with some yarn I hate just to get rid of it. Aunt Lydia's Rug Yarn in icky green colors. It's a ripple/garter pattern from the stitch a day calendar. I don't know where I'm going to use it when I'm done. It's all a mystery.

We're leaving on a mini vacation this afternoon. 5 hours in the car = lots done on Kai's blankie. It's the only project I'm taking with me, but I'm planning on swinging through a yarn shop while we're there and picking up something delicious. I'm thinking some yummy dk weight something or other to make wrist warmers. I just got Teach Yourself Visually: Knitting Design from a swap, so I'm going to use that to figure out a pattern, me thinks. I know this violates the rules of the UFO knitathon, but I claim a vacation exemption!

So, much love to you all. Enjoy your weekend!

More from the UFO list.

2007-03-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a pre-knitathon shot of the iPod cozies:

The pattern is from The Cool Girl's Guide to Knitting. Sort of. It's a really basic pattern that I saw while going through the book, so when I actually got the yarn (Sockatta) and got to work on them, I just cast on enough to be wide enough, knit until it was long enough, decreased for the flap, and bound off. As you can see, I knit quite a few of them. The smaller one is a pared down version for Adam's Nano. Since this shot was taken, they have all be seamed, but they are just sitting around on the "to be lined" pile until sometime next week when I dust off the sewing machine and get to work.

Lining, my old nemesis...

Another UFO sighting

2007-03-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

Before I begin, I've been pimping my swap pretty heavily around the ole intarwebs, so if you're here for that, scroll on down and you'll find it.

For those of you who are here for my crafty ramblings, let me begin:

First of all, until I picked up the needles last night, I hadn't knit for 2 days, so I don't have tons to report. I did manage to finish the other side of the cabled bag tonight. But, since I can't show it, instead, I'll share another UFO shot.

This is Abby's blankie:

I ordered the yarn from Webs a few months before Christmas. I was actually ordering yarn for the sweaters I was making the girls for Christmas, but when you order from Webs, you HAVE to check out their close-out and Grandpa's Garage Sale sections. I mean, hello bargains. So, the first time I placed the order, these cones were $3 each. $3!! So I added one on to my order. Now, I THOUGHT I was getting a worsted weight, thick/thin cotton like one I'd ordered from them before and subsequently used to make a blankie for Kai. But when it arrived, it was more like a thick/thin laceweight. So, when I came up short on yarn for the girls' sweaters, I ordered a second cone ($3!!) and am using it doubled to make the blankie for Abby. I picked a denser stitch pattern than the one I used on Kai's, and between the thinness of the yarn and the stitch pattern, it's very slow going. The photo above is at least a solid week of work, which, if it was knit would be impressive. But crocheted? Draaaaaaging. I'm used to my crochet projects being much zippier than this one has been. I had some pipe-dream going that I'd have this thing done in time for Christmas, but you can see that didn't happen. The new goal is for their birthday party in October. I have a feeling that it will be my project for the next knitathon.

Swap ahead! Beware!

2007-03-26T23:15:00.000-07:00

I spent yesterday morning going through box after box of things in our storage locker trying to find a missing library book. No luck on the book, but I pulled out all my vintage patterns and went through them all and have quite a few I'd like to destash.

My terms and conditions:

1. The dollar amounts are what I think is a fair trade value, not what I'd like to be paid. If you want my stuff and don't have anything I want in trade, I'll gladly take gift certificates or you can order things for me. I don't know why, but trading seems so much better than taking cash. I'm not completely anal about the trade amounts, but I would like the trade items to be within a dollar or two of each other so no one feels ookie about the trade.

2. Since these are all books, I'll be shipping via media mail with delivery confirmation.

3. I prefer to ship to the US only, but if you are in a different country and simply MUST have something, I'll most likely swap. My only condition is that if I'm sending you 5 pounds of books and you're ordering something online for me or sending me a pound of yarn that would make the shipping totals dramatically different, that you increase the swap value a bit to make things fair.

4. I will only swap for items from smoke-free homes. If you are a smoker or live with one and want something, please order something off my wish list in exchange.

5. Email me at annilita at gmail dot c o m and let me know what you would like and what you have to offer and we'll work it out. :) I like for my trades to be settled on within 2 days, so please try and reply quickly so things aren't left hanging. (I'll be out of town this coming weekend, so keep that in mind if you email me then!)

Scroll down the page and you'll find 2 posts full of pattern books. Below that is my wishlist of items to receive in exchange. Thanks for looking!

Old and Vintage items for Trade

2007-03-26T21:34:00.000-07:00

EDITED TO ADD: SEE THE NEWLY UPDATED POST ON APRIL 6TH TO SEE WHAT I STILL HAVE AVAILABLE.

These are all from the 30's to mid-90's.

A Complete Guide to Crochet Stitches (1972) B&W stitch guide. (Very clear photos, even though it's in black and white.) $3

Aunt Lydia's Granny Zoo: 7 animals to crochet in heavy rug yarn (1977) "Granny Zoo" refers to the fact that they are all made from granny squares. Pig, lion, horse, elephant, aligator, giraffe, and turtle. I'd, personally, make them in worsted acrylic or wool instead of the Aunt Lydia rug yarn, but that's just me. $2

Crochet Made Easy (1993) 9 projects and directions for beginners. $1

Learn to Crochet (1968) 11 projects and directions for beginners (including hairpin lace) $1

TAKE ALL 4 for $6.

The Versatile Doily (1980) 23 projects. $2
Crochet: Special designs for Babies, Women, & Home (1977) 40 patterns $2

~~Safari Friends (1987) 6 LARGE animal patterns $2~~
Crochet Critters (1977) 6 small, amigarumi-style construction animals $2

2 newspaper inserts from the Phoenix, AZ area. Undated. Either early 40's or 50's (no mention of the war, so I'm guessing they are from before or after.) Mainly just a catalog chock-full of items people could order patterns for. Great for inspiration and history buffs. Each has a free pattern inside, both are crochet patterns, but one has directions for small decorative painting or sewing items, too. $2 for both.

Pineapple Designs: Doilies, tablecloths, bedspreads, runners (1946) $3

Pineapple Pageant (1948) Mainly typical doilies, but several ruffle edge doilies, too. $3

TAKE BOTH FOR $5

~~Crochet World, October 1983, $2.~~

Floral Doilies (1950) $3

Crochet Patterns Sept/Oct, 1990 $2

Bedspreads, (1939) $3

The Complete Book of Crochet (1973) 32 projects, hardcover in excellent condition. A lot of lace crochet. With some modifications/updates, the fashions in the book would be in style. $3

Women's Household Crochet, Summer 1985. Some cute patterns, interesting look at pre-internet world (pen pal requests, tips, etc.) Cover coming off a bit. $1

5 Magic Crochet Magazines:
June 1986,
April 2003, December 2003
August 2003, June 2003
Lots and lots and lots of thread crochet. Doilies, bedspreads, table cloths, accessories. Originally $4 each, asking $2 each or take them all for $9.

2 issues of Women's Circle Crochet. Summer 1982, Fall 1985 The cover of the Summer issue is split down the seam and the original owner cut the address label off. $3 for both.

Scandinavian Snow Sets: Caps, mittens, gloves, after-ski boots and slipper socks. (1947) PRISTINE vintage condition. 20+ patterns for baby through adult. Gorgeous patterns for fair isle knitters. $8

Knitting Primer: 50 easy knitting patterns and stitches. Undated, but I'm guessing early 40's. Basically a stitch guide, but has instructions for making your samples into an afghan when you're done. Very good vintage condition, slight damage to cover where price stitcker was. $4

Knit One, Bear Two: for the bear with nothing to wear. (1983) Patterns for teddy bear sweaters. $2
Special Baby Outfits (1992) 4 outfits (bonnet, top, bottom, booties) to knit for baby. Really cute outfits for boys and girls. $3

TAKE BOTH FOR $4.

Reynold's Continental Collection. Undated, guessing mid-60's. (A lot of the female models look like they took a little too much valium before leaving for work.) 23 patterns for men and women. The men styles are all still in, and many of the women's styles are still in, too. The rest would be in style with minor changes to collar choices/color/ect. Lower corner of the cover is torn off. $4.

~~Shells for Every Occaision to Knit and Crochet. The cover is missing completely, guessing mid-60's. Very basic, classic patterns, almost all still in style. $1 due to cover damage.~~

~~101 Needlework and Knitting Ideas. Feb. 1982, $1~~

McCall's Needlework & Crafts:
Fall/Winter 1976/1977 $3
Mar/April 1984 $2 (cover torn along crease and a bit across the cover)

Lady's Home Journal Needle & Craft:
Spring/Summer 1976
Spring Summer 1975
$3 each or both for $5

Stitch by Stitch: a step-by-step guide to sewing, knitting, crochet & needlework. (1982) $2
Make It Yourself: The Complete Step-by-step Library of Needlework and Crafts (1975) Pick different colors or yarns and a lot of the patterns are still in style. (feather-covered vest excluded, but could be an interesting coversation piece!) Hardcover, lots of patterns and information $5

Create with Beads (1972) Great beading book. Hardcover. Lots of projects. $3
Working with Wool: A Few Ins and Outs. Undated. Info on sewing with wool fabrics and proper care of wool. $1
The Miniature Book of Napkin Folding. (1990) $1

~~Hairpin Lace. Undated (70's?) Instructions with pattern for hat and scarf. $1~~
Country Style, Spring 1987 $1

Baby Afghans 4 to Knit and Crochet (1989) $2
~~Toys & Puppets to Knit and Crochet (1978) 16 animal and clown patterns. $3~~

Baby Book: Knit and Crochet in Wool, Cotton, Nylon (1952) Quintessential 50's baby outfits. The cuteness factor is HIGH. TONS of patterns. A previous owner sewed around the binding staples and then secured them with tape. No idea why. $4

~~Doilies in the Modern Mannor: Ruffled, knitted, irish crochet, hairpin lace (1953) Good vintage condition, some cover wear, but completely intact with clean pages. $3~~

Spinnovations: Fashions from cradle to crib. (1979) It's baby stuff, so of course most of it is still cute and in style. Babies have it so easy. 24 patterns, knit and crochet. $3
Stoles: knitted, Crocheted, Hairpin Lace (Undated 40's or 50's) Many shawl patterns. Pen squiggle on cover, and cover is starting to split on the crease at the top and bottom, but still intact. Clean pages. $2 due to damage mentioned.

This Is Knitting. FIRST EDITION (1948) Very Good vintage condition, clean pages. Many of the patterns are still in style. Original owner's name written inside cover in pencil. One page is damaged: it stuck to another and a chunk ripped off. None of the text was effected. Other than those few things, the book is in exceptional condition. The following are shots of some of the patterns in the book:

Plus, many, many more. $15

Look further down the page for what I'm looking for in trade, and further up the page for my trade "terms and conditions."

Recent Books and Magazines for Swap

2007-03-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

The following are books from mid-90's to the present.

Adorable Crochet for Babies and Toddlers: 22 projects to make for babies from birth to two years. (2002) Originally $19.95, asking $10
I'm not a fan of the project they put on the cover, so the following 4 shots are from the book and show what is inside. There are some really cute items, as you can see:

Blue Ribbon Crochet: Exceptional Designs to Create Your Own Prizewinning Projects. (2004) Was a gift, asking $5
Afghans, doilies, women's and children's sweaters and clothing, housewares, and toys.

The Big Book of Crochet Sweaters (1999) Originally $12.96, asking $5.

Complete Guide to Thread Crochet (1994) Originally $6.50, asking $3.

TAKE BOTH FOR $7.

Knitting Made Easy: Sweaters, Scarves, Baby Items and More (2004) Originally $3.99, asking $2

BH&G Learn to Knit: A beginner's guide to knitting, 23 Perfect Projects. (2005) Originally $3.99, asking $2

TAKE BOTH FOR $3.

~~Simple Knits for Cherished Babies (2001) Originally $19.95, asking $10.~~

BH&G Handmade Birthdays: 101 gift, cake & card ideas for ages 1 to 101. (2002) Was a gift, asking $5.

Leaflets on gift baskets and gift wrapping. Sent as an enticement to subscribe to get more. Will give for free to anyone who is doing a swap and wants them. The "post-its" are printed right on the booklets.

March 2006 Crochet!
January 2006 Crochet!
Originally $5.99 each, asking $3 each or $5 for both.

Rock-a-bye Wraps, Book 2, (1995) $2
Crochet 1 Hour Baby Gifts (1994) $2

TAKE BOTH FOR $3

Look further down the page for items I want in trade, and further up the page for my "terms and conditions" for swapping.

Stuff I'd like in return for swap items:

2007-03-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

Things I'd like, in order of preference:

600+ yards of lace- or fingering-weight yarn in nartural fiber blends. (Some mohair content is ok, but I'm not looking for epecially fuzzy yarns.) Cherry Tree Hill Laceweight Merino is always cool, but I'd like to try some Lisa Souza and Knit Picks laceweights, too. I'm partial to blues/greys/purples/blacks as well as "burnt" shades of orange, red, and yellow. Natural shades are cool, too.

~~Bamboo straights in size 5, 7, 10 and up. Clover or Fiddlesticks or another well known brand, whatever.~~

Other nicer quality yarns. Make me an offer. I'm not really into felting, and I live in Arizona, so while I enjoy working with wool, I'm looking to branch out into other fibers. Cotton, silk, hemp, linen, etc. Those fibers blended with wool or acrylic is fine, too. I'm not a fan of yarns made mainly of man-made fibers. And I will still take wools, they just need to be softy-soft. And I rarely (as in, "have never yet") turn down alpaca, llama, or cashmere.

Books from my Amazon craft wish list.

Books from my regular Amazon wish list.

(If those two links turn up your own wishlists, try logging out of Amazon and click on them again. If that doesn't work, let me know and I'll send you my info so you can search for them on the site.) By all means, feel free to buy used copies of the books, as long as they are in good or better condition. Just be aware that the shipping is applied seperately to each book when you buy used on Amazon. So sometimes it's not a deal. (And you should swap according to the used price if you do buy used, not at the Amazon price.)

Gift cards to Webs (yarn.com). Oh, Webs, how I love thee...

Woe is me. Just move on.

2007-03-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

This was a craptastic weekend.

Ok, really, it wasn't all that bad. I just had a trio of sad things happen. And they're the sort of things where you think "wow, if that's all you have to worry about, your life must be pretty dandy." For example, the third shoe to fall was that one of the goldfish died in the night. Now, we expected this. We expect to go through a lot of fish in Kai's year long test to see if she's responsible enough to feed her fish before getting a mammal. Adam was up first and "took care of things" and we told the girls that Elmo went to visit a friend today and daddy is going to bring him home after work. Abby, however, is absolutely heartbroken at the thought that Elmo would leave for a day. She keeps breaking out in sobs and I hold her until it's all ok again and then she goes off to play until she remembers that Elmo went to play with someone else and she starts again. I wasn't sad until I saw how badly Abby's taking it. And she just thinks he's gone for a few hours. Good gracious. I'm glad we didn't try and explain death to her. That would have probably sent her into a coma from the grief.

Anyway, this is a craft blog, no? Time to update:

I spent all of knit club this week fixing the two miscrossed cables. I had my cocoa and my chocolate chip scone and then tackled that sucker and managed to finish and knit two rows before it was time to go. Amanda and I went to Paradise bakery afterward. Mmmm.... cookies...

Last night I finished a repeat and got halfway through the final repeat of the bag. Then I stoped because it was getting late and I ran out of yarn. I need to break out the swift and wind up some more. I have about 2 inches left and I'll be done with the other side. Then I need to sit down and graph out the cables for the straps. I want the strap to be wider at the base and decrease a bit toward the top of the bag and then stay that size until the other side where it will fatten back out to the bottom on the other side. That is the plan. I just need to figure out how that's going to work.

Other than the progress on the cable bag, I got a few more rows done on Kai's blankie. I worked on it after I first discovered the miscrossed cables, because I couldn't fix them just then, what with the children bouncing all over the place and all. (Thank goodness for knit club.) I've reached another pink section, so I know it's growing.

Is my seam showing?

2007-03-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

As promised, a shot of my first invisible seem:

(No, you don't need glasses. That's just one heck of a fuzzy shot.)

Can you believe it? There is no possible way you could tell where that sucker is.

Ok, well, the color change gives it away, I 'spose. Ahem.

You have to wait until the lining is in to see a photo of the whole thing. Suffice it to say that it is awesome.

Knit club was good last night. It was just Linda and I, because Debi had a conflict and Amanda's husband is a putz. He's all like, "I need to work for a living," and stuff like that. Psh. Whatever, dude.

We only stayed until about 7:45 and then took off to deal with errands. I resisted the urge to swing through Half Price Books as I usually do because, oh my gosh, I have so many books right now it's out of control. And with the coming rennovations, it's time to cull, not augment. I actually have a swap going on right now if anyone is interested. A lot of it is vintage stuff, some is more recent. I have tons more, but it's all in storage and it was some of the first stuff I packed up, so I won't be able to get at it again until the house is done.

I picked up one of the cabeled bags I'm designing and got back to work on it yesterday. Only I noticed that I'd been twisting two of the cables the wrong way throughout. And I wasn't sure if, after this long, my guage would be consistant anyway, so I just frogged the 18 rows I'd done and started over. By the time I went to bed last night, I had finished a full 24 row repeat. Only then I noticed that I hadn't mirrored the cables properly on either side of the piece and so now, today, I'm going to be dropping stitches and recrossing cables. Oh, heavens. I just had to do this a few weeks ago and now I've made the same mistake again. At least this time I know what I'm doing so hopefully I can redo all 8 crosses in less than an hour. I think I'm being very ambitious, though, considering the fact that our yard is a massive mud puddle and I can't send the kids out to play. In fact, I think trying to knit at all today will be an excercise in futility.

D'oh!

2007-03-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

No photos of my FO today! I put the batteries in to charge and then forgot to check to make sure that the charger was plugged in. Clever!

Oh well. I can't really show it anyway, because I like how it turned out and, with some tweaking, I hope to get it accepted for publication somewhere. Anyway, yeah, I got the mohair cravat all worked up and assembled and it's cute! When the knitathon is over, I'm going to test it out in some different yards and tweak the pattern a bit, but for the most part, it works. Yay!

Next step is going to be finishing off the two cabled bags I'm working on. These, too, are projects I'm hoping to pitch somewhere, so, again, no photos. This blog is going to be boring for those photobucket lovers amung you. I need to get them done so I can add them to the to-line pile. They are my last two projects that require lining, so once they are done, I can face up to my sewing-torture fears. I think it'll take 3-4 days for each of them, so I have at least a week of sewing-free days to look forward to.

Looking at the list, though, once I have all assembled items that are just waiting to be lined done, I'll have finished 9 out of my goal of 10 projects. Party! If I get these two cabled bags done, too, that will put me at 11. Joy!

One step closer...

2007-03-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

Most of my knitting time yesterday was spent assembling the cable bag. I worked my first successful invisible seams, too. w00t! I couldn't wrap my brain around those hand-drawn directions you see in all the knitting books until 3 days ago when I happened to be flipping through a book to find information on something totally different and I looked and, voila, it clicked. I don't know why, but that's pretty much how it goes with me and the black-and-white how-to diagrams. My brain doesn't process them right until a) someone has shown me how to do them in person or b) I've seen them umpteen times. Anyway, I'm very pleased with how it turned out, and I'll get a photo as soon as the batteries are done charging for the camera.

So, yeah, the cable bag is all assembled now and in the 'to line' pile with all the iPod cozies. I still have 2 bags on my UFO list to get done before I have my Days of Lining Torture.

When I finished assembly last night, I worked more on the mohair cravat. Today, we took the kids to the zoo and I worked some more on Kai's pink and purple blankie while Adam drove. Oooh, I'll show you the pre-knitathon photo of that!

This is a never-ending project. The yarn is available at JoAnns and was sent to me in a care package from my Mom. See that cake of yarn there above the project? All that yarn worked up, plus that cake, is only half of the skein of yarn. It is one massive skein. It's a 100% nylon (I think?) boucle. And, to be honest, I almost donated it on to someone else. I was not in love with the yarn, and in the shipping, a bunch of the outer layers got all yarn-barfy. But Kai LOVES purple and pink, so I thought I'd work it up into a simple, garter-stitch lapghan for her. I cast on ages ago. I'm working it on size 7s and for a while it was my go-to project for mindless knitting. But I got so, so sick of it.

It's. Just. Knit.

And it takes forever to see any progress on it. So, it just sat around for a long while. I pulled it out 2 days ago to work on while homeschooling, because our math lesson consisted of me making a design on the geoboard and then Kai spent 5 or so minutes trying to copy it. I have a tendancy toward impatience and wanting to do things for her, so I worked on it while she took her turn so I'd have something to do in lieu of being a control freak.

Just so you understand the scope of this sucker, it's a 30 minute drive to the zoo and I got 2 rows knit on the way there and 2 rows knit on the way back. Uuuuuuugh... Thank goodness for this UFO knitathon or I think it would have just languished for ages and eventually been chucked.

Another FO, and progress

2007-03-20T07:50:00.000-07:00

I got quite a bit of progress done last night.

First, the unfinished washcloth:

I joined the Monthly Dishcloth group on yahoo groups oh... almost a year ago. And I was really on the bandwagon for a while. They feed you a pattern 5-10 lines at a time, twice a month. The first pattern of the month is usually a seasonal- or holiday-themed knit and purl pattern. The second pattern is usually a bit of lace or some other the technique. I tend to skip the first pattern of the month and take on the second one, because they are nice, bite-sized projects that are just challenging enough to be interesting without being overwhelming. The only issue with this new obsession was that no one in our house uses washcloths, and I prefer sponges to dishrags. So... what to do?

Well, at about the same time, I decided to try my hand at recycling sweaters. One of the first to get butchered was a cotton pull-over from the Gap. This left me with copious amounts of dk-weight cotton. It was very soft, but the unraveling process unplied it. I didn't think reknitting into a sweater was the way to go, but thought instead it would be perfect for the dishcloth projects, and it became my yarn of choice. I used size 4 needles instead of 7 or 8s, and they knit up to about half the size. They are perfect for face-cloths, and my daughters like to use them to wash up after eatting.

But then one day while working on the one above, I lost my place in the pattern and no matter how many times I counted rows, I was coming up in the wrong spot. So, it got set aside. For, oh, 6 months at least.

When I picked it up again yesterday, I realized I'd skipped a few rows and that's why I wasn't able to figure out where I was by row count. So, I frogged back and reknit. In the reknitting, I didn't go back far enough, so there is an elongated row of "leaves" in the finished item, but you know what? It's a face cloth. I'm not going to sweat it. It's off the needles now. Bing, bang, boom.

Obviously, that is unblocked. That's one of the things with using recycled yarn; even though you wash it and weight it to remove the kinks, there are still some left, so anything you knit from it looks really wonky until it's been blocked.

Then I moved on to another project. This one is a cabeled bag that was my Learn to Do Cabels project. I took this class at the same LYS where I learned entrelac and had a similar experience. First of all, the owner wrote up the pattern, and it was both incomplete and unclear. It was a bit like studying French all year and getting to the final exam and finding that it's in Spanish. Yeah, you can sort of figure out what you are reading and are being asked to do, but it takes a lot of extra time and thought. Also, the yarn estimates were way too low and after hitting the half-way mark, I realized I would need to knit the strap one ribbing repeat narrower so it would be long enough. And even now it's not long enough. I'd like it to be long enough to wear as a messenger bag, but I'm afraid it's going to be a longish-strapped tote instead. I couldn't even get more yarn to add to the length, because the yarn was hand-dyed by the owner and it was the last skein of that color. As it is, I got the front and back pieces knit with only about 1 yard of yarn left to sew it all together, so I had to go buy another hank of the green so I could finish it off. This was another class o'frustration for those of us in attendance.

All that said, though, I actually really, really like this bag. I went and got fabric to line it with, oh, AGES ago. And then it sat in its little UFO cubby for months and months and months because of my severe aversion to sewing. But, last night I got it out and steam blocked it and sewed the ends of the strap together.

I had every intention of assembling it in preparation for lining, but I got a little carried away with the steam and it ended up pretty wet, so I had to leave it to dry over night.

Instead, I pulled out the mohair lace scarf to work on.

This is some Skacel mohair that I got from the goodie bag at Stitch and Pitch last year. I wasn't all that thrilled with how it was working up. It had a pretty high yawn-factor. So, I frogged it 2 or 3 times trying different stitch patterns until I found one I liked. And, I can't show you an updated photo, because, well, I REALLY like it and I think I may try to pitch it somewhere. It's being reborn as a cravat instead of a scarf. Also, switching from bamboo to metal needles made the yarn much faster to knit with.

So, yeah, that's all the stuff I got done yesterday afternoon and evening. The kids were very content to play on their own last night, so I had a lot of time with my hands free and was exceptionally productive! w00t!

Knitathon FO #2

2007-03-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, I just finished it up, so I'm posting it:

The stats:

2.25 skeins of Patons Grace in color 60603 (apricot). Three-quarter sleeve garter-stitch cardigan, size 6-9 mo. Pattern from Simple Knits for Cherished Babies by Erika Knight. Probably fairly obvious, but I haven't blocked it yet.

I can't say that I'm in love with it. I'm probably going to donate it somewhere, but
I have to find an organization that will take cotton. All the ones I currently work with only take animal fiber. Issues I had:

As stated before, the knits are simple, but the patterns aren't specific enough for beginners. They don't specify cast on, increase, or decrease methods. (I used a long tail cast on for the back, cable cast on for the sleeves, a m1 for the increases, and k2tog bind off for the sleeves and front.) Also, the pattern relies on measurements to guide you through the pattern, lulling you into the false sense of security that your vertical guage isn't so very important. But then when it's time to pick up stitches for edgings, the directions switch to specific stitch counts. So, if your vertical guage doesn't match hers, then your pick-ups along the garter stitch sides will look odd. It also will make a difference in where the button holes fall. I think it would have been better to just switch to picking up one between each ridge and then worked out the buttons spacing myself from there, but I didn't realize how much of an issue it was going to be until after I'd bound off, and I was already not in love with the sweater and didn't want to revisit it.

The buttons are from the button box, 3 floral shell and 2 round shell. This project fullfilled it's purpose--I was just looking for something I could work on in the near-dark. And it was a learning experience, because now I know how to approach the other patterns in the book that I do want to make for others. So, even though I'm not squeeing at the finished project, I don't think it was a waste of time or energy. And, of course, I'm very glad to move this one from my UFO column to the FO side.

Weekend Progress

2007-03-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

I was a productive little soul this weekend. My first FO to share is a hat made for a friend from knit club. Linda has been learning to crochet and this hat reared up and bit her on the hiney. So she loaded me up with yarn and Harmony Guides and asked me to make it for her. And, you know, for yarn and Harmony Guides, a girl will do just about anything.

The pattern is Crocheted Cloche with Tie from Vogue Knitting On the Go: Crocheted Hats. I liked this pattern. There is a mistake in it, though. In round 15 (16), they omitted a “ch1” before the “repeat from *.” Other than that, it was a very clearly written, beginner/intermediate pattern. I like how the designer worked the “headband” in to the pattern. The way the stitch pattern works, she just has you change colors for a row and the result is that it looks like you have a band woven in and out of the hat. Cute.

Made with Cascade 220 in a purple for the main color and a marled purple for the accent color. (I don’t have the ball bands, but it looks like the marled purple has been discontinued.) The color is very off in this shot. I took it under an ott light, but it looks more blue than purple in the photo. It took one skein each, but there is enough to make the same hat with the colors reversed. Or, it looks like enough to make a baby hat with the main color if you’re not in the mood to have two hats in reversed colors.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t on my UFO list, so no effect there. But it did give me one more for the FO list. w00t!

In addition to the cloche, I’m about 45 minutes away from finishing the baby sweater I posted about the other day. I just need to sew up the seams and attach the buttons. Also, the iPod cozies have all been seamed and are ready to be lined. I’m going to try and get all the things that need lining done and then do a sewing day and get them all done at the same time. So, most likely, the last two days of the UFO knit-a-thon will be a lining-a-thon.

Thank you, Soren-love.

2007-03-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

Do you see that thing up there? That's a new, spiffy header made just for me by Madam Soren. Soren is friend and artist back in Massachusetts where I hail from. (From where I hail? Where is Grammar Girl when I need her?) Her art dolls are amazing. I have 3 and I love them so much. You all need to go be in awe of her creativity. Now. Really. You won't regret clicking on her.

Thank you, Soren!!

CaaaAAAaaashmere...

2007-03-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

For UFO number three, I would like to introduce you to the Backyard Leaves Scarf designed by Annie Modessitt and featured in several publications by Interweave Press, including Scarf Style and the 2006 Holiday issue of Interweave Knits. The latter is where I first noticed it and fell in love. I'd been wanting to learn to work lace from a graph, and the design just called to me from the pages. And, if ever there was a scarf pattern made for cashmere, a fiber I'd been dying to work with, this was the one. Surely, it would be mine.

The tragic twist to our little love story is that by the time I saw the magazine in late October, I had already made the decision that my epic yarn stash needed some major culling and was trying to avoid adding yarn to it. And, of course, Christmas was fast approaching and I didn't want to spend money on some yummy yarn to make a dream scarf for myself when there were so many other gifts to be bought. I bought the magazine to get the pattern, but I was fully prepared to wait a year or two to start it, so that I could both get the stash under control and hope to be in a position where buying enough cashmere to make it wouldn't be such a financial stretch.

Well, that pattern burned a hole in my soul for weeks. I would take the magazine out and check the photo to make sure that, yes, it really was my dream scarf, and yes, it really was there waiting to be made. I knew that with all the Christmas knitting I had to get done there was no way that I could even think about casting on until the new year, even if I did have the yarn. But one night when I was bored and too wired to sleep, I did what all sleep deprived and cashmere-starved knitters do. I went trolling through eBay.

And, that night, my friends, the eBay gods were smiling. For yea, verily, there was someone in New York City who apparently had a stash of cashmenre that they didn't want (shocking, I know) and had posted it in 5 different lots, sorted by color. One of the colors was a beautiful dark forest green. And this wasn't just any cashmere. No, this was Filatura di Crosa. Normally retailing for $50 a skein. The lot of 4 skeins was still under $10. Ten. Dollars. Granted, there were still a few days to go, so I put in a bid and kept checking in. I was always the high bidder, and I hadn't even cracked $20 yet. The last few minutes before the auction closed, I parked myself at the computer and watched as people bid the price up a dollar or two at a time. There were 3 people fighting over it. In the last few seconds, I entered a hail-mary bid at the highest amount I could justify paying and won. With the shipping, $45.

FORTY-FIVE! Less than the cost of one skein got me 4! Unfortunately, the person only took checks, so it took nearly a month for the yarn to arrive, but ooooooOOOooh, when it did... And, yes, I still have too much yarn and, yes, Christmas was coming fast, but when was I ever going to get such perfect yarn for such an amazingly low price, I ask you? It was still a few weeks before I could cast on, because I was in the last few days of Christmas knitting when it arrived, but when I did finally cast on? Oh, man. Cashmere. I'd knit sheets out of it if I could.

It took 2 tries to get used to working the lace from a graph, but I'm doing well now. As you can see, though, I'm not too terribly far along. I have to pay very close attention to what I'm doing, and so it's not conducive to working on while the kids are awake. On this third time casting on, I'm only one and a half times through the repeat. I certainly don't expect to have this project done by the end of the the UFO knitathon, but I do hope that by finishing off a lot of my simpler UFOs, I'll be more inclined to pick this one up in the evening instead of working on something I don't love as much because I'm closer to finishing it.

Todays UFO is brought to you by the letters "F" and "O"

2007-03-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

I just finished today's UFO. So, you get to hear it's whole story in one go!

This UFO was born from a very vintage skein of yarn that I got from my Mom's uber-stash. I don't remember, to be honest, what the yarn was called or even the fiber content. What I do remember is that this particular skein of yarn had been floating around in my mom's house since I was a wee little one in the late 70's, early 80's. When my mom had me cull her stash for her about 5 years ago, I grabbed a bunch of these ye olde skeins that I could remember from my early childhood, thinking that if she hadn't used them by now she wasn't going to. And, they had a sort of vintage appeal to them at that point, too.

The yarn appears to be 100% fuzzy acrylic, but part of me wants to say that it also had some wool or mohair mixed in. It was billed as a tweed yarn, and was 2 contrasting colored yarns that were worked together to create the tweed effect. In this particular skein, the strands were a peachy-apricot and a peachy-brown.

Since I only had one skein of this to work with, and the colors weren't suitable for me to wear, my options were fairly limited. In the end, I decided on a purse. It was knit in two pieces: a large rectangle for the body, back, and bottom; and a long, thin piece for the strap. All the knitting was done in stockinet, and I really liked how the "tweed" worked up. I got the bag all assembled and the top kept curling because it was stockinet, so I worked 2 rows of single crochet around the top and that fixed that. In the process, I also added a loop to hold the bag closed. I still had a bit of yarn left, so I seperated the strands and made 6 crochet roses for the lower front corner of the bag.

With the bag all assembled, I moved on to lining. I got all the pieces sewed together fine and then when I put the lining in place to check for size, I noticed that when I sewed the strap of the bag in place, I'd twisted it several times. Oh, dookie. I didn't have enough yarn left so I could remove the strap and reattach it properly, so it just stayed that way. I used the little bit I did have left to sew the edges of the strap together to make it a tube so the gaff was less noticable. But the strap still neaded to be lined for stability. In the end, I just hemmed the edges of a narrow strip of fabric and ran it through the tube and connected it to the bag lining.

And then, it sat.

And sat. And any time I straightened up my craft area, I'd come across it and wonder why I hadn't sewn the lining in yet and it'd get cast aside again to be overlooked for a few more months.

So, today, the first day of the UFO knit-a-thon, I pulled it out and threaded a needle. It took all of 15 minutes to sew the lining in place and another 10 minutes to pick a button for the front and sew that in place, too. And, voila, I give you my first FO of the knit-a-thon:

Cue the trumpets!

The UFO saga continues...

2007-03-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

This fine day, I bring you the tale of another UFO. Also one that has languished for months and months, but, thanks to the stash-busting knit-a-thon starting in just a few hours, should be finished sometime in the next 26 days.

This UFO comes from Simple Knits for Cherished Babies by Erika Knight. The book certainly lives up to its name; the trickiest pattern in the book is a pair of basic booties. I’ve already used the monogrammed baby blanket as inspiration for a blanket for my new niece. (I double stranded DK weight yarn to make it, so I had to do a little math.) The only issue I have with the book is the “It costs HOW MUCH?!” factor of the yarns used. I’m sorry, but I will not be knitting baby pants out of cashmere. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is that I don’t particularly want to spend $50 to knit a baby garment that will likely have poo leaked on it. I know I can't guarantee that anything I make won't, in time, come in contact with poo, but pants for an infant is pretty much a sure thing. I would like to think that my cashmere scarf project is never going to come in contact with poo, but who knows what the future brings? I could be wrong. Finding suitable replacement yarns has sometimes been an issue, but for my current project from the book—the garter stitch cardigan—Patons Grace was a perfect substitution. (And I’ll be using less than 2 balls, so if I remember correctly, it’s $10 worth of yarn instead of $40. Much more realistic a price tag for an item that will be worn for 3 months and will most likely be doused in regurgitated lunch at some point or another.)

To be honest, I wasn't all that in love with this particular sweater when I first saw it, but I cast on out of necessity. When my youngest turned 18 months old, she started climbing out of her crib. And, my then 3.5 year old started climbing into the crib. So, fearing a crib collapse or a serious smooshing incident, we moved Abby into a big girl bed. We had been putting the girls to bed 30 minutes apart so Abby would be asleep by the time it was Kai’s turn to pass out, but in a big girl bed, it’s much harder for Abby to wind down, and in no time we had given up on spacing bedtimes and went to putting them to sleep together.

That’s when chaos sprung forth in our home.

Bedtimes turned into 90-minute affairs on good nights. In an attempt to curb the more outrageous bedtime behavior, one of us would stay in the room with the kids and enforce the “stay in your own bed” rule. When it looked like things weren’t going to improve anytime soon, I hauled the kids to a second-hand store and got myself a small, rocking recliner to sit in on my nights as Enforcer. Sitting in semi-dark repeating, "Lie down and close your eyes," for 90 minutes got old fast, so in no time at all, I followed the example of the old lady whispering “hush” and had some knitting on my lap. The garter-stitch cardigan was the perfect project. Not only is it all garter, but there was no increasing or decreasing for the first half of the project. I made it halfway through and realized that I’d made a counting error way back when I cast on, so it all got frogged one night. After another few nights of knitting, we decided to change tack with bedtimes and went to just telling 1 story and singing 2 songs and leaving them after that, and the project was set aside at that point in favor of projects that were more demanding now that I wasn’t working on them in the dark.

I picked up the project again last night. You can see how quickly it knits up; three-quarters of what is done in that photo was done last night while getting caught up on The Black Donnellys and fast-forwarding to the performances in American Idol. My only complaint thus far about the pattern is that it's very unspecific. Fine for an intermediate knitter, but you would think that a book called Simple Knits Anything would be geared toward beginners. Not so. It tells you to cast on for sleeves after getting to a certain point of the body, but doesn't tell what method. I imagine that a newbie would assume long-tail cast on, but a cable cast on would be more flexible and leaves no more ends to weave in. Likewise, the pattern calls for increasing to form a v-neck, but doesn't say if you should k1fb or work a m1 or what. Plus, for some reason, instead of including the sizing info with the pattern, all the sizing info for all the projects are at the back of the book. It probably made the patterns fit in their allocated space better, but it's a bit annoying to have to flip back and forth. Anyway, for an intermediate or adventurous-beginner knitter, it is a very good book. Simple, relatively mindless projects in classic looks that will be just as stylish for the recipient's own grandbabies 50 years from now. You need to be willing to make some construction choices on your own, but worth looking into.

It's a "thon," not a "thong"

2007-03-13T23:33:00.000-07:00

One of the links you'll find to the right on my blog is a link to a community on LiveJournal that hosts "knit-a-thons." Twenty-six days to pursue a challenging project. This month's knit-a-thon starts March 15th and the theme is stash busting/UFOs. I'm already on the no-yarn-for-a-year bandwagon, so I'm going to concentrating on the UFOs.

The UFOs... Wow... Taking a look at the list to the right, my UFOs total 17 at this point in time. Seven. Teen. That's just not right. The oldest is at least 18 months old and is a bag that just needs to be lined. The next oldest is about 9 months old, so that's not so bad, right? And, again, it's a bag that needs to be assembled and lined. (Sensing a trend?) My goal is to knock that list down by at least 10 items during the knit-a-thon.

As I happen to find myself between projects in these last few days before the official start, I've gotten a jump on things and finished the knitting portion of a pillow cover. This particular project started it's life as a woefully complicated entrelac purse. The YSO who was teaching the class picked it as the project for a beginners class on entrelac. It involved 2 different stitch patterns for the entrelac pieces, increasing and decreasing in those 2 different patterns while working the entrelac to form a hobo-bag shape, and I picked a boucle (Patons Canadiana Boucle, 97% acrylic/3% Nylon in color 7078) as my contrast yarn so the stitch pattern in those levels were next to impossible to keep track of anyway. While teaching the class, the YSO kept getting up to help customers, and for some reason my class members kept asking me for help, so I had very little chance to make progress in the class as it was. By the time I got home, I had decided a few things:

1. The boucle was way too stretchy on its own.
2. The stitch patterns were making everything way to complicated.
3. The stitch patterns in the boucle were impossible to see.
4. Turning the project every 9 stitches was insanely annoying.

So, I decided to rip back and start over. Only the boucle was such a pain that I could only rip back so much before I finally just cut the yarn and threw away the bottom level and a half of the project. When I restarted, I ran a thread of black size 20 crochet cotton with the boucle to give it more stability. Also, I threw the stitch patterns out the window and just went with stockinet. And, now that I'd changed over to stockinet, I looked up a video on how to knit backwards so I wouldn't have to turn the project constantly. I finished one half of the bag and set it aside for months while I took on other projects that weren't the fiber equivalent of dealing with a bloated government beurocracy. When I finally picked it up again, I discovered the final, and ultimately project-killing, point:

5. I really, really didn't like it.

The increasing and decreasing were still an annoyance, but I could live with that with the other modifications I made. But the bag itself? It's shape and construction? I just didn't like it. And I didn't know anyone who would like it. When I looked at the photo that came with the pattern, it just said "60-year-old phD candidate with an unhealthy obsession with India." I couldn't think of a single person in my life who would enjoy the bag. So even though I was more than half done, I frogged it all back again.

This time, I decided to just go square. There was one row of the original pattern that didn't involve any increasing or decreasing, and from that row and the directions for the starting and ending rows of triangles, I was able to extrapolate how to get straight-sided entrelac to work. And, hey, it did! I managed to get a square done relatively quickly. However, due to all the cutting and frogging and throwing-out of unfrogable pieces, I was going to be tight on how much yarn I would have left. When I started this final reattempt, I was thinking I'd do a small tote bag. But in the end I decided to do a pillow cover. So, using the main color (The Leader, 100% acrylic, color 601) I knit a 2-piece stockinet backing. The smaller of the 2 pieces has a garter edge with button holes. When it's all sewed in place, I'll be able to open it up to remove the pillow form for washing. A plus, given the 2 toddlers who roam wild and free in our house.

In my new-project frenzy, I finished the front and the larger back piece and left the smaller back piece with 2 inches left to be knit. And there it sat. So, last night, I picked it up again and finished the knitting. I have about 3/4 of a yard left of the acrylic, so it's all going to have to be sewn together on the machine or by hand. But all the bits are done for now and I'm sure it will sit undisturbed for several more days until the UFO-busting knitathon is well underway and I have nothing else to do but weave in ends and assemble pieces.

Welcome, welcome!

2007-03-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

Well, it appears to be as good a time as any to go live with this thing! My old blog's name didn't accurately reflect what I do. Sure, I still crochet and love it to bits, but since starting that blog, my interest in knitting and spinning have blossomed, too. And, while I am most greatful to the good folks at Crochet Me for providing such an excellent service, I was having a difficult time editing the blog's look and feel myself. So, I opted for blogger, which is much more WYSIWYG in it's design.

My old blog has been DOA for the last three months as I got this one ready and then had to put it on hold while life happened. I'm hoping to be much more on top of things now that this blog is officially "live."