Funky Monkey!

So the monkey totally jumped the queue. I was ogling Snuffykins' fantastically HUGE monkey and well I just HAD to make my own. She took all of these crazy pics of it. She was having so much fun with her monkey that I became inflamed with jealousy and set upon my own monkey (it only made me feel slightly better that she was giving her gianormous monkey away to live somewhere else).

So here is the fetal stage of my monkey dude. He is looking a little odd with only the one leg. The progress of this object is occasionally pornographically phallic in appearance and while knitting it in the Dr.'s office waiting room a man could not resist commenting "That is either for a REALLY big foot. or SOMETHING else!" He then turned red and sat snickering to himself for the duration of our wait in the chairs. On the other hand I have had several people practically falling over to come and touch my neonatal sock monkey, joyfully grasping him and cheering "Oh a sock monkey, a sock monkey!!" I have opted for the "striped" sock. I think I will make him the striped cap as well. Now back to work!

SO done and with time to spare!

I finished Icarus on Wednesday night. The last bead was slipped on and the last stitch cast off! It is now drying on my living room floor. This shawl was another tight fit on my tiny living room floor. There was hardly enough room for me to crawl aroundit and pin it down. So it is looking very red and flat and beady lying there. It will be wrapped and packed and ready for giving away on next Tuesday. The beads (about 100g) added quite a bit of weight on to it. It gives it a lot more drape. I added a bead to every single cast off stitch as I was casting them off. The bottom edge probably used about 40 g of the beads. I hope my mom will like it!

Get on the bus!

I am a Ravelraiser, don't you want to be one too?

Progress so far. So I ripped back to the beginning of chart 2 and reknit, applying beads as I went. This is the current result. If I did this again I would add beads all the way up the rows but the outcome on that happening looks unlikely. This is not a particularly interesting knit. It will be wonderfully Red and bright and sparkly when it is done! Yipee for shiny!

So I'm not really sure this was a good idea but....

As I was working the Icarus shawl I am making for my mom, it suddenly occurs to me that beads would be really nice. Ahem.

Yes, beads would be really nice. Particularly on those feathery parts. So I think it might be a great plan to pick back those purl/knit rows that run up the middle of those feathery parts and add some beads. Yeah, doesn't that sound like a great plan?

Oh and by the way, I am on row 12 of chart 4. Out of 4 charts. So yeah, isn't this a great idea? It sure is, only I should've thought of that sooner, like maybe around, chart 1???

I had to share this:

What Angela Means

You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality. You are very intuitive and wise. You understand the world better than most people. You also have a very active imagination. You often get carried away with your thoughts. You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals. You are deeply philosophical and thoughtful. You tend to analyze every aspect of your life. You are intuitive, brilliant, and quite introverted. You value your time alone. Often times, you are grumpy with other people. You don't appreciate them trying to interfere in your affairs. You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone. You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together. At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together. You are relaxed, chill, and very likely to go with the flow. You are light hearted and accepting. You don't get worked up easily. Well adjusted and incredibly happy, many people wonder what your secret to life is.

What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

I don't know about you, but some of those descriptions are a little conflicted, aren't they? Sort of schizophrenic. I know I am sometimes a little crazy, but am I that crazy? I guess you just see in it what you want to see in yourself? Or do you all think this sounds like me and I am the last to know!?

I really found this to be more appropriate....

You Are a Dash

Your life is fast paced and varied. You are realistic, down to earth, and very honest. You're often busy doing something interesting, and what you do changes quickly. You have many facets to your personality, and you connect them together well. You have a ton of interests. While some of them are a bit offbeat, they all tie together well. You friends rely on you to bring novelty and excitement to their lives. (And while you're the most interesting person they know, they can't help feeling like they don't know you well.) You excel in: Anything to do with money You get along best with: the Exclamation Point

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Teenuh, how much you want to bet you are an exclamation point?

Yowza. Bad blogger, no cookie for you!!

Whoops, so 18 or say days have gone by since my last blog entry. I have been busy, busy, busy. Between Art Vista, See's candy fund raisers, and *dun, dun dunnnnnnnnn* the return of soccer I hardly have any time to do anything (laundry, cooking, cleaning and dishes all fall into this category of anything). I did however have a SUPER nifty weekend away with some girl friends where we were supposed to be scrap booking. Which I was not. I panicked and couldn't decide what to bring and brought nothing to do with scrap booking. Instead I brought 14 skeins of yarn that I wound into balls several of which were 1000yds/ball, ugh! The good news is I won't have to ball my yarn for a while, I can just pick up a new project and go!

Also made instead of scrap booking - several sets of stitch markers. Including a replacement set for Teenuh, which I made for Christmas then magically lost. Now that I have made a duplicate set, I know I will find the bag of markers, where they have been secretly hiding for the last 4 months. I forgot to take pictures of the ones I made for her, so hopefully she will post some pictures soon *ahem, nudge, nudge*. I made 2 other sets as well. The findings, were amazingly cheep $0.96 in the craft dept at Walmart with 5 and 6 pieces on the card. I used Swarovski beads which were also found at Walmart.

Teenuh and I made our Loopy Ewe needle felt kids together. Mine came out with CrAzY eYeS. While Tina's had a saner, more intelligent look. Her stripes were better on her socks too (alas, I shouldn't have striped at 2 am, I should have had the sense to wait until morning like she did). Regardless my daughter loves her and I will make another one with the left overs from the kit.

Several rows of the Icarus shawl (oh, yeah, did I mention I was making one?) were completed however when I got home I realized there was a big mistake made quite a bit down and had to rip back, ugh!! So progress is once again going forward on it. It has to be finished by April 15th for Mom's birthday.

Cranked out in rapid succession, after several practice circles and attempts, were some 70's style lace caps. They were a commissioned item for a friend's daughters to be worn on "Decades Day" at school. They have Tye Dyed some T-shirts and will probably Tye Dye the hats to match. So I made them out of Lily and Cream cotton, so they would be dye able. Hmm. Aside from the fact that I didn't seem to take any pics of my triplet hats I don' t think I have anything else to report..... Hopefully it won't be 20 days until I post again.....

2 down, 1 to go. Finished #2 last night at Princesses on Ice. Today we are going to Cirque Du Soleil so i am not sure if I can finish #3 today. Got to knit like a fiend so I can finish them...

Next up......
3 super preemie hats. My DD's teacher had her babies at 29 weeks 2 days. They were 3lbs. 3lb 2oz and 3lbs 4oz. Apparently the singlet (they were 1 pair Ident. Twins and 1 single) was 4 days older than the twins. But I wonder if they are just smaller because they started out with half the cells that the single did. So I will be making some preemie caps and booties. Strickwear will have to wait....

Revontuli is finished!

I finished it last night, well technically early this morning. When I left the South San Jose Ravelry Knitting group at Starbucks I had only 6 more row to go. So I went home and cranked them out while catching up on DVR'd shows with my hubby. 2 hour long tv shows and a Jay Leno later I was done! I have to block it now. This was a 150g skein of yarn and the pattern writer used a 160g skein. I had just a little bit of yarn left, probably about 10 - 15 yards left. I was sweating a little there at the end. Here is it, unblocked. Blocked pictures coming soon to a blog near you. First I have to go total up all of the Sees fundraising money at the kid's elementary school. Fun!! What should I do next!? I am thinking about making Mister Ben or the Strickwear mobius. I can't decide.

Yippee Skippy! (php)

Stitches was fun! I love to shop and shopping in a massive market of pretty much only the things I am interested in with a large budget specified for shopping with is just stupendous. I did a MUCH better job this year of budgeting my money as I went through. Last year I spent my entire budget by the time I was only halfway through and had to ATM the rest of the way through. This year I came with almost the same budget and came home with money left over! Although I have to admit that I have called my friend Teenuh who is working there today at the fabulous Fiber Fiend booth to ask her to buy a book for me that I am having non-buyer's remorse over. Hopefully she can get it for me. Stupid me and the out of print books! And as Teenuh said, it was quite a bit more fun this year seeing other knitters she and I knew
and shopping with a larger gang in tow.

Thursday night at Stitches was loads of fun, starting with the Ravelry meetup. There were many Ravelers there and I have to confess that I was surprised with the number of "older" knitters that were there (people older than my parents qualify as older - so over 60) as I sort of lamely assumed that they were not strongly represented on the internet. My mistake, I stand corrected! Baby Boomers are representing! Perhaps it is only my own mother and the mother's of my friends who struggle with the internet, all the rest seem to be doing well. After the meet up and some on-stage humiliation with my Pretty as a Peacock shawl, we were "snuck" into the Market Place preview for free. We got our super awesome Ravelry Passport books, which were SO snazzy and cute and well done! I picked up the Knitter's Block from Article Pract (something I had non-buyer's remorse over not buying at TKGA in Oakland last fall).
At Commuknity's booth I purchased 2 skeins of Malabrigo lace weight (exactly) similar to the KnitandRun's tasty yarn that I was coveting. I also bought all of the heavy things that I didn't want to carry all day long the next day or was afraid were going to be gone. This is the Fibersphere which will work nicely when ball winding or using a ball of yarn that tries to escape (like Kauni for example). It is nifty because when you open the container, the feed hole opens too, so you don't need to pull all of your yarn back through the hole if you frog or cut the yarn if you want to swap out your take-a-long project mid-project.I also got these 2 German lace books Kunst-stricken I and II, purchased at Village Spinning and Weaving. An expensive place to buy books but a place that always has a hard to find book or imported books if you are looking for one. Then we found the free sample row. FREE 10 g balls of Malabrigo laceweight! Cripes, that is like 1/5 of a skein, almost 100 yds! I got a spiffy red one. Also to be got- a 10g sample of Cherry Tree Hill sock!

So you KNOW that was the first place we went on Friday morning. I got another red Malabrigo and my super smart mom grabbed the same color and gave me hers! We worked on getting the rest of our passport stamped and shopped quite a bit and got another freebie at Bella Knitting, a small bottle of Wool Wash!

Here is the rest of my stash enhancement. I guess this year I was kind of into buying kits:

Strickwear Kit in Purple Passion: (Purchased to learn the varied strand technique to be used again in the future with my nifty silk from Redfish)

Mister Ben Kit from Black Water Abbey Farms: Featuring the Mister Ben pattern by Two Old Bags.

The Maple Leaf Shawl Kit from Just Our Yarn (who were so accommodating and let me switch the kids around):

Then some loose balls of yarn:
Noro sock from The Yarn Place (Capitola):


Pagewood Farm Hand Dyed Sock Chugiak in Harvest from Great Yarns:

I also did some fiber enhancement:

A sampler of colors from Carolina Homespun 4oz of Silk hankies from I think maybe the Oak Grove Studio Booth, but I am not sure. Two 40z hanks of 100% bamboo fiber in Sunset colorway from Fiber Fiend.Then I did a little tool enhancement, just a needle sizer and some needle caps.

I returned to the Ravelry booth and delivered my filled in passport directly to Mr. Ravelry himself Casey (who was wearing a humorous "Bobfather" shirt), then dragged my tired butt home.

So, to anyone curious on the "Bag of lies" rectification front, just before we left the show Deanna of Deanna's Vintage Designs was there and I talked to her about my 120 yds of yarn (instead of 185). She said it was an Interlacements Yarn problem and talked to them. The Interlacements Yarn people were gracious enough to give me an entire skein of 345 yds of the very same yarn! They were so very kind. Whoo. Finally reached the end! I swear the next post won't be so long...

Fun felted thing project from Stitches

This morning at Stitches we were lucky enough to catch the first seating of the Art felt needle felting demonstration. We got to make an entire project (about 6" x 15") while the rep talked about the process and the materials (and don't forget where they were available...). My mom, Melissa and I all three made project. I don't know about the other 2, but I couldn't wait to get home and finish it! This was it before felting.

This was a fun learning project. I think I have learned much from it. It was relatively hard dissolving the Artfelt paper from the back of the felting. The colors bled some too, Annoying!! After pouring a large tea kettle's worth of boiling water on the thing I rinsed it in cool and put in the spin cycle in the washer. When I pulled it out, it had sticky, snotty, little chunks stuck to the edge from the undissolved Artfelt paper. So I had to boil another pot of water and re-rinse the edges. Spin cycle again. Still there was left on the edge and I gave up and scissored it off! It suffered more shrinkage I think due to the repeated rinsing. Here it is, post felting. Tomorrow, a summary of the show and photos of my loot.

It's done! I dumped the dyes into some nifty anti-spill kids paint buckets and stuck my brushes out of the top. I started with the swatch and did several different color combinations. I then did a quick heat set on it (which obviously was too quick, it came out very light ) but I got the gist of what I wanted to do. I consulted my peacock photos and decided which was the best set of color combinations.

So I put a big sheet of painter’s plastic drop cloth over my table. Pulled out a gazillion feet of saran wrap and tossed the shawl on to it, sprayed it with water and just started painting. Here it is part way through. As I finished a section I saturated it with a vinegar/water solution from a spray bottle and then rolled it up in the saran wrap. Then I laid out some more saran wrap, moved the shawl over and painted some more. It took a long time. I worked on it, for about 45 minutes in the afternoon then had to set it aside. I came back and worked on it from 10:30 pm – 1 am. Then I rolled it up in its saran warp skin and stuffed it in a colander to steam over a pot of water all covered in foil. I left it over the steam to set for an hour then, I rinsed it and sent it through the spin cycle. Blocked it and left it to dry. There you have one hand painted Pretty as a Peacock shawl. It was dyed using 6 colors of Jacquard liquid silk/wool dye: Virdian Green, Marine Green, Royal Blue, Kelly Green, Cyan, and Apricot.

And I still had time to do 12 more rows of my Revontuli. By the way the Kauni yarn kind of sucks. There is tons of debris in the yarn, bits of straw and hay, strings, garbage, and weeds actually spun into the wool and dyed! I have never seen such a mess before. It is like the wool right off the sheep without being well combed or carded. Bummer, because it looks awesome.

The shawl has been painted and is sitting in a pot as I type steaming away. It is late. I am tired and my fingers are stained various shades of blue and green. Keep your fingers crossed. I hope it was worth it. Because it is going to suck if I have to dye it a dark solid blue....

The Pretty as a Peacock shawl is finished being knit. I love this pattern, it worked up so quickly and was pretty easy. I think I could make this again and again. Here it is in its invisible splendor.

The bright pink twin sheet I use to block on was too small so I had to switch to a queen and only had a white sheet to use. So it is very hard to see. I will snap some more pictures that will be easier to see when it is dry. I need to run out to University Art Supply and pick up a bottle of gold colored dye before I start dyeing. I have been studying photos of peacocks and have formulated a plan of attack. This is my little swatch to dye. I worked several different parts of the chart into a square so i could test dye on each style of feather.

Here it was before blocking. A little easier to see. Lastly, here is my newest project. Revontuli - huivi. It is a Finnish pattern for gradually varigaited yarns like the Kauni that I am making it out of. This is the EQ (rainbow) colorway. This pattern is pretty easy and seems to be working up very quickly also.

Apparently I was jumping the gun on my worries about the amount of yarn I am using. How foolish I was, forgetting that the majority of yarn use occurs in the last rows. I seem to have used a much more reasonable percentage of the yarn than I thought I was going to. I am now working on chart I. I have caught back up to where I noticed the mistake at and passed it by a couple of rows.

My mom and sister went to the Friends of the Library book sale on Saturday and picked up knitting book for me that they argued over buying. My mom said I wouldn't make any of the sweaters and it was a waste of money. My sister argued that there was cool stuff in there and it didn't cost much so just buy the darn thing. They stuffed it into the bag and bought it (as much as you could fit in the bag for $5) and ended up paying about $0.25 for the thing. Turns out it's this book: Tudor Roses by Alice Starmore A very precious out of print knitting book! Can you believe it!? Just the 2 days ago I was looking at another Ravler's Elizabeth I and thinking it was a pretty pattern as well as looking at the other patterns from the book. Funny how the world works. My mom and sister were quite surprised to find out how much it was worth!

Coming Clean.

I was reading Teenuh's post and thinking about her crazy agreement to control her sock yarn buying tendencies. I was snickering to myself while looking at her stash and thinking, "wow she has got some serious stash!" Then I went into my garage to look for some blue yarn to make my square for Thom's afghan. I looked all through my stash and didn't seem to have any blue or gray yarn in the appropriate weight. I did however seem to have quite a bit of yarn.

So I am now trying to catalog more of my stash onto ravelry. I added just a few things, although I did just buy the 3 skeins of Paton's classic wool today (who can resist they were on clearance for just $2.00! and someday I will felt with it...) but I realized I have tons of yarn in there I haven't even looked at or touched for at least a year... So sadly over the next couple of weeks I am going to try and post most of my stash onto Ravelry and not just my good stash or my recently acquired stash, because I have been collecting for years now and most of what is listed up there has been purchased in the last 2 years... I am just wondering, is it really worth it to list the cheesy acrylic caron simply soft and red heart pounds of love onto Ravelry. Most were bought with the intention of using just a little bit, but needing the color... Honestly do I have to be THAT honest??


Now for my Thom's afghan square:

This was knitted in the round from the center out. it was nice and easy. I knitted it in sock yarn first to see how the pattern would work over many more repeats than I would need and it worked great. Here it is knitted on size 2 needles in Trekking XXL left overs I had lying about.

This one is made with the Lion Brand Yarn Baby Soft solids in (obviously) blue. The squares are both 4" x 4". The rules were it needed to be knitted with a gauge of 20 - 24 sts / 4" and have 3 rows of garter on the border. So I thought instead of picking up stitches, just knit it in the round and finish with 3 rows of garter border. I quite like the way it looked in Trekking. After 17 rounds my square was 4" by 4". So here is the super simple pattern.

Round square:

Cast on 8 stitches. Distribute around a set of dpns (I put 2 sts on needles 1 & 2 and 4 sts on needle 3 so I don't have to mark the beginning of the round, if you use 4 needles, mark beginning of the round.)

Row1: K 1 into the front and back of every stitch. (16 sts)

Row 2: *K1 into the Front and Back of the stitch (kfb), k2, kfb * Repeat from * to * 4 times.

Row 3 (and all odd rows until garter stitch) K around.

Row 4: *kfb, k4, kfb*, repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 6: *kfb, k6, kfb* , repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 8: *kfb, k8, kfb* , repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 10: *kfb, k10, kfb* , repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 12: *kfb, k12, kfb*, repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 14: *kfb, k14, kfb*, repeat from * to* 4 times.

Measure your square, if it is 3.5" then work the rows as follows, if not continue in the pattern until your work large enough then work rows 15 and 17 as your odd rows.

Row 15: Purl around

Row 16: *kfb, k16, kfb* , repeat from * to* 4 times.

Row 17: Purl around and bind off.

Use the center cast on tail to sew the center hole shut and weave in the ends.

Rinse and block it to 4" x 4".

This pattern is based on the principle of a flat circle and will continue to grow outward. So as long as you continue the pattern Row X: *kfb, kx, kfb* repeat *to* 4 times... and the increases are aligned as corners, you can make this square as large (or as small) as you want.

Pretty as an Albino Peacock

I have cast on for the Pretty as A Peacock Shawl. I have four skeins of the Knitpicks Merino/silk Bare yarn (yeah, OMG 1760 yds! It REQUIRES 1500 yds of fingering/sport wt!) After a few bumps in the start it is going along smoothly. I did not check for errata on this pattern and it turns out there is one very significant error right out of the blocks. The cast on instruction number is wrong! Ha ha, I cast on 3 times, counted the stitches on the chart and realized that the bottom line of the chart and the c.o. instruction were wrong! So I went and looked online and lo and behold it was wrong! I am reading the chart and not the written so there are less errors that I would have encountered, but I think I have learned by lesson, when buying a newer pattern that hasn't been knitted 10,000 times by other knitters always check for errors. Um, duh. Pretty basic isn't it? It also suggested a knitted on cast on and I did that and didn't like it so I did a long tail cast on instead. As of last night I have achieved row 49.

To answer the question of several boggled people: I, who am obsessed with lovely peacock colored yarns, am not making a natural colored shawl. I have a couple of jars of lovely peacock blue and green dyes (picked up at University Art Supply) for wool and silk, which I plan to paint onto the shawl when I am finished, ala this woman's beautiful Peacock Feather's Shawl. I am not sure if I will just graduate it down ward like she did or if I will try to paint in a more detailed feather coloring. The PaaP pattern I am using has longer single feather details than the PFS and might lend more nicely to that, with the colors radiating outward from the eye of the feather. I'll probably have to knit up a sample to test paint and see how the dye takes/bleeds or perhaps turn it over to the hands of my very artistic and paint oriented sister.

So I cast on for the Snow Queen. As soon as I started knitting my asthma started to bother me. So I went and used my medicine. Then I come back later and the same thing happens. I'm beginning to think that maybe my lungs and Kid Silk don't agree with each other. So I'll put it aside for now and try again in a couple of days.

Instead I am going to cast on for my Pretty As a Peacock Shawl. I am using Knitpicks Bare, silk/merino blend. It has a very nice shine to it and is soft and smooth as well. I am looking forward to working with it.

I made it, with room to spare!

I finished the Madeira Stole this morning. With 20 grams of yarn left over! Woo hoo. I could've modified it and put on a longer edging or something. I am just relieved to have not run out of yarn though! I really think the motifs look like little school houses or row houses. The ends are woven in and that sucker if blocked and drying. It is posing on a BRIGHT pink sheet on the living room floor. I really stretched it in length and sacrificed a bit in width for that. I pinned it out lengthwise first, that is the first time I have done that, it was interesting. Usually I pin the 1 side first, then the other side and finish with the ends. Finished size is 22 x 80 (instead of the recommended 26 x 64). I added in all 3 extra motif repeats on both sides below the diamond and over the double row of houses.I was blocking it with string then had a string-tastrophe (known to you as my DD's foot!) and changed over quickly to pins mid block! I am having a hard time taking pictures of the whole thing without the wierd fading off into space/ Star Wars opening look, so once it is all dried out I will take some more pictures when I can move it and post them on my Ravelry page. On to the next project!