Reinventing the Wheel.

Sometimes things seem like they should be simpler. For example, putting a bead onto your knitting. What I started out doing, was what everyone said to do. Work until you reach the stitch you want the bead on. 1. Put down one needle. 2. Pick up the crochet hook. 3. Stab the bead onto said hook (max # of beads that will fit on the hook at once - 2) . 4. Use hook to lift desired stitch to be beaded and slide the bead on. 5. Drop crochet hook. Repeat as needed per each beaded stitch. Was it me or was that WAAAAAy too many steps and way too inefficient?

I sat and thinked for a minute (ala' Pooh bear... Think think think..) The light above my head went on and I grabbed a piece of floral wire, put a curly loop onto the end so the bead wouldn't fall off, then carefully bent the other end of the wire into a tiny hook (this was the hardest part getting it small enough to fit through the bead and not to snag onto the yarn and never let go). Strung the wire full of beads, then realized a giant 14" long piece of wire loaded with beads is a bit unwieldy.I curled the wire into a spiral so the beads would still slide nicely and instantly eliminated step 3, the slowest and most tedious step, completely from the procedure. It is now twice as fast to slip those beads on. I can even have my eager small helpers put the beads on for me. Instead of picking up a new bead every stitch, I now have 100 beads ready to load. In the right pic you can see the next bead on the wire, right at the top. Sometimes the answer to something can be SO simple if you just think about it. Now I just need to dangle it off of a necklace so I don't have to keep grabbing it off my knee. Tidy it up, make it look professional, with a dangley clip on it and market the darn thing to all the knitters of the world still wrestling with one bead at a time...

Today was a sad day.

My sister's best friend Melody died today. She had epilepsy and had lately been having fairly frequent seizures. She died alone in her apartment some time between 1:30 am and 1 pm when the police found her body. It was tragic and it was terrible. She was only 32. She was a nice girl, who loved to have fun, was always a good friend and loved all animals dearly. She will be missed. Keep dancing in the great Goth Club in the sky, Melody.

One perfect morning I was all alone
Listening to the blaze of summer
Drifting
I was falling
I was floating in a golden haze
Breathing in the sky-blue sun
Of memories of other days

And in my dreams I was a child
Flowers in my mouth and in my eyes
And I was floating through the colours of the sky
Up to the stars and angels

Up to heaven
Up forever
Up to heaven
Up forever

Turning in my climb
I looked down on a lake
Traced upon the water
There I saw your face
Sending recollection of the times we shared
Pushed on ever up into the sky

And in my dreams I was a child
Flowers in my mouth and in my eyes
And I was floating through the colours of the sky
Up to the stars and angels

Up to heaven
Up forever
Up to heaven
Up forever

To the Sky. The Cure

Falling Leaves I.P.

Here are some quickie pix of my Falling Leaves in progress, modeled by my DD. I have decided to put the beads only in the center of the leaves. The pattern is not terribly clear because of course this lace has not been blocked, but you get an idea sort of. You can also see the bottom edge is actually V-shaped and not a blunt line. Here is a blurry close up of the bead work. Sorry, the camera did not want to cooperate and we had like 2 minutes of sun before the clouds blew back in. I had threaded all the beads on (PSYCHO!) then realized this was a bad idea and I ended up pulling them all off anyway and now am using the crochet hook method to place each bead (sllllllow) on the WS and RS rows. If I have enough yarn left I am going to knit on an edge with beads on it too, though I think I will probably have to go buy more beads, I bought 70 g of size 6/0 and I think it will be enough to just do the body of the shawl and not the edge. And of COURSE I picked the beads that were $6.50 per tube instead of $3.50 like all the rest.... gold and sparkley mmmmm.

Now in progress...
A falling leaves triangular shawl made from my Shaeffer Anne in the autumn leaves colors. I swatched it on a size 5 needle, too tight, not airy enough, switched to an 8 and was satisfied with its holey-ness. I am using the pattern from Carol Rasmussen Noble's Lavish Lace book, but I didn't like the beginning she used so I have changed it some to make it taper up more. As attentive as she is to details she makes a crappy beginning on this project. I have also noticed her lace charts are lazy, she adds on a garter edge but doesn't include it in the chart pattern. So back to the beginning part, she has you cast on 6 sts, then begin working the pattern right away off the cast on. ALL the rest of the edges ALL the way around have a garter stitch edging that is 3 sts deep on the sides and 5 rows tall on the last rows before cast off. So why didn't she put that on the beginning on the bottom? If you look at the picture in the book, you can see how weird and blunt her beginning edge is. So instead of c.o. 6. I did a c.o. of 2 sts, worked the first one in knit, knit the second row with 2 twisted lift increases, then knit the third row, knit the 4th row with 2 increases (now I'm up to 6 sts), knit the 5th row, so now it matches the top cast on and begins with a gently tapering point and on the 6th row, began working the charted pattern. So I am about 4 repeats into the pattern (about 40 rows?) and I realize that this thing will be so light it will always want to curl up, so now I want to add some beads to it, maybe just on the edges? I am going to a bead store tomorrow to shop around a bit and then I'll decide. I am debating putting it on every other row in the garter border, or using it around the edge of each leaf, or in the center of each leaf, or just knitting the whole thing up then knitting on a separate border onto the edge with beads on that. Too indecisive. What do you think?

As I was looking at this book I realized something kind of funny. I bought this book about 3 years ago (or whenever it was that it came out). All of the projects in this book use Cherry Tree Hill Yarn's, pretty much something is knit from every one of their lines. When I got this book I looked at that and said, "Ha, who's ever heard of this kind of yarn" the one yarn store near me didn't carry it and I pretty much put it off as something I would never get my hands on (at the time it was even hard to find affordable lace weight or fingering even!) Then I am sitting here in my living room with the Cherry Tree Hill Silk Cascade Fingering in my hand and I think, hmm, maybe something from that Lavish Lace book, and Lo' there are 2 projects in there made from that very yarn, bizarre. Things can sure change in a couple of years. Now there are 1/2 a dozen yarn stores to shop, with large selections and real yarn brands, plus of the course, the glorious world of internet out there waiting for us to search for that special something we saw somewhere and now need to have.

A Post! Finally!

Well, Full Thread Ahead had a totally fun 1/2 time superball sale this Sunday which Teenuh and I went to. It was all you could carry for a whopping 45% discount. It was pretty funny watching people carry around arm loads of yarn and dropping them as they went along (Teenuh's Love yarn was particularly good at escaping). This was my haul.
2 skeins of Plymouth Fiesta (sea green and aqua colors) destined to be another fuzzy scarf, 1 skein of Cherry Tree Hill Cascade Silk Fingering in the Monet colorway, 2 skeins of Tofutsies (Yaye for soysilk and Chitin!?) in Put Your Foot Down 723 on the left and Tender Foot 727 (Thanks Tina!). 8 Skeins of Misty Alpaca dk in brown and 8 in cream.


Here finally are pictures of my convertible mittens in the Broad Street Mittens Pattern. They are made from Colinette Jitterbug. They are very nice and soft and warm.Here they are flipped up. They were supposed to have this dorky little loop at the end of the mitten that you could button up when you flipped them. I couldn't stand the loop so I just closed it up on the end no loop. The flaps stay up pretty well by themselves. The other minor change I made, I added a mini cable in the k2, p2 rib, so that I had a k2, p2, mc, p2 rib instead. I think it makes it 2% fancier! I like that. The cable is also on the rib on the flipped part, but It is on the other side, so when the mitt is closed you can see it, but when it is open you can't, I realized WAY too late I should have put it upside down. They haven't been washed yet, before I took the pics, but they will be soon since they absolutely REEK of vinegar. The Jitterbug looks great but the smell is very vinegar heavy. I have not decided on a new traveling project yet. Although I will have to come up with one soon, we are supposed to go to my BIL's house this weekend and I am thinking. Bore fest, watching DH and BIL play video games for a couple of hours *yawn*. Well, happy Friday people.

Vickie Howell, how knifty!

Last night Teenuh and I went over to Full Thread Ahead for a Vickie Howell book signing, yarn promo and her DIY Super bowl Knit In promo. She talked a little and answered questions. What a nice friendly lady she is (and every bit as cute as she looks on tv, boy she is tiny see the pic of her and me below, her wearing like 4" Steve Madden Heels and me like 5'11" in my Bass slip ons.) I am sure it improves her male viewership. This is her modeling her new original pattern for a crochet and knitted shrug made out her new super yummy soft soy/silk yarn Love. It is so very nice and soft and drapey. It is fairly pricey but a few skeins for something nice, worth it. She is smirking because she didn't want to model it because her outfit did not match with the shrug. I love the names of all her yarn colors they are hillarious and/or cutely named. Last but not least here is tiny Vickie standing next to GIANT me. She is so friendly she will just chit chat away with you while she signs your book and even after she is done. She doesn't make you feel hurried or like you are bothering her a bit. You couldn't imagine a more pleasant experience. Don't miss the FTA super bowl sale.

Knitwise, today I fnished one of the Broadstreet mittens without the flap. I made the fingers on it and decided in fear of running out of yarn that I would make both glove parts of the mitten first and then divide the yarn in half and make the flap portion. I am evening thinking maybe I should make the flap part from the point up and work backward and then I'll know exactly how far I can get with it.... but then it would be hard to join. Hmmm, decisions decisions.

Wow was that slow!?


Last night, the last stitch was cast off and the last tail woven in on my Austermann Step socks. They came out quite nicely. Except for some weird looking pictures of my feet. I don't know why but I struggle with photographing socks and my feet. One would think it was easy, simply look down and *snap* right? NOoooo just weird freaky looking shots that make it appear I actually have no ankle. Fortunately for you I have filled in the color on my leg so you don't have to see the pasty color with all the unsavory unshavenness going on...

What else is on the needles now aside from that crazy shirt I am working on? A shawl from the Viictorian Lace Today for my mom, she picked the what was probably the hardest project, knit on both sides, the k2tog go right on top of the previous rows yo. It is crazy when you make a mistake and have to pick back. Then in my usual form I pulled one needle out like a spaz and dropped 1/2 of the work (this was about 30 rows in) and had to pull back almost to the cast on.

Also my traveling project cast on is a knitted flip top glove Broad Street Mitten on the Knitty website I began yesterday after I finished the sock. I am using the Colinette Jitterbug that Teenuh gave me for Christmas. I am thinking though about not making fingers and instead making it into a fingerless mitt kind of thing with a flip top over it. Especially since the pattern calls for about 30 more yards then what I have. I know that eliminating the finger portion will greatly reduce the amount of yarn I need. Plus think of all those woven in ends.... I have also debated making one finger (maybe the index finger) and the rest in one opening so that the mitt part will stay down when flipping back the flip top. Duh! I just realized I should have run the yarn through my meter to cut it in half then I would know exactly how much each one took. I may just run the yarn through from the ball and cut where it should be half....

Here it is Sunday already.
I spent HOURS (and I mean hours) picking apart a partially knitted tank top that for some insane reason I have agreed to finish for someone else. I sat, graph paper in hand carefully noting each stitch as I picked it apart so that I could duplicate it quadrupilly on each of the four straps of said tank top. Why did I volunteer to do this? I don't know, it makes me want to tear out my hair.

Knitting a sock.
I am still working on my mini cable chevron Austermann Step sock. Not making much progress as I haven't had much time to knit. I just realized I didn't take any pictures yet. That's okay though i am terrible at taking pictures of my own feet. I will have to buy a foot or hire a foot model to have better pictures of my socks. Never thought I'd type or say that...

Dying Yarn (Picture Heavy Post)

On Saturday Teenuh came over and we had a brilliant time dying yarn with Kool Aid. Teenuh dyed 2 skeins of Knitpicks Bare Superwash Fingering. I dyed 2 skeins of the same and 1 skein of Yarn Place Angel lace weight superwash. I documented our fun.

Here is Tina prepping her yarn.

We mixed up 1/2 cup of water per packet of Kool Aid as a standard.

Now the debate, to dump the die on or to hand paint the yarn we can't decide so we both do one of each....Tina is dump dying here. Using a spoon and a cup of Kool Aid mix. Looks like yellow.

Here are all of our skeins (post spin cycle) hanging out in the shower to dry. Tina's are the two on the right (obviously making mine the three on the left.)
Tina is showing off her still damp yarn before going home. Hours of work for 2 skeins of yarn. I jokingly noted at some point we were producing about one skein per hour (boy weren't we SUPER efficient!?). The rainbow colored skein was died by dumping the color in sections and the firey red, orange and yellow was hand painted. My skein in the same color way was also a hand paint.
After Tina left (late at night) I overdyed the blue/green/blue-green. I mixed up the Kool Aid in the same concentration, then added 10 drops of food coloring per packet of Kool Aid for a more intense color. Here is the end result of all three together. For comparision, the overdyed skein is on the right and was the same green and blue as the skein on the left was before overdying. Also you can see it in the shower third from the left. I was really pleased with the darker colors. I am thinking about dying a couple of lace weight skeins in this same colorway, it would look really cool (or should I say Kool) knit into the Fiddlesticks Peacock Feathers Shawl. Just writing about this makes me itch to dye that lace weight!

I had been doing so well with posting on a regular basis, but I don't seem to have a minute of free time lately. DS is trying out for the fighting team for Tae Kwon Do and has to be there M and W at 6:15 - 7:15. On Sat 10:45 - 12:45. This is in addition to the regular classes 3 days a week for an hour. Then after this, we must also eat dinner and do homework. Fun fun fun.

I had a groovy time doing some Kool Aid ( Ohhhh Yeah! Some how in my mind that didn't sound so much like Kool aid man anymore as it did sound like Macho Man Randy Savage.... hmm) dyeing at my house with Teenuh on Sat. evening. We got some nice looking colors, it was pretty easy and came out quite nice. The knitpicks Superwash Fingering is SO awesomely soft, it feel wonderful. I can hardly wait to start knitting with it. I think Teenuh's rainbow skein was probably my favorite. I have some pics to go with this, but I am on the laptop so I will have to do a knock down drag out post on this later.

Today, I occupied myself with knitting a little project to send out to someone else. It went very quickly, begun early in the afternoon and finished off watching the bad auditions for American Idol. Pics to follow later.

My Austerman sock continues to make progress, sock 1 is a full fledged sock now, I am racing toward the finish line at the top of the ankle (toe - up obviously). It is quite nice, I love knitting with the yarn. I am sure all that aloe etc will feel quite nice on the feet.

Alas I am about to run out of gas here. I have been having insomnia so i have double dosed myself tonight with 2 bags of strongly steeped sleepy time tea to ensure at least some sleep tonight. My eyelids are getting heavy and my brain is running slow. I promise pictures in the next post.... When I can edit photos on my Giant new to me 19" monitor (yeah, I was trapped in 1982 with my 14" monitor that was actually SCREAMING constantly, ever heard a monitor scream? It is like nails on chalkboard man... It was horrible. I don't know what was wrong with it.) Regardless the new monitor seems huge and totally in my face. It's funny though I don't have to squint anymore and my laptop had a bigger monitor than my desktop did... hmm.

Mercifully... on the scarf from hell stage 3 : Running out of yarn - also known as being done, has been reached !! I made it, with both eyes intact. What a relief. Now I am swatching for a pair of socks out of the Austermann Step. I am working out a chevron with a mini cable in between. I started off with just a chevron then wanted to add something a little more interesting into the v. I am NOT making the same mistake I did with the scarf. Once I see if the swatch looks good I'll get started. I have already knit and unknit 3 different swatches of this same thing. I am tired from a long week. My eldest child, my dog Sam, is having health problems and DD is having Night Nasties (not Night Terrors, she isn't afraid, she is just yelling and hopping mad in her sleep) I'm headed for bed.

Ha ha ha!! I finally know what I ordered from Yarn4socks.com. Why? Because it finally came. Lame!! Okay. What I did get was: lovely Lorna's Laces Shepherd sockin the Childsplay colorway. Rainbowrific!
Here, left to right, Schaefer Yarn Anne Handdyed in violet, blue and olive green tones. Then J. Knits Superwash Me - Sock in the Columbus colorway, sea blues mixied with jewel greens. Quite nice. Both feel absolutely WONDERFUL. Very nice and soft. Better than imagined. Mmmmmm. Both for size 1 needles.
Last but not least, three chubby german rolls. Left to right again. Austermann Step in nice Autumnal hues of blue, rusty red and tan. This has Aloe vera and Jojoba for softer feet (goodness knows I NEED that) which is supposed to stay in the yarn even after repeated washings. It feels nice now, it will probably feel great when knitting as well.
Next is Lana Grossa Cotton Fantasy (they can't all be winter socks.) It is a 45/42/13 cotton/wool/polyamide blend. Also nice and soft. I LOVE self striping yarn. Finally Lanna Grossa Magico superwash in denim tones color 2528, which now that I have it in my hands, looks suspiciously like a previous purchase of LG Colortweed 1006. Guess I really kind of dig those colors? Looking the yarns overall, apparently I was in some kind of blue/green mood when I ordered them all. Next time, I'll have to really stay focused and not lose my head. I am also thinking, next time I will not photograph things on my couch the olive green, not conducive to bright and colorful looking pictures is it? Then when I tried to recolor it another color in Photoshop it colored in parts of the yarn (particularly in the second picture.) So next time, it may be back to tissue paper, too bad I don't have anymore of the bright yellow that comes in the Commuknitty bag...

Tragic knitting day. Today I have knit nothing. Nothing I say, yes you gasp. Today my tendonitis and carpal tunnel were terrible from an afternoon of yardwork yesterday. Those of you who know my DH know he does nothing. So I do ALL the yardwork. I had 2 fruitless mulberry trees worth of leaves to clean out of the backyard. My arms are aching. Also I spent much time today prepping the box tops for education for the children's school I am the Box Top Mailer mom for the school So I have spent plenty of time cutting the boxtops right at that little pink dotted line edge. Then I have to peel the cardboard backing so there is as little cardboard as possible stuck to the printed from. Then I have to put them in bundles of 50. So, $125 worth later (also interpreted as 1,250 box tops, plus the 27 left overs that will wait for the next batch of mailing), my thumb is barking where I was continuously stabbed by cardboard peeling it apartmy tondonitis is a little more aggravated andthe school people are just a little happier. Tomorrow, I will knit, even if it kills me. Right after I run the copy room for the whole school...

Stage 2:
View the limited progress. I can now count the number of rows and calculate my progress. 21 repeats of said pattern. 252 rows. 14 Inches long. 7560 sts. Just about 2/3 of the way there. Current goal: Knit the dreaded scarf long enough to wrap around your neck and hang yourself.

What a sucker.
I had a whole bunch of the striped yarn left over that I dyed and I thought to myself, "Well, the mittens and the hat are cute, I should make a matching scarf. " Then, I stupidly say to DD "Look I have enough to make you a scarf, do you want a matching scarf." To which she would obviously reply yes. There is a reason why people do not knit scarves out of fingering weight yarn, because it is slow and it is tedious and it is stupid. And like a fool, did I decide on an interesting pattern? No, I did not. 9 rows knit rs, purl ws then row 10 -1 2 k both sides. This is over 30 sts, meant to be about 4 inches wide. It is now about 6 inches long and I am ready to stab out with eyes with the stupid moronic size 2 needles I am knitting it on. Why do I do things like this without thinking about it first!? Even child sized as it will be, the scarf will need to be at least 36" long, meaning that I am right now at Stage 1: desire to stab out eyes, only 1/6 of the way done with this. Ugh. Really, you think some people would think first. Now even though I want to quit, I can't, because DD is expecting this now. She peers over to see how much work I have done and makes comments like "I can't wait until you are done Mommy!" and "I wish I was a talented person like you Mommy so I could make this nice stuff for everyone." (Yeah seriously she says that, worded just like that, she is SUCH an articulate, 6 year old, brown noser.) Who doesn't want to knit for that!? Now I am committed and may soon find myself "Committed" in the other sense of the word to The Sanitarium for Insane and Foolish Knitters.

It's HEEEEEEEEEEEERE!!!
Yep, can you see it. I had to order it from Amazon.com It was THAT hard to find blue and green Kool Aid. Now I have SO much. 72 packets of each color as a matter of fact. The good news about Kool Aid though is if you get tired of dying with it you can drink it. Tastes great with Splenda. Even DS can drink blue and green colors. I can hardly wait to dye with it. In my head I have imagined rainbows of colors flowing from purple to green to blue. Doesn't it sound beautiful. Mmm, I can almost smell those delicious colors.

Now, on about my Kool aid dyed self-striping yarn that I made for DD. I used Knitpicks, superwash fingering. It was quite a lot of work. I started by winding small sections on my Niddy noddy (10 winds around) then tying tiny strings onto those sections (sorry for the painfully blurry pic!)

Next I separated them into 3 separate sections going in a left to right then right to left placing one section in each pile (yeah the strings on the bottom became tangled, don't ask what I was thinking). Then I started by gathering up each section and tying it together, I then made a bed of plastic wrap for it in my casserole dish and began pouring on one color. I carefully bound up that section and slid it to the side of the dish then made another plastic wrap bed and placed in the next section and dyed it. For the red and white section I poured on stripes using a 1 tsp medicine dropper. After all 3 sections were bound up I poured some extra water over the bags and stuck it in the microwave. I nuked it initially for 3 minutes to get it good and hot, then I did a 2 minute nuke, 10 minute cooling repeating cycle until the water was clear. I rinsed it out. Then spend a frustrating 3 hours untangling it (whoops, what was I thinking!?) Apparently I didn't take any pics of that part (must be my shame) nor did I take a pic of the finished skein. But here is the project I made with it. That hat is knitted out plain so you can see the color transitions coming out the way I dyed them. The mittens are knitted from finger ends to wrist cuff and the thumb was added last.
I learned 5 things doing this. 1. This is not a good way to divide the yarn because it gets all tangled up (I am thinking of a solution for this I'll keep you posted). 2. Purple requires several packets of Kool aid or you get a lot of variegation in between blue and purple (which comes out nice, but if you wanted an absolute solid you need to make sure you saturate it with color). I used 2 packets of grape and still got that much variegation 3. Wrapping tightly in separate sections of color works really good to prevent bleeding. 4. When making stripes, on a section to try and make that nifty fair isle look make sure you don't over saturate the section or it bleeds a lot on the bottom unbeknownst to you and ruins the stripe effect because the yarn on the bottom comes out mostly the color and a lot less stripey. 5. I can hardly wait to do this again!!!

My habit is getting out of control. I have lost control of my ability to stop buying yarn. I browsed the Yarn 4 socks website and ended up buying stuff. 40% off of my favorite self striping lana grossa who could resist!? Certainly not me... and well, if you order $50 you get free shipping, so spend and save right!? I order a couple of other things, but sadly in my frenzy, I cannot remember exactly which things I ordered, duh!! Pathetic. I am like an addict and after I got my fix I blacked out...

So my mom and I tried to go to this place in Fremont that a gal my mom knows owns. It is a yarn store, sort of Stitch Paradise Studio. Read their website, maybe you can figure it out better than I. It is some concept place and the owner offered me a free kit of some sort if I came by (remember that old Camel commercial, "I'd walk a mile to smoke a camel" I'd walk a mile to get free yarn!) So we went by and no one was there, no signs or anything, it is the weirdest thing despite it being listed as their "Open Hours." It is bizzarre because it is totally a residence and has NO signage what so ever and we were knocking and calling one the phone and could hear it ringing inside and no one was there. If they want people to come, don't you think they should at least have a sign? Harumph.

So then we cruised over to the Yarn Place. Whoops big mistake, right!? I bought too much stuff I certainly didn't need. I picked up 7 skeins of the silky nylon yarn in red. So soft and wonderful. I also got 2 dark chocolate brown skeins of Gentle and a blue and purple graduated skein of Graceful. My mom also picked up a yummy deep red of Gentle that she wants me to knit into a shawl for her. Crazy. They have started carrying this really nice bamboo yarn that is SO soft and wonderful. I would like to pick some up next time I am there.

I Totally thought I posted this entry. But I guess not. Today, 12/30, we went to the house of Teenuh and swapped Christmas presents and had a generally nice time. The kids had a good time playing Guitar Hero 2. I got a wonderful dish cloth knitted by Teenuh which is a really pretty pattern and also a most yummy skein of Jitterbug sock yarn. Yaye, thanks Teenuh! I can't wait to knit with it!! Yeah!

Yippy Yay for Christmas. What took days to carefully wrap and place artfully under the tree was dismantled, tossed aside and laying in a heap in a matter of just minutes. Presents opened, children happy. It is all good, until that is, you have to open that evil store shelf packaging all toys come in. Insane numbers of nasty finger tearing twist ties and tape spackeled across surfaces and materials that should NEVER come in contact with tape. It is an evil plot to destroy the confidence and dexterity of parents the world over!! The packaging is ridiculous.

That said, since this blog is about knitting, I should comment on the wonderful Knitting based items I received as gifts. My mom and dad got me the most beautiful books Nickey Epstein's Knitted Flowers. I am in love with EVERYTHING in the book. I think every thing I make for a while will be adorned (or tortured) with flowers!! Yahoo! They also got me the gorgeous and lovely book Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby. It is such a pictorially wonderful book that even if you didn't knit it would just be nice to look at. I can't wait to make everything in the book (though I know this will never happen based on the fact there is a HUGE circular cobeweb weight shawl that I will NEVER knit. Once bitten twice shy on giant circles. I don't know if I can afford another 5 months of my life!) So many things... so many!! My mom also got me a huge bunch of yarn she got on clearance at Walmart that will become various things, though I am not sure what. My sister's gift was a Yarn Meter. "It sure doesn't look like much." she says. "I think they forgot to put your present in the box," says DS. What, no! I am very happy this device is wonderful! Once I figure out how to use this right I will be able to divide a ball of yarn in half exactly so I can make my sock (or whatever) as long as I possibly can and know I will have exactly enough yarn left over for the other half. I will be able to gauge how much yarn I have spun as well so now I know exactly what I can do with it. This is a very useful tool I have been DYING to add to my repitoire! DH may find me sleeping with my new knitting friends tonight....

The lovely kid silk scarf is finished. I think that the people in the yarn store were wrong. Once blocked it was the same width as the one in the store, but upon using both rolls of Fiesta, the scarf was normal scarf length of 64" not the stubby 20 some odd inches they had in the store. Well it was a lucky surprise anyway. Longer is always better than shorter. The close-up pics came out too blurry to post though, so you'll have to settle for just one pic.

As promised here is the picture of the Shawl Kit I purchased at Knitting Arts for $35. It has the multicolor hand dyed mystery bobble wool, which was obscurely labeled "100% wool $36.00". The mystery multicolored shiny nylon or acrylic fancy. The purple is Rowan Kid Classic a lambswool/mohair/nylon blend and the green is Soft Kid a super kid mohair/ nylon blend/wool blend both are very nice and soft. I think I will likely make the seafoam shawl out of it, just because it all goes together so nicely and then I won't really have to think about what to do with it.


I tried my hand at Kool Aid dying on Thursday night. I used Orange, lemonade, and Strawberry. I have noticed that the lemonade tends to come out fairly pale so I added about 8 drops of yellow food coloring to the mix to make it more vibrant. This is a dk weight 100% Merino skein from knit picks. Not superwash though. The superwash was more expensive so I decided I would try first on the cheaper merino. I used 4 Kool aid packets, plastic wrap, a casserole dish and my microwave. I figured out though I have to watch the trasitional areas because I didn't cover them enough at the reds, I was afraid it would bleed a lot, but it didn't and I got areas that are very pale pink almost white. As I type I have another skein in the ol' wave heating, it is a superwash that is planned to be mittens to my demanding dd. I do appreciate that they like what I knit for them now, I can't imagine it will last too long. My only problem now is that I can't find a store that has blue or purple Kool aid in stock right now!! ARGH! Now I am just Dye-ing to knit something up!!

The Lana Grossa socks for DH were a hit, he liked them quite a lot. He eagerly jammed them on to his feet. I knit them entirely in front of him, but he had no idea they were for him, so he was totally surprised. I decided to rip out the entire top of the sock, from bound off ankle to below the heel. It looked quite a lot better after, much better than that GLARING tacked in stitch.

I have now started the Kidsilk Haze/Fiesta scarf, with a 36 st cast on in the feather and fan pattern. I think the one at Commuknitty must have been 54 sts because mine is coming out quite a lot thinner than theirs was. That is good because it will be longer theirs was freakishly short, though only intended to be a demo and not a wearable item, unless you have a pencil thin 13" neck or so. Which was totally working for them, since once I saw it I HAD to have the stuff to make it...

My family (UGH kids in a yarn store!!) and I swung through Knitting Art in Saratoga on Sunday and I picked up a "Shawl kit" with some beautiful yarn in it. I had to fend off some other woman who seem to have her eye on anything I picked up. I was somewhat disappointed when I realized that the instructions for the shawl (a Seafoam Pattern) they had hung up to demonstrate the yarn kits were NOT included in the bag, but instructions for a straight, knit top to bottom rectangular and triangular shawl were. Now if I didn't know that was the Seafoam pattern and I didn't already have a copy of it, I would be pretty darn P.O.'d. Harumph.

Found a new place to obtain yarn from. I'll have to check it out. News to follow.

Swallowtail shawl #2 is complete. With just a few dedicated knitting hours yesterday (okay, it was probably like 9 hours of knitting in one day) I finished weaving in the ends and blocked it, putting in the the last pin at about 12:15 am. It was dried and beautiful this morning and ready for the teacher's gift bag tomorrow morning! Yes! Now I only have to finish a scarf or two for the other teacher by tomorrow (not nearly as difficult!) But I guess I had better get to it now or I will be up late again!

Teenuh and I took a quick jaunt to Commuknity this afternoon after a day of hanging out and peddling CTMH scrapbooking and stamping supplies. It was a good thing that Commuknity was closing when we got there or I think I would have spent more money. Whoops!! Fifteen minutes in the store and I come out $65 poorer, and that was with 20 % off!! It is a nice store. It looks very nice and cozy. They have some couches that keep calling out to me to go and sit on them. But both times I have been there I didn't have any time to sit around and relax. Their sock yarn selection doesn't compare at all to Purlessence. But they have lots of nice stuff, lots of Rowan and Debbie Bliss, Noro and other nice stuff, as well as books lots of beautiful books.

I TOTALLY want to start a scarf I saw there, yummy fuzzzy scarf. Mmmm.... Rowan Kidsilk Haze (shade 606 a brilliant fuschia) knit together with Cascade Yarn Fiesta (color 9488 Purple and blue rattail type, appearing mostly purple in the picture) making it shiny and fuzzy at the same time! But I have other stuff to finish in time for Christmas and birthdays etc... So I need to keep on track. "Focus.... Focus..." I also found some yummy hand dyed Schaefer "Anne" sock yarn in muted blue, greens and yellow, with shocking brilliant orange, and another skein of Lana Grossa (color 5121) pink, white, purple and yellow striped. I picked up the Interweave Knits special Holiday Edition. The Interweave mag was interesting. It was shorter than a regular mag. I compared it to the last regular one. It wasn't because it had particularly less patterns. It had about 1/2 as many pages of ADVERTISING!! Cripes, once I was comparing I noticed how much friggin' advertising there was in the regular issue. Sheesh. I am TOTALLY going to knit the purse. It is from Knitting Beyond the Edge I think. I have some Patons Wool sitting around I bought to make a felted bag but never found a pattern i liked. Now I have one, when I bust out the yarn sometime this week, I bet the colors are all going to be so off that I am going to go out and buy some new yarn to make it!!!

I fnished most of the sewing yippie, ALL the blankets down (that would be 6!) and just some pajamas to go, though let me tell you, the procrastination bug is a bitin'!

Well, I finished 1 and 3/4 of the Lana Grossa socks. I was so happy with the way it turned out. Then... I put the sock on my foot for the second time and noticed a runway dropped stitch escaping from the side of my heel! ARGH!! I had to pick that stitch up, hook it back to the top. So now I am starig at it, should I sew it back in then every time I see it I will hate it, or should I frog the entire top of this finished sock and redo the whole darn thing. I will just get through the last quarter of the second sock then decide I suppose. Either way, I am quite annoyed.

I have also started another IK Swallow Tail Shawl out of a purple/maroon Alpaca Cloud, a colorway that apparently they don't make anymore. In this picture it looks totally brown but it is really more maroon. I'd better save the rest for something really special. Which is just what I need, another reason to keep something in my stash and not use it, right? I think I have 4 more skeins of it. It is very, very PRECIOUS. I should probably hide it somewhere special... Right next to that beautiful lavender kid mohair....

I forgot to mention I finally made it down to Commuknitty yesterday. It is such a nice store. Very spacious with lots of yarn (though not NEARLY enough sock yarn) and full of beautiful things. They were preparing for a signing that is occuring tonight by Mel Clark, Tracy Ullman's co-author of the book Knit 2 Together. Full of very cute things, I was tempted to head down there tonight. But alas, this book's patterns are all made for people of an extraordinarily small size! (Not hefty gals, such as myself). The largest sweater pattern in the book has perhaps a 40" or 42" bust. Which is really too bad, because the stuff is CUTE!! Plus they were having a 20% off all yarn sale to boot. I just bought 2 skeins of Lana Grosa self striping sock yarn (tans and browns and a denim blue mix, seen here already assaulted) yesterday and scurried away, bummed to know I couldn't attend today. Regardless it is a very nice store, I highly recommend it.

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone, this will be our first "Normal" weekend since Labor day when soccer season started. So it will be a relaxing weekend only consisting of a couple of birthday parties (yeah, so it's not so relaxing is it?) and a baby shower I think I am going to dodge out of. I have a cold and I don't want to make the expectant mother sick. This is a terrible phlegmy nasal cold which does not go away. I have been sick since last Saturday the majority of the time having no voice and honking like a goose. In spite of this Thanksgiving was excellent. I enjoyed spending time with my family again. Pictured here with 3 members missing who left quite early. Imagine all of these folks crammed into a 4 bedroom house, with a small kitchen, smallish living room and *gasp* only 1 (yes folks, that says 1) bathroom! Also note DD having a fit during the picture taking. Nice right?

On the up side. I have finished socks for DS photographed here on the leg of sleeping DD so as not to let the cat out of the bag on this birthday present for DS. This is Shoeller and Stahl yarn I don't know what color way. Great stuff to work with and the more you wash it the softer it gets, very nice.


Also finished is the Cashmere "Swallowtail Shawl" (Fall '06 Interweave Knits). I was blocking it and I didn't quite get it stretched as far as it was supposed to be. it is 22 inches tall by 43 inches wide. Intended to be a Christmas gift for my mother. She knows what a prize the yarn was so I am SURE she will appreciate it in spite of the smaller size. She will probably wear it all crumpled up around her neck, anyway It should be okay because my mom is just not that large a person. I hope that she will enjoy it. The variegated colors look like some wierd pixelation issue on the screen of my computer. Actually there are stripes of fuschia, purple and dusky gray all blending together. It looks quite nice, maybe you can tell better if you click on it and view the large picture. It is currently drying on my living room floor. My house is SO terribly cold it may take a week to dry. We FINALLY lit the furnace today, when I got up this morning the house was 49 *damn that's cold* degrees F. I could practically see my breath. It made it quite difficult to get out of bed and even worse to get out of the nice hot shower. But now folks (we had a little furnace filter changing fiasco going on for a bit) my house is a much more reasonable 68 degrees. Ahh... it is practially like summer in here.... practially.