Earth to blogger, come in blogger!

I have been so horribly busy and to make matter worse I was a little shell shocked after everything was finished. I was about ready to have a nervous breakdown from all of the busy school activities. So Art Vistas is done, classes, Art show, extra classes, all done! 3rd Grade play is done done done! I ended up in charge of costumes. Tried to delegate them out but people flaked on me (and you all know how I feel about that). So I ended up making 60 of the 120 costumes my self. It was a lot of work. It went went. It is over! Woot!

So needless to say I did not get a lot of knitting done. I got plenty of shopping done, which I won't drone on about here (think Knitting Arts going out of business and a trip to Green Planet) . I will post pics of my 2 whole FO's I accomplished during the busy time.

Here is Mr. Ben Sock Monkey Extraordinaire!
Seen here in a child's booster seat for perspective. And posing here with his new best friend the ever-so-slightly-smaller Mr. Ben Cain. (who has an awesome hat!)



I also finished my Aster from the Beyer Band 361 Kunst Stricken , Kleine und Grosse Decken. From Herbert Niebling and Irmgard Sorenson. It is about 23 inches across. (56cm) just shy of the original dimensions given for the original design. This instruction for the pattern was written in German. Knit in size 40 cotton from Daiso. Knit with size 000 needles. I did this as a knit along with a blogless friend who made her much larger with lovely seasilk on size 2 needles(?) Now summer is here I will be a better blogger....

No time to blog right now. To busy. Everything is coming down the chute at once. 2 weeks from now I'll be sitting at swimming lessons or at home wondering what I should be doing because I feel like I have way too much free time and I must be forgetting something. Until then. No time to photograph yarn or project progress... I am still knitting (King Monkey and Aster) You'll just have to wait to see it.

Super Awesome Monkey Dude.

I finished my sock monkey. He is super awesome and super cute. I am so happy to see him sitting on my couch - amid the unfolded piles of clean laundry. I can almost pretend I don't see that laundry. You should have one. You should make one. No reason not too (except it is the dulldrums of stockinette knitting insanity!!! 90 + rows x 6). I must make some more......

Give me a minute....

So on Thursday I sat watching television and felt inspired to do this:
Kind of ugly. Kind of dorky looking. Kind of splotchy, like a dog with mange.



On the sock monkey progress:

I finished the second arm today and triumphantly held it up! Victory!! But alas! No! The first arm was about 1-1.5 inches longer than the second!! I had just counted the rows on the second so I knew the problem was with the first. I counted rows. No, not 90 like it should be, or course not! It was 100!! Ugh! I unraveled the bottom from the cast on edge (hence the needles in the pic) and have since bound it off. Just ears and muzzle to go and Mr. Ben will done!! The kids are excited, they can't wait to see him! Me too!

I'm totally feeling this.



How about you?

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.