Knot So Much

Moving Along Nicely So Far

2012-01-29T12:09:00.004-05:00

I've already finished 2 projects this month and there's still a few more days to go. I finished the Retro Baby Blanket I was working on:

Retro Baby Blanket

So easy, mindless knitting. I want to add some felt turtles that can be buttoned off and on. I was thinking of sewing them on, but the felt I want to use is 100% wool and the blanket is 100% cotton so their laundering requirements are different. I want my DDIL to be able to just toss it into the wash without a fuss.
LQM came up with a great idea to use buttons across the whole shell of the big turtle using one of the buttons as the one that attaches the turtle to the blanket. Will definitely have to do this.
The other project I finished is Jeweled Cowl Tut's Gold. I had purchased a skein of gorgeous lace-weight yarn from Solstice Yarns called Andromeda Merino/Silk Sparkle Lace in Pharoah colorway. I don't usually work with lace-weight yarn, but couldn't resist this one. The cowl was an easy knit. I would definitely make another one of these using 4-ply/sock weight yarn next time. The cowl/scarf wants to pull in the direction of the beads which I don't think detracts from the beauty of the finished piece. The pattern called for 52 bead rounds. I only knitted 42 beads rounds and I think it turned out fine.

Jeweled Cowl Tut's Gold

I used the same needle to cast off that I used throughout the project. I did what I thought was a loose cast off. In hindsight I should have gone up a needle size or two. It works as an infinity loop scarf as well. It definitely won't do a double loop for me.☺ No matter, it is a gift and I'm pretty sure the intended recipient will be able to double-loop it if she wants to. ☺
Finishing up two projects so close together put me back at one project, my Boxcars Poncho-turning-Sweater.

Boxcars Pullover

This is such a long-term project I don't mind working on it at all. It's gotten pretty large as a project now though, so it's not portable at all. And the weather is definitely more like April than January, so working on this project is a bit more of a challenge with it so warm. I'm crossing my fingers that we still have February to get through and that that means there's will be enough cool weather to get it finished.☺
Right before I finished the baby blanket and the cowl I was surfing for what I wanted to knit next. There are soooooo many options. Sometimes the time when you are surfing patterns can be a bit overwhelming unless you have something in the back of your mind already.
I received so many nice gift patterns for Christmas I decided to start the B4Bag. Fortunately a Ravelry friend wants to knit this one too so I'll have company.
This pattern uses Bulky Weight yarn, or it can be knitted with double-stranded Worsted Weight. I have lots of Cascade 220 in my stash so I decided to knit with double-stranded worsted weight. I'm going to use Black, Hot Pink and Orange Cascade 220:

I got some black pony beads to use in the hot pink section:

And I bought some Alphabet beads which I'm not sure whether to use or not:

I looked through my button box and came up with some brass/gold colored dome shank buttons & some shield and crown shank buttons:

As LQM, Bead, Colour and Button Consultant to the Stars (among her many other attributes☺) pointed out the shield and crown buttons have a more formal feeling to them and the colors I've chosen are more zippy. Alas, it looks like I'll have to do some online retail therapy for buttons as our local shops don't really have anything I like. I know. It's true. But someone has to do it.☺
I'd gotten used to having four projects going at once last year. Can't seem to keep that amount going this year. However I do have what looks to be an easy projects that I've started and one more waiting in the wings.
I bought some organic cotton at a really great price, with colors DDIL loves to make another baby blanket, and possibly some booties and hats, etc...:

I want to eventually knit Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitted Garter Stitch Blanket using wool I have in my stash, but, for now, I'm going to start with Frankie Brown's Ten Stitch Blanket which uses the same method for turning the corners as EZ's blanket.
I haven't really had a good grasp of short rows yet; have only had one project that I can recall that used short rows. I think this project will give me a better understanding of them. DDIL absolutely loves the colors for this blanket. She said they're not too pastel-ish, muted, but baby enough. I really like them too. We worked out the sequence for the colors as you see them in the photo. First up is Apricot. Second is what I would call Old Gold. Third is Rose. Fourth is Medium Blue. Fifth is Khaki. Sixth: Medium Green. Seventh: Lt. Blue. Eighth: Lt. Pink. Ninth: Pale Grey and Tenth: Cream. With this many colors it may work out to be a much bigger blanket than we think. But that's okay; babies are babies for awhile.☺

And finally I want to cast on Big Snowy Owl. My grandson's birthday is coming up in March and I would like to knit him one of these. I looked at all the projects on Ravelry and it looks to be quite a quick knit, so hopefully I can find time to squeeze it in.

Off to search for some cute buttons for my bag.
Happy Knitting,

Sally

Knitting with Beads

2012-01-11T19:27:00.000-05:00

I've started Jeweled Cowl and I wanted to give you a photo tutorial on beading.
This is the second project I've knitted with beads. After the first project, Ice Queen, during which I used a small steel crochet hook similar to these:

Steel Crochet Hooks

I decided to buy a Cro-Tat hook.

Cro-Tat Hook

A Cro-Tat hook has a longer shaft to fit your beads onto, which works perfectly for the Jeweled Cowl as the bead rounds have 14 beads added during the round.
How do you add beads to knitting with a Crochet or Cro-Tat hook?
1st: Load your hook with beads. Then lift the stitch that's on your left needle off the needle.

Lift

Off

2nd: Slip a bead from your Crochet or Cro-Tat hook down onto the stitch you've lifted off your left needle.


Slip

3rd: Replace the stitch with the bead onto your left needle:

Replace

4th: Knit the stitch that has been beaded:

Knit beaded stitch

Et Voila! 1,2,3, 4. Pretty simple really. It is slower knitting during the bit where you add beads, but the bling factor is sooooo worth it.
For my Jeweled Cowl, Tut's Gold I'm using:
Solstice Yarns: Andromeda Sparkle Lace, 'Pharoah' colorway
WhimBeads: S/L Brown AB 8/0 Seed Beads
                       S/L Gold AB    8/0 Seed Beads
                       S/L Brown       8/0 Seed Beads
                       Trans. Topaz   8/0 Seed Beads
A Size 1.00mm Cro-Tat Hook
Size 8US/5mm Knitting needles

I emptied several tubes of beads into a wide-mouthed jam jar we saved so I could shake them up and mix them. I poured a bit of them into the lid of the jam jar to pick up beads onto my Cro-Tat hook from.
I really like this project. It's a simple to execute, free pattern. Don't be intimidated by the pattern reading 728 beads. The beading is only done in one section on every other round. The rest of the project is straight stockinette; knit, knit, knit.☺We have a KAL going here if you'd like to join in.

Happy Knitting,
Sally☺

Boxcars and Jeweled Cowl

2012-01-07T18:09:00.000-05:00

Another blog post so soon you say? Why yes, let's chat shall we?
I've been knitting on my Boxcars Poncho for quite some time now. I started it toward the end of August. Ripped it completely out in September and restarted after I found I'd been working the cables wrong. I posted on my project page that I was so far into the knit that I was going to leave it, but changed my mind and ripped completely back to the beginning. I've worked the front, done the neck-shaping and rejoined the yarn. This project is ready to go back into its bag and continue as t.v. knitting.

Boxcars

You wouldn't think it would be good t.v. knitting with all the textures and cabling. I put markers in for each section at the beginning of the project and made little flip cards for the pattern repeats. You only have to cable twice out of a 12 row pattern repeat so as long as you mark your tally's as you go and remember to flip your cards it is a relatively easy pattern.
I'm definitely not going to work the turtleneck as part of the pattern. I like knitwear that I can remove or put on as I need it. I wear a lot of cowls and scarves. I've also decided to seam up the sides so this will become my 1st sweater pattern for our 2012 Year of the Sweater KAL. I guess I'll have to stop calling it my poncho.
I still plan on knitting Cocoon with this yarn:

I think this yarn will look good with that pattern. I also plan on getting back to my Color Your Own Cardigan for DH which has been languishing waiting for my mojo to return since last Spring. I still have my chart that I colored in to mate with the yarns I have pinned to my corkboard:

I finished my jetties & quays cowl . It came in handy this past week with temps dropping into the 20's here. The grafting wasn't difficult. It was a bit tedious and took me several days in bits and spurts to finish. It wasn't perfect. I had more stitches on one needle than I had on the other so there's a slight twist, but I'm happy with it and you can't see it the way I have it folded.

I got some yarn-to-die-for from Solstice Yarns. I cannot say enough about this yarn. It is so pretty and soft. I don't usually want to sqoosh yarns, but I can't seem to resist this one.

After I got the yarn I was trolling through lace-weight patterns on Ravelry's database and came across one I'd saved to my Favorites awhile back: Jeweled Cowl. It's a free pattern and it has beads.
I have some tubes of beads from when I ordered beads to knit Ice Queen. Of course when you start looking at beads to order you can't just order one color. The company I ordered the beads from WhimBeads has some really great bead mixes. I got Size 6/0 Seed Beads when I ordered.
I set the bead mixes I already have beside the yarn. At first I was really drawn to this combination:

I was thinking the reds and pinks would be smashing together with the golden yellow yarn. As I looked through all the projects that people have knitted, and their yarn/bead combinations, I thought that the yarn I have is so beautiful on its own I don't want the bead work to dominate the project so I ended up choosing this combination:

All golds, transparent yellows and ambers. I only had this one tube of the Golden Harvest Mix and it isn't being offered right now so I got some other tubes of Silver-lined Gold & Silver-lined Brown with an AB finish, and Transparent Topaz and Silver-lined Brown without the Aurora Borealis finish to make a mix together with what I already have. I think it will be just right. ☺
There's a Mini-KAL going on right now on Lynne Ashton's Friends of the 28-row Scarf group on Ravelry if you're interested in knitting the Jeweled Cowl. It's always fun to have support and humorous chatter to go along with your knits.

Happy Knitting,
Sally

Pretty Good Year

2011-12-30T17:10:00.000-05:00

I was just looking through my projects on Ravelry and I was pleasantly surprised to see that as soon as I've finished grafting my jetties & quays cowl I will have 25 FO's for this year. Not too shabby me thinks. ☺
Sometimes the mojo strikes you to just get some things done. I seem to have that kind of energy this week. I've been organizing my office. Well, actually, I've transferred some yarn bins to my bedroom to be put away in my closet which I still have yet to do. The office doesn't feel so overflowing anymore though and that makes me happy. Well, at least my side of our office doesn't feel that way. DH's side, well, that's another story, although he is outside working on some drawers for a cabinet he built that goes under his work table. Will just have to keep my face toward my own desk.☺
I've never done a project before that required Grafting/Kitchener Stitch. The jetties & quays cowl is my first attempt. I watched this video to see how to do the technique. The pattern also has written instructions. It is pretty simple, but it's definitely something to do without distractions. Of course I ooops'd this project. Didn't realize until I was watching the video that I shouldn't have cut the yarn. So I had to rejoin the yarn.
The yarn I finished with is the same yarn I started with: Miss Babs Yowza - Whatta Skein in Oyster Monochrome colorway. I love the yarn. The yarn is gorgeous, sqooshy soft, superwash Merino wool. Usually when I need to join yarn in a project that is 100% wool I wet felt it together. But I wasn't sure you could do that with yarn that has been treated to make it superwash yarn. I decided to just learn to do Russian Join. I watched another video for this technique and got it with no problem. The jetties & quays cowl is knitted in a tube so grafting the ends together also means managing 2 sets of circular needles and grafting around the circle.

jetties & quays

I'm hoping to have it finished today if I don't run out of time doing other things.☺
In the spirit of getting organized I'm going to try to make a To Do List on my Queue page on Ravelry for 2012 knitting. It's nice to think ahead to what you want to knit for the next year. With a new baby coming next Summer there will be lots of baby knitting. I've queued: Baby Bear Newborn Hat; some Monster Booties which I think are sooooo cute....leetle claws and furry feet....might do these in the same yarn as the hat; Knitted Sock Monkey Hat because babies just needs some monkey things☺; The Baby Surprise Jacket/BSJ which will have a KAL on Lynne Ashton's Friends of the 28-row Scarf group on Ravelry in March; EZ's Knitted Garter Stitch Blanket which has a really great looking mitered corner pattern; Sock Giraffe ,and Wool Leaves by Jared Flood.
I really like knitting baby blankets. I started a baby blanket based on the Grandmother's Favorite dishcloth pattern we did earlier in the year with my local knitter's group. This pattern is started at one corner, increased to the size you want it to be, then decreased to the other corner. I chose some cotton yarns I've had in my stash since the baby will be born in Summer.

I haven't named the blanket yet, but I love the little turtles on the baby book my DD sent to DS and DDIL when they found out they are having a baby, so I plan on making some felt turtles to sew onto the blanket when I've finished knitting it.
We had a Gift Pattern Exchange in our group for the Christmas holiday that was really fun. I was gifted the B4Bag from my queue. I actually had to set up a queue as I hadn't done that in the past. I queued up 7 patterns just to give whomever got my name from the exchange a choice. In the end people decided to be really generous this Christmas and I got 6 patterns all together as gifts; 5 of them from my queue.
In addition to B4Bag I got Wool Leaves by Jared Flood which I've already mentioned; Tiles Fingerless Gloves and Headband from LQM☺; Weave It shawl which I love the texture of; Koolhaas which I've liked for a very long time just never actually put it in my list to knit yet; and from a new Raveler, who chooses to remain a mystery, I got Roar, a Dinosaur Hat which will also go into my baby knitting queue.☺ I was really floored at the generosity of everyone. It's something I love about Ravelers. They are generally cheerful, gracious, generous, humorous, supportive, encouraging friends. I haven't found that anywhere else on the internet.☺
I knitted some things this year that I've not knitted before and learned some techniques that I'd not done as well. I knitted a Jane Thornley Vest with lots of random yarns:

It was a fun project and I've worn it a lot this Fall. I would knit one again, but next time I'd knit it longer.
I learned how to bead and knitted with lace weight yarn for the first time when I made my Bahama Dreams snood:

This project was actually way easier than the end result looks like it would be.
My 2012 List includes:
Spectra
Clockwork
Wool Leaves
Tiles Fingerless Mitts and Headband
EZ's Knitted Garter Stitch Blanket
The BSJ
Baby Bear Newborn Hat
Sock Monkey Hat
Monster Booties
Sock Giraffe
Io Flip-top Mitts
Roar, a Dinosaur Hat

Cocoon which I've wound my yarn and swatched for and which will be cast-on on the 1st
and
Color Your Own Cardigan which will be my other big project for the year.
I've also chosen yarns from my stash to knit Tiles Fingerless Mitts:

Just a few more things to do and finish before the end of the year. We're going to take down the Christmas tree tomorrow. I always miss the lights from the tree after Christmas. And I'm going to try to clean out my closet and put the yarn bins I dragged into my bedroom away. Plus I want to finish stitching the Felt Baby Shoes I started. I'm not that far from finishing them. Everything considered I'm pleased with my knitting this year.
I hope you had a good year too, in spite of the things in the world that are always happening.

Here's wishing you a Joyful New Year.

Sally

So Many Interests or Where Did The Day Go?

2011-12-20T18:16:00.004-05:00

I don't know if I've ever mentioned how I've generally been a person of very low energy. Many of the things I like to do involve sitting for a good bit of time working on a project. And usually not just one project. For the past 5 years straight I've knitted one project or more at a time without straying to other things that capture my attention; until recently that is. In fact nothing else has really captured my attention besides knitting in a way that would make me want to roll back the amount of knitting I do to allow time for other pursuits. Having said that, and I've already said it here where paint chip butterflies abound, I've finally found my interest fired up for knitting again. Baby knitting has captured my attention! Baby shoes, sweaters, blankets, booties, hats, bedding, motifs.
Remember the 100% wool felt I bought from Purl Soho?

I was going to make some Felt Dahlias with some of them, and I still might at some point, but I found these Felt Baby Shoes on Purl Bee's blog and I started these:

They're so easy to make. There are only 2 pattern pieces.♥ I still have to stitch in the elastic behind the chalk X's, finish the other orange one and stitch the yellow ones, then Voila! 4 pairs of wool baby shoes.

It isn't known yet which gender the baby will be, so I've settled on baby shoes, booties, hats, blankets, sweaters, buntings, washcloths, and bibs. You can't ever have enough washcloths or bibs with a baby. These types of knitted items can be made in many colors, or striped, etc... without having to fix on a particular set of colors.
I've already started a baby blanket based on the dishcloth pattern Grandmother's Favorite. It's such an easy pattern to knit, mindless really, just garter stitch with eyelets along the edges. It's mindless enough that you have to pay a little bit of attention or you'll forget to do that YO at the beginning of the row and have to tink back to it to continue.☺ Ask me how I know this. It knits into a square. In order to make it into a blanket I was thinking I'd just knit it into a larger square. A ribbon can be woven through the eyelets later if it turns out it's a girl.
Have started with some Lion Brand Cotton Ease that I have in my stash:

I like it a lot. It's a modern arrangement of colors me thinks.
DS and DDIL got a baby memory book in the mail from DD so they can keep photos and a record of their baby's growth. It has some really cute little turtles stacked up on top of each other that I'm thinking I'll make some appliques of to stitch on to this blanket when I've finished knitting it.

DDIL likes these colors. I do too.
Surfed the yarn closeouts at WEBS recently and found these yarns from Kertzer for a fabulous price. I LOVE the muted colors, that the yarn is 100% organic cotton, so not sprayed with pesticides, and the price was too much of a bargain to pass up. Got 2 balls of each color:

It is machine wash/air dry. Can't wait to show them to DDIL.
In March there will be a KAL for Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket, the BSJ, on Lynne Ashton's Friends of the 28-row group on Ravelry. The pattern can be found in the book: The Opinionated Knitter or a pamphlet can be purchased from Schoolhouse Press that includes the Adult-Baby-Child Surprise Jacket patterns; A-B-C SJ.
It's a really interesting looking pattern that looks nothing at all like what you'd expect from a knitted baby cardigan or any cardigan for that matter. After it's knitted it has only two seams across the shoulders and the addition of some buttons to finish it off. Can't wait to see how it comes together.
I've purchased the book which is a collection of EZ's newsletters. It has a Garter Stitch Baby Blanket that I really like too. I know garter stitch can become boring to knit, but I really like the texture of it. I think the look of this blanket is graphic in its structure. With the right yarns it can be exquisite.
After telling you I'm usually a person of not much energy lately I've had lots of energy. This past Saturday we had a day of cleaning up the back yard; decks, ponds, mowing, burning yard trash. It has been so mild here this Fall that it's the perfect weather to spend time out there.

It's been so mild in fact I've had to be choosy about working on my Boxcars Poncho. It's become quite a bit of knitting to manage now. We've had a few nights in the lower 40's/upper 30's when I haven't minded the extra warmth of it on my lap.☺ I'm hoping to finish it before this Winter is over. I'm also hoping January and February are colder than December.
Being busy and having energy has led me back to some cooking. I like to cook when the weather is cooler. Last week I cooked a roast in the crock-pot with caramelized onions on the bottom, beef stock, a very large can of diced tomatoes which I poured over the roast after I seasoned it with Montreal Steak Seasoning and browned it in a bit of hot oil to seal in the juices, and some portobello mushrooms. It was really delicious. Yesterday I pulled out the tiny bit of leftover roast, which was still in the stock and drippings it was made with. I set aside the little bit of meat in a dish and to a soup pot I added:
the stock/drippings from the roast with bits of onions, mushrooms and tomatoes in it
2 cans of French Onion Soup
2 cups of water
2 peeled and diced sweet potatoes
3 washed and cut up carrots
another Large can of diced tomatoes
1 large bunch of kale, washed and with the center spine removed
1.5 cups of alphabet noodles

I waited to add the kale and the noodles until after the sweet potatoes and carrots had cooked; about 20 minutes. I added about a teaspoon of salt when I put the kale in. I added the alphabet noodles at the end; turned off the soup and covered it until we were ready for dinner. The noodles soaked up the majority of the liquid. It was really good. There was only the tiniest bit leftover. Yummmm!!!!!

After having looked at some of the Food posts on Pinterest I came across this recipe for Easy Cheese Danish. I made it this morning. It is sooooooo good. Nom, nom, nom....☺I followed the suggestions Kitchen Girl made to halve the cream cheese and the sugar. Will definitely have to watch out for this one. DS and I had it with our coffee and I could see him resisting getting another piece.

I've been fortunate enough to be married to my DH for 30 years this year. He comes from a large family; 7 sisters and brothers. One of his sisters makes hand-made dolls. In August, when we went to Papa Martin's Birthday Party, she was there and I asked her to make two dolls for my grandchildren; a girl doll for A. and a boy doll for M. I just got the package in the mail a few days ago. I was thinking of sending them as Christmas gifts, but it's too late for that now. A.'s birthday is in mid-January and M.'s birthday is in March. I will send them on for their birthdays now. Here are the dolls:

DSIL's attention to detail is amazing. Each doll's face is hand-painted. I had a bit of difficulty getting good photos because of the shiny paint on the faces. Each costume is hand made including the shoes and socks:

And each doll has a belly button and a pair of knickers on:

I didn't take a photo of the boy doll's knickers because I didn't want to undress him. ☺
Both dolls have articulated arms and legs and the arms have stitched in elbows:

The boy doll has a little pocket on the front of his denim overalls:

Am really pleased with them both. It was worth the wait. I think DgD and DgS will love them.

One more thing, last but definitely not least. Had a visit recently with my friend who raises llamas. We've known each other for a few years now. We met at a knitting group that used to knit together at one of the coffee shops that used to be here in town. My friend doesn't knit so much anymore. She has moved on to weaving. She has spun and dyed her own yarns for a few years now and she found a loom at a thrift shop. She brought it home. Her husband refinished it and they got some things that were needed for it. When I went to visit her she gifted me this beautiful houndstooth wrap that she wove:

I absolutely love it.♥ It's light but warm and the colors are great. She dyed and spun the yarn for it too. Handsome gift right?

Phew! longest blog post ever. ☺

Hope you're enjoying the holiday season.
Merry Christmas,

Sally♥

p.s. rats forgot to tell you about the cards I made....next time☺

Fa, Rah, Rah, Rah, Rah!

2011-12-10T19:16:00.000-05:00

For many years now Christmas has only been putting up a tree. With grown children there wasn't the same impetus to go all out. Plus if there's something we want or need we just get it if we can afford it. We never were able to wait until Christmas Day to open gifts. Years ago DH and I didn't really get gifts for each other that we wrapped up and put under the tree. We were too excited to wait, so we would wind up giving whatever it was to each other. We wrapped things up for DS though. He loves the decorations and such associated with the holiday.
When he was small we determined not to ever lie to him. We've been able to keep that promise to each other and to him all these years. He was not told that there was a Santa Claus. He knew the gifts he received came from us. It didn't make it any less special or exciting for him and he learned that he could trust what we told him.
This year is different. We have an added reason to really celebrate. DS and DDIL are expecting their first baby next Summer. Huzzah!
DH and I have 2 grand-babies already. Our sweet A:

and our little buddy M:

Lots of reasons to celebrate!♥
DS really likes to decorate for things. In the last few years, since we've been sans wee ones here at the house, our ornaments have consisted of Twenty-somethings ideas of decorating: Darth Tater Mr. Potato Head tree topper, tiny leetle liquor bottle ornaments, and a beer cap garland. This year Mama had a hand in the decorating.
We have a pretty nice artificial tree. This year though we decided to get a real tree. We haven't had one in so long I couldn't actually remember the last time. We usually put white lights on the tree, but we sprang for colored lights this year. It worked out pretty well as DS had a Command Christmas Party to decorate for and he took the artificial tree and the white lights with him. More on that in a mo.
There are some gorgeous turquoise and fuschia ornaments available this year. So I updated our stash of ornaments for the tree. Got some silver, white and blue ones for the apothecary jars we have for the center of the table as well.

Didn't have room for a topper, but we like how it turned out. I'd seen a design show once where the people were competing for their own show. They gave the competitors their own blank space to decorate. They were allowed to have a very small amount of money. They took them to the grocery store to get supplies to decorate the space. One guy got all the bundles of firewood and all the apples he could for his budget allowance. He painted his space red, and I think nailed his apples to the wall. He had a lot of apples. When the judges came around to judge the spaces he commented that anytime you have small items to decorate with use a lot of them. His space was fabulous and I remembered that he said that. There are a lot of tiny ornaments on the tree, but I think it looks great. No topper, no garland, no tinsel, just lots and lots of drops.☺
DS is the President of the Rec Committee for his Command. He wanted to have a raffle with some nice gifts, some food, and decorations for the party. Tales be told last year's party was tragic at best. He really worked his bum off getting Black Friday special deals on different electronic gifts, he arranged with someone's wife who runs the local Cracker Barrel restaurant to provide the food, and he worked until late Thursday night, after having had 24hour duty the day before, and affiliated duty the day before that, to set up the decorations. He had some help with the decorations. He did all of it on a pretty small budget.
One of the decorating things he did was go to the Dollar Store and buy pretty much all the plastic and foam snowflakes in different sizes he could. DH and I knew he wouldn't have time to get them ready to hang so Thursday, while he was working we got some fishing line and got everything strung up, plus put ornament hooks on them. 10 hours worth of getting them ready. It was totally worth it. DS's party was last night and everything turned out beautifully. His Senior Chief liked the snowflakes so much he was having his little girl's cheerleader party today and asked if DS would leave them up.

There were people from DS's Command that pitched in to help with the clean-up too; washing dishes, bagging trash, mopping, taking down the tree, really working together to have a successful party.☺
On a totally different topic, with no obvious segue☺, my knitting mojo has moved to England and run away with LQM's knitting mojo. They've gone backpacking on the Continent.☺
I don't know what it is really; hasn't happened for any extended period of time in the last five years. I sure hope it comes back at some point. I'm still working on my Wright's Aran Poncho and I started ships and seaside cowl. Totally loving knitting ships and seaside cowl.

jetties and quay

It's right up my knitting alley just now. Round and round and round, adding a stripe now and then. I'm going to modify the original pattern to include five different sections of color so I can loop it around a couple of times. It's knit in a tube then Kitchener Stitched together at the end; provisional cast-on. I haven't done Kitchener Stitch before. Time for me to learn. Got a ways to go yet though.
I can't seem to wrap my mind around any pattern right now that has any details that I have to pay particular attention to. I cast on the Io Fingerless Mitts. Knitted the first 2 sections. Knitted the Zig Zag section. Screwed it up. Pulled it back to what I thought was the right spot to reload the needles. Screwed that up. Frogged. It's sitting here on my desk waiting for me to start again. When my mojo is done vacationing in Europe.☺
And now there will be baby knitting plus other baby things. I love a lot of the patterns on Purl Bee. They have fresh looking things, modern, cute, good colors. I keep their icon pinned to my toolbar because I look there so frequently. I looked there day before yesterday and VOILA!! Look at these. Felt Baby Shoes. Sooooooo cute. I already have 100% wool felt in lots of colors.

I am so going to make some of these. If it's a girl I'm good, lots of pinks and yellows. If it's a boy I'll have to order some other colors.
And remember this guy from another post? Guess I'll be knitting more than two of them.☺
I do have plans for knitting. And I always have something that I'm working on. But the desire and excitement that usually goes with knitting, looking at new patterns, and yarns, discussing them with friends, the feeling of accomplishment when a project is finished seems to have left the building; for now.

Hope you're getting on with your knitting and projects.

Cheers to you and yours,
Sally☺

Before it's next year's Thanksgiving already....

2011-11-29T11:15:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you really don't want to do something. I get to where I like being home so much and I have so many things to do and interests right here at home that I forget going away to spend time with other people can be enjoyable....or at least adventurous....
I really wasn't looking forward to going away for Thanksgiving. My aunt and cousin had asked us to come down for Thanksgiving and would we cook the turkey? We said yes of course. I was thinking about my aunt's tiny kitchen, not really big enough for more than one cook, and how we were going to manage without our cooking things. I knew we would manage and I brought some things I rely on with us, so off we went.
We got there a couple of days early because we intended to brine the turkey. We had been reading about how much brining keeps the turkey breast meat moist and thought we would give it a try. Turns out you have to brine 2 days in advance and the turkey was still frozen solid 2 days in advance. We scrapped that plan and I defaulted back to what, for me, has become somewhat of a mantra: Keep It Simple....I'm leaving off the "stupid" part☺ More like Ockham's Razor; the simplest solution is often the best one. And actually this last statement is a simplification of what Ockham's Razor is.☺
Before we left I had cut some rosemary from our plant so I had fresh rosemary and after we got there I went to the grocery and bought a stick of herbed butter. Thanksgiving morning I cut up a yellow onion and three stalks of celery to put inside the bird. We cut up the herbed butter and rosemary, put them under the skin, heated up the oven and planned which order we would cook everything else in. Ten minutes to ten in the morning. Turkey goes in. Twenty minutes later, check on turkey; doesn't seem to be cooking much yet; let's leave it for awhile.
Earlier that morning my cousin had baked a breakfast strata with eggs, sausage, cheese and bread. Yummm!
Go outside. Look at peacocks.

Which was really interesting this year. More on that in a moment. Go back inside. Eleven eighteen a.m.. Open oven door. No heat. Turkey still completely raw. Oven dead. GAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!! Now what?
Luckily my aunt has lived in the same house for 30 years, with the same neighbors. She phoned them straight up. They happened to be having a spat. He was outside digging around some of his trees. She was inside getting ready to go to their son's for Thanksgiving; without him. It was no problem to bring the turkey and everything else over and cook it in their oven. Something to be thankful for☺.
DH went over every thirty minutes to baste the bird and it turned out beautifully. We learned a new way to cook it too, so when we came home we cooked another meal with our children. Turn the oven on 450F for the first 45 minutes, uncovered, then cover the bird with foil and turn the temperature down to 350F. The roasting at the beginning browns and crisps the skin, especially with the butter under the skin, and the foil and regular cooking temp plus basting keep the breast meat from drying out. It was totally moist and delicious.
My aunt's house is far enough from her neighbor's house for us to require the golf cart to lug the rest of the things over, cook them and bring them back. We ate 2.5 hours later than we planned. Everyone was totally starving because we hadn't planned any appetizers since we expected to eat so early in the day. Ah well, the best laid plans....
Our menu was: Turkey, dressing, green bean casserole, broccoli/cheese casserole, roasted garlic Ranch mashed potatoes, and rolls; plus cake, ice-cream, flan and two kinds of pie. I was able to resist everything except the cake. It was delicious.
Our unexpected surprise, besides having to cook our dinner at the neighbor's, was how many of the peahens were around this time. My cousin said she'd never seen them in the 30 years she's been coming up to her mom's house. They are white and brown and smaller than the males of course. There were quite a few juvenile males this time. One of the times we came out of the neighbor's house from basting the turkey, there were two juvenile males with their tails fanned and backs to each other warning each other off of a pile of leaves. I'm sure they were after some bugs. Their fans were much smaller than the adult males and they stood back to back. DH didn't have his camera with him as we were doing food at that moment, and by the time he got back with it they had stopped; of course.

DH, my cousin and the next door neighbor hauled the old oven out Thanksgiving day.

It was fairly vintage. Early Friday morning DH and my cousin braved the Black Friday crowds and bought my aunt a new oven, which DH installed for her before we left for home. Can you say whew! It was a Thanksgiving to remember for sure.
On a knitting note my cousin will retire sometime in the next five years. She has decided to try some different things to see what she likes to do. So Wednesday last we went to the craft shop, she got yarn and needles and I showed her how to cast on. I was surprised a little bit by how fast she got it. With knitting you never know, either someone gets it or they find it fiddly. By the time she went home Sunday she was almost finished with her first garter stitch scarf.

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving,

Sally☺

Just ribs

2011-11-16T11:28:00.000-05:00

A quick little pattern for some fingerless gloves:

Materials: Paton's Kroy Socks Stripe - 1 ball

Size 4US/3.5mm double-pointed needles
CO 48sts, divide onto 3 needles; 16sts on each needle.
Work 32 rounds of 1x1 ribbing
Round 33: Thumb Gusset set-up round: work across all sts on needle #1, continuing 1x1 ribbing; work across 8sts on needle #2, pm, M1R, k1, M1L, pm.
Continue working 1x1 ribbing to end of round.
Next round: work 1x1 ribbing on all sts except thumb gusset sts.
K across thumb gusset sts.
Increase every other round across thumb gusset sts until there are 19sts between markers.
After there are 19sts between markers: knit to the second marker, continuing pattern, place the thumb gusset sts on scrap yarn or a stitch holder; continue in pattern to the end of the round.
Knit 1x1 ribbing for 2”. BO loosely.
Place thumb sts on needles. PU 3 sts across gap. 22sts total. K 4 rounds 1x1 ribbing. BO loosely.

I took a couple of in progress photos of my Boxcars Poncho:

It's difficult to get a good photo on a grey day, when the knitting itself is grey-ish. It's actually a good bit more green than it looks in the photos. I really like it so far. It's going to be over-sized which will make it a good choice over jeans.

Sally☺

Where i get distracted from knitting....for a mo

2011-11-12T12:57:00.000-05:00

....even if you have total devotion to one particular craft, or thing, there comes a time where you are just kind of blah about it....recently i read a post on a blog where the woman wrote a letter expressing things she'd learned that she would tell her 17 year old self....in the midst of the things she wrote one particular thing stood out to me.....it went something like this:
...in your life your fire will go out more than once....don't worry about it....just be around people that inspire you....
....that's not an exact quote, but i really like the idea of it....fire, or inspiration, doesn't actually go completely out i think....it just gets banked to the side sometimes by things that seem totally urgent....or things that captures out attention for a time....the only real tragedy, IMO, is if we do let the fire go completely cold....that, to me, is a choice....
....saying all this leads me to telling you i sort of hit a blah place in my knitting about 6 weeks ago....not that i don't love my knitting....i still have 4 projects going at once....just that i hit an inspiration wall....couldn't seem to find any....several projects i was working on ended roughly around the same time and i couldn't seem to muster any enthusiasm for anything else....what did i want to knit?....another bag?....scarf?....shawl?....hat?....fingerless gloves?
....from May of last year until August of this year my knitting was mostly technique driven....i had the mind-set to learn as much as i could and to increase my skill level....i put my mind to it and pressed on with everything that i started....even that which seemed to be my nemesis: knitting socks....☺
....perhaps being so driven and focused for an extended period of time needs an equal and opposite reaction.....
....in October i started Catkin....10X....i finally got the start right and knitted the first section....then i just couldn't seem to make myself keep on....i didn't love it....i've recently had the same unsuccessful attempts at knitting fingerless gloves for my Auntie....i will be seeing her for Thanksgiving and i want to give them to her when we go to her house....i've succeeded in getting one glove knitted that i like and will be on to the other one as soon as i can get to it.....
....evidently this is a time for me to just relax about technique driven knitting and go with things that fuel my creative desire....
....to that end i've found a lot of inspiration recently on Pinterest....there are lots and lots of tips, ideas, photos, food, crafts, art, all sorts of things....
....one of the pages i found on Pinterest was about using paint chip color cards to craft things from....our Kate and i went to our local Big Box Home Improvement Center and chose lots and lots of card to bring home....one of them was a folding card with butterfly wings printed on the outside cover....
....i cut the butterfly wings out from the folded card, and reduced the size twice so i'd have 3 different sizes to use....i fold the paint chip color card in half and trace around the butterfly wing shape, then cut it out....some of the chip cards are really large and some are quite small....i've stacked three colors of butterflies together and i'm thinking of using similarly colored markers around the edges to take away the white i can see after they've been cut....i'm thinking of stitching them together in the center and giving them a loop at the top for hanging....my granddaughter will turn 2 years old in January and i'm thinking the colored butterflies will be nice for my daughter to hang from her ceiling....

....it's quite fun actually....in the late evening DH and i come back into our office and watch the evening news....i draw around and cut out a few butterflies while we watch....i love the idea....and the free supplies.....☺
....behind the butterflies is the Silhouette Cameo machine that i got recently:

....i read posts on a few design blogs in the mornings and Miss Mustard Seed mentioned the Silhouette Cameo machine....i love cottage/shabby chic style decorating....something vintage, rusted, whitewashed, chipped, peeling, painted over, and especially something lettered or numbered....DDIL and i are slowly evolving our house into a more cottage style house....i had been thinking about the Cricut machine when i read Miss Mustard Seed's post and i was sold.....
....DDIL and i both really like the vinyls that you see around with words and other graphics....was thinking how tedious and unexacting it would be to cut them out by hand....don't have to do that now!....this machine will cut vinyls, it does heat transfers....& can add rhinestones to projects....cuz who doesn't need some rhinestones on their stuff?....you can make your own cards, labels, stickers, upcycle some clothing....just about anything your leetle brain can imagine....or you can Google☺....there are hundreds of designs already there for you to choose from.....
....i love felt and felted things...there seems to be endless ways you could embellish something that's been felted....i want to make some of these felt Dahlias too and i was thinking about how it would be to hand-cut all the petals out....the Cameo will make it so much easier....
....i bought some 100% wool felt bundles from Purl Soho to make them out of.....

....there's a feature on the Silhouette Cameo machine that lets you custom draw any shape....i drew half the shape i wanted and used the Mirror feature to get the petal shapes....then i re-sized them a couple of times to have 3 sizes....haven't cut them out yet but that's on my get to it list....☺

....the thing that sold me on the Silhouette Cameo was that you can do your own custom designs....you're not just stuck with premade ones....even though after looking through one artist's graphics i added 198 things to my wishlist from that artist....DS does some of his own artwork and he does tattoos....perfect for him to do stencils for his air-brushing and tattooing....

....i've got my inspiration fuel again and my creative fire is stoked....knitting is my first love of crafted things so this afternoon i'm going to cast-on Ships and Seaside Cowl by tiny owl knits....

Cheers,
Sally☺

Another post with no photos

2011-11-04T17:23:00.000-04:00

....wasn't really going to post today....got to playing around with the template thingy and found the watercolour background one....love it☺
....it's been quite a week this week....we were supposed to go on vacation this past Monday, but i got a summons for jury duty last week....since we didn't know how it would work out we cancelled our plans....it's okay really, we always have so many ongoing projects of all different sorts it's the same difference to us to stay home and work on some of them....
....it turned out i wasn't chosen for the jury....no one was actually....there were some snafu's that made it not possible to seat a jury for that trial that the judge said she would try to convene another one at a different time or move it to another venue....it was a bit interesting to see how everything was going on....long day though....
....we did get some of the things we've had sitting in the background waiting to be done at least moving to another stage this week....yesterday it was warm enough and not windy to take all the picture frames we wanted to paint out back onto the deck and get them all painted black....our kate is brilliant as painting and she really enjoys doing it....we're planning to do a gallery wall with photos from DH and DS photos....at some point....getting the frames painted lets us bring the whole project indoors now for matting....that's the next stage....we're going to do all white mats....gallery style....
....DS has had to get us a much stronger router for our electronic devices....we've had such a time the last several days....it finally seems to have worked itself out now....poor LQM....she waited and waited and waited....she's been helping me learn the Moderator ropes on Lynne Ashton's Friends of the 28-row Scarf group on Ravelry....
....still working on my poncho....and i started another pair of Cafe au Lait Fingerless Mitts for my auntie....i keep telling myself i've got 3 more weeks until i see her....with working on other things though i need to get with it and knock them out so the time doesn't catch me out....
....i've found a new thing to love on the internets: Pinterest....what can i say....a girl needs inspiration...and baby oh my!!!!!....
....it's funny how we go through different phases of things we're attracted to....for me right now it's HOT PINK....don't know why, but PHOARRRRRRR at some hot pink!....

Sally

A Few Random Things

2011-10-25T17:07:00.000-04:00

....i finished the Long Striped Hand Warmers i've been knitting for a gift....i have photos of them, but will have to wait until they are received to post them....here's the other link for them....i really love the patterns from Purl Bee....there are several things i'd like to knit for that site....definitely want to knit the Big Snowy Owl pillow....he's so cute and cuddly looking....i think my grand children would love him too....will probably have to make two of them....one for me and one for them....and i love, love, love the Big Herringbone Cowl....looks so cozy....will definitely have to have a go at this project at some point....the big thing coming up though for 2012 is The Year of the Sweater on the Friends of the 28-row Scarf & It's Siblings group....
....i've already been looking at sweater patterns this year and planning stash for the ones i'd like to knit....i already have all my yarn wound for this cardigan and my chart is colored in....
....i definitely want to get back to the Philosopher's Wool Color Your Own Cardigan for DH....i started it last winter but never returned to it....it's definitely a winter knitting project for this part of the country....and i'm going to knit Cocoon with my local knitting group....i love this pattern....it is definitely my style....have to look through my stash to see what i have or if i need to order something for this project....planning on starting this one as soon as in December....and i already have the wool and pattern for Slinky Ribs by Wendy Bernard....which is a top-down pullover....i'd like to understand top-down garment construction....i think it might be easily customizable to fit a garment with this type of construction....three large projects for next year seem like plenty to me....that would allow me to possibly fit in some KAL's and continue with smaller easier projects....plus i have some new responsibilities to go along with my knitting....
....my friends on the 28-row scarf group asked me, and another friend in the UK, to become Moderators of the group....i was honored to be asked ~~leetle did they know what they were getting into~~....it took a few years but having a place that feels like home on the internet is pretty spectacular and this group is it for me....there is really something special there that i haven't found anywhere else....i'm really grateful to be included in it....☺
....i kind of feel like my knitting is all over the place just now....i knit some on something everyday, but i don't seem to have the mojo that i had a couple of months ago to get on with it....maybe it's like that this time of year....getting ready to give knitted items as gifts, loving being outside to enjoy the Fall weather....and it has been really spectacular here recently....and finding time to be inspired....
....i think sometimes a bit of down time from knitting to get re-inspired is a good thing....i don't usually have a time where i don't have anything at all to knit...there's always a project going even if it's the simplest scarf or hat....i usually work on it at night while i'm watching t.v. with my family....recently i got bogged down a bit and let myself be so exclusive to just knitting that i quit looking at other things that i love....i think i need that kind of inspiration to fuel my love of knitting....
....one of my other loves is design....of all kinds....home design, architecture, gardens, clothing,graffiti, tattoos, sketches, photography, etc....in the mornings i read several RSS feeds from different design blogs and websites....this Summer i found Pinterest on some of the sites....Pinterest is awesome for inspiration....i signed up Sunday and have already pinned over 200 different things....including knitting of course....recipes, travel, humor, decorating, gardens, DIY stuff....

....maybe a bit of inspiration is just the thing for now....

Sally☺

A passing

2011-10-19T10:52:00.000-04:00

....i've been knitting now for six years....today marks a significant day in my knitting life....there is a particular group on Ravelry that has warm friends who have given me many shared laughs, knitterly advice, encouragement, and challenged me to learn more....the Friends of the 28-row Scarf and It's Siblings group....whose Fearless Leader, Lynne Ashton, died today after battling cancer....
....i've already been missing her for these months she has been ill....she had such a great sense of humor and cheer....i loved her and will miss her.....
....she was the creator of the 28-row scarf:

Sally's 28-row Scarf

....and if you read this blog i'm sure you remember the socks i finally learned how to knit last year.....

Toe-up Socks

....it was Lynne's pattern for the socks and the groups encouragement that kept me knitting them until they were accomplished....

....goodbye my friend,
Sally

Many Projects, Happy Knitting

2011-10-17T17:19:00.000-04:00

....Finished my Ice Queen cowl....it is an easier knit than it appears....which is brilliant....with stellar results IMO....it was my first time knitting with lace weight yarn which took a little getting used to....it's really, really thin yarn....thin yarn, tiny needles, big hands = slowish knitting....still it was accomplished, beads and all in not too much time....
....this pattern only takes one ball of Rowan Kidsilk Haze....i had to go down 2 needle sizes to get gauge....and let me say, Kidsilk Haze DOES NOT frog, or rip or any other version of backing out of what has been knitted....so there are a couple or three mistakes in the piece, but i'm probably the only one who will notice....☺
....the pink beads worked great with the green yarn....i almost left the pink perle cotton i used for the provisional cast-on in place....but, it was a leetle too 1990 and i have tons of beads so i went ahead with the Beaded Picot Bind-off....

Ice Queen Bahama Dreams

....back in August i knitted two Vivian Hats....they've been sitting on my desk waiting for me to full, and then embellish, them.....they have a very specific Mad Hatter/Mary Poppins-ish shape....it took me awhile to decide which items to use to block them on, knowing that would determine the final shape....i wanted them to fit my extra large cranium....as they were blocking on some items from around the kitchen DS said "Mom, why did you knit a birthday cake"....clue number one that they were not going to turn out with the curve in the middle i was hoping for....
....we have quite a few fans going at our house....including one very large industrial type on in the corner of the dining room....perfect for getting your fulled item to dry swiftly actually....they were dry in no time....and i have ideas for embellishing them....but i'm not in love with them....DS to the rescue....i was telling him about how they are supposed to look after you shape them and he suggested that because i had to block them so big that distorted the proportion of the brim to the rest of the hat....he gave the example of imagining Andre the Giant wearing a ball cap in which the cap itself had been increased in size to fit his head, but the bill had remained the original size making it seem disproportionately small in relation to the overall size of the hat....Brilliant!....

Bon Vivant

Joie de Vivre

....actually looking at the hats now that i've taken photos of them they don't seem that bad....the hat in the first photo is knitted according to the pattern....the hat in the second photo is modified....
....i have plenty of wool to knit more hats....it is a very easy, quick knit....
....haven't cast-on the Ashford Shawl yet, but one of my Ravelry friends found an excellent long shrug with dolman sleeves called Cocoon that i have wool for so i sprung for the pattern....
....still working on Wright's Aran Poncho, the Linen Stitch Scarf that i started with some sock yarns i've had for quite some time....which is actually going to become one of those long cowls that you can wrap around two or three times....a couple of pairs of fingerless gloves and 2 hats....
....whew!....sometimes an idea works out brilliantly, sometimes not....finding out which is always intriguing☺

Sally

the end of one and the beginning of another

2011-10-02T17:06:00.000-04:00

....the last couple of days have turned incredibly nice....low humidity, sunny, in the low-70's....can't seem to make myself stay inside and work on things just now....☺
....i'm still working on some things of course....except for Catkin....sometimes a project is just not worth continuing....i seemed to have brain fog where that pattern is concerned....i never could find a place where i could "see" what to do and i kept getting just completely frustrated....
....i've powered through other projects that had similar frustration, but couldn't seem to bring myself to keep on with this one....so, Catkin went to the frog pond....☺
....yesterday started 2 new KAL's on the Friends of the 28-row Scarf group....the Beading KAL and the KUSO KAL....i got some great beads


Lt. Pink Translucent AB 6/0 beads

to use for my Ice Queen cowl....they don't look as pink individually as they do all together in a cup....i cast-on today....

Ice Queen

....haven't made it to the row where you start to add beads yet....that would be because of staying outside in the sun and napping....but i have found my new favorite way to do Provisional Cast-on....i'm used to crocheting a chain and picking up stitches from the chain....this way still produces the chain, but you add the loop to the knitting needle at the same time and then just start knitting with your project yarn....Brilliant!
....i'm really not wanting to do a slew of new technique things right now....maybe because the weather has turned off Fall-like....i just want to do comfort knitting....for me comfort knitting means easy cables, ribbing, seed stitch, straight stockinette....things like that....after i finish Ice Queen i've been thinking about Ashford Shawl in Berroco Ultra Alpaca....the pattern is only a couple of rows....i love patterns like that....and something warm and snuggly feels just right....

Sally

10x is the charm

2011-09-26T15:33:00.000-04:00

....after a little kick in the pants by LQM i'm finally going to post again☺Ta LQM♥
...i know it's been almost a month and i have been working on things....but i haven't had the mojo to post really....sometimes it's like that....
....after finishing my Minty i posted a photo of it on FB and my niece said she wanted one...so of course i knitted one for her....
....then i spent a couple of weeks surfing patterns and trying to decide what to cast-on....i wound up casting on Wright's Aran Poncho....i have had this pattern for a long time...i really like the look of it....it's over-sized and has ties at the sides....after knitting my Big Honkin' Bag i really liked the squares in the pattern and found a cardigan that reminded me of those squares....i wasn't sure if i wanted to figure out the modifications for that cardigan or not when i remembered this poncho having the same sort of squares as part of its pattern....i already had some Cascade 220 Heathers....#4011....in sweater quantity that i thought would look good....making the poncho a bit bigger wasn't a real stretch....so off i went casting on....it's really a project i thought i could finish in the not too distant future....you sense the 'but' coming though right?....
....i know it's sort of time consuming and possibly crazy☺ to rewrite a pattern, but that's what i do for a lot of patterns....sometimes i find patterns have waaaaayyyyyy too much information for me to work them.....and other times the pattern doesn't have enough information....it assumes things....and you know what ass-u&me means, yes? i need the information to be condensed....i did that a lot when i home-schooled my son, so perhaps it comes from years of researching and condensing information for him....
....a while back i bought some of those print-your-own business card sheets....actually it's been a long while back....when i first started knitting i was a smart-ass-know-it-all who could knit anything because it was "only knits and purls, right?"....hahahahahahaha....boy did knitting teach me better....my first really difficult piece was a square from a blanket that DH may get in his lifetime☺....i haven't worked on it in ~~FOR.EV.ER~~ at least 4 years....☺....the piece looks really great though....it is a Moss Diamond Cabled Square....(didn't realize i don't have a picture of this)....the pattern has 23 or 24 rows....reading it written out on paper made less sense to me than making a flip chart....i got some of the business cards and wrote each line of pattern out on the cards....

....it works great to just flip as you work....this is my go-to way of working a pattern since then....i have one for Romance Reversible Shawl, Big Honkin' Bag, and now Wright's Aran Poncho as well....
....for the Aran Poncho i made 3 sets of cards....1 for each pattern....i cast-on 36 extra stitches to make the width i wanted and get the pattern repeats to work out correctly....then i worked the piece for 11" before i found that the cables weren't crossing:

Wright's Aran Poncho - Boxcars

....i didn't figure it out until i took this photo....this is the second time i have seen a mistake i've made in a really textured pattern only after i've taken a photo of the piece....i had the 3 sets of flip cards laying flat on my desk which made me miss seeing a K4 on the cable rows....at first i didn't hate it....told myself i could live with it....but then i cast-on Catkin....sort of....
....i have had the yarn for Catkin for awhile....this pattern was posted as the KAL for September for a couple of months before we actually got to September....by the time we got here i didn't really want to work the pattern just then....i told myself to go ahead and work it though since i knew if i had questions other people would be working it too and i could just post in the KAL thread....so i cast-on....and ripped....and cast-on....and ripped....and cast-on....and ripped....can you see where this is going?....i've only had this experience with knitting one other time and that was with the socks i made last year....my brain was on hold....it didn't want to process the information in front of me....but i didn't want to give up either....so i cast-on and ripped 10x....yes, 10x....not a typo....before i finally got the tab worked at the beginning of the pattern....the persistence payed off....i'm working Section 2 now:

Willow by the Lower Pond - Catkin

....i'm not using high contrast yarns for this project like some of the other projects i've seen....i plan on gifting this shawl to my aunt who is in her 80's....the pattern allows you to put in contrasting garter ridges in Section 1 if you want to....i thought this yarn is gorgeous enough on its own....i really, really love the Madeline Tosh yarn....it's so soft and squidgy....i learned that word from LQM☺....squidgy is very descriptive of it's quality....i also really like tonal yarns....i'm not as attracted to stripey yarns really....although Noro yarns seem to have long sections of color before a change to another color....
....that being said about stripey yarns i found this Random Stripe Generator that is awesome!....it's so much fun to plug in and try different colors together and different stripe widths....when it shows you the stripe pattern from the colors you've selected you can refresh the page and get another selection as many times as you want....i used the RSG to get the color sequence to make Minty hats for my grand children for Christmas this year....

....i love how you can see how the stripes will work together and that it tells you how many stripes to knit in which colors in what order....♥
....kid colors are fun colors to work with too:

Stripey Minty for Ava

....it's a start anyway....
....after reworking Catkin 10x i decided i couldn't live with the cables being wrong on Wright's Aran Poncho...it was bugging me....i thought if i had the persistence to rework Catkin 10x then what was the big deal starting over with the poncho?....i found that my mistake in the cabling was in laying the flip cards flat on my desk....i stopped reading the pattern and just checked for the word Front or Back when i was knitting the cable patterns....that'll teach me....i made some cardboard stands to raise the flip-charts up so i can see them better....and of course now that i made the mistake and ripped the project all the way out i'm much more observant of the cable rows....

Flip-card stand

....this works much better....
....i'm also working a Linen Stitch Scarf with some Kauni Effektgarn and 2 colorways of Dream in Color Smooshy that i've had for awhile

Linen Stitch Scarf

....i wanted this scarf to be really long so i cast on 1100 stitches for it....the other night i was thinking about that....i'm working each row front and back with one yarn then changing to another yarn....i'm up to somewhere past 44,000 sts....i really like it though....am thinking about stopping with the linen stitch and increasing to have a ruffle using the Kauni Effektgarn....it's all pinks/lavenders/browns....
....and if this isn't enough i found some cute gauntlets on Purl Bee....that i cast on for someone's Christmas gift....i know she'll love them....i already have the yarn for them....Purl Bee has some really cute projects....IMO
....this seems to be a theme here....knitting from stash....in fact on October 1 a KUSO KAL....that's Knit Using Stash Only....is starting on Friends of the 28-row Scarf group on Ravelry....and a Beading KAL starts that same day on Friends of the 28-row Scarf group and on Appalachian Yarns group on Ravelry....
....i have 1 ball of Rowan Kidsilk Haze:

....and i've wanted to knit Ice Queen for a long time....it only takes 1 ball of Kidsilk Haze if you get gauge and about 300 beads....beading is a technique i'll need to know when i'm ready to cast on Shipwreck Shawl....
....i ordered some Size 6/0 beads yesterday in Transparent Lt. Pink AB from WhimBeads.....and some extra 11/0 beads from their bead mixes for embellishments for some other projects....which reminds me....
....i've also knitted 2 Vivian hats....they are waiting to be felted and embellished....the felting isn't as much of a problem as finding which forms in my kitchen will work for the blocking....very many possibilities with these hats....
....i've got several projects i've already knitted that could benefit from embellishments like embroidery, beads, ribbons, etc....i have specific ideas for each project it's just i actually love knitting more than blocking, sewing, or any other craft related thing....i'll get the mojo one of these days and crack on with them....

....in the mean time....

Happy Knitting,
Sally

a certain hat for a certain queen

2011-08-27T11:01:00.000-04:00

....i seem to be in a knitting lull....finishing up, surfing for what to cast-on, knitting smaller projects to have something to knit while i surf my patterns and books....in that vein here is my Minty hat:

Ice Blue Minty

....this hat was a quick knit....easy to do....the crown pattern and decreasing follow a chart....in the set up round you place markers and follow the chart between the markers....easy to do and interesting results....i really like....for the tie you just knit an i-cord....the pattern is free....it has two suggestions for completing the hat....the striped version uses wool and the plain version uses cotton....i used Lily Sugar 'n Cream cotton and knitted the striped version....i carried the yarns up on the inside being careful not to pull them too tightly and always looping the bottom yarn over the top one on the color change round....
....i did Magic Loop for the body of the hat....then switched to dpn's for the crown decreases....i'll definitely knit more of these....
....the first knitting project for my monkey queen....off it goes across the pond....
....doesn't everyone have a monkey queen?....☺

Sally♥

Voila! right side out...

2011-08-21T19:36:00.000-04:00

Finished:

Twilight in Autumn Free-Range Vest

☺

Night Shots Never Turn Out

2011-08-18T19:41:00.000-04:00

....finished knitting the back, fronts, bottom panel, side panels and neck-band on my Free-Range Vest.....took photos....loaded them on my projects page on Rav....linked them to my favorite group....
....knitted a pocket to connect the side panel to the bottom panel....picked up stitches from the side panel edge, stitch for stitch, and knitted garter ridges....knitted enough length to attach it to the bottom panel creating a pocket....when it was knitted i realized it was too narrow....ripped it out and reknit it as a wedge, increasing with kfb at each end every 4th row until i had the right length....so 2 stitch increase every 4th row....
.....knitted enough length....used Elizabeth Zimmerman's Sewn Cast-Off for bind-off and attach the pocket to the bottom panel....stitched up the sides of the first pocket....
....patted myself on the back....took another photo to add to my project page....et Voila!
.....really looked at the photos this time....which you would've thought i did as i was taking them....and realized that the vest is inside out....hahahahahahahahahahaha.....
....of course it's nighttime now....will have to get Ressusa Annie out tomorrow and take more photo....and as i said in my project notes....i would put on the vest, but as hot as it it i might burst into flames....
....here are some of the photos for your amusement:

....i'll finish the other pocket and take some more photos tomorrow.....

LOL
Sally♥

(i actually love the Vest and i'm happy with how it turned out)

Birthday Party & Knitting Swag

2011-08-14T13:28:00.000-04:00

....long, ridiculously hot, Summer please go away!....i thought it was hot here on the coast....and it has been.....upper 90's....windless....last weekend we went to N.Alabama for Papa Martin's birthday party and it was hotter there than it is here....go figure....it was a fun party though....thought i'd give you some shots DH took while we were there.....
.....Papa Martin is DH's dad....DH is the oldest of 8 children....everyone has spouses/significant others who have children....and some of those children have children....whew!....when the whole gang is together immediate family is, last time i counted, 48 people....

Guest of Honor....Papa Martin

Papa Martin

Papa and L'esha

Papa Martin's Birthday August 2011

....it was blisteringly hot....took forever to get this many people to sit for photos....can't imagine how long it's going to take next Spring when we have Family Reunion....DH took about 1500 photos over the course of the weekend....there was lots of food of course, lots of beer and wine....and lots and lots of laughter....everyone trying to talk over each other created that thing that happens when you're in a restaurant where the televisions are all around and on and everyone is shouting to be heard....fun was had by all though....
....i did manage to get my Windmill Bag finished while i was there....we got there early on Saturday morning and i got the cat-bird seat in the sun-room....i could see everything that was happening in the kitchen and outside with plenty of room for people to come and sit around us whilst our Kate and i knitted....

Dulcinea

....while we were there our Kate and i got to go to the LYS....and we both scored some swag:

Plymouth Galway wool

.....this bit was my swag....right before we left the Friends of the 28-row Scarf group was starting the August KAL....hats and gloves....and being the friends that they are there were many suggestions for patterns to choose from....i started Minty....but what got my attention was Vivian....when i saw these yarns in the sale bin i knew they would be perfect for a Vivian hat....☺....my Minty is languishing right now as i'm really trying to finish up my Free-Range Vest....i'm knitting the bottom bit now....have to do the front band next....hoping to finish up here in the next few days....i started a Linen Stitch Scarf with some balls of sock yarn i've had for a long time plus some Kauni to take the place of the Windmill Bag for t.v. knitting....i'm not 100% positive that i won't ever knit sox again, but for now they don't have my interest....
....and i swatched for the Slinky Ribs Pullover from the Custom Knits book by Wendy Bernard....i want to tackle garments now....i don't love pullovers....i prefer cardigans, but i looked through all the projects people knitted for this garment on Ravelry and i'm going to give it a go....just waiting on needles now with longer cables to get started....with this garment i read through the project notes of some people who had done modifications and i am settled that i will have to knit and tink with this project as i go....i saw one that i love that someone just did a vest....no sleeves....so i'm giving that a think too....
....the Friends of the 28 are going to do a Teddy Bear KAL....i don't want to get side-tracked from the pullover, but was looking through the knitted toys last evening and i found THE cutest knitted Goldfish....with fishy lips and everything....who can resist that?....might have to fill in with those....my grands will need a whole pond full don't you think?....there was a cute giraffe and a cute elephant....and a cute monkey....and a cute teddy....you get the idea....

....hope you're all having good Sundays....

Cheers,
Sally♥

Whirlwind Thursday

2011-08-04T16:48:00.001-04:00

....it's a bit of a whirlwind today....getting ready to go to Papa's birthday party this weekend....had to get my knitting in order first of course....
....finally got the handle on the Blackberry Cane Garter Bag:


Blackberry Cane Garter Stripe Bag

.....i've been slowly working on a Free Range Vest Jane Thornley style.....

Autumn Twilight Free-Range Vest

....i've knitted the back and both fronts and will wait until next week to do the sides, bottom and neck bands....
....i'm finishing up my first Windmill Bag.....i really do love knitting bags....the Windmill Bag is totally easy and totally cute....

Dulcinea Windmill Bag

....the Dulcinea Windmill Bag was my tv watching project....it's being replaced with a Linen Stitch Scarf....

Linen Stitch Scarf

....i'm sure i've mentioned before how much i love texture....and Linen Stitch fulfills some texture love....
....finally, i've cast on Ice Blue Minty....for the Hats and Gloves KAL on the Friends of the 28-row Scarf group....it looks like a hat i would actually wear....everyone agreed to knit which ever hat they wanted to....and knit together the same gloves....we'll be knitting Knotty gloves....which i'll have to wait to start until i return....
....i guess i'd better get back to the preparations....do you think that's enough knitting to take for a long weekend?

Sally♥
(p.s....oh yeah, i've adopted a monkey and a puddy....and various and sundry other siblings for them....they're running around loose on Ravelry....just a heads up!☺)

Stitching, stitching, stitching....

2011-07-22T18:16:00.000-04:00

....Voila! i've finished my newest Garter Stripe Bag during our KAL on the Friends of the 28-row Scarf and It's Siblings group....waiting for straps from SeryphStudios.....
....this pattern is so addicting....the color combinations are endless....


Blackberry Cane Garter Stripe Bag

....i knitted this bag out of bulky yarns so it is a large bag....i decided to felt this one as well....the original dimensions, prefelting, were: 19"w x 15"tall from the top point to the bottom.....48cm x 38cm....after felting they were 15"w x 13" tall.....38cm x 33cm....a very roomy bag....
....and....in the finishing up category i've also finished Sacchetto Verde my Big Honkin' Bag:

Sacchetto Verde Big Honkin' Bag

....Sacchetto Verde is Italian for "green bag"....case you didn't know....i sewed the lining in loosely for this bag to allow for the bag to expand when i fill it with stuff....getting a strap for this one from SeryphStudios as well.....
....i've been sewing in linings for a couple of days now....and i started sewing the leather bottom onto my Entrelac Bag....which has been languishing for a couple of months....

Entrelac Bag

....the lining is all stitched in on the Entrelac Bag now....hoping to get the leather stitched onto the bottom this weekend....it's too hot to play outside anyway....then there will be 3 bags waiting for DH to make straps for....
....don't know if you do this, but when i see that i'm getting toward the end of a project and/or projects....and i know they're all going to wrap up in short order....i start to surf my books, paper patterns, favorites i've saved on Ravelry, pdf's in my Ravelry library....thinking about what i want to knit next....
.....i've been doing that for a couple of weeks now....i know i'm going to return to the Color Your Own Cardigan i started, then frogged, then restarted a couple of months ago....just never got back to it yet....it's a knitted project i haven't done yet actually; a cardigan....
and i think i'm going to cast-on the Slinky Ribs top-down pullover by Wendy Bernard....
i've wanted to conquer knitting sweaters for awhile....i've had the Custom Knits book for awhile too....i checked my yarn stash....trolled the projects pages for this knit on Ravelry....there are some people who keep excellent notes as they knit a project....i like to read the notes before i begin....i have some Elsebeth LaVold Silky Wool....enough for this pullover i think....so i'm thinking as soon as i get the bottom piece of leather stitched onto the Entrelac Bag i'll start swatching for this pullover.....
.....Cascade Yarns has a Window Pane Cardigan Jacket that seems to have the same stitch pattern as the Big Honkin' Bag that is on my mind as well....
.....and for my night time knitting i bet you'll never be able to guess what i'm knitting now?
....it's so cute how could i resist?

♥Sally

Finished diagram and it's a go

2011-07-10T10:29:00.000-04:00

....i finally finished marking the Exploded View Diagram for the Garter Stripe Bag......

....i hope you'll find this diagram helpful....and i hope you'll join us tomorrow for the KAL....some of us have already been knitting and crocheting along.....

Cheers,
Sally

Garter Stripe Bag KAL...again

2011-07-07T13:07:00.000-04:00

...good Thursday everyone....just a quick post to let you know we, the Friends of the 28row Scarf and it's Siblings, are starting a KAL for the Garter Stripe Bag this coming Monday July 11....there's still plenty of time to pick out some yarn and join us....
....i loved knitting this bag....it was so much fun....i've knit about halfway on my second bag now, and i have yarn i purchased specifically for another one....
....here's an update on the exploded diagram i've been working on....hopefully this will help you see where to pick up stitches and where to seam....

Cheers,
Sally

First smoke, now rain

2011-06-29T10:55:00.000-04:00

....it seems like it's been 4EVER since i last posted....first we had weeks of heavy smoke from fires all around us....now our summer rains have returned, thankfully, to put out the flames and smoldering peat....stuck indoors means lots of time to knit though....
....i saw a post recently, in one of the threads on the group where i hang out on Ravelry, about knitting in a more random style...changing yarns at whim....combining textures....i loved the work i saw and it just happened there was an upcoming KAL (knit-a-long) for a vest....i've been reading the posts on the Jane Thornley group and knitting my own version:

Twilight in Autumn Free-Range Vest

....difficult to photograph flat on my desk, but here's the back done and the right front is on the needles....everyone seems to be farther along than i am, but since there are no knitting police i think i'm good....
....on July 11th there will be a KAL for the Garter Stripe bag on my Friends of the 28-row scarf group on Ravelry....you can see the info for knitting the bag on the left-hand side of this page if you're interested....it is totally fun to knit and my friends of the 28 are THE BEST (crazy funny)bunch to knit along with....
....i've started a second bag already....this time i'm using bulky yarns in purple....just a note about using bulky yarns: you won't knit as many ridges using bulky yarns to get a square as you will using worsted weight yarn....with worsted weight i cast on 19 stitches and knitted 19 garter ridges (38 rows) alternating colors as i went along....with bulky weight yarn i cast on 19 stitches but only knit 13 ridges (26rows) to achieve a square....using bulky weight yarn will, of course, give me a much larger bag as well....
....here's some photos of my process.....

....i'll try to keep up with the progress as we go along....i seem to be a bit slower about blogging in summer though....
....off to have a leetle nap....:)

Cheers,
Sally

Just for LQM♥

2011-06-13T11:50:00.000-04:00

....i trolled through the recent posts on here and it looks like i haven't mentioned our latest building project....it seems like we can't really go too long without thinking of a new project to work on....usually in spring we get so many ideas....DH loves to work on building projects he says....this years project is going to be screening in some of our back decks and building an outdoor kitchen....
....we built the decks in stages....first the deck outside the back bedroom in 2007....had to do that one to install a sliding door in order to get the whirlpool tub into the bath....that was the year we remodeled the baths....really couldn't get that tub through the window....as one thing led to another we decided we would like to have an outdoor shower...so we added on to the first deck, covered it and built the outdoor shower....it's actually really great taking a shower out there....especially after we've been out working in the yard....DH built the benches and he and DS did all the concrete work for the ponds and fire-pit in 2009....and in late summer/fall that year he built the big decks....here's a couple of links for those posts.....#1.....#2....
....last summer DH built a cover over the part of the big deck where we have been keeping our BBQ....and he built us a really large table....

....it's lovely to have all the decks and ponds and gardens....we enjoy them very much....but, generally we're stuck inside the house for the most part in Summer because of the bugs and the rain....this year is different, and even last Summer was different....it hasn't rained like it usually does....at all....it's been really dry.....the dry air has actually made it more pleasant for sleeping and just generally not as hot....we decided that this would be the Summer to put up screened porches so we could continue to enjoy our yard without the problems bugs give....the rains will return at some point....i'm sure of it....it's the swamp after all....
....as we built along all of our outdoor projects we've also done some things that i think are practical....we compost our kitchen scraps and use the "cooked" compost we get from it on our gardens....we recycle as much as we can....and DH has run all of our grey water out to our gardens....the only waters from our house that go into our septic are the black water....everything else: kitchen, laundry, showers goes out through perforated tubes in gravel lined underground trenches to water our trees....
....in keeping with a conservation mode this year we added a pallets worth of batt-insulation to the cellulose insulation that is original to this house....after 23 years that insulation had compacted somewhat and last year's power bills for summer cooling were horrific....DH also added a power ventilator to the back roof and another gable end vent to help the house breath....we noticed a huge difference in our interior temperature this Spring....we usually turn our air conditioning on May 1 and it stays on from then until sometime in October....this year however, until last night, we've only turned it on one night when it was so humid we couldn't sleep....this week we're having upper nineties everyday so we're running it for a bit....all of these things, particularly the cooling issues led us to feel the time is right to set up our screened porches and outdoor kitchen....DH has already started the deconstruction:

....the benches, as well as the old decking material, will go to live in the front yard reassembled there for places to meander and sit in the gardens....
....having the outdoor kitchen will allow us to not heat up the public spaces in the house during the summer....and the screened in porches will allow us a place to migrate away from the heat of the day that has built up inside the house as well....
DH is going to add a couple of swings that will face the ponds for us to sit and enjoy them in the cool of the evenings....

Cheers,
Sally

Wabi Sabi

2011-06-04T14:17:00.000-04:00

"Wabi-sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional..."
Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, by Leonard Koren

....let me just say how much i love Wabi-sabi....it describes a lot of things in my life....looking for ideas in gardening magazines, design books and websites, knitting sites, yarn shops, fashion, science and astronomy sites, even math....i love fractals....my mind eats ideas like snacks....small tidbits of brain-carbs to fire the imagination....and in spite of the CRS that comes with age some things stick with me....
....when i look at those exquisitely staged and photographed creations in magazines, books and online, i'm perfectly aware that they are just that: staged....the reality in my garden includes yellowing leaves from over-watering; sometimes brown leaves from under-watering; a dead plant for no reason that i can discern; weeds...which weeds are purely a subjective matter....if i like them and they are so prolific i don't want to waste the effort to combat them i manage them lightly....in other words, i let them grow until i think they are getting the upper hand then spend a bit of time reining them in....
....learning to appreciate the flaws and imperfections lets the stress off....and those imperfect things have their own beauty....that basket of Sweet Alyssum hanging on the garden gate has some new, green bits with small, fragrant white blossoms....and it also has the dried, brown stems from the last bit that has finished its bloom time....
....there are rewards too for not trying to have the magazine photo "perfection".....i don't necessarily do the Fall yard clean-up that my neighbors do....i have the shaggy, dried grass, flowers-gone-to-seed yard full of leaves....not so eye-catching, but in Spring i have volunteers from the seeds that i planted the year before....i've saved myself money on new plants and seeds as well as time and energy on clean-up....in Spring i rake my leaves up around the bottoms of my big trees and save myself a few bundles of pine-straw mulch....

....recently i've had more than one opportunity to enjoy wabi-sabi in my knitting....i am knitting a beret for a friend....fairly easy, well written pattern....with some gorgeous yarn that i had some real trouble getting....the yarn is Wexford Merino/Silk in a heathered lilac color...very subtle....after much delay, when i finally received the yarn, i found that there are some spots where you can clearly see the darker blue dye that i'm assuming must've been one of the colors used to achieve this shade....after having so much trouble just getting the yarn i decided it wouldn't be worth the effort to send it back or complain about it....
....as i untwisted the hank i was thinking the blue spots were probably where the yarn was hung up to dry with, possibly, clothes pins?....that's just my guess....because they seemed to be in regular places around the hank....i was hoping they were only on the surface....but, alas, they are here and there throughout....
....my friend, for whom i'm knitting the beret, has some health issues and i got to thinking the imperfections in the yarn sort of reflect that about her....the yarn itself is beautiful...soft with a nice sheen and a beautiful hand....the pattern for the beret includes cabling which gives it interest and serves to hide some of the blue bits....
....in the process of knitting it there must've been a point where i wasn't paying attention to the process....sometimes i get in a zone when i'm knitting, thinking i know the pattern for the round i'm working, and i think about other things instead of paying attention....i had to tink back four rounds and i'm just picking it up again today....i'm noticing that some of the stitches are not mounted properly....an easily solvable problem...i've been knitting long....i took some photos to show you about the stitch mount....

Stitch on left needle mounted incorrectly

Legs of stitch crossed at the bottom

....if you look closely at the stitch through which both needles are posted, at the bottom of the stitch, to the right of my thumb, the legs of the stitch are crossed....you would not generally desire this for your stitches unless you are particularly knitting a twisted stitch pattern....

Removing stitch to right needle to reposition stitch mount

....i've taken my right needle and lifted the stitch off the left needle preparing to remount it correctly...if you look closely, just to the right of my thumb, you will see that the stitch is now open at the bottom....


Stitch remounted with right leg in front of the left needle

....i've repositioned the stitch on my left needle and it is now ready to knit....

Knit Stitch

.....i've exaggerated the stitch so you can see it better in the photo....you can see that the bottom of the stitch is open....
....Wabi-sabi for this project: learned to not mind discoloration in yarn; continued learning to not mind tinking and repositioning stitches....

....this isn't the only recent project with a bit of a problem....i've been working on Romance Reversible Shawl Moonlight Romance (Ravelry link)....it has become my t.v. knitting....the pattern is gorgeous on both sides....i prefer rectangle type wraps....i knew i hadn't posted in awhile....been busy with other projects; more on this later....and i took the wrap out to photograph it one morning....i hadn't really looked to closely at it....the pattern is easy to follow and a casual glance seemed like everything was reading correctly....different story when i took the photo....

Romance Reversible Shawl, Moonlight Romance - Front

Moonlight Romance- Back

....Oops....180 rows back....guess what?....wabi sabi love for this project.....

....i'll leave you with some really great fractals....and a photo of kitty doing her job: loungin' it up on the front porch....in case you don't know about fractals, roughly, in very simplistic terms, remember the xy axis graphing you did in school?....fractals, like the ones in these photos, are points on the graph that are too infinitesimal for the eye to see....with the advent of computers patterns appeared and these are artist interpretations of those points....math can be very beautiful....

Hobbes, June 2011

Cheers,
Sally

CYO cardigan

2011-05-15T13:13:00.001-04:00

....in the last year i've learned more knitting techniques than in the previous five years put together....maybe there comes a point where you find you're willing to invest the time in your craft to actually get better at understanding how it works....it can take you to a whole new level....
....because of the willingness i found to invest the time in learning the new techniques and finishing a project all the way through i tend to think of projects differently now than i did before....i realized a while back that part of knitting includes making errors and deciding if you are willing to live with them, if they won't really be noticed in the pattern, or if you want to take the time to tink back to where the error began....or frog the whole thing and start over....being willing to think about the project differently than before, and being willing to finish a project all the way through to completion has shown me how to read my stitches better on my needles as well....
....for the first few years i never swatched anything....i picked out the yarn i liked, needles i thought would work and commenced knitting....had one epic fail garment that would've fit four people together, but stuck to knitting squares, rectangles, triangles, etc....anything that wouldn't require me to think about it too much....i still like those kinds of projects and always have one or two projects like that OTN (on the needles)....i find them relaxing to knit....but after knitting through and learning so many new techniques i find i'm not willing to continue to knit a project that i can clearly see the mistakes in or that i just don't like the colorways that i chose....i find i'm willing to experiment more to get the result i really want....
....i started the first sleeve....

....of the Philosopher's Wool Color Your Own Cardigan ....

with the yarns i had chosen....

.....after i thought about and colored in the chart....

....i started knitting through the first section with Midnight Blue, Dark Sheep Grey, Medium Sheep Grey and Willow....i found that one of my colors....Willow, the gold one....was off by one stitch on one of the rows....i didn't discover it until i was past it and at first i told myself that i would live with it....or, rather, DH would live with it because it will become his cardigan when i've finished knitting it....as i got onto knitting the second section i noticed that i was off again at the end of the first section....so, off in two spots in the first section....

....i knitted a part of the second section so i could see how the yarns worked together....i like the way it looks colored in on the chart, but i wanted to see if it really worked well together in the yarns....the colors looked good together, but i decided i couldn't live with the two mistakes in the first section and i think the main color is off....because i've learned to be more patient about a project i consider the seven inches i already knitted to be a good learning experience....
....the thing that put the colors on the chart off in my knitting was the increases....you are supposed to increase a prescribed number of stitches every 4th round....those increases fell on a round where i was working with two colors and threw the stitch placement off....
....one great thing about Ravelry is the forums....you can go into the forums and ask a question about anything concerning knitting....i belong the the Appalachian Yarns group on Ravelry and the group admin. has knitted this pattern before....we're doing a KAL (knit-a-long) of this pattern so there are already two threads for this pattern in that group....i went into the KAL chat thread for this pattern and asked my question about being off the chart and Voila!....she answered telling me to just do the increases in the rounds that have only one color....
....i might've thought of this answer at some point as i considered what was throwing me off, but at this point there are several things i'm already learning and having to keep track of....this pattern teaches you to work with two different yarns, one in each hand; to weave the yarns in as you go; to add in a new color before you need it and weave it in as you go along with your working colors; to keep track of where you are on your chart....it's definitely one of the more challenging projects i've knitted....
....i've ordered more of the Midnight Blue Bartlett's Fisherman 2-ply yarn from Appalachian Yarns to use for the base color....i was using the Light Sheep Grey as the main color, but i'll switch it on my chart and use it as the accent color....
....it really never hurts to swatch to see how your yarns will work together as well as seeing your gauge/tension numbers....
....off to color in a new chart.....hope everyone has good Sunday's....

Cheers,
Sally

i love me some yellow/greens

2011-05-13T13:19:00.000-04:00

....evidently i love yellow/greens....as evidenced by my yarn choices many times....my most hearted project on Ravelry is my 28-row Scarf that i used Noro Kureyon for:

28-row Scarf

....i had lots of this yarn (still have 2.5 balls of it) and i used it as well for my Entrelac Bag:

Entrelac Bag

....i have some blue/green yarns, but i seem to gravitate to the yellow/greens....and my Sacchetto Verdi Big Honkin' Bag is no different....


Big Honkin' Bag Sacchetto Verdi

....i've started a stealth project too....so, shhh, don't tell anyone, but i'm knitting a beret for the designer of the 28-row Scarf....she's a lovely person....i've still got a cake of the Wexford Merino/Silk from 3IG....even with its flaws it's really soft with a nice sheen....i think it will make a pretty beret....

....i did the ribbing section yesterday....
....i'm finally going to get back to work on the Color Your Own Cardigan today....

Cheers,
Sally

Smoke, Ash and Lizard Love

2011-05-11T08:06:00.000-04:00

....it's early a.m. here....earlier than i normally post anyway....what got me up was the smoke from that Okefenokee Swamp fire....last thing i read was it was now burning about 147,000 acres....you can definitely see the smoke haze....there are ashes on the vehicles and everything in the yard....we've really been loving the low humidity we've had this Spring....it has been staying cool enough at night to be comfortable for sleeping....usually by now we've had the air conditioner on....the dryness is the downside though....
....i've been watering my gardens like crazy this Spring....everything is coming along slowly....there's nothing like rain for the gardens, no matter how much you water....my Gardenias have been in full bloom for about 10 days now....it smells wonderful in my yard....DH and i were out walking last night and every time we passed our yard the fragrance was wonderful....

....this is the big Gardenia bush in my yard....i know it's way overgrown, and i'm going to have ot trim it back after the bloom season this year....i let it get humongous because it hides the view of the neighbors' garage and driveway....but it's pretty shaggy looking....

....this is the smaller one; more like the size the big one will get trimmed to....because of the dryness the blossoms have lasted a much shorter time....the large Gardenia's blossoms have mostly turned now....

....the volunteer sunflowers are blooming in the MacGregor Garden....

....and this guy is a volunteer from last year as well....i must've planted it because here it blooms....don't remember what it is though....Cosmos maybe?....

....i do know what these are though....my favorite Hyssop....plus DH's favorite Zinnias....Hyacinth Runner Beans and a new plant for this year, Cornflower....

....this box has DH's Zinnias, Hyacinth Runner Beans which will totally fill the trellis later this summer, Rosemary, Greek Oregano and Collard Greens....it didn't work planting the Collards among the fragrant herbs like i was hoping....they're the only plant in this box that the bugs have eaten through the leaves....

....i have some hanging planters on the outside of the pickets in the MacGregor Garden....this is Nasturtiums and Basil....so i'm going along watering and imagine my surprise when i get to the other end of the fence and see this:

....yes, the lizards are doing what you think they're doing....evidently there is not movement while this is happening or i wouldn't have gotten a photo....
....after having finished a couple of projects last week, i started the Big Honkin' Bag....i do love knitting a bag....this pattern is a bit different....i'm using worsted weight, #4, wool with Size 2US needles....more often you'd use Size 6,7, or 8US needles....i really like the pattern and it's an easy knit....
....i've been meaning to get back to my Color Your Own Cardigan, but haven't had the mental focus lately....everyone is sneezing a lot around here, and i feel congested which makes it difficult to focus....maybe today i will get back to it....

Cheers,
Sally

p.s. i finished Night Train too....

2011-05-06T15:42:00.003-04:00

....i seem to be on a bit of a roll this week finishing up my Four Square Garter Stripe Bag and DS' neckerchief....


The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief Night Train

Cheers,
Sally

Garter Stripe Bag leather handle installation

2011-05-06T15:17:00.000-04:00

...Voila! i have a new bag:


Garter Stripe Bag Four Square

....i got the Cane Weave 16" leather handles from SeryphStudios in brown/black....here's how i installed the handles....

Materials:
1 pair of leather handles
1 slotted screw driver
a tool to punch a hole through the lining fabric....i used a straight awl
a marking pen

....the handles come with 2 Chicago screws on the tab....unscrew both screws and set them aside....

....position the leather tab over the spot where you are going to attach it to your bag and mark the spot through the screw hole with your pen....

....using your pointed tool, from the front of your bag, at the point that you marked, push your tool through the front of your bag and the lining to make a hole for the screw to fit through....

...put the part of the screw on the back of the tab through the opening in the lining....you will have to move a stitch on the front of the bag with your fingers or a knitting needle so the opening in the back part of the screw shows....put the front part of the leather tab over the screw opening....lining up the bottom hole on the tab with the opening....insert the top of the screw into the opening and using your slotted screw driver reattach the screw....

....i installed the top screw on the tab through the edging on my bag....it was with some difficulty and i had to get DH to help with that....it would be a lot easier to install the top screw on the tab just above the tip of the bag point....

Cheers,
Sally

Garter Stripe Bag lining tutorial

2011-05-04T17:37:00.003-04:00

....ready for the lining tutorial?....here it goes.....
Step 1: knit bag....as DS would say: buhduh!
Step 2: pick out multiple fabrics from which you will choose your lining
Step 3: ask LQM to make a poll for you so everyone can vote on their favorite fabric for your lining; then pick the one you want anyway....:)

....so, here's the actual process....thanx in part to laughingpurplegoldfish for her tutorial on making a fabric lining for a knitted bag....

Materials for bag lining:
lining fabric
matching thread
sewing machine
iron and ironing board
straight pins
hand-sewing needle

....set up your iron and ironing board and get your sewing machine ready....
....For my Four Square Garter Stripe Bag i chose a lining fabric with a large flower motif....

....i isolated the flower pattern on my fabric above the fold and lay my bag over the pattern....

....if your fabric has an all over pattern you won't have to bother with the last step....for the purpose of this tutorial i folded, cut and sewed my lining with my fabric right side out....you will fold, cut and sew your lining with your fabric right sides together....flatten your bag and place the bottom along the fold line like you see in the above photo....
....i marked around my bag with Tailor's Chalk....if you don't have Tailor's Chalk you could use a quilter's marking pen or straight pins to follow the curve of your bag....this mark will be your sewing line....at the bottom of the bag let the curve you are marking trail off to the fold....in other words you want the fold line of the fabric to span the width of your bag as it will be the inside bottom of your lining....as you can see in the second photo below....

....after you mark around your bag, measure 1/2 and inch away from your sewing line and mark or pin all around the shape of your bag....this line will be your cutting line....i used straight pins around to see where to cut....i cut my fabric on the outside of the line of pins....after cutting, remove the pins....

....now you are ready to sew the bag....with right sides together and remembering that the top of this bag has diamond points, measure down from the top of a point to the bottom of the side opening....you want to mark this place with a pin so you will know where to stop sewing the side of your bag....then go ahead and sew the sides up to the pin....

....now that your lining is seamed you are going to form the bottom of your bag....turn your lining right side out....lay it on your ironing board and pull up the bottom like you see in the photo below....iron a crease across the bottom of this rectangle that you have formed....then measure across to the other side of the rectangle and iron a crease on the other side....

....the measurement that you take to form your rectangle will be the width of the bottom of your bag lining....

....now that you have your rectangle creases ironed you will see that each end of the rectangle will form a triangle if you fold them in toward each other....

....at this point turn your lining inside out again....and fold the triangle points in toward each other....

....with your fabric under your presser foot on your sewing machine you will be able to feel the line of the fold underneath the fabric to guide you as you sew....sew across the bottom of the triangle....also sew along the sides of each triangle....

....after you have finished sewing each triangle the bottom of your lining should look similar to this photo:

.....now you want to turn your bag lining right side out again and attach it to your knitted bag....place your lining inside the bag and adjust the fabric so it sits on the bottom like you want it to....you could pin the bottom of the lining to the bottom of the bag at this point if you'd like....begin folding and pinning the top of your lining points to the top of your bag points....for this bit i had to make the cuts on each side of the lining fabric deeper to fit the lining to the bag....

....finally hand stitch the lining to the bag using Overcast Stitch....TechKnitter has an excellent tutorial for attaching a woven lining to a knitted bag using overcast stitch here.....along with sewing the top of the lining to the top of the bag i am going to tack it to the bottom and sides with a few stitches so it will stay in place....then add my new leather handles....

Cheers,
Sally

Lining a bag and COWYAK

2011-05-03T17:13:00.000-04:00

....in the mornings i usually read a bit on Google Reader....i love using a feed reader....i can have everything i might want to look at in one spot and see what new posts are there....some of the feeds i read include Design Sponge...there are so many interesting things on Design Sponge....Mondays are Sneak Peeks....there are regular posts for online businesses titled: Biz Ladies....lots of good ideas to help your business succeed.....and City Guides....that one is really cool....locals from cities around the country and around the world give you an insiders guide, with links, to design shops, good restaurants, etc... from their locale....my favorite day on Design Sponge is Thursday....Thursday is Before and After day....projects that people have done and photographed....sometimes furniture, whole rooms, lighting, etc....i also read some news, and knitting blogs....
....one of my favorite blogs is TECHknitting....TechKnitter has a lot of great posts, with diagrams...i love that....yesterday's post was about casting on along the long edge ....in that post i came across the acronym COWYAK....i love that!....funny and easy to remember.....a technique for casting on with waste yarn and knitting from a post that TechKnitter did in 2007 referencing a discussion in a forum on Ravelry....COWYAK!....COWYAK!....COWYAK!....okay, i think i'm done....maybe....:)
....went to Cosmo Bleu Salon today to actually get some curls in my hair....i don't always go there just for the knitting....just sayin'....after i left there i went over to Beyond Fabric to see what i might find in the way of fabric to line my bag....i like the plaid fabric that i already had in my fabric stash, but i didn't love it...and i thought it competed a bit with the bag itself.....i was able to find more than one fabric of course....the lovely Sara helped me look through the selection and i wound up buying three different pieces....

Don't know the name; Front Runner

Ginkgo Leaves

Jacobean Gold

....i don't know what to call the fabric in the first photo, but it's the front runner for the Four Square Garter Stripe Bag lining....i plan to start on the lining tutorial tomorrow....and maybe practice some COWYAK....couldn't resist!

Cheers,
Sally

Two Sales

2011-05-02T13:07:00.003-04:00

....hi everyone.....just wanted to let you know SeryphStudios is having a Mother's Day Sale today through Sunday....10% everything in the shop....

....and Appalachian Yarns is also having a Mother's Day sale....30% off....

Cheers,
Sally

Not too many after all

2011-04-30T17:28:00.000-04:00

....i had a fun time at Cosmo Bleu Salon yesterday with our Kingsland Knitter’s group….some of the girls are finishing up their Garter Stripe Bags and have them ready for felting….we felted one of the bags while i was there, and it turned out great….it’s blocking now and awaiting it’s handles….i was already thinking about some yarns in my stash that i could use for another bag….i have some Ironstone New Wool in bright pink that’s wrapped with a black thread and some Cascade 220 in black that I think will make a pretty bag:

Irontstone New Wool, Cascade 22

….as i was stash diving i also found some Louet Bonnie that i have with purples, blues, rusts and a wee bit of green that i think i’ll match with an orphan hank of Bartlett’s 2-ply in Lilac Heather that i purchased to see if it could be used in the Philosopher's Wool Color Your Own Cardigan:

Bartlett's 2-ply Lilac Heather, Louet Bonnie

....that hank didn't make the cut for the cardigan, but it seems to contrast nicely with the Louet Bonnie....
….i did cast on for the Color Your Own Cardigan….my main color for this cardigan is Light Sheep Grey….i worked the cuff on Size 4US/3.5 mm needles and I did one stripe in Medium Sheep Grey….i had already practiced working one color in each hand on a swatch….i'm still working on throwing/English style knitting….my right hand feels awkward holding the yarn tension….hopefully i’ll have it down by the time i finish this project….the Philosopher's Wool company has a good video that i can watch repeatedly if necessary until i get the hang of it....i switched to Size 8US/5 mm needles for the sleeve, worked the increase round in the background color and started the chart after that round….i need to write it down so I’ll have two sleeves that match (oh wait!....lol, i guess i'm writing it down here....):

Philosopher's Wool Color Your Own Cardigan Cuff

….i also started sewing the lining into the Entrelac Bag

Entelac Bag

….after that it is ready for it’s leathers and off my desk…

….and I finally figured out what to do about the cord for the Bryophyta Cell Pouch….i wasn’t entirely happy with just a thin leather cord….it’s seems too thin and I didn’t want to send it on to my cousin like that….day before yesterday I remembered about Filled I-cord….so I have that project sitting on my desk as well….

….i’m also going to post through the process of lining my Garter Stripe Four Square Bag….i've chosen and cut out the fabric for the lining:

Garter Stripe Bag Four Square

....and i'm hoping to get to it this week....i like the look and size of this bag so i'm going to forego felting it....felted fabric is fairly dense so it doesn't necessarily need a lining....with my new bags the yarn is bulkier necessitating larger needles....i'm going to cast on more stitches which means each square will need more rows as well so the overall bags will be larger than this one....i've already picked out my handles for this bag from SeryphStudios:

Cane Weave 20" Leather Bag Handles

....the handles are the Cane Weave....i love how the pattern matches the woven look of the bag....i'm getting a 20" pair in Brown/Black….
.....the Romantic Reversible Shawl Moonlight Romance and The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief Night Train…seem to have become my relaxed/watching t.v./listening to music knits....i always like to have a couple of projects that just seem relaxing....
.....which brings me to our project for May….everyone seemed to like the idea of knitting The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief with sock yarn….i’m using Dream in Color Smooshy Black Jungle:

The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief Night Train

....and size 4US/3.5mm needles….the original pattern calls for DK (double-knitting) weight yarn, but there are also examples of projects knitted with worsted weight yarn….my only changes to the pattern are that I’ve added an additional section of the stockinette pattern before the final Garter/Eyelet Section….

Louet Euroflax

….now that I read this back it doesn’t seem like so much….one of my Friends of the 28-row scarf has 24 WIP’s….but she also has a long Royal Wedding weekend in the U.K. to finish up some of those nearly finished things….don’t know if I could keep track of that many projects, but I guess I’ll have to surf through my own patterns for something else to cast-on….maybe it’s time to cast on Shipwreck Shawl….hmmmm....i have the needles and now i have the yarn....just need to get some beads....

Cheers,

Sally

Finishing up

2011-04-24T17:01:00.000-04:00

....i've been finishing up the Garter Stripe Bag today using acacia09's diagram....i found the diagram really helpful for picking up and knitting the bag....and it's just as helpful for seaming up....if you are at the point of seaming up seam the green arrow sections first....the red arrow sections next....and finally the blue arrow sections according to the diagram....it's a bit of seaming but waaaaayyyyy less than if we had knitted up all the squares separately instead of picking up stitches and knitting them....

....the last bit of finishing requires felting the bag if you want to....and either crocheting two rounds of single crochet, or making an i-cord and applying it to the top opening of the bag according to the instructions we've been following from gardengate's project page.......if you click on gardengate's photos on her project page they will enlarge so you can really see the stages of her bag well....

....finally you will need to decide which handles you would like for your bag....gardengate's project used i-cord handles....i-cord is a nice finishing detail and is very easy to accomplish....here's a video link from KnittingHelp on making i-cord.....of course you know i'm going to use leather handles from SeryphStudios which you could also use if you desire....

....i hope you found this a fun project....

Cheers,
sally

Kindergarten had its benefits

2011-04-22T15:14:00.000-04:00

....i spent the entire day yesterday coloring Charts and Color Keys to keep myself on track with the Color Your Own Philosopher's Wool Cardigan i'm about to start....why, you might ask, would i be crazy enough to start a wool cardigan when summer is definitely on its way?....as evidenced by the humid, upper-eighties we've been having around here?....i know, it seems kind of crazy....but, it also makes sense to me that if i'm able to complete this project by fall then it will be ready for himself to wear as soon as cool weather comes around again....and a KAL is starting on the Appalachian Yarns group on Ravelry so i'll have all the help i could need with tips and techniques.....

Bartlett Yarns Fisherman 2-ply

Light Sheep Grey

....now you might be asking yourself why it took me all day to color that chart.....it was the third chart i colored before i got the mix of yarns the way i wanted them....it's a good thing we ordered way more yarn in different colors than we will actually need....we're using Bartlett Yarns for this project....you know how it is when you see something on your computer monitor and you're not sure how it will actually look in front of you....i ditched a couple of colors in favor of a couple of other colors and ended up winding more yarn into a cake to get that right mix....right to my eye at least.....i don't want the cardigan to be too dull....even though men usually like the most neutral of colorways....i still want to enjoy knitting this project or i'm likely not to finish it....especially with all the other projects going along....i'm using Blackberry, Willow, Cranberry, Larkspur, Midnight Blue, Dark Sheep Grey, and Medium Sheep Grey for my 7 alternating colors....and Light Sheep Grey for my main background color....

....this will be my first second time doing Fair Isle color-work using both hands to hold and work the yarns....i knit in the Continental style and find it difficult to hold my yarn tension with my right hand....i started out learning to crochet when i was a young teen, and held my yarn in my left hand, so it makes sense that i would find Continental style familiar....i knitted the Bryophyta Cell Pouch using the two-handed technique and i found the knitting using my right hand was tighter than the knitting with my left hand....i suppose it will work itself out the more i knit in both styles....and the KAL locked thread has a video link up so i can practice before we actually start.....

....this will be my first time with a couple of other techniques as well: steeking and installing a zipper into a knitted garment....

....my DIL (daughter-in-law), our Kate, is going to work this cardigan as well....and this weekend we are going to watch the video and practice the two-handed technique....plus she needs to color her chart....you can join along with this KAL if you are interested in knitting a Fair Isle Cardigan....just go over to Ravelry....it's free to join....and join the Appalachian Yarns group....you can order yarn from our friends at Appalachian Yarns for this KAL too....the recommended amount of yarn is 4 hanks of a background color of your choosing, and 1 hank each of 7 other colors....you will also need the book: Fair Isle Sweaters Simplified by Ann and Eugene Bourgeois....

....after all that coloring i'll be happy to get back to knitting....Happy Easter Weekend.....

Cheers,
Sally

Another Mystery Begins

2011-04-20T11:06:00.000-04:00

....i've been pretty busy lately...as you can probably tell by my lack of posting....we had the most beautiful weekend....sunny with dry, cool air....in the mid-seventies....i spent the entire afternoon Sunday on the front porch knitting....i'm finishing up my Garter Stripe Bag....after i got the hang of it i found it pretty easy to proceed along picking up stitches....i only knitted one square that i didn't pick up stitches for and seamed it onto the bag....i've enjoyed this project a lot....i spent one afternoon last week weaving in the hanging ends as they were becoming annoying and i didn't want all that finishing at the end....after that i've been weaving the ends in as i finish each block....i only have three more squares to knit then the sewing up....

....DH has been outside too....he got a new lens for his camera and the hummingbirds came back a few weeks ago....you can see some of his shots on SeryphStudios on ArtFire....i made some hummingbird food for the feeder and we have it hanging just outside our office on the front porch....it is really, really difficult to get a good photo of a hummingbird....there are two or three of them that come to the feeder....there's one that doesn't mind us being out there at all....it looks directly at us while it is on the perch....kind of showing off it's ruby throat ....there's another one that is all white on it's belly and throat....it's more hesitant about approaching the feeder....and there's one that seems smaller than the others to me....if that's possible....they are pretty small....it's proving a real challenge to DH....he's been sitting out there for the past three days getting different shots....one day he used the flash....they didn't like that very much at all....except for the bold one....it didn't seem to mind....they are louder than you would expect too....they sound like really loud bumblebees....two of them chase each other off....they move so fast....even the photos that seem like they are perched and still, when DH does the photo processing you can see that their wings are still moving....they make a chittering sound when they chase each other off....territorial about the feeder i suspect....

DH has other pursuits that he enjoys as well .....remember that hint i was talking about last post?....he really likes leather working too....i suppose i enjoy knitting bags as much as any other knitted item....i love bags really....who doesn't love a bag to carry or store something in?....i'm overflowing on my side of our office with bags stuffed with yarn and projects ....i told DH how lovely it would be to have leather straps and handles for knitted bags....so he ordered up his supplies and commenced working on some really beautiful leather straps and handles....

....i posted in a couple (or three)(or five....:) because you know i love my DH and fiber artists need to know about how awesome i think he is too....just sayin') of forums on Ravelry about his handles and straps and i got an email from Talitha Kuomi....don't know if you remember the Mystery Bag KAL i knitted along with last May?....probably not....i'm lucky if i remember the things i've knitted from last year....:)....she designed the bag we knitted for that Mystery Bag KAL.....that Mystery Bag became the Quench Bag....the pattern is available from our friends at Appalachian Yarns....

....the Quench Bag was a fun Mystery KAL....it started in the middle....and kept it's mystery for most of the project....you might remember Tal's Wild Olive Beret from the Holiday Gifts 2010 issue of Interweave Knits....and her inclusion in Knitscene's Hot List of 10 Designers to Watch in 2011....anyway she had seen DH's leather straps and handles in his studio on ArtFire and been intrigued with them....she generously offered to design a bag that will include one of his straps....so now the mystery begins again....what kind of bag will it be?....which yarn will she use?....can't wait to find out....keep your eyes open here for more hints as they come along and probably a summer KAL on Ravelry....

Cheers,
sally

Bag lining

2011-04-13T16:17:00.000-04:00


Entrelac Bag

Lining for Entrelac Bag

....i've been working on the lining for the Entrelac Bag today....i haven't made a lining for a bag before, but i came across an excellent tutorial by laughing purple goldfish....pretty easy, lots of photos....:)
....i think it turned out pretty good....at least i'm liking it....i even put a pocket in it for my sunglasses and phone....i had a bit of a snafu when i sewed it with wrong sides together.....that's what i get for not sewing very much anymore....or just not paying attention really....i solved the problem by sewing flat fell seams....you usually find seams like that on jeans....they're actually easy to accomplish and they have a very finished appearance....it was a good solution as i had already installed the pocket and sewn up the side seams....so i would have had to start entirely from scratch....le boo....now i just have to hand sew the lining to the bag and decide which leather bottom and straps or handles i should use....i'm thinking light brown?....

Cheers,
sally

New stuff

2011-04-12T14:20:00.000-04:00

Bryophta Lichen Cell Phone Pouch

....i do knit....everyday really.....it may not seem like i have time to knit much, but i do knit....and i finally got my own point and shoot camera...with all the photographers in the family you'd think i would have stellar photos of my knitting....not so much though....(or should i say knot so much?)....my photographers are so busy with other things i have to hunt them down to get a photo or two....now i'll have no excuse not to post photo's of my WIP's and FO's....so let me get started here....first up i also finally finished the Bryophyta Lichen Cell Phone pouch that i changed from mitts to cell pouch and that sat on my desk forever....i put a thin leather cord in it for a drawstring and to hang from the wrist....i'm not entirely happy with the drawstring, so i'm giving it a bit of a think to see what else i might like to substitute.....

Garter Stripe Bag - Four Square

....then there's the Garter Stripe Bag our Kingsland Knitter's group is working on....i'm loving this project and will definitely make another one....

Romance Reversible Shawl Front Side

Romance Reversible Shawl Back Side

....and the Romance Reversible Shawl - Moonlight Romance....i don't usually knit with acrylic yarns anymore....i love wool really....but i had ordered some Bernat Satin Solids to knit baby blankets for my grands and i really like how soft this yarn is....it has a nice sheen to it as well and it's not splitty....always a bonus....so i ordered some more and i really like working with it....


Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief - Night Train

....and i'm working on The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief for DS....he liked the pattern and could use it when he rides his motorcycle....so i'm titling it Night Train....

12x25 Scarf

....and i finished my 12x25 Scarf knitted with the Miss Babs Yowza Whatta Skein Monochrome, Oyster colorway and Three Irish Girls Wexford Merino, Heathered Lilac....i intended to knit an entirely different scarf with these yarns and i tried 3 times to do different patterns....but the yarn seemed to fight with the patterns so i decided they just wanted to show themselves off:

Gardening Bag

....and i went on an art supplies shopping run with DS and came across these gardening bags....the shop had four and home they came with me....gardening bags make such great project bags....:

....and, silly you, you thought i'd run out of "and's".....and, there's something really exciting happening with a certain designer i know.....no more hints than that for now, but keep your eyes open.....

Cheers,
sally

Bag lady by any other name....

2011-04-11T19:41:00.000-04:00

....hi everyone....i'm pretty excited....DH finally has his leather bag handles and straps up on his studio on ArtFire....so get your bag hats on and knit, crochet, sew or felt you a bag or six....:).....he's at SeryphStudios.....

Cheers,
sally

Garter Bag Options

2011-04-05T09:37:00.007-04:00

....good morning everyone....it's a good day to stay inside and knit here today.....stormy and windy....

.....i'm sitting here at my desk working on my Garter Stripe Bag and i was thinking about options for making the bag bigger....you could, of course, just knit more squares and join them to your project using the same sized needles you are using now....if this is an option you would consider using the current diagram would have to be expanded in width and length.....
....or you could use bulky (#5) yarn and larger needles....bulky yarn is thicker/fatter yarn....usually bulky yarn is knitted with needles in the Size11US(8mm)- Size 15US(10mm) range....because of the thickness of the yarn and the larger needle size you will get a bigger square than your current squares with worsted weight yarn....

....or, since we are all using worsted weight (#4) yarn, if you really love your current yarn but just want larger squares, you could cast-on more stitches and knit 2 garter ridges in each color....for instance you could cast on 28sts and knit 2 garter ridges with your MC (main color) then alternate 2 garter ridges with your CC (contrasting color)....you would need more yardage to complete your bag if you would like to use this option....

....if you're like me i'm already thinking about making another bag....:)

....can't wait to see your finished bags....

Cheers,
sally

Edit: i was looking through the bag projects on Ravelry and i came across one that has a really good photo....of the bag seamed up like you see in the diagram.....

Garter Stripe Bag KAL

2011-04-04T13:40:00.000-04:00

....we had fun today starting our Garter Stripe bags.....as i was driving home it occurred to me that for the stripes to orient correctly some of the squares will have to be knitted separately and seamed on to the main portion of the bag....i was thinking about the diagram and i knew if we picked up stitches along the edge with horizontal stripes we weren't going to get vertical stripes going in that direction.....so we'll be adding seaming to our techniques for April.....

....here's a video on Mattress Seaming .....

Cheers,
sally

April KAL

2011-03-31T14:25:00.004-04:00

....hi everyone....we've pretty much agreed to knit the Garter Stripe Square Bag for our April KAL....i'm pretty excited about knitting this project....have a look through some of the projects on Ravelry to get some color ideas....

....for this project you will learn these techniques: knitted cast-on,
....joining squares by picking up stitches,
....joining a second color to your work,
....i-cord,
and felting....

.....this Ravelry link has good instructions in her notes for this bag.....thank you, gardengate....and this Ravelry link has a good diagram for attaching the squares in English and German.....thank you acacia09....
.....for felting make sure your yarn DOES NOT have any synthetic fibers or it will not felt....read the label carefully....no: nylon, rayon, polyester, acrylic....it's okay to use yarn with these fibers if you will not be felting your bag....when you look through the projects on Ravelry you will see that some people didn't felt their bags....some of those bags have fabric linings sewn in to them....
.....TechKnitting has a great tutorial on installing a fabric lining into a knitted bag that seems pretty helpful....thank you TechKnitter....
....i can't give you the exact amount of wool you might need, but if you are going to use the Noro Kureyon i recommend having 2 skeins on hand....i'm going to use Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool in Natural and Brown Heather....
....speaking of wool and other lovely yarns, starting tomorrow, April 1, and for the months of April and May, WEBS is having their 37th Anniversary sale....lots of good fibers on sale....don't forget to check back in May because they will have all new yarns on sale that month....

.....look over to the right here on the blog for the project info.....have a good weekend....see you Monday....:)

Cheers,
sally

p.s. Arigato Ishi san

Two at a time today

2011-03-29T22:25:00.000-04:00

....two posts in one day, what'll they think of next?....found another project for you to consider....we haven't done anything cabled yet....and this looks like a great beginner cabling project: Palindrome Scarf....give it a look and let me know what you think about it.....i can see this scarf knitted up without the striping....in something lovely and soft....silk/merino?.....alpaca/wool?....mohair?....you decide....

....cables are stitches that are knit out of order....some stitches are either held to the back or the front on a cabling needle or other stitch holder while you continue to knit the pattern across....then you return to the stitches on the holder....not difficult....you have to pay a bit of attention...and you get really interesting results.....

XO,
Sally

Always knitting something new

2011-03-29T18:34:00.000-04:00

....we're coming up on the end of the month here and i'm thinking about what we're going to knit next in our local group....we'll finish up the Ribbed Watch Cap of course....that's our technique knitting for April....and i've posted a new block in the Block of the Month pattern on the side-bar for those of you who are still working on your blankets....

.....i got an adjustment from my chiropractor this afternoon and had time to stop by the shop....i'm always curious what everyone is knitting and i'm usually thinking about what to knit next....i'm never going to run out of ideas especially when i look on the Most Obscure patterns forum on Ravelry....i have so many patterns in my favorites, printed out and in the books and magazines i have i'll never run out.....

....after i got back this afternoon i went on Ravelry to have a look at the bag patterns and i came across an interesting Garter Stitch Bag....let me know what you think about it....and perhaps we'll knit this bag next.....don't worry about the blog being in Japanese....i looked through the projects that people have knitted from this pattern and there are some really great tips and instructions in their posts on Ravelry....it looks pretty simple....we could either knit all the squares and then seam them up, or we could learn to pick-up stitches along the sides of the squares as we go along....a handy technique to know actually, and used in many projects....some of the bags are felted; some are not....and quite a few people used I-cord handles; another useful technique....

Cheers,
Sally

Wings and Wheels

2011-03-27T09:16:00.000-04:00

....what at great day we had yesterday....the Gaggle Flight Team hosted their Wings and Wheels Event at Spruce Creek Fly-In in Port Orange, Florida.....we had to get a move on in the early a.m. to be there when it started.....there were so many restored WWI planes and restored Classic cars to see.....

Gorgeous Day

2011-03-23T18:35:00.000-04:00

.....what a gorgeous day.....it is March, therefore windy, but i love the wind.....i spent the entire day working in the MacGregor Garden.....i reworked three of the boxes....put in new compost....planted a ton of seeds....every Zinnia known to man....well, at least every Zinnia available at my nearest Big Box Home Improvement Center.....and Poppy's, Cornflowers, Echinacea, Basil, lots of Basil, Italian Parsley, Hyacinth Runner Beans, Collard Greens, Creeping Thyme, Rosemary, Tickseed, Tarragon, Sage, Marjoram.....some self-seeded Sunflowers from last year are coming up....and of course my favorite self-seeding Hyssop....i'm hoping to outwit the grasshoppers by planting my Collard Greens amongst the strong smelling herbs.....we'll see if that works....i have four more boxes to improve, but i'm satisfied with what i accomplished today.....i even found a way to, hopefully, foil kittehs and squirrels....DH attached some small picket fencing we have....the kind that comes in a roll....to the outside of the boxes and DS and i rolled out some chicken wire across the top of it....hopefully this arrangement will at least make it harder for them.....and i can remove the chicken wire when everything comes up and fills in.....we'll see.....

Cheers,
sally