Witches Stockings

Cheryl dyed the Halloween colorway "Witches Stockings" which looks like this:

I worsted spun it into this:

Then I Navajo plyed it into this:

I have been coveting Cheryl's Halloween colorways since she dyed them, but I've been keeping my hands off - The rovings are for the customers. Then, a wonderful customer decided she had to have the Witches Stockings, and wanted ME to spin it!! WAHOO!! I love how the yarn turned out - long stretches of each color, then a long transition into the next color. Cheryl dyed long stretches of the roving to make just that effect!! Brilliant!!

Feather Cowl

I put the final touches on the Feather Cowl today - I like to block first, weave in ends second. It came out pretty well. I used some yummy hand dyed sock yarn from Tanis Fiber Arts.

80% superwash Merino
20% Nylon
400 yds (365 m)
Seabreeze colourway

A close-up of the lace (running sideways, knit from right to left.)











The cowl is basically a tube, knit in the round using Barbara Walker's Japanese Feather lace stitch. Easy peasy! Here it is folded in half.











And here it is scrunched up.










I think if I knit this one again, I may lose two or three repeats worth of stitches, and one repeat of the lace pattern (could be narrower and shorter). I am thinking of tacking the top and bottom together to make a doughnut with the seam on the inside, so I can just pull it over my head and go, no fussing. I'll let you know how it works out.

Having a bit of a slide lately with my routines. Not getting anywhere with the house. I think the problem is all the clutter. I keep cleaning it up and it gets spread back around. Today is Labor day, and I'm going to take advantage of a bonus day of hubby being home to help with the kids. The clutter had better watch out! I'm gathering up donations for The Salvation Army today, and loading them into the car, to deliver them tomorrow! Baby clothes and old clothes of mine. (hubby's too. Shh! Don't tell. He wants to keep that old tee shirt that hasn't fit him since college. I am sure he won't miss it.)

Next on the needles: I'm designing a poncho for a client's daughter, with matching hat and bag. Yeah! I get to knit with PINK!! That's something that someone with two boys does not get to do very often... :)

Best Laid Plans

Well I had planned to work more on the house today, establishing my routines, decluttering. And then my one year old fell and cut the inside of his mouth. All those plans went right out the window. The poor baby was bleeding and crying. Doctor says he had cut his frenulum (sp?) and did not need stitches. Thank goodness for that! Can you imagine how scary the emergency room would be to a little guy like that? Yipes.

My four year old was a peach through the whole thing, letting Daddy take him to his first day of preschool while I took his bro to the doctor.

The brave little dude even let the doctor check his lip, no tears, no wiggling. What a trooper!

Good to know my kids are good in an emergency!

Before all this excitement, I finished my latest project, one that I designed before I found out that someone else already designed something eerily similar (her version here - Ravelry link) While hers is a wimple, mine is a simple lace cowl. Pattern for mine with pictures to come tomorrow.

Today I cast on a go-to project, another baby bib from the Mason Dixon Knitting book. My sister has a few and RAVES about them, so I'm making bibs my car project for sitting in line at the bank, the preschool, the carwash, wherever I'm stuck in the car for a time. It is nice to have something to fill the gaps between projects, isn't it?

Back from Vacation

We recently returned from vacation (LOVE the Outer Banks) and I am trying to unpack and get my act together around the house. I have been trying to get the house together for a very long time (longer than I am willing to admit) and have been largely unsuccessful. After staying in a clutter-free rental for a week at the beach, coming home to a big mess was very disapointing. Not only am I missing the beach, but the mess is overwhelming. I am VERY motivated to throw everything out of this house. Starting over feels easier than slogging through all the CRAP.

SO, I'm trying to get into a routine. The day to day stuff is first. I swept and vaccumed the public part of the house, just where I could get to. I consolidated the paper clutter into one spot and started a load of laundry. I took the boys out to lunch instead of trying to find the table. Then I unloaded the dishwasher and put the few dirty dishes in, and put the laundry in the dryer. Now I have a few minutes to hang with my boys before starting dinner.

Tonight, I plan on going to the gym and then knitting until bedtime. Hopefully I can get some sleep before Tiny A wakes up. And tomorrow is the first day of preschool, so I should have some "free" time to keep up with these daily things!

I am looking forward to tossing a ton of clutter and finding some peace and room in my life for creating! This fall is going to be very busy, with June Pryce's ads going up on Ravelry and tons of spinning and knitting in my queue. I also have some ideas floating around in my head and I'd love to work them up into patterns!

Good to be Home Again

Ahhhh. I do love the holidays, but after 5 days at my parents', and almost 3 at Hubby's, with only two days in between, it is so very nice to get back into our little routines at home... even if home is an enormous mess.

Right now, Monkey is having a bath, and Daddy is assisting, (I can hear the giggles from here) so I have a few minutes to catch you up. I finished my holiday knitting just in time, again. Now this year I didn't plan on very many knit gifts because I wanted to avoid the frantic knitting/felting/sewing at midnight from last December. But still, I was down to the wire. I may not have been quite as stressed about it this year, but I was still pushing the deadline. I'm thinking that no matter how few or how many handmade projects I plan on, I will somehow find a way to be done just in time. I should just be glad that I did get them done, because the alternative is a bit embarrassing (and knitting gifts after they've been given is a bit like a chore).

My holiday knitting consisted of dishcloths for 8 (four each), a shawl, and some crazy hats.

Here are some dishcloths:

The finished shawl:

No pictures yet of the crazy hats for my BIL who likes to soak in his outdoor hot-tub in the winter, sorry. He got an acrylic rainbow hat with tail an pom-pom, and a regular hat of terra-cotta in Lion Brand Cotton-Ease, very comfy.

Today is New Year's Eve, and I'm thinking of the direction I'd like my knitting to take in 2008.

• Knit up more of my stash, in order to switch the stash from the jumble of odd skeins it is to (many less skeins) of (nicer) yarn to be bought for a specific purpose.


• Finish a few UFO's, to have less of them at the end of the year than the amount I have now (many more than you are thinking).


• Knit some for charity. There are a lot of cold people out there. I have a ton of yarn. There's a connection there.


• Publish some free patterns. Yeah, I said FREE. One pattern a month, minimum. Here on the blog. Be sure to check back.

For now, I'm working on a charity baby blanket for Warm Woolies. It usually takes me awhile to select a pattern and yarn, but this time I just picked yarn out of the stash and cast on. Yeah me!

Hosting Christmas

Each year, at Christmas, my family (or as many of that can) travel to one house to enjoy the holiday together. Thank goodness I am not hosting Christmas this year. I hosted last year and it was a ton of stress and work! (admittedly, some of the stress could have been from having a one year old child who didn't enjoy napping and my deciding to make most of the presents...)


I had never realized before how much work goes into just cleaning for the holiday! Then there's decorating, and cooking, and shopping, and it's sort of rude to do those things after the guests arrive. Then where to fit everyone (we do not have a large house) and making sure they're comfortable and sort of letting go of whether they're comfortable because there's only so much I can do without adding on a wing to the house and hiring some staff. So, thank goodness I am not hosting Christmas this year. But I feel guilty that my Mom, who is hosting, has all this work to do, so Monkey and I traveled to my Mom's house last week to help out. We blasted the Christmas music, and danced around with our dusters, then set about decorating for the holiday. It was great fun, and Monkey got to spend quality time with Nana and Poppy, so he was happy.


I brought two knitting projects with me, a Baby Surprise Jacket and a shawl for my grandmother, neither of which had been cast on. The shawl hadn't really been planned out, but I brought a copy of "Folk Shawls" by Cheryl Oberle with me, I figured I could pick something out of that. I started the lace shawl for my grandmother about 8 times this week, and FINALLY got something that resembles lace and doesn't make me vomit. (yeah, the tries were that bad) The problem was not Cheryl Oberle's book, it was my interpretation of it.


Apparently, I cannot follow simple directions. First, I ignored Cheryl's beautiful patterns, and tried to adapt her technique and stitch patterns into something entirely new. I tried to fit a lace pattern meant for a rectangular shawl into a triangular shawl (vastly overestimating my ability to adapt lace). Then I knit across the back for awhile instead of purling. When I finally figured that one out, fixed it, and the lace still looked bad, I realized I wasn't following the chart for the exceptions at the beginning and end of some rows. Hmmm... I decided to do something a bit easier, because it was very clear that I was not capable of much here. I cast on for a rectangle, used the number two lace from the sampler shawl in Folk Shawls, and remembered to purl on the wrong side (most times). So far, it's looking pretty good, and about 10 inches long (and it only needs to be about 60. God help me!)

You're probably wondering about the Baby Surprise Jacket I took with me. Never touched it. Seems it's a bit difficult being a single Mom, even just for a week, and with a few relatives around helping. Well, it is for me, anyway.

It's that time again

Sweater time! Wouldn't you know, Monkey has outgrown all his sweaters from last year (yes, it's true. Kids grow. Who woulda thunk it?) My goal last year was to have a handknit sweater that fit him for every day of the week. I didn't care if it was knit by me, or if it was knit for him. So, together with handmedowns from his nephews that were knit by me and by a talented aunt, the sweaters knit for him by the Knit Chicks (thanks again, ladies) and the ones I knit specifically for him, he had (at least) seven sweaters. But now, he has outgrown them all! Yikes! I went directly to the old standby:

The wonderful wallaby. You might be sick of seeing them here, but I never tire of knitting them. It's sorta mindless after you knit the first 10 sweaters... and mindless is exactly what I needed. The brain is still on vacation from my pregnancy (yes the child is almost two. Yes I'm getting worried that the brain will decide not to return.) I think the colors are victorian Christmas, but I'm weird that way.

So the wallaby musta jump-started my knitting mojo, 'cause then I started this:

It's the Dragon Skin Wrap from the holiday issue of Interweave Knits (the holiday issue is not included in the subscription. Yeah, that bugged me too.) I know what you're thinking. This is not a boy's sweater.
Well, maybe the wallaby got my hands warmed up for this project, but not my brain. I ripped. A lot. And then I ripped again (where can the brain BE?) So not so much with the mojo, but much with the "I gotta knit that!" What's that called? Hankerings?

Anyway, it's almost done, here's a pic:

I'm knitting it in Lion Brand Cotton Ease. Next I sew the side/underarm seams, knit the collar, and the i-cord tie, then add a snap inside, and voila! I brought it to Knit Chicks and Lisa asked if it was turning out the size it was supposed to, and I can honestly say I have no idea. I didn't check my gauge (yeah I know) and haven't measured the sweater yet to see if it turned out the way the pattern said it would. I truly believe that the child who fits the sweater (now or eventually) will appear to claim it. No worries.