Finished project!!!

Foliage

Pattern: Foliage by Emilee Mooney from the Fall 2007 Knitty

Yarn: Malabrigo Chunky in Hummingbird

Needles: Size 10.5 dpns and 16 inch Addi Turbos, Size 9 dpns for ribbing

Thoughts: This was very quick — I started Post Rhinebeck and finished already! 2 evenings with a touch of afternoon thrown in. I also had to unknit a bit (my error, not the pattern). One bit of advice I have is to make sure you bind off loosely. I had to go back and bind off with a larger needle size.

Thank you Emilee for a beautiful design and easy to follow pattern! (The lace pattern is both charted and written out.)

Agent K also finished 2 felted creatures from her felting kit from Sliver Moon Farms. I promised I would post her photos. Aren’t they cute? She said when she gets good enough she is going to have her own Etsy shop of felted animals.

Yesterday my Fiesta Boomerang arrived! I can make Boomerang socks like Sarah and Cheryl and Dara now! I love it! It is so soft and squishy! I ordered it from The Loopy Ewe and the packaging is incredible. My yarn actually came looking a bit like a grinder. I was a bit hungry when my mail came, so a grinder would have been nice, but YARN is SO MUCH BETTER.

Here is all the stuff that comes in the box with the yarn:

And here is the yarn in Raspberry Mocha. Once again — so yummy I want to eat it!!!

The gauge on the pattern label says 18 stitches = 4 inches. This yarn may work for Mr. Greenjeans. I think I will swatch for that before I start my socks. What if I like the swatch? Should I order 2 more skeins for the sweater instead?

I also have a Dark Victory update! Annie Modesitt posted an update about it on her website yesterday. It seems like what probably happened is that there were 2 sample garments and the wrong photo made it into the book? Anyway, there are 2 versions. One with ribbing at the bottom and one with the slip stitch pattern all the way around the bottom. The 2 versions can be seen here. Seeing both of them next to each other makes it a tough decision as to which version to make. I will have to think on it.

I’ve been surfing around Etsy quite a bit lately. I’ve bumped into a few shops with just such lovely things that I would like to share. Yesterday, I was window shopping at Knitting’ Pretty and admiring her beautiful handspun yarn. Heather’s colors are so pretty and she has some cute stitch markers too. Julie’s Creation Nation has lovely and unique felted items. My favorites are the Felted Nursing Mothers with Babies. Oh and has anyone seen this shop called Jelly Beans? I just love, love, love it!!! Maybe I should publish this post now, so I have some shopping time before work today?

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Going tomorrow!

Can’t wait!

We interupt your regularly scheduled SKB knitting to bring you…

A Fish

OK, I’ll admit it, I’m at the point of knitting SKB where it is time to take it off the needles and try it on. I’m just being a bit too lazy to do that at the moment so I knit a fish instead. The pattern was sitting right here, I had all the yarn left over from my sling bag and I really need to use my size 11 ChiaGoo double points at every opportunity to help in their depreciation process. So Fishy was born!

Thank you to Flan for the pattern and to Nona Knits for the mouse-over trick. Go ahead run your cursor over the photo – you will see what Fishy looked like before his swim!

Glub Glub!!!

Edited to add:

Fishy would like everyone to be able to see him prior to his swim in the Neptune so we are adding the photo that is *under* the top photo:

Sorry for the inconvience – we are still learning the blogging routine!

This week was mostly dedicated to the act of taking my children swimming and just trying to make it through to the end of the heat wave. We had some accomplishments though. IHA finally fixed my (whoops, I mean, our) garage doors. The Little Agents and I started our Hoops and Yoyo album and we completed 10 pages and 2 partial pages. I finished a knitting project and a book…
Knitting:
I finished my Colorwork Sling Bag! Yep, I finished weaving in all the bajillion ends, made the braided cord, and ran it through the wash to felt it.

Before felting:

After felting:

Project details posted in Finished Objects page on the sidebar.

Reading (warning, may be a spoiler if you plan on reading either of these books):

I finished reading The Virgin Blue today. I was reading before bed last night and it hit me like the weight of water, or rather, The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve. A couple of years ago I went through an Anita Shreve binge. (Can you tell that I tend to do that?) While most of her books had some heavy sadness, or strange twists, I did not expect what happened in The Weight of Water. I can deal with the sadness or death of adults, but when it involves children, I don’t want to read about it. I never finished that book. I just stopped reading when the child died. It took me a while to get over that and I didn’t read any more Anita Shreve books without “getting clearance” first. I guess it was a bit different with The Virgin Blue, there were hints along the way that something terrible was going to happen. I could tell that Ettiene was planning something. I just thought (hoped) that Isabelle would be able to save her daughter before it was too late and all would be fine. So as I was reading last night, I found that I was wrong and Marie was going to die. I threw down the book and decided that there was no way I would read anymore, at all, I was done, how could she (Tracy) do this to me?
Today I felt different. It was not the same as The Weight of Water. I thought – I really have to know what happens with Ella. Does she find out what the blue dream means? Does she stay with her husband or does she end up with Jean-Paul? So I picked up the book and finished it. It was worth it. I think the difference for me was that in The Weight of Water, Billie’s death was senseless (and I’ve heard that it was not incorporated into the movie version even). I think she could have made her point in a different way, but in The Virgin Blue, Marie’s death (and her mother’s grief) were the whole substance of the plot. Without it the story would be different, there would be no dream, and Ella would not change and her life would go on as it always had. I’m glad that I went back and finished reading it. Of course, I still don’t love it as I did The Girl with the Pearl Earring or The Lady and the Unicorn, but it was worth reading. Now I’m going to have to wait for her next book – according to her website it is due out in March 2007.
Coming next:
I have some big-time plans for this weekend. The first thing is to catch up with the housework! Whoohoo! Hopefully, IHA and Little Agents will all be on-board. I also need to mow the lawn and weed my garden. I need to apply another bag of Milky Spore to my lawn. I am going to fight those grubs to the death!

Craftwise though – I have a lot on my plate:
I have some black alpaca fiber that I need to card to finish spinning. I bought it in Maine last summer to make IHA a pair of socks.

I have some sock yarn waiting for me to practice my tubular cast-on and make a new pair of socks.

I have a baby afghan project for work using Unser Renner.

While reading Fricknits this morning, I remembered all the squares our Girl Scout troop knit this year that still need to be seamed into an afghan.

I want to organize my dyeing supplies and start dyeing up some spinning fibers.

I still have to blog about Sock Wars!

Most importantly, I have to work on the sweater that I am designing before I forget everything that I learned at my classes at TKGA!

I better get some sleep tonight!

Have a great weekend!

Well, the title says it all. They are bored. We are going to have to think of some better ways to entertain them.*

What have they done so far this summer? They have done some knitting, scrapbooking, bike riding, canoeing, and swimming. They have been to Duck Day, Camp Mohawk, Field Hockey camp, the playground, Brodie Park, and a birthday party. They have cooked with the Easy Bake Oven, baked cinnamon rolls with yeast, and drank lots of coffee. They have played the flute and the violin. They have had Twinkies for the first time. They have even joined us for the sacred watching of This Old House on Saturday nights.

What do you think they should do next? Please let me know what you think they should do next week. These guys are fun loving creatures who are getting very antsy and driving us nuts with stuff like: “We’re bored.” “We don’t know what to do.” “What are we going to do now?” They really need their own social director.

Blogstuff – Today I worked on creating a Current Projects page. I think it is best if I just start with what I’m working on now and not try to get bogged down in past projects. Now, when I finish something from the Current Project page, I can create a Finished Objects page and move it on over (I hope I figure out an easier way to post photos soon because the way I do it now takes like 18 bajillion years.)

Speaking of time consuming – I’m wondering how people who blog have time to work on anything except the blogging. I guess there is a learning curve for the blog software and I’m at the steep part of it now. Hopefully, soon, I will have some time to do fun stuff like dyeing (and spinning, and weavette-ing, and more scrapbooking, and more knitting) that will have awesome pictures. I’m also working on designing a sweater. So I’ll be posting about that soon.

Tonight I worked a bit on my Colorwork Slingbag. I choose this project because it incorporates a few techniques that I need to practice and/or learn. It uses stranded knitting, Russian slip stich, and intarsia. This will be my first time with intarsia and what better way than to learn than in a project that will be felted. I’m also curious to see how the Nature Wool will felt.

Thank you everyone for your nice (nice? I mean awesomely incredible!) comments on my first blog entry (and on my Pages)! I really like comments! You guys rock! I think I am going to work on leaving more comments on the blogs that I read since now I know how it is…

P.S. to J – I promise to write some scrapbooking posts while you are on vacation!

*If you are unfamiliar with Hoops and Yoyo, I added their site to my list of Delicious Links on my sidebar.

I’ve been waiting all week for an idea to come to me, because you see, this first post has to be spectacular! But, although I’ve had severaly ideas, none of them have seemed to be “first Post” quality. So I’ve decided to take a different tatic. My first post is just going to be all about getting it over with so I’m just no longer a blogging virgin. Then maybe the good stuff will come after that!

So this is it, my first post! Whoo hooo!!!

I do want to add a couple crafty pictures though, so I can check off some categories on my side bar!

My Rainbow Felted bag

Project Details:

Rainbow dyed roving

Spun on my Kromski Minstrel (still as of yet, unnamed)

Navajo plied

Bag based on Sophie from MagKnits

Pictures show rainbow yarn, prefelted bag (with Hoops and Yoyo), and finished bag

Note: 8-2-06 post edited.  Pictures removed and new compressed pictures inserted.  T.