Poodles for the rest of you

If you're not so lucky to have an actual poodle, this might do...

Redsweaters.org

A way to combine knitting with being thoughtful about killing people.

Redsweaters.org

Shopping spree

And this one had an excuse! This is what I got for my birthday swap pal:


A close up of some scrumptious yarn:


There were a few things that I added and forgot to take pics of. Oh well. Like chocolate. You've all seen that before. And I gave her the bag that I made from Noro Daria.

It was so fun to shop without yarn stash guilt. So fun!

More felting madness

Here are the after photos for my green felted purse. Before you ask, I forgot the before picture.



The Pursonalities book that I got from my Birthday Pal has sparked a sudden felting flame. I knitted up the (Arcuna?) Nature Wool that she gave me, and was going to do a band around the top in Manos del Uruguay in a dark green colorway, but hand-felting the swatch didn't turn out well. So I said damn the torpedos and threw the light green part into the washer. Even though I have a front-load machine, so it's hard to stop in the middle of a cycle. I just ran it through on warm/cold, and voila. I'm still thinking about a separate edging, I could knit a length of it, felt it, then sew it on.

And while I was at it, this crazy felting thing, I ran across my Knitting Olympics Capelet. So I threw it into the wash too. It didn't felt up snug enough to start chopping into flowers, so I'll run it through again. Anyone got some dirty laundry that I could wash? I'm all done with mine.

What else did I do with my weekend? I chopped up some of our deck.



How did I do it? I bought a power tool! We'd ripped up a few boards with crowbars and the like, and that was just not going to cut it.



Here I am with my Brand New Sawzall. A reciprocating saw with orbital action and a 1.25 inch stroke length. Yahoo!

And a bragging picture of our weeks veggies from our Community Supported Agriculture.

All organic, and all delicious!

Frustrated with felting

How do I felt by hand? I'm about to spend $4.75 on a download pattern that includes instructions on how to felt by hand in the sink. I have a front loading washing machine, and that's not so good for felting. (Great for washing clothes though!)


I tried a swatch, and it's drying in the sun as we speak. I'll take a pic in a few minutes here.

Thanks Birthday Swap Pal!

Wow! What a wonderful box of goodies! A beautiful bag (did you make it?), a poodle card (how did you ever know?), two skeins of gorgeous green yarn, beautiful hand-dyed merino roving, very cute note cards, and an ultra cool book of knitted and felted purses. The book is great for four reasons:
1. I don't buy myself enough knitting books.
2. I haven't felted yet and I want to.
3. I want to knit a bag.
4. I want to knit something with Cascade 220, and all the patterns are for that yarn!



And sorry all you Internet Exploder users, I didn't want to shrink the photo so that it would fit on the top part of the page. I wanted you to see the beautiful detail!

My favorite part of this is that all of these are things that I love, but they also reflect the taste of my birthday pal.

Thank you!

Needle Holder

This story starts at a thrift store. Upholstery fabric samples for sale. Ridiculous low prices. Fabric sitting in my closet for a few years.

I inherited a few needle holder rolls from my late grandmother. They were saturated with cigarette smoke, but are decent post-washing.

These two plot lines intersected, and next comes the needle holder roll made out of the upholstery samples:


Untie and roll open:



I even wrote down the process as I was sewing. Some fantasy about making a pattern for it.

Excuse the terse sentence fragments. Long freakin' day at work. No particularly nasty people, just lots to do, never caught up. Brain is FRIED. Deep fried with cajun salt. Microwaved to jerky. I love ten-hour shifts.

Blue handspun mittens

Stick 'em up!



My blue hat finally has matching mittens!

Hempathina Done!

I have wanted to knit Orangina since seeing it on Knit and Tonic.

I had a heck of a time getting the hang of the pattern enough to carry it around and knit without concentrating, but once I did, I loved knitting it. So much that I actually put off finishing it out of sadness for the loss of the project. Weird, huh.

Ta-da!



Details: Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy, on size 3 needles, negative 2 inches ease (I knit it 2 inches smaller than my bust measurement). I had 27.5 stitches per 4 inches, and cast on 121 stitches. I wet blocked it instead of steam blocking, as it was 104 degrees (in Oregon!) that day. The swatch was machine washed and dried, and stayed the same gauge. Not that I'm planning on machine washing this, I was just curious.

I love the drape of the Hempathy, and would knit with it again. And it has hemp in it! Very cool for an eco-girl like me.