Thursday, October 30, 2008

More Knitting

I bribed James with a peanut butter sandwich to get him to model the hat I made to give as a gift to someone else. He didn't put down Heinlein's Starship Troopers, but he did get up, go outside and wear the hat. (Did you know Starship Troopers is on the reading list of all the U.S. military academies?)

Sherry 001

This is the Ribbed Cap from One Skein Wonders, though it took a skein and a half of Lion Organic Cotton in the naturally occurring "bark" color. I'm having mixed feelings about the yarn. It was very, very splitty--possibly number two on the "Most Splitty Yarns I Have Ever Used" list. However it makes up for that by being very soft and full of organic goodness. A Ravelry-er who made a baby sweater with it said she hated the yarn because it didn't wash well and lost its shape. That makes me anxious, because no-one wants to give a self-destructing gift, and I bought more of this yarn with the intention of making other gifts. (I bought some of it during a "buy 2 get 1 free" sale--original price $6.99, then got more on clearance at about $3/skein.) The investment in yarn isn't insignificant, and if I spend the time to make a sweater out of it and looks like a dishrag after a couple of washings, I'll be very upset.


Audrey was wearing a store-bought knit headband, and saying she liked it very much and it kept her head warm, so I should make her some more. Here is my first one:

Sherry 004

The yarn was one of the single skeins I got for $1 at the yarn yard sale. It is Rio De La Plata kettle-dyed handspun from Uruguay in "Gold Fusion." The original price was $13. The yarn behaved very well while I was knitting it, but it is the kind of itchy, itchy wool that gives wool a bad reputation. Audrey said it was very warm and only mildly annoying on the backs of her ears. One of her friends admired it and would like me to make her one, which I am happy to do with the other half-skein (though it's farther down my queue, because of the Christmas knitting.) I'm loving the way the color glows even in our gray late afternoon light. I didn't use a pattern, I just cast on 15 stitches, used a border of 4 garter stitches on both sides and stockinette in the middle, and made it the same length as the purchased band (about 20 inches.)

I should have taken some pictures of the trees around us yesterday or the day before. The colors have peaked, and there's more bare branches than there were at the beginning of the week. It's dark when I take Audrey to school at 7:40 (it's dark most of the year when I take James at 6:40,) the days are definitely getting shorter, and the rain is supposed to set in soon.

Sherry 003

Monday, October 27, 2008

Yarn Diet.

A new (today) picture of Norman:
Norman on Knit Picks Imagination Seven Dwarves
If this was a LOLCat I would caption it "Yarn Diet not going so well akchually."

Norman is doing really well. When I first posted on the blog after we adopted him,I called him robust, and I think that's a pretty good descriptive word for him. He plays hard. The dogs (and everyone else) have accepted him as part of the pack. He purrs like a champion. We think we'll keep him (though we aren't so sure about the claws--we are against declawing in theory, but in practice--we're all getting poked full of holes.)

Now about that yarn diet. . . . We are supposed to be having a "Necessities Only November." Yarn is not a necessity. Not really. The three skeins of fingerling-weight hand-dyed superwash-wool/alpaca/nylon under Norman in the picture don't count, as they were ordered before the concept of "Necessities Only November (and the rest of October)" came to be. But I fell off the wagon today for a $1.76 skein of acrylic (ACRYLIC!) Audrey and James would say it goes to show what a problem I have when it comes to yarn. We won't talk about the two clearance-priced skeins of Noro Silk Garden on their way here, it was clearance priced, and I had just been seduced by Brooklyn Tweed's "Turn a Square" hat. This is a seriously good looking hat ( http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/turn-a-square ) and named after a White Stripes song. It has been all White Stripes all the time around here lately (seriously, "Seven Nation Army" plays in my head.) James NEEDS this hat, and I didn't have a single self-striping yarn in the stash (if you don't count dishcloth cotton, or sock yarn.)

Do not feel sorry for me about the yarn diet. I recently organized the stash and I am well prepared to knit/crochet through this time next year (and the year after, and possibly the next year, too) if I just plan my projects around what I already own. A couple of months ago we went to a yard sale given by a woman who had closed her yarn shop and was trying to get all her remaining inventory out of her garage. We made it there in the last 10 minutes of the sale and she gestured at the bins and stacks and piles of yarn and said "$1 skein." My family was waiting in the car and she was sporting a heinous sunburn from being out in her driveway all day, so I didn't have the luxury of leisurely picking and choosing. I said "wool" and she threw things out of bins and stacks and piles at me and I took home 152 skeins of good quality yarn, some with their $10=$15 price tags still on. I have those 152 skeins in addition to everything else that has followed me home from yarn stores and caught my eye online. So I'm set, all I have to do is figure out what to do with the grab-bag variety of colors and styles. Ravelry has been an awesome tool for this, I just type in the type of yarn and see what other people have made with it. Many of the patterns are free on-line or already in my library. It's pretty cool.

Currently I am trying to make Christmas presents. I finished a hat just last night for that purpose, and have something else on the needles already. It's good to have a crafting purpose. I suffered a bit of a let-down after I finished the Afghans for Afghans afghan. I coped with it by making tiny hats.

Big Knit Hats

I was supposed to go the Mason Dixon Knitting book signing at Powell's a couple weeks ago to turn over my tiny hats to get sent off to England to top off smoothie bottles as part of an ingenious fundraiser to help English oldsters. But I missed the signing, which was in Portland on a work/school night. So I will tweak my sizing (some of mine are on the smallish side,) make some more (making tiny hats is addictive,) and send them off for next year's Big Knit. Innocent Smoothies collects the little hats, and in the month of November they put them on their product at Sainsbury grocery stores. For each hatted bottle sold they donate 50P (about $1) to the Age Concern, a charity for seniors which among other things, helps to pay winter heating bills.

Big Knit Hat with Flaps

Time to go make dinner, and do dishes, and clean off the table. I have a Halloween costume to make. More about that later.

All pictures in today's post courtesy of Audrey. Don't forget to visit Audrey's blog at www.lifeofevildaisy.blogspot.com

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Current Favorite Loldog

dog
see more puppies

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Afghans For Afghans

Finished! And due today (so lets hope that deadline had some wiggle-room built in to it.)

Sherry 005

I started this in August during the Olympics. I had no illusion of finishing it by the closing ceremony (okay, maybe I did for a little while,) but it did take longer than I expected. It is the biggest project I've ever made and it is done, done, done.

The varigated yarn is Moda Dea "Cartwheel" I found at Joanne's for $1.49/skein. The other two shades of solid gray are Paton's Classic Wool. Afghans for Afghans requires wool content in their donations because it is warm, and warm when wet. This is for the youth drive, for kids 7 through 14 who are separated from their parents and at a refugee camp.

Here is the afghan at Lake Sacajawea:

Sherry 004

I'm very pleased. The yarn is soft, the pink is vibrant against the grays. I hope the girl who gets it likes it as much as I do.