Whoops...there it is

Time flies when you're having fun!!! Frankly, I'm not even sure how time gets away from me most of the time! But there is it...I was MIA again.

It was craft show time so a little trip to Huntly with my SIL was in order for this amazing craft show at some old peoples Over 55 community. It was really quite amazing. This community center of theirs provided all kinds of activities for the, erm, retired? Any there was tons of unique pottery, some beautiful sewn items, very cleverly crafted items as well as the usual, knit and crochet stuff. Lots of old men crafting. Very interesting and fun day...topped with a trip to the outlet mall!

I realize Halloween (samhain for those Celtic folk) kinda came and went with no noticeable activity in my house. Usually Raine and I have a scary day date but this year my partner in ghoul had other plans...REALLY???

She had her own gruesome twosome this year-I guess that means my baby is growing up :(

Sarah did carve a jack for me and Brodie -complete with candle and cinnamon :)

And she did send this picture to me on my phone...to prove that my girl was in the zone...( oh I really didn't mean to rhyme) and it did scare the bejeezes out of me when it popped up on the screen. ( I wasn't expected...OK)

A special project, this brown and pink baby blanket made to order. My SIL needed a gift for one of the gals at her school and she had "colors". This is my favorite baby gift pattern, however I usually prefer to do it in baby yarn. This one was done in Vanna's Choice since I couldn't find her colors in baby yarn. Still I am happy with how it turned out and the recipient was excited.

I finally finished this one up too...it has been on the needles since...Feb 2009??? Ended up going to Sarahs friend who just had a baby.

Selfish knitting alert!

This scarf is for ME! I know, not exactly a news flash is it. Gathered Scarf fun and easy knit. I made it from a beautiful natural alpaca I picked up at Stitches Midwest this year. New Era Fiber's out of Tennessee, Dawn. I really enjoyed chatting with them when I was at Stitches too. It was a little on the pricey side but well worth it! I got the scarf, and also completed a headband ( no pic yet) and I think I should have enough for some fingerless too (maybe).

I have been working on Traveling Women but I am struggling for some reason with Chart B. *shrug*. I only have 5 or 6 rows and I am done... soon..I promise. In the meatime - or rather in between times, I sneak in a few rows on the shawl that Raine wants.

4 Score and...

...A couply years ago (3), if you've been around that long, you might remember this wall hanging. A woman I know, had a small herd of - alpaca's and this was the very first yarn she had made from her first alpacas. I ran into Alpaca Barb yesterday at my friends shop and she just told me she had to sell her herd, (very sad) and she realized she had not given me yarn from her very first alpaca Savannah (also very sad).

Alpaca Barb's herd had grown to 15 before she had to give it up. After a nice long chat yesterday, we decided another wall hanging for Barb will be in order. Not sure when I will be starting it yet, but I will have to see the yarn before I plan the blocks, like I did last time. Might be that I could even just add on to this one since the numbers are right.

I started this shawl a little while ago. I got pretty cocky having successfully made those other two shawls, so I thought I would try my hand at something a little more challenging- The Traveling Woman's Shawl. While not really a difficult piece, it has been challenging for me. I am learning the value of not only counting stitches, but counting rows...even more importantly - using a row counter!
Ya'll know I am not really a fan of lace knitting, yet because of the very nature of conceding defeat...I keep right on trying! I've had to frog back a couple of times, to figure out mistakes but so far so good...I am on my second lace chart (this pattern is charted and spelled out for us chart dummies), and nary a one design feature!!

Now that I have said that crap will surely hit the fan ;)

I'll have to slide the knitting back into the basket for now. Looking forward to a weekend with that hillbilly cousin of mine, I just got a call that he was comin' up.

Moving right along...

Moving forward, a couple more projects I completed while I was MIA.

Katy Scarf was a kit I purchased last year at Stitches, started and put away because it is beaded and beads get heavy to work with and I got lazy. On this one the beads had to be strung onto ribbon yarn. Of course I was constantly pushing the beads back because obviously, you use more beads than yarn.. low and behold...then damn yarn broke. So it sat for quite a while NOT being worked on. I finally started the whole thing over because I also discovered a dropped stitch somewhere along the line...grrrr , then realized somewhere in the move...(yup that is how long this one has been in the works,) I lost half the directions.

This scarf should be called Calamity, not Katy! It all turned out in the end, after I figured out how to make the end of the scarf look like the beginning part, one would never know I lost part deux of the directions. Which I naturally found about two weeks after I finished the scarf! Go Figure!

But...in any case, she is finally finished...and I will probably never do another ribbon yarn project again.

I enjoyed making the blue shawl so much that I tried my had at another one. This one is one skein of Knit Picks Shimmer. Loved this yarn! I used the basic shawl start from Clara's pattern and threw in some repeats of yo's and basically knit until I ran out of yarn. I did add a crochet border after the fact.

You can almost see the border in this picture.

Until next time...

Like a butterfly

From flower to flower

Sometimes...I wonder where my head is at!

I have had this problem all my life...I see something, think it might be fun to learn, then I launch myself into yet another project. What were you thinking?? I say that to my many callers at work (under my breath of course). I blame my mother of course... she did raise me this way!

This week I thought it might be fun to make polymer beads... so I impulse shopped my little self to Michaels, buy a couple of packets and off I go. Now I used to be heavily into ceramics and pottery back in the day, so much so that I drove my mother crazy digging up the clay from the back yard, making beads and flower pots in the oven. And that worked for me...I am a little bit bohemian and of course every pot and bead I made was unique (lots of macrame hangers around the house). As an adult I find that I am striving for a uniformity that just isn't there.

THE BEAD PROJECT:

In theory they should have had a pinwheel design like this.

The reality was more like this!

And lets not forget, just another in a long series of the calamity events in my life, the bead that I dropped into my coffee cup... which I drank anyway.

I get the concept of course, but the application usually seems to be lacking...ah well...it is therapeutic at any rate.

I do try to do things myself as much as I can, I hate being dependent on someone else. Things like hanging curtains, or say blinds. In which case Mark aka He-Man ( I am not She-rah BTW) comes over and looks at my handiwork, (which I find completely acceptable by the way), points out where I went wrong, the basically pats me on the head and says "Honey, you stick to answering 911 calls, I'll take care of the man work". I think he likes me to be dependent on him. Nah... he's not really chauvinistic...riiight!

On the "I mostly know what I am doing front" I started the mobius shawl from that pretty sparkly fairy wingish yarn and am nearly finished. Can't really screw this one up, it is a no brainer.

On the other hand... This poor little cabled fingerless mitt... I have frogged 3 flippin' times! Not because I don't know what I am doing, but because I just don't pay attention.

Again...I blame my mother, she did raise me this way! If nothing else...I find my life boredom free. ( I do still plan to take that spinning class)

Yarnfest Time!

How many goodies can you fit into a shopping bag???

THIS MANY!

Today my Co-worker (Lisa - new knit convert) and I went to Stitches MidWest where we pushed are selves to the limit...along with our wallets. Lisa worked last night and I have to work tonite so we forwent the whole sleeping thing...who needs sleep anyway, to take our happy camper butts to Schaumberg to get our yarn fix. For me it is like a pilgrimage, for Lisa...it was her first time.

One of the vendors likened it to a candy store...I think of it as yarn-crack. Completely addictive!

I went with the idea of buying a new swift...yah no... that did not happen, but I did get a few patterns and some shawl kits geared for the lace challenged knitter.

I bought some shawl pins (now I have to make the shawls), a book on drop spindling...as I am determined to learn how not to drop the spindle come hell or high water...

Bought some fantastic yarn at ...erm 40 clams a crack...(see... there's that yarn crack thing again). But it is so darn pretty,and you can't really tell here, but it looks like it has been sprinkled with faery dust! In fact it is so pretty, I couldn't make myself go to sleep until I took out my ghetto rigged swift and wound one of them (the one that reminds me of faery wings).

And of course, once wound I immediately cast on for the mobius shawl pattern I got when I purchased the yarn.

As Brodie patiently waits for his momma to quit playing and go to bed!!

Kinda Fugly Shawl

This is a step back into the past a little ways. I actually made this shawl (my first) last winter. I have an abundance of this particular yarn because I was going to crochet an afghan from a pattern I "inherited" when my mom passed away. She had used this pattern called a "Star pattern" for the layette set she made when my son was born. Well, I guess I should have had her show me how it was done. It is the most complicated pattern I have ever tried to read and I completely botched the whole damn thing.
So a frogging we will go... and I shoved the whole mess into the closet.
Until last winter, while I sat in my freezing computer/craft/disaster room shivering until I could hear my teeth rattle- I pulled out two of these ginormous balls of yarn, used it double strand and started knitting.

No real pattern here. I started out with three stitches, and increased on each end, I think maybe every other row. Honestly I can't remember. It is pretty big as you can see by the size of the chair, and toasty warm! Which was what my goal was. I was told that it was hillbilly ( I think that was the word he used) and that I should throw it away. He also told me to quit wearing "that blanket" around the house, along with some other derogatory comments. *shrug* What do I care what it looks like -it keeps me warm and has a place of honor on the computer chair.

Feather and Fan

And prior to all of that and inbetween and all around... I managed to get my Feather and Fan Shawl completed.

(TG-I have it ready now for the cold ass house I live in)

and then there was the pair of (not-so) lucky Vegas socks. They turned out cute even if I did not win in Vegas.

Ha!! And you thought all I knew how to make was scarves... Oh yeah, I made a few of those too.