Giving Thanks for Great Yarn!

Are the holidays really upon us? I'm ready to start cooking! I love preparing the Thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings. I don't realize how tired it makes me until it's all over. That will be my "sit and knit" time. MMMMmmmmm, pumpkin pie and designer coffee!

The trip to Tulsa was a whirlwind. I made it to Loops in Utica Square, but not to Stitches. Loops was sensory overload with all the different yarns packed in there. What a busy shop! I settled on some Toconao by Araucania Yarns, a hand painted heavy worsted that I had never seen before. I fell in love with the colors.

I can't wait to knit with it. This yarn is spun and painted in Chile, a place I would love to visit. When we lived in Europe, I bought yarn in every country we visited. It was fun to knit up items with the yarn from Germany or England or Italy. My friends collected crystal and David Winter Cottages and Lladros. Not me, I collected yarn!

Before I allow myself to start playing with new yarn, I am going to knit the last few stitches on the turquoise baby llama sweater and assemble it.

Lots to do this week! I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! 

Frigid Friday

No new pictures to share today... One of the "not me" residents took the last of the batteries and didn't let me know we were out of them. Sorry! 

On the needles: I am working on the neckline of the baby llama sweater, leaving only the sleeves to set in and the side seams and it will be an FO! With any luck, it will be done this weekend. I am taking DD to Tulsa for soccer, and our schedule looks like it will allow me to visit at least one LYS there (many thanks to the scheduler!) and I already have the addresses punched in to my trusty GPS -- pictures next week, no doubt.

Finally, this post would not be complete without sending kudos to Kay who has a podcast on KnitPicks about her Lace Knitting book. You can listen to it here. Kay, you go girl!! 

As usual, I have a mile-long list of things to do, not the least of which is to finish editing some really pretty sweaters. 

The sun is out, but it's only 17 degrees!!! These are the days we knit for!  Have a good weekend!

Monday, Monday

Here we go with another week... the kiddos are out the door to school and the dogs and I have our "castle" to ourselves. I have my usual list of things I need to do - the boring mundane chore kind of stuff. I finished the sleeves for the turquoise baby llama sweater and started the front. This feels like the home stretch on this sweater, but it'll still be a while. I need to wind a couple more hanks into yarn cakes.

I did manage to check off everything on Friday's list, even knitting, and only 2 items were held over for Saturday, but everything eventually got done. 

So, in honor of my extra clean kitchen, I went a little crazy and made a "gourmet" meal yesterday. When I start slinging flour, that usually means I'll have to mop, and that's the case now. But once the floor is wet and I can't walk on it, I'll have to sit and knit. See, there is a silver lining, a method to the madness.  :D

 

The List

Every day, or at least most days, I make a list of what I need to do and/or would like to get done. My lists include everything from which rooms I need to vacuum to errands I need to run, to phone calls I need to make. It occurred to me that my lists never include knitting, and that's the one thing I really want and need to do to maintain my sanity. So today I put knitting at the top of my list.

I don't always accomplish everything on my list, but I do like to check things off as I complete them. Putting knitting at the top of the list probably won't make any more stitches fly off the needles, but it's kind of nice to see it there. In the few minutes that I have been sitting here writing this, I have mentally added 2 things to the list.... I need to go write them down.

On the needles: I am up to the sleeve caps of the 2-at-a-time sleeves of the baby llama sweater. My goal is to get the sleeves off the needles and make some headway on the front by the end of the weekend. Maybe I should be more specific on my list about how much knitting I want to get done.

Happy weekend to all!

Goodbye, Monkey!

There has been a monkey on my back for a long time... projects that I had finished knitting and set aside. I have had 2 purses in this state forever, it seems. This weekend, I finally dragged out the sewing machine and made linings for the purses and finished them up. Completely. This red one is for my aunt who is a proud member of the Red Hat Society - now the trick will be to actually get it in the mail to her! 

I'm keeping this one. It reminds me of Mary Poppins and her carpet bag, for some reason. The colors, maybe? The cell phone cover from last week was made from scraps from the purse project (clever matching, don'tcha think?).

My motivation to complete this may have been that the purse I have been carrying is worn out, so it was time for a change. This is the first time I have sewn anything with the regular sewing machine since we moved... so it took me this long to discover that my box of machine attachments is missing. Once again, I have torn through boxes to no avail. I am sure that the attachments are here... somewhere... ::sigh:: 

I finished up the back of the turquoise baby llama sweater and am working on 2-at-a-time sleeves, although I haven't gotten very far.

I'll be working on those sleeves this week! Hope you are all warm and dry and finding time to knit!

 

November Knitting

It's been a busy week, and I am happy to say that it has included some knitting time. I felted the snowflake bag from the last post... now you can see what it is. The twisted cord didn't felt very well, so I opted for a purchased cord, added some beads (which I may change to white ones if I can find them), and I am pretty happy with the way it turned out. I thought this would be a fun way to "wrap" bottles of wine. As an amateur vintner, I give a way a lot of wine, and this is a quick and easy way to dress up a gift. Plus, this is a way to reduce my abundant scrap stash of feltable wool. I'll definitely be making more of these. 

Since I was going to be using the washer for felting, I whipped up a cover for my new cell phone to throw in at the same time. This has a magnetic snap closure under the button. The fit is perfect on the phone, but I wish I could find a clip that I could use to attach it to my purse to keep it from swinging.

 

I made it to the Thursday night SnB last night - always a fun time with lively conversation. I love the way knitting crosses generations. I am working on a sweater with Mirasol Miski. It's 100% baby llama and super soft! It works up at 4.5 sts per inch, so it's not going to be a never-ending project. Too much texture in this yarn gets hidden in the fuzziness, so I am working away on a lot of stockinette. I do have secret plans for the front of this sweater!

Another weekend is almost here! There are high school football playoffs and indoor soccer games to attend, and who knows what else the next 2 days will bring?! It's always a surprise to see what happens to the plans we made! have a good weekend!

Another Month Gone By

Happy November! Boy has time flown! Halloween was a whirlwind! It was fun to see all the kids in costume parading through the neighborhood. We had our annual customary Mr. Jack O. Lantern.... 

But now, he has fallen victim to an ax murderer (that would be me and my big knife), and look what he's become....

But his memory lives on throughout the year in stuff like this....

OK, back to knitting. I finished the JaWoll Silk socks. I like them, especially the colorway. These socks have a right foot and a left foot to accommodate the way baby toes slope away from the end of our feet faster than big toes. I don't know if they will end up on the correct feet if somebody is groggy when they put them on. 

I also whipped up this blob. Can you tell what it is? I'll felt it and take another picture later this week. The yarn is the Cascade 220 Tweed that I bought at the Yarn Shop Hop.

Gift knitting time is upon us but that didn't stop me from going to the library last week and picking up the latest 2 mysteries in a series I have followed for years. I tore through both books this weekend and now DH is consumed by them, too, and will undoubtedly have them finished before they are due back to the library. If you like quick and easy to read murder mysteries, check out the Judge Deborah Knott series, written by Margaret Maron. The first one is 'The Bootlegger's Daughter', and last one is Death's Half Acre. if you are inclined to read them, I highly recommend that they be read in the order they were written - the main characters and their relationships develop from one book to the next. 

DD was tormented this weekend... she sat and watched her soccer team play (and win) 2 games, but she is not allowed to play yet. Hopefully when she sees the dr. this afternoon, he will agree to let her start working out again in the hopes of being able to play in a big tournament later this month. She looks all healed and feels good, and I know she has done some inadvertent running (got scared in a corn maze Friday night and ran for her life - ha ha!).

I hope you all had a good weekend. Are you gift knitting? What's on your needles? I need to decide in a hurry what to knit next, especially with a dr appt to sit through! I haver SIL's name for Christmas and she is very cold natured and appreciative of hand knits. It won't be hard to settle on a project for her!