Constant Vigilance and Some Pre-Holiday Knitting

Had a great time knitting with Tina and Ethel tonight.

Tina brought her felted soaps to show us.

Close up of soap with needle-felted butterfly

Soap that was felted by hand with hot water

The homemade soaps smelled wonderful. Tina is still excited about her visit to Fayetteville, NC, at a shopping center that had a Michaels, a JoAnn’s, and a Hobby Lobby in the same place! Future crafter’s shopping heaven!

Ethel has been into some fun I-cord bauble knitting from Knitting Daily.

Ethel’s knitted bracelet

She gave me the two round squares she knitted last week in red, white and blue. I could use them to start an afghan, or as wash cloths, or trivets at a party…all sorts of things. Thank you! Her next project is citrus-themed wash cloths in orange, green and yellow cotton Sugar ‘n Cream.

Ethel’s segmented orange wash cloth

A pic of my finally finished baby sweater:

Baby wrap sweater

The yarn was actually Plymouth Bear Hugs, not Cotton Kisses. I used the pattern that came on the ball sleeve, but I had a bit left over, so I could have been a little bit more creative with it: since it is an “Aran weight” yarn, I could have made some cute little cables or something. Coulda, shoulda, woulda.

My next project is a necktie in Maggi Irish linen. I’m just knitting away in seed stitch, not looking for a pattern. I realize that would bore the experienced knitter to tears, but for some reason, when I try seed stitch, I tend to veer off in to stockinette territory. Like The Little Prince uprooting his potentially dangerous baobab tree seedlings, I need to exercise constant vigilance.

This weekend: Memorial Day hi-jinx. Next weekend (June 2) is Yarnworks annual yard sale starting at 9 AM.

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Knitting Patriotic and other projects

After a short vacay, Wednesday Night Knitting resumed last night and we knit ourselves back in our groooves. Yeah!

Ethel brought her fancy new Nikon camera –maybe she will also take up blogging? Or perhaps photography as an art form in itself? The possibilities are endless.

She also brought the finished bag.

Ethel and Entrelac knit bag

How gorgeous it turned out, felted Noro with its I-cord strap and silky fabric lining!

She showed us her new afghan from knitted cotton squares.

Ethel’s afghan WIP

Now is the perfect time to get some patriotic crafting plans underway, with Independence Day soon. And Flag Day even sooner. Flag Day always slips by unheralded, then I redouble my efforts so as to have something red, white, and blue for July 4 (in my mind, anyway–in reality, I’m a patriotic holiday deadbeat slacker; I really just like to hang around like a beached whale or go to someone else’s party).

Ethel said knitting the individual squares, with double-pointed-needles, is already getting to be a drag…but she does get through one right quick! And she is experimenting with the self-striping sugar and cream, to see if the stripe pattern will work out ok, rather than change colors from separate balls to have complete control over where the stripes in each square begin and end.

a granny square, not exactly; it’s knit

As you can see from the pic, this project has Vanna White’s name all over it. We’ve been watching her show on TV a lot lately –it’s College Week on Wheel of Fortune—and DH is really impressed at how Vanna White turns over those letters so purposefully when the students guess a correct letter. As an engineer, he knows that modern technology can provide for the letters to just turn themselves over, but not as magnificently as Vanna White can get the job done. Vanna White, Knitter, Designer, Television Star, Diva!

Lois worked on more beautiful hats.

Lois with blue velvet ribbon-trimmed hat

Satin ribbon-trimmed hat

Lois has been knitting in another club at the Atrium, making lots of hats for people who’ve been going through chemotherapy.

bebe sweater in progress

I thought I was ready to start assembling the parts to the baby sweater for #18 grandchild, but alas, I discovered I’d knitted two left fronts. Grrr. Am I ever not going to be a knitting idiot? Never mind, a few rip-its and re-do’s and it was fixed. I bought this as a kit; it included buttons, yarn and a pattern for a wrap sweater in 3 baby sizes; I think it was this Cotton Kisses; a very soft, slubby Plymouth yarn with a silky strand.

Woke up this morning and the girl cats were at each other’s throats.

Pauly

Stella

They were hissing, biting each other in the neck, wind-milling, and whipping around the house growling like a train whistle.

DH: “Stella, shame on you! That’s your sister Pauly. Even if she is evil and a harlot…”

To get the full effect, go to Itunes and listen to Sharrie Williams singing “Jealousy, it is a bad disease…”

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Winter We Knitted, and Spring’s on the Way

Ethel brought her finished poncho to Knitting! Oh, didn’t it turn out to be

poncho

wonderful? A long labor of love!
“Isn’t it great to know that–”
“That it’s FINISHED?” Ethel finished my sentence. “YES! I’m so glad!”
“I mean, that you made something someone will appreciate!” We were laughing. One, she asked her son what he wanted her to knit for him, and he did say, “a poncho.” Always good when you knit what they ask for. Second, he lives where it is actually cold in the winter. This is a warm, densely stitched, woolly covering that will be great to wear. Three, a guy-poncho is really cool. Modeled by its maker, it is cool, but imagine it being worn by the movie-star-good-looking owner, tall and broad shouldered! She should hurry and put one of those tags that says “knitted with love by your mom” inside in case it gets misplaced on the subway, or someone wants to know where they, too, can get one and searches for the label while he is telling the waiter what he wants for lunch.

Ethel showed Lois and Tina her Nalbinding cuff, and demonstrated the Oslo stitch for them. Tina didn’t bring any knitting, and what I was doing didn’t bring me any degree of pleasure, so we just talked. Sorry that Tina will be moving soon, to NC. We are already scheming how we can plan a field trip to visit her. And how she can lay the groundwork for another spin-off knit and natter group “up there.” 😦 for our loss, but happy that she will have a great new world to conquer!

Ethel showing how to do Viking Knitting

Ethel and the Zimmerman surprise baby sweater

Ethel started working on a baby sweater which is an intriguing Elizabeth Zimmerman creation knitted all in one piece (except the collar) and then folded together and the seams sewn. Bob is watching from his perch above.

Lois worked on a hat in a beautiful light blue. Robin’s egg blue? Can it be that spring is on the way?

Lois and spring hat

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Fun and Fishy Knitting Adventures

Wednesday was a fabulous, fun and fishy day! I went with 5 awesome kids I know (and most of their parents) to the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville after noon. It was the school-age grandkids’ last day of the year. The museum is fabulously kid-friendly. Lots of the exhibits have “hidden” drawers at the level of little ones they can pull out and see tiny collections related to the large display. One featured a woodland scene with several big fallen tree logs in the foreground which had “bark” flaps with “fungus growth” handles that the kids could open and see bugs and lizards that live just under a dead tree’s bark shelter. The kids loved looking at towering mastodon skeletons, bug displays, shells, and especially the gigantic fish jawbone display.

giant fish jawbone (taken last year)

The parents liked crawling in the cave and encouraging the youngsters to dig deeper into the interactive features. We ended in the Discovery Room, where kids can sit at tables and create art objects out of clay, or play in modules that have different themes. Afterwards we went to Applebee’s, where kids eat for $0.99 on Wednesdays! (Note, you have to have an adult who gets a regular entree for every kid who gets the $0.99). Which we did: score, score, score, score, score!

The family had barely left to go back to their homes when the knitting group members started to arrive! Ethel came with a project-in-the-making out of pom-pom yarn.

New sensation; pom-pom yarn!

Gotta get it! Perfect geometric rows for the beautiful mindset, except holding our breath to see how the binding-off will be done. Her next new project is the Dead Fish Hat originated by Thelma Egberts on the Knitty web site. Everyone is going to have to have one of these! Here’s a link for Dead Fish Hats, Alive and Knitting!, an interesting cult blog site all about Fishy–see the post where the knitters made a hat 15 times larger than the original!

You guessed itl Lois with another hat!

Lois is still working on the little animal, which she says is looking more like a sick chicken than a hamster, so she’s doing another hat in the meantime. And she picked right up on the tatting apparatus that I found in my stash. How in the world do they do it? “It’s pretty easy,” said Ethel. All right, I’ll take your word for it, ladies.

Tatting equipment

Ethel with tatting shuttle

Lisa brought baby princess and worked a wee bit more on the rose sweater, and brought along some Seven-up bread (like beer bread for teetotalers!) for a delicious snack. It has a tiniest hint of sweet lemon-lime.

yummy lemon-lime bread

Lisa and seed stitch sweater

Tina began knitting a cotton dishcloth, mostly to prove that she knows how to really knit and not just loom knit!

Tina and new project

She finished the book Sweater Quest so we all had an in-depth discussion on Adrienne Martini and Alice Starmore’s patterns. Every once in a while I check ebay to see what Starmore’s out-of-print Tudor sweater pattern book is going for. As for me, I am almost finished with the baby sweater. I switched to a different pattern I found in One Skein Wonders, which called for bulky yarn, so at the suggestion of the lady at Yarnworks, I combined the strand of Louisa Harding Kashmir DK with a variegated blue and white worsted weight yarn, the two together serving as a bulky weight. Due to carefully adhering to the suggested gauge, this sweater turned out more toddler-size. All I have to do is add buttons and block it.

the cashmere blend baby sweater

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