DisOrganizing or Something

Teresa says I should post. I did tat last Tuesday and I should have posted pictures of it because it was very pretty. But I didn't.

I could have posted pictures of the beautiful knitting project that I dreamed up. It is a remote holder thing that hangs over the arm of the chair. The other day I was going to exercise with the Wii but I couldn't find the remote to turn on the TV. I looked and looked and when my husband came home, he searched for the remote. He was the last one to use it and we didn't find it until the next day. The pattern is just stockinette felted, so I decided to knit two birds with one needle. Teresa and I are wanting to try out the stitches in Twisted Stitch Knitting. So I am picking out patterns and putting them on the remote holder.

And I decided that I didn't have enough bins in my fiber room for my fiber and asked my husband to pick me up a couple of more packs. Turns out that the ones that I got were discontinued and they don't have any more and won't be getting any more. (Definition of clearance). But he found two boxes of something very similar back in the warehouse (also clearances). The new ones are solid where as the old ones where mesh. I took the whole thing apart so I could use the solid ones as bottoms so stuff wouldn't fall through. And because I thought it would look less like something I had McGyvered.

I must say it looked better in the before pictures that I didn't take. See old post for those.

And hubby and I bought some extra shelves for mom's new bookcase and extra pins to put them up with. (You owe me money mom). Then the bookcases got all put together and some of the boxes got lugged from my house over to mom's. I got six boxes emptied and put away. I only have two dozen left to do.

Mom's bedroom was looking pretty bad for a while.

Then it looked even worse. I almost gave it up as a lost cause. But I have had so much fun these last months going through these boxes. Almost as much fun as Teresa. I have almost caught up to Teresa on the number of times I have gone through the boxes.

But finally the bedroom looked arranged and organized. Then I went back to my house and realized that I had missed a box of books and three more boxes of photos and photo albums. I have to think about this for a while. At least until tomorrow.

I rearranged medical appointments, got caught being a drug trafficker (actually my hubby got caught cause I sent him to do it). Got a script out to mom. And lost 2 more pounds. No pictures for all that stuff.

Dena

I still think that I haven't done anything worth posting about. But here it is anyway.

Once a year . . . .

. . . whether she needs it or not . . .

Casey gets a haircut.  

This year, she needed it.  She went to the beach without me and came back with lots of mats.  We combed a lot of them out.  It would have been cruel to make her sit through combing them all out so we had some of them cut off.

She's a little mad at me right now.

Bag Lady

Finished the felted bag for Pam.  It's quite nice.  I did not sew in the handles because I wasn't sure what length would be best for her.  I think she can probably sew them in herself.  I also neglected to take any before photos, so after is all I got!

This is what I have going on my wheel right now.  It's as gorgeous now as it was when I bought it in May of 2009.  I have been saving it until I could spin better because I wanted it to be perfect.  I'm not sure I spin any better now than I did then, but I have learned that Handspun is not perfect and that's ok.  This is 5.3 ounces of BFL dyed in the Eowyn colorway by Dicentra Designs.  Even tho I've been sitting on this fiber for two years, Dicentra (Lisa) still has this colorway in her etsy shop.  She also has Pelennor, another colorway I'm in love with.  This is spinning up very nicely and if I spin down my stash a bit, maybe I can buy some Pelennor someday soon.

Mmmm!

I bought this lovely merino/silk roving last year at Stitches South.  It has deep turquoise, green, blue, black, white and yellow in it.  It is also incredibly soft and luscious because of the silk.

This is what it became after spinning two thin singles and plying them together.  I think it is probably some of the best yarn I have made so far.  I put so much spin in the singles that I thought they might be overspun.  Then I plied it pretty tightly and it worked beautifully.  

This is it next to the Anna handspun.  I think it will make nice panels in my Anna Blanket.  I have more handspun that I think will go into the blanket.  The problem with handspun is that you usually don't make enough for an entire sweater, but you can only use so many hats and mittens (which I never wear anyway).

These are flowers on the new blueberries I bought.  The start of my fruit garden.  

All these flowers are on one azalea plant.  I love this plant because each flower is big and beautiful and because it has two colors of flowers on it.

The very tiny little thing at the end of this branch of my Harry Lauder's Walking Stick seems to be a flower!  I have seen the seed things before, but never the blooms.  Of course this bloom is so small that I still can't say I have had a good look at a flower!

Water Hawthorne in the pond - going nuts.

One of the backyard rhodos is blooming.  The rest will be coming out shortly!

Yummy Rug

Being the very good aunt that she is, Dena made this lovely pom pom rug for her neice,  my youngest daughter.  Since she didn't post it here herself, I'm doing it for her.  The rug lives in my new craft room because That Other Girl has such a messy room that I won't let this gorgeous (and seriously soft on the footsies) rug venture in the room to get lost.

And since Dena posted awful pictures of me, I'm going to post a pretty good one of her here!

Kumihimo

My first attempt at kumihimo turned out pretty well.  Well, my first attempt was in class, this was my first solo, no teacher attempt.  It was with the practice threads that came with the kumihimo disk.  It's the college colors of Girl Far From Home's college, so I guess it's for her.  It's very nice - a little stretchy and a good thickness.  It was easy to do and quick.  I just left the little disk in the car and did it while I waited for That Other Girl to come out of the school in the afternoon or while hubby drove us to dinner or the concert.  It only took two days of little bits of time.

I just got a bunch of bobbins ready for the next attempt.  I hope this will be a longer cord when it's complete. I don't yet know how much thread is required for the finished length of cord. 

This is the new Latin Club head dress.  The latin teacher went out and bought a stuffed wolf to make into this.  He sliced the poor thing open down the middle and removed all the stuffing.  Then the edges needed to be hemmed and the stuffing that remained in the head (necessary for it to keep it's shape) needed to be contained.  That Other Girl trimmed the edges and sewed the arms and legs shut at the body.  I turned under and hemmed all the raw edges of the body and head.  Then I got a piece of fleece and cut it in roughly the shape of the head and sewed it into the uppermost part of the neck - actually it goes from under the chin to just behind where the ears are attached.  That allows the thing to sit on a person's head like a hat and stay put.

It looks pretty good if I do say so myself.  I haven't heard any complaints from the Latin Club, but I haven't heard anything good either.  Who knows?

This is the finished thing sitting on my counter.  I didn't see it before it was gutted, but I think it was probably pretty darn cute for a wolf.

Coming soon . . . .

to a house near here . . . .

Stitches South . . . may it live forever

I love Stitches South.  It's a fabulous opportunity to take tons of fun classes and it gathers all kinds of knitterly goodness in one place.  It was last weekend and Dena came to my side of the country to take classes with me.  It was a lot of walking and we each lost a bracelet, but we had fun anyway.

The first class we took was Estonian Cast Ons with Merike Saarniit.  It was great!  We learned about 12 new cast ons and just imagined all kinds of cool things to make with them.

This is a flower that I made with one of them - just did the loopy cast on and knit two rows and bound of really tightly.  Then I sewed the two ends together in the curl the bit wanted to make anyway.  I made another one with a single length of petals but gave it to Merike.  

The next class was on Dalarna Mitts with Beth Brown Reinsel - Scandinavian twined knitting in colors rather than texture.  This is my first mitt - it needs its ends dealt with and the thumb finished.  It's so much prettier in real life and this is such a fun knitting technique.

Then we took a market session in knitted bracelets and another full class in Kumihimo with Candace Eisner Strick.  The bracelets on the right are knitted (and are replacements for the ones that we each lost at Stitches) and the bracelets on the left are Kumihimo.  The Kumihimo was so much fun and the beaded knit bracelets are so nice.  Glad we squeezed those in!

We also took a class with Anna Zilboorg called Free Sole Socks.  We learned how to knit a sock with a replaceable sole.  That way if you get a hole, you can just replace the sole and not loose a ton of work.  I'm planning to use this type of sole when I do some of Anna's stranded patterns which will be a huge amount of work.

We took one last market session class on Sunday - called Crochet:  Putting the Afghan Together.  In it, we learned how to crochet knitted (or crocheted) squares together using crochet to make them into an afghan. I made it through even with my very limited crochet skills but still haven't finished the edging on my mini afghan. Dena's is finished except for blocking and working in the ends.  I stuck with two colors, but she had to be fancy and use four!

And then there was the yarny goodness at the market.  A fiber person could have gone absolutely nuts . . . well, ok, we did go more than a little nuts.  

There was this lovely Fiber Charmer yarn - she's dying me a nice deep brown to go with the coral yarn and the green and the grey can go together if I decide to make stranded socks out of them.  This is lovely yarn!

And on the last day, we found a sale on Socks that Rock - 25% off!  So we bought a bit.  The blush on the right and the green on the right (bottom pic - left in the top) are Dena's.  The copperline and the green on the left (bottom pic, right in the top) are mine.  The two greens are identical.  The brown in the middle has been split into two equal balls which we both plan to use as the soles for our stranded socks.  Gonna look good!

 And this was the expensive stuff . . . a set of the smaller Hiya Hiya interchangeables.  I shouldn't have splurged on them because I have so many needles, but the set is so light that I can carry it in my knitting bag easily and not even know I have extra needles.  My bag gets so heavy with my knit picks needle sets in it - could be because I feel the need to carry all of them, but I need to lighten the load.

This is lovely - the colors are so much prettier in real life.  I think I'm making a small shawl out of it.  It's silk and merino and it's absolutely lovely.

Kumihimo goodies for me and the girls . . . I think they'll like this because it is fun, easy and quick.

We had a great time, spent too much money and are totally exhausted.  Can't wait to do it again next year!