Finished Object parade part 3

In this last installment I will be talking about the other thing that I was busy doing during the nice long Memorial Day weekend: sewing. I have been building a fabric stash, though it is still in the infant stage, and I wanted to try my hand at some project bags. I have one that I won from Keri and use it all the time and it is starting to get worn (no fault what so ever to Keri I just use it all the time).

So I pulled out some light weight denim and went to work. It was easier then I thought. I looked at many how to's that are out there on the web.

here it is closed

What fabric did Qutecowgirl use to line her bag?



Why cow print of course!

I also tried something that didn't work out but I did turn it into a really cute bag


There are a couple of mistakes on this one. The cow print is jersey knit and well I tried to rush so I could be done quicker. So of course there are a few boo boos. I also put the handle on with the seam facing out. Oh well, it will look fine once I iron it.

With a left over piece I made a new pin cushion. My poor tomato was overwhelmed from all the pins and it was fall apart.

It is about a 7 inch cube.

Next time.... Something funky from Blue Moon.

Finished Object parade part 3

In this last installment I will be talking about the other thing that I was busy doing during the nice long Memorial Day weekend: sewing

Finished Object parade part 2

The second to last time I dyed yarn for my store I was dyeing some Met Inspired yarns and started thinking that I do not even have any for myself. Well that is just not right. So I dug out some worsted weight superwashed merino and dyed myself some.
I had received tickets for Mom's Day and I knew it was going to be cold and did not want a repeat of the last cold game so I sat down and made myself a hat.

My own pattern named it Kevin Hat. I have it mostly written out and will get it posted soon. It really is a cute and quick knit and can be sized up and down. I have made many of these.

I had a good amount of yarn left over and figured I could make fingerless mitts with the leftovers. Not knowing exactly how much was left I knitted these fingers down, knitted until I thought the cuff was long enough (didn't weave in the ends just in case I need to undo some) and knitted the second mitt. I had enough and I am thinking of adding the thumb gusset onto them. I really like the mitts with the thumb and it felt a little weird not having one.

Pattern made up as I went and I tried to take good notes so I could write it out.

About a week ago I was sitting here, the kids were asleep and there was not much on TV. I had just frogged my tank I was working on (more about that in a sec) and felt a little like I had lost my mojo. I wandered over to my stash (about 10 feet really) and opened a bin and on top was my handspun Mermaid yarn. It was my favorite so far and I really wanted to make something out of it that I would wear. I did not want another scarf but I only had 99 yards. Kevin hat to the rescue! I messed with it a little to get the needle size right and with about 2 yards left over I had a nice warm squishy hat. Like I said before I love my pattern.


this is my wow look at the spider on the ceiling look

Ok about the tank top. I was trying to use some cotton yarn from my stash which I thought and calculated that I would have plenty to make a tank that I was thinking about. Nothing fancy, just some seed stitch borders and a little waist shaping with a halter type top. I was almost 3/4 of the way there when I had commented on Toni's blog that I have wound up short on yarn a few times but everything had always worked out (can you see what was going to happen?) well that night I sat down to hopefully finish my tank and well it turned out I was on my last skein. I was just to the boob area and well 1 75 yard skein was not going to work. Unless of course I wanted to get propositioned. I should have seen it coming. The color was discontinued. I am sure I could have searched around to see if anyone had and extra 3 skeins laying around and I was going to. Then I tried it on. It was HUGE!!!!! Yes I knitted a gauge swatch and it lied! About the yardage and the gauge. So I frogged it. I figured the idea and pattern needed a time out. I have started something else with the yarn that is worked top down and I will just keep going until I run out. As for the pattern (which I really like my idea) well I need to find a different yarn that is not as heavy as I am thinking that it had something to do with the growth. Maybe bamboo or linen.

Next time part 3!
= )

WooHoo!

Finally everything is working here again. You see I can not do thing easy sometimes. I did not just want an external hard drive that you plug in to my iBook (because then I would have to deal with loading it and ejecting it every time I wanted to use it) no I wanted it wireless. We have Apples here and with the Airport base station (that is the thing that sends out the signal so you can be wireless) you can hook up an external hard drive (or drop $500 for the new one that has a hard drive already it). So after about 2 hours of playing with it and trying not to beat the crap out of all of it with a baseball bat I am finally working. 300 gigs of memory waiting for me to fill with my crap = ) Gotta love technology.

So here I am almost a week later with the ability to post pictures, so where to begin. How about finished knitting!

Scroll Socks!

yarn: my own funky dyed (oh how I wish I could repeat this)

pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks!

I knitted the first sock in 2 days. Second 2 months. I kinda lost the sock mojo for a little while. Of course now it is too warm to wear wool socks.

Bamboo Scarf

Yarn: my own handspun (100% bamboo from Loop!)

Pattern: simple drop stitch every 3rd row

I didn't have much yardage, but I did have enough to make a shirt scarf. I like it = )


Spinning!

This is 100% merino, 4 oz

My own Blue Tie-dyed roving. This is my first time dying roving and I couldn't wait to spin it to see how it would look.

More has been posted in my store!

More tomorrow!

=)

MEME!!!

I was tagged by Laurelena. She had perfect timing since I have no upload abilities yet. So here we go!


The rules: Are posted at the beginning. At the end of the post, the player then tags 6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blog and leaves a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you've posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

Wow ten years ago. Well I was a manager in Bed Bath and Beyond. I learned that Sangria can be deceptively strong in the alochol content. (it only happened once and I learned my lesson, drink a glass not a pitcher) and at the time I was dating a guy who would later get my best friend pregnant (yes very Jerry Springer-ish)

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today - not in any particular order? Knit, walk the dog, clean up after dog,kids and hubby, get kids to do their homework and hopefully knit some more.

3. Snacks I enjoy: chocolate covered pomagrante thingies, dill flavored sunflower seeds, homemade popcorn and chocolate chip cookies.

4. Places I've lived: Congers Ny 24 yrs and Dix Hills Long Island Ny 6yrs

5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Pay off all my debts, ; buy a wonderful old house with a wrap-around porch (me too!) and open my own store.

The following people are tagged: Jilly , Shewolfy, Abby and who ever else would like to play along!

We are experiencing technical difficulties...

Well all of my photos (talking numbers in the thousands) and saved patterns (not as many as you would think) have finally caught up with my iBook. I went to upload pictures of finished knitting and spinning and new stuff that I dyed and I received a message that my free memory is low. Ok no problem I was going to get an external hd anyway. What I didn't realize was it was really low and the pictures only half uploaded. All 50+ pictures were half there. Of course I always click the option to erase the memory card after downloading so there were gone. I though maybe a few could be retrieved but anytime I clicked on them I was told that the file was incomplete. Oh well.

So I was going through my flickr account to see if there was anything I didn't blog about and I found roving that I never blogged!
Hopefully tomorrow I will get the external hd move some files and bingo I will be good to go!

So here we go...

Enchanted Knoll Farm is dear to me (shop found on esty.com and now they are selling stuff at the Loopy Ewe!). They have great stuff and they are a "green" business, so I like to support them.
Both of these are 100% merino top. The first is Beach Comber and the second is Deep Blue Sea. Similar but different.



Next up is stuff I bought from Sakina Needles, which I do believe Shewolfy enabled (we are having a little fun battle of sorts trying to enable each other with fiber - right now I think she is winning since I caved and bought stuff)
This is Dale colorway in 100% superwashed merino. I have 8oz so hopefully I can spin enough to make something really cool (maybe for a certain nephew of mine).

This is way outside the comfort zone. Silk hankies. Basically people take the silk cocoon and do something to it and layer each one on top of each other. I have read about spinning it over at knitty and it seems easy enough.

There are 10 hankies in each pile though I am not sure how many layers are in each hankie. Blue and purplish and red orange are the colors. Oh and the silk is Mawata. Not really sure about what that means either. Like I have said in the past I sometimes just jump into things. =)

So hopefully next time everything will be back to normal and I can show the knitting and spinning I have been up to.

Baseball, Baseball and Spinning

Can I tell you that the tiredness and exhaustion from the chemo is starting to become really annoying! It is been 3+ months now and I am over the "Yeah it is working I can put up with the side effects, they are worth it". I am so tired and it sucks. I take 2 naps and sleep for about 8 hours a night. Sometimes the naps are not planned they are the kind that you wake up from and say hey when did I fall asleep?

Ok enough ranting. For Mothers day I received Met tickets. Front row baby =) It was so cold Monday. It was 45 with 20mph winds, which were constant. Sadly they lost but heck the seats were great!

Got Jose?

David Wright.
and for the girls out there....

a nice view of David's butt.
Here is how close we were to the field

The grass looked like carpet

A cute Hubby was spotted

one of my favorite pictures from the night


Last saturday we actually got to see Stepson play a game. So far this year skywalkers and stepsons schedules have conflicted but we did get one game so far.

His team won that game. Yeah A's

I have tried to get back to spinning and the other night I said screw cleaning up I am spinning. I am spinning Merino roving that I dyed myself. It was my first dyeing of roving and it came out so pretty that I decided to keep it. You know for sentimental reasons. (anyone believe that?)

This is the first bobbin. I have already started the 2nd and I am close to being done!! Maybe I can even ply it tonight!!

In the knitting front I did finish a pair of socks. I do not even think I blogged about them. I will hopefully take pictures tomorrow (I still have to weave in the ends). I also started a scarf using my own handspun yarn. (again pictures tomorrow)

I need to go charge the camera battery and hopefully finish up spinning.

=)

Like Father, Like Children

Yesterday was Skywalker's baseball game. I thought it would be great to bring my new camera and take pictures. I am sure other kids do this too but mine are good very good at it. You can stand there getting ready to take the picture and the child is smiling and you are thinking this is going to be a great shot. Click. Then you look a the picture and the child has a face on. They know exactly when to do it.
3 kids, 3 faces
Buddah:

The rabbit face
Drama Girl:

The psycho look
Skywalker:

the "Oh Yeah" look
After they were done I went to snap a picture of Hubby

Like Father Like Children

I did get one shot of my girls that is mostly normal (and it only took 56 tries)

No they are not twins. You would be surprised how many fight I have gotten into about that and yes it is a little sore point for me. Drama Girl is almost 2 years older but Buddah is .25 inches taller and 2lbs heavier. In our families you are either 5 foot or 6 foot so Drama Girl got the short genes and Buddah got the tall genes. I explained this to the girls and now Buddah tells people she is bigger because of her pants. = )

Knitting!!
This is a shawl I knitted (it still needs to be blocked) for my Aunt who has the nerve to move to Florida. I am teasing of course. I will miss her but as long as she is happy. The yarn is cotton so she should be able to use it down south.

It took 2 hanks. Both are the same color just different dye lots. Pretty neat.

I also started a hat today. Last time I dyed yarn I made a hank of Met colors for me. Hubby is taking me to Monday nights Met game and it is again going to be chilly.

I like how the colors are pooling. It is like Mets camouflage.


Snick thinks she is a lapdog

= )

A Camera Story

First I have Great News, my Mommy finished her first sock!!!

Ta-Da!! I would say that this is a excellent first sock. Plus it fits!! (no picture though - Mommy take a picture please!)

Ok so I was at Skywalker's musical and I was taking some pre-start pictures when my camera decided to turn off. Okay, I turned it back on and tried to take a picture, it turned off. Okay check batteries - indicator say they are full. I switch the camera to play back mode then turn it on, it is showing me the pictures so then I turn it to camera mode. I get one picture before it decides to turn off again. Yeah this is going to be fun. Only 2 pictures and only one of them is Skywalker. Now my camera is about 7 years old, has been dropped, bumped and bang who knows how many times so maybe it is about time for a new one.

Only pic of Skywalker - he was a rain drop!

Old Camera.

Plus it couldn't take very good close ups.


Enter new camera. It is the Sony Cybershot (just like the old one). Smaller, more features and a touch screen. Plus it explains everything on the camera. No more trying to remember what setting does what.

Close ups

(writing done on the camera!)

(same distance as the old camera's close up)

Look what else it can do!
Snickers before:

(not sleeping on the couch)

Here is Princess Snickers


All for the Etsy store, I mean I do need a camera to take pictures of my yarns and stuff right? = ) Speaking of store, I dyed more yarns and they should be up either tonight or tomorrow night. (Abby- there will be a fingering Ketchup and Eggs posted. This time it stayed Ketchup and Eggs during the rinse and did not turn into Ketchup and OJ)

So I am off to take pictures (and play with the camera)

= )

Secret Project Revealed!

Ok, The secret project has been shipped and received very well. So lets start from the beginning. Lobster Pot yarn was turned into a shawl for my Auntie C, who lives on Cape Cod. I made the pattern up as I went. All Was going well, I was knitting the border on and closing in on the end. Guess what happened?

Yep I ran out of yarn. I called the store and no there was not any more and no real way way of getting another hank. So I stood there looking at it on the floor thinking. I only needed a few yards more. Well I was thinking about my triangle shawls and how one bunches up at the neck and how another doesn't stay on my shoulders. They needed a notch! Eureka!! I undid the cast on and unraveled it a few rows.

(I had to undo a little more then the picture shows)

When I finished the border I went back to the neck stitches and using a crochet hook finished the neck. Off to blocking it went.


It so worked!! I am very happy with the results. So much so I almost kept it. = )
(I took these pictures late at night, so just look at the shawl ok?)


stays on with no problem.


Here is what was left. Not even a foot.


=)