Thursday, April 27, 2006

And so it begins....


Thanks to the generosity of 2 really cool
Sybermoms, AKA Girl Interrupted & Box of Rain, I know have the requsite supplies to knit a real bag.

So, I naturally proceeded to spend about a day and 1/2 searching for he perfect felted bag. Because, well, I have to have a pattern. I'm pretty sure I was about 1 instant message away from being banned by the Box. Seriously, I must have spent at least a day at Knitty Chick's Free Felted Patterns and at Knitting Central's free patterns for bags, totes & purses.

Naturally, nothing was just right, Goldilocks. So, I made it up. LOL


Cast on 60, knit for 40 rows, then pick up 20, 60, 20. Yeah. We're at the "picking up" stage.

Oh, did I mention the stripes? There's at least half a day, right there! LOL Because getting the perfect stripe pattern is important. Especially if that delays the oh-so-scary beginning a real project. I really liked the stripes on Knit Picks Farmer's Market Tote, but I didn't want that big of a bag and I only had two balls of yarn (btw, a ball winder has made it to the TOP of my Xmas list. Santa? You are paying attention, right?).

And the handle - did I mention that? Because I was thinking about just doing a Booga Bag or a Sopie, but didn't like the handle. I wanted a buttonhole handle, like the Lopi Tote, but I didn't want that bag itself. Yeah. You can see where this is going.

So, I just made it up. With many, many IM's to the most loverly Box of Rain. And hours spent on Excel making stripe patterns.

STFU. It worked. Or rather, it appears that it worked. The proof will be in the, um, felting.

We'll see. Because, I'm blogging instead of picking up stitches. Because it's intimidating. I can only watch the Knitting Help girl so much. It beats the hell outta Barney, though...

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Books, Books, and More Books - and new yarn!

Ahhhhhh....I love libraries!

I have about 20 knitting books that I picked up the other day (um, not realizing I had put that many on reserve). Stitch encyclopedias (I could make dishcloths from now till eternity...), knitting for beginners, baby patterns...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

A loverly Sybermom sent me some beautiful yarn. Someday, I will stop fondling it and actually make something with it, probably the felted backpack she sent the pattern for. Wow. Nice yarn is so totally drool-worthy.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

AMG 1, Fun Fur 0


HA!

Take THAT, you fuzzy string you!

This is a purse for my niece. I even managed to unsew it after I sewed the wrong sides together - and I used a strand of Fun Fur to sew it.

HA!

I didn't have enough yarn (or patience, for that matter) left to make the strap, so beads it is.

HA!

This was supposed to be a purse with MicroSpun lining made from a pattern. Yeah. Not so much. Whatever. 30 sts on #8 needles. Knit till yarn is gone. I haven't measured how big it is. Took most of a day. But it is DONE now.

HA!

Now THAT'S a fugly scarf...

But it has meaning...

See, almost 5 years ago, I produced & directed a play written by a local playwright (because my theater co. produced new works by local playwrights). She also acted in the play, as did my husband. The piece was fictional, but with many elements based on real life. The character played by DH has a heart condition, so he has taken up crochet - in some of the doGawfulest colors, too LOL

He is also a packrat, and after he passes, the wife (played by the playwright) starts to clean out his shed. She comes across a yarn stash, which includes several balls of pink yarn left over from the pink blanket he made their daighter. She also finds a ton of olive green yarn, prompting the line "What? You were going to knit a Jeep?"

As producer, I bought the cheapest yarn I could as props. And guess what's been in my garage for 5 years? LOL


So, because I love the playwright & needed knitting practice, I made her the Brody scarf! (Brody is the husband in the play).

It was good practice for me - I did it in 1 x 1 ribbing - and she loved it! And here it is, as modeled by DH, who played Brody in the show and in the screenplay that was subsequently made as a result of an indepedant filmmaker falling in love with the show when he saw it :D

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Oh, look at that beautiful blanket!

I can not begin to tell you how...satisfying it was to be DONE with this damn blanket.



Because that meant that I could return the evile #15 circs and the 3 unused balls of cheap-ass yarn (I plead newbie ignorance, ok?) and get more needles for other projects.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Blechy blechy blechy basketweave baby blankie

So, I'm just making this one up as I go along....

I cast on 100, k 5 rows, then began
k5 (p10, k10) k5
K5 (k10, p10) k5
and at some point, when the thing looks like the weave is square, I'll do a double k5 (k10, p10) k5 row to start the next section of "weave."

I hate circs at the moment. They just seem to want to twist the way I do NOT want them to go. Grrrr.

Here I started this, thinking what with the klassy yarn markers every 10 stitches, I'd easily be able to put it down & pick it up again. Well, yeah. Unless I'm not paying attention and start knitting back the way I came. Sigh. So, 45 minutes later, I managed to finish the row. After I discovered that after frogging the partial row and getting going in the correct direction again, I was k'ing when I should have been p'ing. I got good at putting this damn thing back on the damn needles. Backwards.

So, what is driving me to distraction and causing me to shout BLECH at regualr intervals is the looseness of the stitch on the transition between k & p. Blech.



So, um, what have I been doing since my last post? Well, I finished the red fun furn scarf. Will, finished in the sense that I stopped knitting it and did the bind off. Now all I have to do is figure out how to weave in all the ends. It's peeking at me right now. It wants to be woven in. I want it to STFU and just weave it's own self. Hey, it could happen.

In other news, I'm currently "in between jobs" as they say. So, I've been busy HS'ing my 4 y/o, working in the garden (things are sprouting! YAY!) and we're all getting used to our newest family member, Max. Erm, Max is the canine ;-)