Yet another catch-up post

As usual, it's been a while since I posted last.

I've been busy between the knitting workshop and now!

First, the last day of the workshop:

Susanna Hansson taught a class on stripes, and it was wonderful! I was initially disappointed that it had been chosen, but I learned a lot. She talked about the Fibonacci sequence in a new way than I'd thought about, and I learned a new twist on making a jogless stripe.

The hat above is too small for Ryan so I made him one that's identical only bigger. Gillian wants one, too, only in purples instead of blues.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I finally finished up my second Honeycomb fingerless mitt. I've been working on writing up the pattern to make two at a time on magic loop, and hopefully I'll have it test knit and ready sometime in the next month or so.


I've also been doing some Christmas knitting, which I'm going to refrain from posting about here. I don't think the recipient reads my blog but I don't want to chance it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

During the spinning guild meeting and while Karen was here (we had a great time -- more about that later), I managed to get the Ashland Bay merino/silk spun up that I bought at the Snake River Fiber Fair in 2007. I think that finishes up the fiber that I bought then.

I got 184 yards from 4 ounces, and it's worsted weight.


Of course the picture doesn't do it justice. It's so soft! And of course I have no idea what I'm going to do with it (as usual!).

-----------------------------------------------------------------

My very nice Mother-In-Law sent me a gorgeous present for my birthday:

It's a basket of Amaryllis! I'm very excited. I love these plants, and three at once is a special treat.

I also got some yarn from Aunt Louise for my birthday:

She sent eight skeins of worsted-weight 100% Peruvian Alpaca, and it's incredibly soft! I have no idea what I'm going to do with it (yet) beyond petting it occasionally. She said that she made a jacket with some black yarn of the same stuff, and I can only imagine how wonderful it is. I'm tempted to dye it and make a cuff-to-cuff jacket. We'll see....

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Now, on to activities while Karen was here.

When my sister comes down to Tulsa, one of the must-visit places is DSW shoes, and this time I actually found *two* pairs of shoes for me! This is a truly earth-shattering event.

Here's a pic of one of the pairs:


Not only are they cute, they show off my socks (which knitters know is very important). I'll work on getting a picture of the other pair soon. They're just as cute!

Karen outdid herself with Thanksgiving. Here is everyone, ready to eat:


It was incredibly tasty and I'm so thrilled that we have leftovers. Yummy!!!


We swore we wouldn't go shopping on Black Friday but we ended up going anyway. We left Karen at home to nap and went to Harbor Freight (which Greg calls "Michael's for men") to get some wheels for the kids' go cart. It's been a big hit!






Karen went back up to Illinois this morning, and she's got a bit of work ahead of her. She's got about a week to finish her dissertation, then a week to relax and clean until my parents arrive. They'll all drive down from Illinois to spend Christmas with us, which will be wonderful!

The kids and I are going to work on getting the Christmas decorations out and put up this afternoon [since it's already noon! Where did the morning go?!?!] so hopefully I'll have some pics to share of that for my next post.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Working hard, but no pics

I'm working on Christmas gifts, so I'm not going to post pictures of those until after the holidays.
I've got quite a bit going but I feel like I'm fairly close to finishing most of the projects, and on time even!

I still haven't figured out what to make for neighbor gifts this year although I'm leaning toward something like a cheese ball and cracker assortment (Rori, will you teach me?). Mmmmmm. Many of my neighbors are older and some are diabetic, so I don't want to make cookies and sweets. I probably will make some anyway, but I like salty things, too.

I did another chemo cap and this one will go to Caps with a Conscience. Once I get the ends woven in, that is! Here's a picture of my hat:

I adapted the design from a design I saw on a sweater in a J.C. Penny's advertisement, although I double you'd recognize it if you saw the original. Yes, the yarn is a strong coral color. It's not quite deer-hunter orange, but it's bright. This was the yarn from Leisure Arts and Bernat that they sent if you emailed them. I'm not sure if they're still doing it or not, but click here for the link. The yarn is very soft, called Bernat Satin. I'm not sure about the colors, but it seems to be very similar to Caron Simply Soft (which is the white yarn in my hat, since I didn't have enough yarn left to do the entire hat). I used part of the skein to make a Diagonal Rib Hat but it came out too small, so I sent it to a different chemo hat campaign.

This hat is Rori's that she crocheted:

Both hats went out today in the mail, just barely--I managed to catch the postman after he'd come to our mailbox and was going down the other side of the street. One more thing checked off my list of things to do! Now I can add two more, right? ;-)

Magic Loop, diagonal rib, and MORE bathroom stuff

This is a quick post about using the Magic Loop method, an alternative to double-point needles or the two-circular method.

Begin as you usually would, casting on the necessary number of stitches. In this case, I cast on 20.

Next, move the stitches down onto the cable and pull out a loop of cable at approximately the half-way point. I cast on 20 stitches then pulled out the loop between the 10th and 11th stitches.


Next, slide the stitches up so that both needles have loops on them. Note that the working yarn is coming from the right needle.


Now pull the right needle up so that the stitches are on the cable. You're now in working position. Bring the yarn up and begin knitting, using the stitches on the left needle tip.

Here I've worked four stitches, and you can see the loops (I like to think of them as ears, for some strange reason) on either side of the work.


At this point I've finished working the stitches on the left needle, and now I need to bring the needles back into working position.


I'll bring the right needle tip up and out of the stitches so that they're on the cable...




Then bring the tip of the right needle back up into working position. You can see the loop forming on the right side.

On a not-really-related subject, I've been having fun with my Diagonal Rib Hat (see sidebar for pattern). As the pattern progresses, the stitch marker—and the beginning of the round—move one stitch to the left every other round. So although the actual knitting doesn't change its position on the needles, the marker moves around. I took a picture, because for some reason this amuses me. [I know, I know, no comments from the peanut gallery, please. Those of you who know me will realize I am very easily amused.]

The needle is at the original start of the round, so you can see how the stitch marker has moved with each pattern repeat. For those of you with a fair bit of knitting experience, you're probably going "huh? WHY is this a big deal?" but I thought it might throw some beginners and was worth mentioning.

And here are two pictures of the magic loop in action on my latest Diagonal Rib hat:

After finishing the stitches on the left needle (above), and starting the next half of the round (below).

Hopefully someone will find this helpful!

We're nearing the end of the bathroom project. Today we hung towel bars, which was quite exciting! ROFL

Here's a picture of the medicine cabinet installed. It was totally bizarre to walk in there and not have a mirror. I kept thinking my eyes were wonky.

Please ignore the little bits of burgundy around the vanity. Those are going to go away. Very soon. That's the old paint color. If you can imagine, the LIGHT FIXTURE HAD BEEN PAINTED BURGUNDY when we moved in!!! The previous owners really should not have been allowed near paint. I took down the light and got some really nifty "hammered metal" spray paint. Poof! Burgundy light fixture gone! That stuff is way awesome. We also used it on some old hinges in the other bathroom and so far they've held up pretty well.

So now all we have to do is get new baseboard, paint it, install it, do some touch-up painting, fix two broken tiles on the floor, and install some crown molding. And then those of you who are tired of reading about my bathroom remodel won't have to be in agony any more. ;-)

Hat Pattern Up

I've formatted the pattern for the Diagonal Rib Hat and posted it on my site.
Just as a refresher, here's a picture:

DD looked at this picture of herself and said "I look like a MOVIE STAR!" LOL! It's a little big on her, of couse, since she's five and the hat is for an adult.

Here's the link to the page with my free stuff:
http://www.piecefulstitches.com/FreeStuff.html

And if you want to go directly to the pattern, it's here:
http://www.piecefulstitches.com/files/DiagonalRibAdultHat.pdf

I'll also put a link in the side bar.

This hat is the one shown in a previous post in the variegated yarn, as well as in the orange yarn (although the yarn was really a DK weight instead of worsted, so it's much smaller).

I really am an airhead lately

I was just looking over my previous posts and realizing that I hadn't included some of the recent happenings. (Pictures toward the bottom.) Refill your coffee mug before you read this 'cause it's a really long post.

I did end up getting all of the ribbons on my fair items, which is great! At the October K.N.I.T. Guild meeting I was recognized as the Best of Show winner for knitting, which is cool. The president cracks me up--she's queen of backhanded compliments. She congratulated me and then went on to say something along the lines of "but it's not hard to enter, and you can win with just about anything." ROFL!! Some of the people there told me later that they were rather taken aback, but I think it's funny. I don't think she means it in a mean way, she's just not really thinking about what she's saying.

My birthday was one week ago and it was by far the worst I've ever had. Except for my wonderful husband taking me out to dinner--that part was wonderful! The truck died again, with the same exact thing as the week before. Turns out, $650 later (plus the $160 the previous trip that didn't' solve the problem), that a chip in the steering column was dying and wouldn't recognize any key, so it would shut off the gas. Until this time around it was only doing it intermittently so it didn't strand me. So not only was the truck dead, but Gillian was very late to school since we had to walk and were already running late. That was probably the fastest I've ever walked that .65 mile and I was "glowing" by the time we got to the principal's office. I will never own another American car. That brings us to $2,000+ this month on repairs for that truck. And it's a 1999. Enough about car trouble!!

I did get some wonderful birthday wishes from my sister and many internet friends, and my parents sent me some money (which I'll be spending on YARN of course) as well as serenading me with the traditional trombone rendition of "Happy Birthday" which I love. My aunt Melanie sent a wonderful hand-made card which I always enjoy. I also got a phone call from my friend Heather, which was really nice. Rori emailed me a big happy birthday wish, and Tracy, with whom I spoke at least twice that day, totally forgot but called me the next day, embarrassed. (*snicker* Hi, Tracy! LOL!) I hope I didn't forget to mention anyone.

On the knitting front, I got four hats finished to send for Caps for a Cure although I haven't gotten them sent out yet. Gillian was graciously consented to having her picture taken as long as I didn't interrupt her game. She had 10 minutes until bedtime and she wanted to squeeze the most out of every second before bedtime while playing computer games.

This first hat is for a young child. My children both have big heads so it's small on her. The yarn is Bernat's Satin yarn in the color "Sunset." I got the yarn, a pair of needles, and a DVD on knitting from Leisure Arts through this link, and it was supposed to be made into a hat for the "Caps with a Conscience" campaign. Since the hat came out too small for an adult I'm going to send it with my Caps for a Cure hats and make a truly adult-sized hat for the "Caps with a Conscience" campaign.

The white hat is from Caron Simply Soft yarn and the pattern is here. It's big on Gillian, but then she's five. It's actually a touch small on me but most hats are.

This hat is Odessa from Grumperina and it was a fun knit even without the beads. The yarn is also Simply Soft. I'm having a terrible time finding nice machine-washable yarn that's not too expensive and available locally so a lot of my charity knitting is from this yarn.

And my final finished hat is made from Caron's Simply Soft Shadows. I really like this yarn! It's a bit heavier than the standard Simply Soft, more like a true worsted than the almost DK-weight of the regular yarn. It was a REALLY bad picture of me, taken by holding out the camera, so I cut out everything but the hat.

And now for the main distraction in my/our life/lives, the shower remodel!

Greg and I actually used this shower this evening and it was wonderful. The rest of the bathroom looks like hell, but the shower looks great!

It looks wonky in the picture but that's because I couldn't get a good camera angle in that little room. It took Greg a while to get the back panel in since the framing isn't square anymore (the house is 30+ years old) and then we had to struggle a little with installing the control and handle, but we got it! We're debating on whether or not to put in a shower door and/or to replace the tile on the floor and the toilet. The toilet keeps leaking from one of the bolts. This project could keep growing, though, and I'm so ready to have it done.

Here's a closer-up of the fixtures we chose:

Tomorrow evening after Greg gets home from work he'll finish putting up the drywall. I still need to scrape down the high spots on the burgundy wall so that we can texture all the walls the same. Here's the challenge I'm facing with that part, where we took down a cabinet. Still not sure what we're going to do about that... We need storage but what was there was pretty bad.

The color balance is off but the large white-and-tan area is where the cabinet was, and the splotchy area below it is where I've scraped off some of the very irregular texture. Lots more to go....

And if you've made it all the way to the end of this extremely long post, congratulations!!

Finally recovered from the flu

The last week has been the Week of Illness in my house. The littlest came down with ickiness on Sunday, and the rest of us got it on Tuesday. Not fun!!!

So not much knitting (or anything else except laundry!) got done during the last week. I did manage to start and finish an Odessa hat and a Vintage Bubble Bag from the Pursenalities book.


The bag is shown pre-felted, and it's significantly smaller now. I put it through the washer (in a zippered pillow case) twice, and could probably have stopped a little ways into the second run. The black yarn, which I got for $1 a ball on sale at Porter's in Idaho Falls, felted amazingly quickly. It also bled a little which is not a big deal. The red-plum yarn is Reynold's Odyssey and it's a beautiful yarn. Despite being 100% merino it will not felt. It's absolutely fine in this project though! Once it's dry I'll take some pictures of it.

I got the Odyssey for half off at the LYS, which made it $9.50, and three balls of black yarn at $1 a ball, so $12.50 for this bag was a good thing. It's not going to be my favorite bag because it's smaller than I'd hoped, but that's all right--it was still a fun knit! I think next time I'll branch out on my own as far as a pattern goes. This one has some funny things going on at the bottom, and I think making a shaped bottom piece, then picking up stitches along the sides would be more successful. Next time!

The Odessa hat is Caron's Simply Soft yarn. I have such a hard time finding soft yarns that can be machine washed and dried that I like. I'm not a big Red Heart fan, and the more I knit the more I gravitate toward wool and natural fibers. This hat is very soft though. It's also going to be very warm. It'll be donated through the Yahoo group Caps for a Cure, and I hope to get another finished to send along with it.

The Tulsa State Fair starts on Thursday and I think I'm going to have to drag my family over there that night to see if any of my stuff got ribbons. I'm so bad about that! The fair doesn't start until 4:00 the first day. I might wait until Friday and drag just DS and my very good friend Rori over there. The problem is that it's $8 to get in, and I want to go when I can LOOK at all the neat stuff! And there is a lot of neat stuff if the sampling I saw when I turned in my stuff is any indication. Gotta be patient. Hmm, I'll have to start a new project or two to distract myself....