Muppet Fur

While shopping for party supplies for Lil Turbo's first birthday I found some yarn on sale.  Yes, I found bargain yarn at a party supply store.  They also had toilet bowl cleaner.  I live in the sticks.  Shut up.  As you might imagine, it wasn't the highest quality yarn.  Dude, if that shop carried Malabrigo yarn for cheap there's no way I would be posting about it.  I would be skipping work and camping out in front of the store to make sure I had first dibs.

Anyway, now that I've shown you the dark side of knitting....My new yarn purchase. 

copyright Lion Brand Yarn website

I have plans for this to become a reusable sw!ffer duster cover.  The brand name refills cost on average $8.00 for a pack of six.  My yarn cost $4.00 for both skeins.  I'm hoping that two yarns held together will result in extrafantasticfurrydusttrappingability.  If it doesn't workout I haven't lost any huge investment.  But I am hopeful, because the sw!ffer mop covers I knitted up a what seems forever ago have held up quite well (turns out it was ages ago) .

Hats for Alex

I love my ribbon hats. So much I decided to share the love. 'Twinsies' and a simple baby cap in yellow will be going to a new home for an infant or toddler at a children's hospital. They're just too fun to keep to myself.

Hats for Alex is an ongoing knit charity project started by Trillian42, who began it out of the love for her good friend.

"On December 8, 2005, one of my oldest and dearest friends lost her 6-month old son to injuries suffered at the hands of his day-care provider. I started the Hats for Alex project to honor his memory, and to thank the wonderful people at Children’s Hospital in Omaha, NE who cared for Alex while he fought for his life.

I collect knit and crocheted hats in sizes from preemie to child, made in any washable yarn, and send them to the hospital to warm the heads of their patients. If you would like to contribute, please contact me at hatsforalex AT gmail."

This is my first charity knitting and I am getting really excited about giving it away! I should have started this sooner!

Twinsies

I'm really at a lost of what to write here. Instead of coming up with insanely clever blog posts in my head, my brain is focused on producing small, tiny acrylic tubes covered in bits of shiny strips. It's starting to border on a freakish obsession. I'll elaborate:

First I knit a pink hat covered in ribbons for funsies, because I had a small amount of pink cotton yarn and what else was I going to do with it?

Well that got me into ribbons. More specifically into the need for ribbons. Ribbons which complimented my pink yarn-better ribbons than what I had. This, of course, required that I go shopping for ribbons. As I stared at the multitude of silky goodness on the WALL of ribbons and contemplated my situation, it occurred to me that this might possibly be habit forming. A though which I quickly shoved away and reached for the four new ribbons I would be purchasing to go with my itty-bitty hat.

Putting those ribbons on that hat was fantastic. It was like icing a cake. It was delicious. Fiddly, but not to fiddly. Like fair isle, but without all the extra time spend stranding across the backside of your work. Now, you may be thinking that ribbon hats just aren't your bag. I admit on first glance they are not so fabulous to look at. The ribbons are all lumpy (also like fair isle in some cases) and their ends don't weave in nicely (umm...ditto on the fair isle metaphor) and quite plainly just stupid looking. But I dare you to knit up a hat and add ribbons. I'll find you in the ribbon aisle next time I go out.

That's how I ended up here:

and here:


The ribbon aisle it'll do you in every time.

Itty-Bitty Insanity

I should be making some thing more constructive. Is that a contradiction, "making something constructive," or an oxymoron? Nevermind. Moving on. Continue onto the pros of knitting up another of this project.

This project lets me abuse my new needle collection.

I use acrylic yarn from my stash for this project. I have better yarn for other better projects. Yarn which breathes and is not made from harsh chemical processes, but those projects don't allow me to buy ribbon in quadruplets. This project does.

Also, this project lets me use the excuses, "This yarn, that I already own, is machine washable and dryable." and "But all I need is a little ribbon, I already have the yarn."

This project is small, portable and useful. Similar to socks, if socks were made with pretty ribbons.

So, I planned to knit this project and I bought ribbon.


I may have been indecisive. I only need four colors. Obviously, I bought five. I am set on three in the middle, from top to bottom: Shear Orange, Stars, and Thin Aqua. What I am not set on is which green. Should I use the Wide Green, which doesn't really match? It's kinda a pretty pale, but is an obviously different size and would add interest that way. Or should I use the Polka Dot Green? Which is uniform in size and texture (blah!), but really adds pizazz in the color and pattern departments!

It's important to state that no matter which green is picked, the color arrangement will stay as you see here, either beginning or ending with a green.

I have a plan

As we all know, I am always way behind the trend. I mean, I was working on my Adrienne Vittadini Dianna top from Spring '05 in Summer '06. This is nothing new, but there is a problem with being a late knitter.

And that problem is yarn, name-brand-designer-for-a-limited-time-only-whatever-you-want-to- call-it yarn. By the time I get 'round to knitting a pattern there's no more yarn left and I have to substitute. After two years of feverish knitting I am a pro at substituting yarn. (It also helps that I'm not real particular about quality standards or perfection per say. Boo boos are okay with me.)

You can imagine that when I bought Becky's yarn for booties, I was going to get in trouble. And in trouble I am. The cutest sheep booties in the world require a skein of Jaeger persia in black before i can finish them. Once again, I am left to find replacement yarn as I did not realize Jaeger no longer produced their persia yarn. Not one single solitary skein of persia in black to be found anywhere. As any knitter knows, when you are that frustrated with a project, you set it to the side and let it steep a little. You know, to enhance the flavor to your liking, or in this case until the project comes back into flavor. (I'm southern-everything relates back to tea somehow.)

So after about a month of sitting on the back burners, I realized that I had the perfect substitute already in my stash! 100% acrylic Red Heart Plush yarn in a soft brown. You read that right, I am mixing my designer yarns with my crap yarns. The shear audacity of it might overwhelm your knitting senses. However, lets look at the facts about these booties:
1. They are baby booties for a non-existent baby, making them purely for the pleasure of it knits.
2. Should they ever come in contact with a baby they will more than likely be drooled, peed or pooped on and there for need washing.
3. Acrylic washes really good, while wool not so good.
4. They are sheep booties! Sheep booties!

Now imagine how great they match, because my camera is on the fritz and I've got no pictures for you.

Weasley and the Anti-Itch Solution

I have discovered how to add inches onto my Weasley Sweater without going insane. Quite simply, I feel brilliant about it. B-R-I-L-L-I-A-N-T. [Add your own big smile and razzl-dazzle hand movements.]

As you may or may not know, my job involves odd hours. It's one of the reasons I love it. Some days are normal 9:oo to 5:oo-ers and some are 1:00 to 8:30-ers. Normally, a person would cringe at those kind of hours, but I get to make my own schedule and my late nights involve working with students. I don't do very much, except keep the students on task and answer questions every now and then. In fact, I often need another activity to keep me busy. Enter knitting.

By knitting, I can still very much do my busy work and pay my full attention to the students. We all know knitting helps us focus our attention. I read somebody proved it somewhere. I swear, I just can't remember where. Grumperina possibly? She's a sciencey gal like that. JenLa? They know the value of knitting in public. At any rate, I can knit mind numbing rows of stockinette stitch in the round and still be fully accessible. Should I actually need to get up at a moments notice the Weasley Sweater allows for that too. It's the perfect at work project! Plus there's the up side of exposing all those kids to knitting. One of my girls has already completed several scarves. She's currently working on a reversible scarf with two colors. I'm very proud. Especially, that she's learning to knit mostly without my help; due to the fact that I need to her to work when she's with me and not to knit. However, I do provide tons of support, helpful hints when she's stuck, and about a billion websites to check out for help when I'm not around. (All Praise Amy's Knittinghelp.com!) Though, I would love to get paid to teach college students to knit.

The result of my epiphany? An additional inch and half on the Weasley Sweater! Hey, I only discovered the yarn isn't a scratchy when I knit while talking two nights ago. So all in all, I have 10.5 inches done on the front AND the back. That's got to be like one third of the way done. Plus, I still have:
to finish this project.

WIPs and Fos:
WIP: You guessed it! The beginnings of a pomatomus sock in my gifted yarn. I reduced the total number of stitches needed due to the yarn gauge being slightly larger than the pattern required (found at Knitty). So far so good. Everything is working out beautifully. Eleven more rows in the pattern and I begin the heel. Updates to follow.

FO: I finished these baby booties a while back, but needed to find the right buttons. I gave up trying to find cute boy buttons without traveling to foreign countries or spending an arm and a leg. Instead, I just bought cutesy girl buttons at my local X-Mart and had at it.

Pattern: The booties are from Zoe Mellor's book I got for Christmas*. This is her generic pattern, with buttons added for flare. (Anytime I talk about added flare I think about Jennifer Aniston's character in Office Space and "What you can do with your flare!" [Insert rude finger gesture.] It's very distracting.)

Yarn: No-label 100% acrylic yarn bought a long time ago at Wal-mart.

Needles: size 2 aluminum of unknown origin passed down from my grandmother.

Addendum's: None, I knitted them by the pattern. Though, I did arrange a different set of buttons differently. Does that count?

*Note: I have several unfinished and/or solo booties started from this book.

Yarny Goodness

Guess what was sitting on the porch for me when I got home? Elizabeth's generous yarn offer! She told me she would mail this out yesterday it arrived today-from another state! I about died when opened it. It's 310 yards of a gorgeous wool dyed in a variegated more-pink-than-mauve color complete with note and her favorite generic sock pattern. The additional touch of coordinating ribbon and flower charm tied to the skein just kicked my completely into the "awww" factor. Thank you so much Elizabeth!

I am sooooo in love with the color I couldn't decide which picture to show y'all.

So here it is outside in the full sun:

And indoors with indirect lighting and the flash:

She even sent a present for the kitties. And no, there would not be any lawyers to eat in that box
(Disclaimer: No yarn was harmed in the following pictures!) It apparently this yarn just smells really fantastic. Besides the fact the I have now entered the twilight zone (because that's the only way these two get this close together), they both got on the bed I was using to watch me wind the yarn into a ball. At one point Maya might have accidentally walked between of Nigel's line of sight and the yarn "show," and he may have pitched a hissy fit about it. Really, he swatted her for coming between him and the yarn. I've never heard Nigel hiss, but I was really expecting him to at that moment.

PoPo , who is normally uninterested in yarn past the initial sniff, actually hung out right by my side the entire time I hand wound it into a ball to ensure that the yarn was properly treated. She also insisted on double checking my work. She requests that I ask Elizabeth if there is a boy doggy present at her house and if so is he available? Did y'all catch that? All three of my animals, plus myself were involved in the winding of this yarn into a ball in my spare bedroom next to the bed in about 3 square feet of space. It was intense.

Now all that's left is to knit up a pair of socks and tell y'all about it. I had picked out a couple of patterns I wanted to try and I think that Pomatomus will be perfect for showing off the wonderful dappled dye job. Note to self: must build up courage to actually knit with gifted yarn.

Sock Love

I read somewhere once that after you get married you should still close the bathroom door when you pee. (Pooping and closed doors goes unsaid.) Why? What purpose does closing the door serve anymore? This is the same man who sees all my bodily flaws when I get out of the shower. I wondered. At the risk of giving you TMI, the Hubby and I pee with the door open. I asked him once if it bother him. He was completely indifferent. Actually, I think his exact response was to shrug his shoulders and gave me a weird look as he replied, "No." It also happens that when you pee with doors closed in our house Nigel thinks that you are abandoning him and alternates howling pitifully with pawing at the doorknob while mewing accusations of rejection. It's completely counterproductive to peeing.

Back to the point. The socks on two circular needles method (by Cat Bordhi) has you rotate the stitches from a front facing sock (the top of the sock is on one needle and the bottom on the other) after knitting the heel flap to a profile sock (the top of the sock is split on to two needles along with the bottom). It has me wondering the same Why? What purpose does it serve other than to make picking up the gussett easier? similar the article about peeing and marriage. Okay, so it's not a perfect metaphor, but it still has me wondering why the standing rule.

It seems to me that a sock like Hedera or Pomatomus would be much more simply knitted front facing, than profile facing. Plus, I have two seams from each of my joins that would be placed on either side of my foot, rather than as they are now. Which is directly down the middle of the top of my sock driving me nuts. There is also one on the bottom, which doesn't bother me as much. Imagine that! Therefore, I have rebelled and just like I leave the door open when I pee, I am knitting this sock front facing! We will see if this works on 'real' socks.

My legs are really not that pale or fat.
It's the camera angle...I swear.

In addition, I don't know if I mentioned it yesterday, but the yarn I'm trying out my sock knitting on is 100% acrylic. It's so old I can't even find a label. I do know, however, that I have a ton of it, because I bought two HUGE skeins at Wal-mart for PoPo's tragic Boss Tweed. In a completely unrelated, but rather interesting fact I am referencing a post that is only hours away from being a year ago to the date!

Lemonheads: Part Duo

It seems that the lemon hat I knit at work prior to knitting the eggplant hat went over smashing with my college students. (The original work sits on my monitor at work.) I actually had a request for one. So being the obliging knitter I am, I cast on for an adult sized lemonhead hat. Then, I set it aside for more interesting, i.e. less acrylic, projects. Therefore, the lemonhead hat was cast by the wayside for a few days, errr...about a week or two....Then last night (at work with my students) I was hit with an update on the lemonhead hat. I was so shocked he was still interested in his hat that I made the promise very knitter makes and I set a dead line.

"You'll have your hat before the end of the semester," I told him. Oopsie! The semester ends on Friday and he's actually leaving Thursday. I better get cracking.

This my friends is the cast aside beginnings of a lemonhead hat.
I can tell you're thrilled.

That's when another student piped up he wanted an "onion hat." I didn't make any promises for that. Because really I see something similar to this in off-white, with a green stem out the top. And I might just die laughing while I make it.

"What," might you ask, "is better than acrylic fruit shaped hats?" I'll tell you. It's using up stash yarn for meaningless, but very quick projects designed from your own head. I'm using the 2 pink and 2 multicolored bamboo skeins with the perfectly matching pink glass buttons to make some sort of baby top. I have several ideas inspired from other sources. Such as:

1. A sleeveless shell with overlapping shoulders. That way the baby's head can fit through easily, but will still be shirt looking. I plan adding picot edging around the armholes to tack the two overlapping shoulders together.

2. A raglan-type sweater that buttons up one or both side. (Okay so this idea is really Gumperina's.)

3. A boring cardigan.

I'm not really worried about who this gift is for, but rather the design process. When I bought the bamboo yarn, I thought that it'd be great for Georgia's scorching summer days and chilly fall nights. I still think that, which is why I'm not really picky about sleeves versus no sleeves in this design. Though, knitting with the slippery stuff is not exactly thrilling. I used my Vogue Stitchionary to pick a stitch that would look good on the yarn and that I hadn't tried yet. Here's a quick preview:

Shhh...none of you can see the glaring error in this knit that I am unwilling to fix.

Lemon Heads

This past weekend the hubby and I went to visit a friend of mine (the knitting apprentice) who just bought a new house. She was a one of the best roommates in college, if not THE BEST. So we decided to throw a little party to celebrate the holidays and show off all the new place all at once.

First off, let me just say that if you want to cook a coke ham by a recipe a friend used and he says 350 degrees overnight. He's lying, even if he did used to work for a caterer and you've eaten wonderful meals prepared by him before. Just go find a recipe online. Unless you want to get up at 5 am to the smell of burning coke and ham.

Second, let me just say that that I am completely jealous of the largeness of her home and even more so of the fenced in backyard for her pupsteroos, Charlie and Samantha, i.e. Sam. I told her so, but I have better cabinets. Of course, my FIL is in the cabinet business, so they were free, but whatever. For two days now, I have been working the hubby over on a fenced in yard . See how much more fun PoPo will have if we fence in the yard. And by fun I mean not going stir crazy and asking us to play with her all the time? However, it seems fences cost money and we have none.....but never fear dear readers, I will find a way around this problem. I swear.

So in a vain attempt to regain my status as "cool," I knitted. I knitted with acrylic yarn leftovers. I knitted all day prior to the party and ended up with a eggplant. Eggplant? Yes, a hat in the shape of a eggplant including leaves and a stem. (Personally, I think it looks more like a grape, but since when to individual grapes have leaves?) My apprentice loved it, wanted it, had to keep it and I was very happy. I gave her the eggplant hat that would fit a two year old. I regained my "cool."

Thanks for the pictures, Apprentice!

Halloween Already?

Because I am lazy and have yet to complete the PoPosaurus costume in time for Halloween. Whoopsie! Thank goodness dogs don't get any bigger from year to year. I blame it on the craptastic acrylic yarn and the fact that I am anxiously awaiting more yarn to finish cathode.

Happy Halloween!

One more F.O.

I forgot to add this F.O. last week. It Katja from Knitty knit in the smallest size (3 months) using the rest of my acrylic yarn from Ocean.

Do I have a three month old female child in the middle of summer? No. Do I know any three month old female infants? No. Do I even know any female infants? No.

Do I have left over yarn to match a cute blanket that would be fun to knit with and make a super easy weekend project? YES! OH YES! I watched Ocean's Twelve and Snatch, just so that I could make those stupid i-cords, but it's done in ONE WEEKEND!

What I did at work today

And no it was not the collar of Cloud, as I forgot the book that explains the tubular cast off method I want to use.

Instead I whipped up a purple pair of mittens (yes, in the summer, because I'm that weird) to match the yellow pair I was ready to send out. Please ignore the pitiful attempt to use a duplicate stitch. After you see these you will wonder how I ever managed to design the pattern for Cloud. And no, the horrible star on the right mitten was my second attempt. I should have stayed with my normal too tight stitches.

These are for play only. I cannot guarantee the weather resistance of poorly made mittens.

Oh well, the recipient is a 5 y.o. and they are made from 100 % pure acrylic. If a 5 y.o.'s standards are above that, her mother can throw them out. I promise not to be insulted.

Though, I now understand the affliction of socks. Yes, you read that correctly, affliction-like a disease. Sock knitting, I'm told, is addictive and highly infectious. The quick fix of knitting a complete project in a a day or two is highly satisfiying. Socks and mittens are drugs, which feed the pleasure center of the brain, like Ecstasy, but without the great sex.

Now I'm off to ask the Hubby what color he would like is mittens in.

Add another FO to the "Done" List

Gosh where to begin? This week as been full, not busy, but full. You know what I mean? I finally finished Ocean, formerly known as Fugly Baby Green. Everyone at work has been complimenting me on it, which has been really weird for me. I have mixed feeling on this project. When I started it, I realized that the yarn was "drowning" the pattern. (hehehe, drowning/ocean, get it?) Also, it's made from-look away yarn snobs-100% acrylic yarn. But I forged ahead and began to like it anyway, even when my fashion sirens were going off in a bad way.

The detail of how the purl two together creates a little wave.

I just loved the naturally scalloped edge.
I looks extra yummy using the long tail cast on.
So neat and tidy.

Naturally, because I've finished up one project I have five more projects I want to start, but I am being patient. I will wait on my bamboo yarn to arrive that ordered from The Yarn Shop, I ordered Poppy (#40), Pastels, Varie. (#21) and Bright Varie (#18). I emailed the seller and she assured me that it was not seconds, and would be of the same dye lots. I have been burned on this before, Av yarn from Threadbare, but not from a ebay store oddily enough. However, I did promise myself that I would finish at leat one front of M's vest and frog the Weasley sweater, which as turned out to be waaaaayyy to huge for the hubby.

I also want to start crocheting a plastic bag bag. I'm a huge recycler, and normally I take all my plastic bags back to the store to recycle, or find other uses for them, such as trash can liners, but this by far takes the cake. I love it. And I have the perfect plum colored bag to make a beautiful addition to the bag. (I have been hoarding this bag for over 6 months and not taking it to recycle because it is just so pretty.) Anyone else interested in making this with me? I'll give updates and post pictures along the way! It should be a fun and easy "knit."

Died and Gone to Heaven*

I am a happy girl. This weekend was the laziest I have been all summer. There was little to no planned activities. Therefore, there was no extensive amounts of time spent in the truck. ( As new and comfy as it is, spending time sitting makes the lower half of my back go numb. FUN!)

So I could pop in dvds and knit on Ocean, formerly known as Fugly Baby Green, who is now past the halfway mark. (I really should join AA - Acrylics Anonymous.) I haven't been feeling Celia even with all my help from Cat, but maybe if I followed some of her drink directions I'd be feeling something. For that reason, only a little knitting got done and I didn't want to waste your time with pictures of the same thing inches longer. Sorry no pictures!

But the lure of the sunny North Georgia Mountains lead me to out of doors to pick wild blackberries in our yard. I let the PoPoster out to nose around in the woods while the Hubby and I gathered two guarts of those thorny suckers. Then, da da dana! we made them into jelly. Not jam mind you-jelly, which requires a filtration process. We canned a total of four jars (a half recipe).
Where's the fourth jar you ask? The Hubby as already opened it up and is eating it. At. Every. Meal. I am so proud. The longer I live in the mountains, the farther back in time I go and I like it. I canned! Next weekend I am going to make grape and apple jellies, but I'm going to cheat and just start with the unsweeten juice. I figure that's totally acceptable for a newbie. I've only been in the mountains for a year and a half and already the "county" side of me is starting to flourish. (Thankfully, much faster than the geek side of me.) This is not a new phenomenon as I lived in Acworth, GA teaching horseback riding lessons a Girl Scout camp for three summers during high school.

I also got a few pages in the scrapbook done. I'm up to March of 2005 (I was on January 2005) and while that's two months more, it was really only three pages, and lots of planning. While I was hunting for the dates we had snow here last January I came across JenLa's November 2005 entry which contained the word "Hiawassee". I was completely in shock. Jen had appearantly been up near me and not only that she LIVES NEAR ME. A fellow knit blogger NEARBY! Now, I've gone to some of the LYS and asked around about knitting groups, because I figure in a county with the mean age of 65 (I kid you not, my mother researched it on some school/eduational website) there has got to be a knitters club. Wrong. So in a state of happy disbelief, I immediately bombarded her with emails to make sure I could read correctly. (Sorry bout that!) And today I got mentioned on her blog! Wo-Hoo! You know that happy feeling you got in high school when you finally felt like one of the cool kids for a day? That's what I'm feeling now.

And so, while I'm high on life and feeling all cool 'n stuff. I leave you with a picture of Maya doing what she does best. Sit on square things-not round-square, because round things would be absolutely no fun. Chalk it up to licking all those plastic bags.


*Also entitled: Attack of the Parentheses (Because I am Beside Myself).

WIP #2 & #3

So the greecian sweater is coming along. I'd say nicely, but somehow the shaping is all off. I'm hoping to fix it during the blocking phase, were one wets the garment and pulls is gently into the right shape. Never the less, I am determined to finish it and wear it. I'm very excited about it. 100% acrylic, and I love it, baby. I've knitted with expensive yarns and not so expensive yarns-and I've come to the conclusion that I think wool is for the most part- itchy. Alpaca wool is soft, but come on people, I live in GEORGIA. The stores run out of bread eggs amd milk when we get flurries. (On a side tangent; I've never undertood why bread, eggs and milk? I mean if the apocolypse comes in the the form of snow; Somehow milk will see you through? Or perhaps you can consume massive amounts of eggs to get by? And bread? Come on people, we need NON-perishable goods in times of desperation and snow flurries! moving on...) Therefore, wool is not a good choice of yarn. That being said, I perfer the acrylics. Plus, it smells much less like sheep, goats, or llamas, take your pick.

I've been trying out a new stitch I have renamed Greecian Plait, after the pattern I am using rather than it's boring "Cross Stitch" label and to reduce the confusion about what kind of project I am working on. Below is a picture of what the Greecian Plait should look like and the slanted edge of my work.


I'm afraid that my camera does not allow me any closer to give you better defintion, but you can see (hopefully) that it has a braided look. Perhaps another picture of my work will help you (and in no way be showing of how proud I am of myself).


This is the front half of the sweater and it's almost complete; I have finished the arm hole decreases and only lack the neck line area. Then I start the back, which is identical. So hopefully, I can pick the better of the two to be the front....

PoPo's "Boss Twead" Sweater is moving along swimmingly. I just bought some cheap, but soft and pretty, baby blue cotton yarn and modified the pattern to be able to knit in the round. It is going quite fast. I will be very sorry when I have to switch it back to a "flat" knit. I do not plan on blocking it, as I did for the Puppy Panache, because really, it's just a sweater for my dog, to which I am adding a zipper for fun...I will post a picture when I get to that stage, because one can't really take a good photo of a partically completed dog sweater in the round. Really.