Knitted Gifts

Ah, the season of gifting has ended so I can post some pictures of projects I gave away. Of course I forgot to photograph some of it before giving it away (namely the scarves for my Grandma and Julie).

I made felted mittens with cuffs, fingerless mitts, fleece trimmed mittens (modeled by my dear sister when she opened them early Christmas morning), and the white lapel scarf for my great-aunt.

I had a lot of fun knitting gifts, and I was actually there to see some of them open the gifts, which was very nice.

I also received many knitting-oriented gifts, which is superb.

Christmas fun with the fam

Everyone's trip to and from Ohio went very well so we're quite fortunate. We saw a lot of family while we were there, which was great.

Of course, when you're among family, you're also among jokesters. I sat our camera down on a side table during the fun on Christmas night, and found these charming pictures when I went to review the photos later:

Dessert Spread

Tablecloth










Laundry Detergent



Microwave











And my personal favorite, the toilet:

I still don't know who did it, but it made me laugh very hard, so whomever it was: Well Played.

So Generous!

Imagine my surprise when I went to mail box at the end of last week and found another package from my One Skein Secret Pal! The Knitting Librarian sent me this gorgeous yarn:

The purple/green is sock yarn, and the multi-color seems to me to be some of that sari-silk yarn. It is heaven to touch. Here it is under the tree:

Thank you, thank you, thank you! You are so generous, and what a great surprise!

A few more details

Evergreenknits wanted to know how much wool went into the felted balls (they're still in the same state...I haven't decorated them).

I had 2 oz of roving to start.

The largest of the individuals balls (the teal in the center) is .2 oz (6g), with the average sized ones not even registering on my kitchen scale. The whole collection below weighs 1.4 oz and have .6 oz leftover that I didn't ball up yet.

I hope this information helps!

gift-a-palooza

Here are a few items I have just finished:
Ornaments from Handknit Holidays:










(I haven't decided how/if I will snaz them up a bit with beads, etc.)

Felted bowls from One Skein:










I plan to fill these with treats for my librarians this holiday season (those are all yarn remnants I was using up--Wool of the Andes, Lamb's Pride, Dale of Norway)

Here is the product of the Kool-Aid dyeing experiment:










Which I then made into felted balls to make into ornaments like in Handknit Holidays. We'll see how that goes.

Lots of knitting, very little to show.

It is very hard to post right now because I've been doing a lot of knitting, but a lot of it is for gifts and cannot be posted.

The mitered square blanket was gifted the day before baby Lauren arrived. I hope that she will like it!

I played with Kool Aid to dye some roving that I bought at GS last weekend. Here it is in the process of dyeing:

(Um, just kidding. I can't find the camera cord anywhere. I remember seeing it before we painted the guest room but now I have no idea where it is. Shoot! And Justin's not responding to my "have you seen it?" "I still can't find it..." comments)

10 minutes later: CORD FOUND!

This is what the roving looked like to start:

Here it is in the process of dyeing:

I don't have a picture of the final product because I haven't made it yet. I was really happy with the red that's in the lower left of the photo. The other colors were ok.

Last of the yellow walls

The last of the yellow walls are gone! We painted the guest room a nice, fresh shade of green. We even painted the ceiling (hence the picture of me with a crick in my neck). The pictures of the new color don't do it justice, but you can see some of the improvement.

Julie's Visit

Julie visited from MN after she traveled to CT for work. We had a fun time eating in Providence, crocheting at Graceful Stitches, tasting beer at Leta and Tom's, and touring the Breakers in Newport. Such a fun (but too short) weekend! I also saw "Trick my Truck" for the first time. :)_

Step one: felted

Ok, so I took the Christmas Tree Hat idea and wanted to translate that into a felted Christmas tree. I altered the pattern a lot, and added a lip to the bottom. It's drying right now, so I need to decide how to decorate it. I made some garlands, but I haven't felted them yet. What do you think? How should I decorate my tree?


(Heidi asked for dimensions...it's 14 inches tall and 22.5 inches in circumference)

Christmas Tree Hat

I love this little project (even though the trimming of the tree took longer than the actual knitting!) I knit it for Graceful Stitches, and the pattern is from Too Cute!

Here it is by itself:


Here it is modeled by the only thing I have in this house with a child-sized head:

Now I've got ideas for a non-hat version for our house...more to follow.

The Great Finishing Miracle 2006 (Or, what not to do when you're making the pattern up as you go along)

This is a baby gift for an undisclosed recipient (pretty please--ignore the horrible light [and the pillow holding the items up]...the sun sets at 4:00 p.m. in New England at this time of year, so there was no natural light to be found). I decided that there was enough yarn for both a stroller/car seat blanket, and a little jacket. I decided that I would just wing it and see what I came up with. Now that I think about it, I should have made the jacket first. Then the blanket could have been made to whatever length of yarn I had left. But did I think that far ahead? Oh no, because I was winging it and laughing in the face of danger (this from a woman who has worn off the S on her keyboard from saving her documents obsessively). As you might guess, I barely had enough yarn to finish the edging of the collar on the jacket. As in maybe 1.5 inches left, even after cheating and using p2tog at random intervals around the edge to save yarn. However, I managed to weave in the ends, so this is now known as the Great Finishing Miracle of 2006. (there were other acts of divine intervention involved with this project, but I would feel very foolish if I mentioned them all)


Look! Sock #1 is done. That is the sad start of Sock #2 on the needles next to my foot. I am suffering from second sock syndrome.









This has been exacerbated by the fact that I picked up a kit to knit for the shop and it’s adorable. Can you guess what this will be?

it's knowing the little things

I know I've only been married a little over 2 years, but it's amazing to me how much you can learn about a person in that short amount of time. For instance, I just walked downstairs to find my husband watching South Park. That's right, South Park. Knowing him like I do, I know that the poor guy is past his threshold and needed something brainless. He's been working on his grad school application, grading, sorting out the car title mess, and a bunch of other things. Poor guy needs a break, and how do I know? He's watching South Park.

Sock Progress

I'm back from my two-day Massachusetts School Library Association conference. All and all it was a very informative conference. I also got this far on a new sock:














Unlike the Yarn Harlot, I was not confident enough to have the sock pose with the famous people I met there: Ed Emberley (you probably know him best for his how to draw books), Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky (check out this amazing Favorite Poem project--the videos are amazing, and the quality of the videos will be updated in the next week or so), and others.

Mitered Blanket

I finished it! The mitered blanket. This is for a friend out here who is expecting a baby. I used Cotton Classic in various colors that I thought were bright and cheery for a baby. It ended up about 28 inches by 28 inches. Now I need to decide if I should add a lining.

Off to Taylor!

I sent this blanket (and a sweater that I forgot to photograph) off to new baby Taylor. I made four random squares and pieced them together. I did learn one lesson the hard way: easy-care acrylic/wool blends aren't nice to work with. But now I know. :)

The colors are a bit off in the photo---darn cold, gray weather without natural light. It's also laying a little wonky. Oh well.

That's right, you knitters out there--that's an Intarsia heart on the upper right. It was my first intarsia and it turned out pretty well.

Long time no blog

Lots of craziness around here lately, so I've been a blog slacker. Here's a super-duper post to catch up!

Let's see....a few weekends ago, some of us went apple picking at Honey Pot Hill. It was a madhouse. I would recommend you plan to visit NOT on a Saturday, and NOT on a gorgeous weather day. Kurt shared these pictures of the day. While the apple pickers were traipsing through the orchard, a golf crew went golfing. It was J's first time playing 9 holes of golf and he even got a par on one hole! We also found out that Josh and Joanna are expecting a baby--such exciting news!

Last weekend proved that a AAA membership is worth its weight in gold (thanks again, Mom and Dad!) J's car, Old Red, is dead.

The story of his demise includes multiples towings and a seized engine, so I won't go into more detail here. We thank him for the 155,000 good miles we got out of him.

Which of course meant that we needed to buy a new car! We are now the proud owners of a 2007 Toyota Corolla. It will primarily be J's car, since he drives the farthest to get to work and grad school, so we want him in a safe and fuel-efficient car.

We also found out that our new nephew was born this week, Taylor. Taylor was impatient to arrive and meet everyone so he came 2 months early, so keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

Sort of Noni Bag

I used a Noni pattern for this bag, but I used completely different yarn and changed the size somewhat. I made the flower in the correct size relationship to the bag, but it seemed too big so I trimmed it down.

Via Diagonale

I finally finished it! This is Via Diagonale from knitty.com. It was a real bugger, because of how you make the chevron pattern. It was actually hard on my hands, so I could only work on it a little bit at a time.

I used 5 skeins of Tahki Cotton Classic--3 of the brown (color 3336), 2 of the teal (color 3805) and used size 6 needles.

I lined it with a very cute fabric, but I wish I had used something heftier so it would help the bag stand up even better.

Phew!

Impulse Buy

We were in Newport, Rhode Island last weekend to celebrate our anniversary and we made an impulse buy:













Just Kidding, of course. That's just one of the lovely homes we saw along the Cliff Walk. We also saw Rose Cliff, where The Great Gatsby, True Lies, and Amistad were filmed.






Newport is a beautiful place, and the weather was delightful when we were there. We can't wait to go back!

Final Shipment Arrived!

My secret pal sent me this awesome Moebius scarf as the final installment of the One Skein Secret Pal exchange:














Isn't it neat? Can you see why it's so tricky to knit? The edging is very detailed (I'm not sure if you can see it from the picture).

I especially love the colorway--and Dominique, my not-secret-anymore pal, sent me the rest of the yarn to have fun with!

I'm also intrigued by the Moebius knitting...add that to my list of things to try!

Thank you, Dominique!

Frisbee Golf

Saturday we (J, Krissy and I) went down to Providence to see Marc and Christine and also to play some frisbee golf. Here are some action shots:


In the background of the last shot you can see Bob. Bob was golfing alone and we invited him to join us. He is hard core---see that black bag on the ground? It's filled with all kinds of different frisbees. He also had longer hair than all five of the rest of us combined. I think Marc and J were jealous. :)

Here's the course we went to:http://www.pdga.com/course/courses_by_city.php?id=2208