One last hint, and some pictures

OK, so I’m saving the hint for last, tease that I am, but let’s start off with some pic’s of what I’ve been working on:

A nice simple ribbed seed stitch washrag.  Patrick christened it tonight in the bath.

These were so much fun.  My lovely sister gave me 2 skeins of Patons SWS that she got on a clearance, knowing how I loved them.  Well, 2 skeins was not a good number really.  One skein, I could have made a hat, or mittens, or a couple potholders.  3 skeins would have made a scarf or something like that.  But 2?  What could I do with 2?  Ravelry pattern search to the rescue.  Came up with a cool slipper pattern that even included felting!

David saw mine and quite politely requested some for him as well.  Thankfully my lovely sister again had already furnished me with some Lion Wool in a blue and turquoise color that David loves.  I think that one skein will not be enough, so I’m striping it with something else.  Not sure what yet.

This was a quickie I kicked out the other night.  It’s a lace sampler bookmark.  It was fun, but the yarn is pretty floppy.  I may have to starch it or something.  Probably not the best choice of yarn to use for this project, but it’s still cute.  I lucked out in that mostly the color change coincided with the pattern changes.

There’s a story and a half with these socks.  I’ll give you the short version.  I won the yarn in a sock contest.  It’s orange and purple striped, which happened to be my sister’s favorite color when she was a kid.  I tried to make them the Nutkins.  They didn’t work.  We’re not going there.  They went into time out for a looooong time.  Then I tried another pattern, which also didn’t work.  I don’t even remember what that one was.  I knew I needed to find something that was around 70 st around.  I looked at all my patterns and couldn’t come up with anything that I thought my sister would like and that would look good with this yarn.

Then I remembered that I had done David’s Horcrux socks with 70 st around.  Phew.  I cast on and finished one sock before she came down the other week.  I was so gun shy from the other disasters that I didn’t even cut the yarn off.  I went ahead and told her the short story and she tried on the sock and it fit.  So, now I can forge on with confidence on sock #2.

One whole mitt from the top down Serpentine mitts is done.  I think I may have figured out who they’re going to belong too, but I’m not going to say yet.

Ok, ready for the last hint?  Thanks to a knitting buddy for this one.  The new project?  It’s one of those heirloom things.  Guesses anyone?

Having trouble thinking of hints

Ok, so I can’t think of any right now, but if hubby gets off his conference call early enough, he might help me think of one.

Know what I had for supper tonight?  A salad with that southwestern ranch, the spicy kind, a beef pot pie (I love those things!), and now, a few hours later, I’m hungry again, so while I was loading the dishwasher, I whipped together a box of cornbread stuffing to which I added some fresh thyme and rosemary hand picked from my lovely sister’s garden.  Yum.

I’m alternating projects now.  I’m almost done crocheting the handle for Maureen’s purse.  Then I just have to sew it in, and sew in the lining, and it’s good to go.  I think it probably doesn’t need blocking.

I also had my sister try on her horcrux sock before I started on the second one.  It fit.  So, I’m on about round 11 on that.  Size 1’s.  70 st around.  At least 60 rounds before the heel.  It’s going fairly slow.

Especially since I borrowed 2 of the 1’s to make a quick bookmark out of this pattern I printed off a long time ago.  I’m pretty sure I took the pattern to Canada thinking I’d make some up there.  I’m thinking these could make cute gifts as well as using up some leftover sock yarn.  I know, I usually don’t have leftover, but I did those fun circle socks, and managed to have a bit left, but not enough to make a kid pair of socks.

Also chugging along on the entrelac scarf when my hands cramp up from the teeny sock yarn.  And whipped out a washrag last night because I hadn’t finished anything in a while and needed some immediate satisfaction.

Still working on that second pair of Serpentine Mitts.  I think they may be for one of Steve’s sister’s for a Christmas present.  And there’s the corn tank top, OH, and I forgot, I also did some slippers.  I completely forgot to take a picture of them pre-washing, and they’re in the wash right now felting away.  I’ll have to put up the link when I get them all the way finished.  David has already requested a pair if they work.  In our most recent yarn trade (consisting of my buying her clearance yarn down here, and her buying me clearance yarn up there, and then we meet up and trade; it’s worked out great so far,especially the one where I bought her 4 balls of this fluffy violet stuff marked down to $1.99 at Hobby Lobby and she found that she had bought 4 balls of the same stuff at hers, and they all turned out to be the same dye lot, but I digress), I got 2 balls of Patons SWS in natural green, which turned out to be mostly orange and yellow with a little stripe of green and tan, but one ball made perfectly one slipper.  Or at least I hope it did.  It’s on the 2nd cycle around the wash right now, with the boys’ dark clothes (jeans), and I’ll go check them in a minute to see if they’ve shrunk enough for my tiny Cinderella feet.

Hint

I wanted to post a few little hints about the new project I’m working on.  And to tell you something funny.  First the hints:

I’m right about halfway done.

It’s a collaborative project, meaning that someone helped me get it started, but I’m doing most of the work now.

I can’t post a picture right now.

Sorry, that’s all the hints I can give for now.

On a funny note though, remember the entrelac scarf my sister wanted to try?  She went to knitting night with me on Friday and I got her pretty much squared away.  She had already completed the 2 base triangles, and the row where there’s a side triangle, a center square, and another side triangle.  Friday night I showed her how to do the first square of the row with the 2 squares, knowing that all she’d have to do then was to do another square like she did the first, then go back to the triangle/square/triangle section.

Well, my phone rings Sunday night, after I had already tucked the boys in.  I answer to hear a little voice say,” Hello?  Is this the entrelac hotline?”  She just couldn’t quite remember how to pick up the stitches to get the second square started, whether she was supposed to go in from front to back or from back to front.  I got her all situated though, and she’s on her way.  I’m pretty impressed that she wanted to try entrelac.   It’s going to turn out so nice.

Slight clarification on the hints – it’s not the entrelac scarf.

New Projects

Let’s see…I got my sister and her hubby off this morning, and promptly fell asleep.  I think I needed a nap.

Haven’t been sleeping real well since hubby left for FL.  His mom has pancreatic cancer, and she’s, well, almost done with her fight.  So, I miss him, but I understand quite possibly better than most why he needs to be there.

In spite of the crappy weather (rainy and low 40’s), I had an absolute blast with my sister.  She almost single-handedly put together one of those mystery puzzles that I had attempted in the spring.  It’s one of those where there’s no picture, and it’s 2 puzzles in the same box, one of the crime scene before and one of it after and there’s a story and you’re supposed to read the story and look at the before and after pictures for clues to figure out who did it.  Lovely idea, but I couldn’t get very far on the puzzle myself.

We went on a mini yarn and bead crawl, to 2 stores of each all in one day.  Russ behaved as well as he could until the end when he pretty much threw a temper tantrum because I wouldn’t take him to the bank to withdraw $15 from his savings account so he could buy some Kidsilk Haze.  In cream.  I must be doing something right.

We spent a morning and a bit into the afternoon beading, and I now have 5 or 6 new pairs of earrings.  I’ll have to get a picture tomorrow to post up, cause it’s finally supposed to be SUNNY tomorrow.  We also discussed a shawl.  She got this amazing yarn, Plymouth Colorspun Worsted, and it’s black throughout, but with other colors in a slow colorchange thing.  It’s really quite beautiful, #7022 I think, and she hasn’t been able to quite find the right pattern for the yarn.  She had started the Seraphina shawl, but the yarn was making it look really chunky.  I agreed and steered her in the direction of some knitted shawls.  I think some yarns just work better knitted and some look better crocheted.

She also requested another knitting lesson, and had recently bought, at previously mentioned yarn crawl, some Cypress Mohair and thought it might look cool as an entrelac scarf.  She asked if I thought it’d be too hard.  I thought for a minute, and said no.  The Danica scarf was the first thing I ever did entrelac and I thought the instructions were very thorough.  The only changes I made were to not use several colors, instead I used a color change yarn, and to also slip the edge stitches where you’d later pick up stitches to make that process easier.  So, she and I started a little KAL of our own.  She really only messed up 1 time really bad and that was really my fault.  I was trying to get her to learn to read her knitting, and I had instructed her to do something until she saw the gap.  She thought the gap was in a different place than it was, and accidentally joined her 2 base triangles, and I didn’t catch it until we were done with the first side triangle and she had too many stitches.  My bad.  If I had just let her follow the row by row instructions, like K6, it would have turned out fine.  I learned my lesson there though.  And she got double practice doing pfb.

She left me with a small assortment of beads,which upon my purchase of some nice jewelry pliers, I will be making all my knitting friends some stitch markers.  I don’t have many beads though, so if you’re one of my knitting friends, and you want more stitch markers than the 1 or 2 that I’d be making for you, go out to Hobby Lobby or Joann’s or Michaels or the bead store of your choice and pick out some beads.  I’ll buy the little wires and do the work and you get some one of a kind new markers.  I just get to keep the leftover beads.  Good deal, don’t you think?

There is one more project I wanted to tell  you about, but I’m going to tease a little bit longer.  You’re welcome to guess though…

Yay!

Went to the train station last night to pick up my sister.  She’s visiting until Saturday!  Yay!

This week will be filled up with yarn and beads and crocheting and knitting, and somewhere in there I guess we have to feed the boys.  Luckily some potato leek soup with added rosemary and thyme, picked fresh and hand delivered from my sister’s garden, will suffice for tonight.

Finished those awesome circle socks, pictures will follow at some point.  Oh, and stay tuned for a big announcement probably on Friday or Saturday.

I found the end of the black hole

Honestly, it went so far that I didn’t think I’d ever get done.  But, finally it did.  Then it was just 16 or so rounds of the green and that was it.  Doesn’t show on this picture, but there’s green at the bottom of the body.  I made it a little long, so it’ll fit him better and longer.  Right now, he has to sort of tuck/roll it in at the bottom.

Isn’t that look on his face just precious?  He really was thrilled to see it finally completed,and loved putting it on, and had a big grin on his face until I asked if I could take a picture.

He sort of doesn’t like getting his picture taken.  Case in point #2:

And #3:

Those were taken Sunday afternoon over at the Louisburg Cider Mill Festival.  On the other hand, here’s the other 2 boys hamming it up:

Patrick sitting on a pumpkin.  I’m thinking it might not have been too comfy.

Here he is doing a Saturday Night Fever channeling thing:

That’s a cider slushy he’s holding.  Very much yum.

And so there’s equal play, here’s 2 of Russ, one showing his personality a little better than the other.  See if you can spot it:

And:

That’s my boys.

Oh, almost forgot, back to the sweater that never ended, here’s a closer up picture of the cabling down the sleeve.

And a little picture of the Grandpa 60 slippers I whipped out for Patrick last week.  I crocheted these and while they turned out smaller than I thought, he still loved them.  Now Russ wants a new pair too.

Those fingerless mitts are coming right along too.  I’m already down to the ribbing on the wrist.  I decided to do these upside down from the directions.  I wasn’t sure if I had enough yarn leftover from the last pair, so I thought if I reversed the chart and did it that way, I could make the wrist part as long as I had yarn left.  I cast on the amount for the thumb and did a few rows of ribbing, then put those on a spare pair of needles and started the top of  the hand.  When it got to where I would have otherwise stopped doing the thumb, that’s where I added it on.  So, I did decreases for the thumb gusset instead of increasing.  It worked out very well and easier to figure out than I thought.  I still have no idea who I’m giving these too when they’re done.  I suppose it’ll come to me.

They look a little scrunched right now, but trust me,they look better on.