Found It!!!!

Found my digital camera, after tearing apart the living room. It was in one of my 30000 knitting bags. Anyway, my birthday was this past Thursday, and lovely Gina sent me these - I promised her they were blog-worthy, and so they are!!

I came home late that night, and the FTS box was sitting on the front steps. It was a great way to end what had been a crappy day. Daisies are my favorite flower, in case you weren't aware!!

She also included some Maxine refrigerator magnets - very cute.

The daisies have opened up beautifully, and are enjoying a few more days on the bay window. It's too bad cut flowers don't last longer.

Thanks, Miss G!

Cut Off at the Knees!!!

No, I don't need a handicapped plate - although they do come in handy at Christmas. I can't find my freakin digital camera! It's here somewhere. I think Abby took it so I wouldn't keep taking pics of her and Pud. So here are some older ones anyway.


So I have a few projects on the needle, including two Jaywalkers - one using Opal Petticoat, and the other using Gina's watermelon sock yarn. Both are coming along - I just started the heel flap on the Opal sock last night. Or maybe it was this morning - haven't been sleeping so well. But I can't PROVE it cuz the frigging camera is no where to be found.

Also still working on my aunt's birthday album. Will probably finish it up at Melissa's Creative Memories OctoberFest next month to be able to give it to Joyce. But can I show you that? Noooooo!

Is it Hot in Here?

Yes, here it is, my long-intended post about the famous Cheetos sweater from Hell. This has been on the needles for over a year now - luckily the recipient is done growing, I think / hope. So this blog entry is for you, dear Jess. Read on, lucky readers, and learn the story of the shrug.

This is Jess daSilva, by the way - she just graduated from RISD, and was a phenom on the Providence Roller Derby circuit. When she comes back from Brazil next spring, she will go back to the team. Her game name is daSilva Bullet. Freakin beautiful, or WHAT???

I picked what looked like a simple pattern from the KnitPicks catalog, the Bolero shrug, to make for her. I figured - hey - I have been knitting for a WHOLE YEAR - of COURSE I can make the leap to a sweater. And she's small, so it would go quick - right? What I didn't remember is that I hadn't produced much more than partially finished hats and a few scarves. It sucks to work full time plus and try to learn a skill that, for me anyways, takes some concentration and patience. I am not spatially adept - can't just look at a pattern and see what the results will be. And learning new stitches? HA! At LEAST three demos from increasingly impatient expert knitting buddies.

But I digress. So I sent Jess an email with the KnitPicks Shine yarn URL, which they recommended to make the shrug with, and asked her to pick a color. She chose, of all things, the Apricot. What a surprise - this girl has gorgeous coloring that would go with vomit-color. But Apricot? What about that beautiful Cherry? But whatever she wants....! I'll tell you though, the color gives me hot flashes whenever I work with it. Apricot schmapricot - it's the color of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, or Cheetos.

The knitting went along very well - I learned new skills, like increases and decreases, that I hadn't used before. I could see it taking shape, and the yarn, color aside, is sooooo soft. Try Shine sport weight. It is 60% Pima Cotton, 40% Modal - I don't have a clue what that is. But the yarn is so easy to work with.

And then the leaf edgings, the final pieces. The right side came along, after about a dozen trips to the frog pond until I understood the pattern. But the left edging stumped me. No matter how many times I read the pattern, it seemed like what should be a 10 stitch row decreased to a 9 stitch row after the first row - definitely not the same as the right edge. Well, after sending emails to KnitPicks and then learning the very weird and uncomfortable purlwise yarnover as first stitch, voila. The edging is finally done.

So now I get to assemble. Did I say yet that the mattress stitch is boring and frustrating? Not liking it. And I may have to rip a whole side seam out and start over because the pieces aren't lining up. But this think is almost done - I can smell success.

Jess emailed me a week or so ago and hinted that she would be pleased to receive the finished shrug while she is still in Brazil. She added that the girls down there often wear shrugs like that with nothing underneath them. Yeah, right - like that will make me run to the post office! I've known the kid since she was 5! She'll get the sweater when she comes home in March!!!

(Project pictures are coming - bear with me!!)

Booga-Mania 2006

Hey - I just realized we are in a month that ends with an R. You know what that means? It means that Christmas is coming. You know what that means? It means I promise myself that I will try to make as many awesome gifts as possible for the people in my life - and then fail to achieve anything close to that. Two years ago I promised my self I would knit cute little wrist warmers for all the folks I supervised at work - because it can get mighty cold in the winter in our office. They are still waiting. If I wait long enough, maybe turnover will take care of the issue. Sigh.

I promised last year to make Booga Bags. I mean, how easy can it get? Hell, I can knit in the round in traffic, and make i-cord in my sleep. So how many did I make? One - and didn't even felt it. It's the multi-colored one above, in Kureyon Karaoke .

So today was a mizzable rainy day, and time to make my empty, futile promises. But due to the weather and my husband's rare lack of interest in annoying the shit out of me all day (he even took a nap), I even got some work done. I finished one Booga, minus the i-cord, and started a second.

This one is ready to felt. The bottom is a bulky cranberry - the remains of the yarn I used to make the scarf for my husband that is displayed in a previous blog. The white and green are Cascade 220. I'm hoping the thicker cranberry will make a sturdy base for the bag.

The thing I like most about the Booga Bag idea is that after you make one, you really don't even need the pattern. You can improvise to make smaller, or larger bags, and try different strandings and patterns as you knit in the round - which goes anywhere. It's brainless, and so unless I am chewing gum, I have a fighting chance of not screwing it up. No real need to check gauge, no real need to even measure. I figger what ever size comes out of the washing machine will be just fine.


This is the beginning of bag number two. I crocheted (I hear GASPs from the knitting snobs, but bear with me...) the bottom to have a round base - the rectangles are getting boring. This is Lopi evergreen, which I picked up in a quickie visit to Patternworks yesterday with my sister-in-law, the lovely Anita.

She had never been there - it was fun to see her have a little yarn-stiffy as she wandered around the store. But she didn't buy anything. How sick is that? I had to raid the sales bins, and still in a Booga frame of mind, had to pick up some Lopi. Yes, I have Karaoke at home. And butt loads of Cascade. So what.

Anyway, this bag is now in its knit phase.

I am alternating with Lopi gray green, first in a stripe, and now have moved on to a 5 stitch checker pattern. Somehow I managed to come out exactly even on the repeats, without even counting the stitches first. That will NEVER happen again. I don't deserve such serendipity twice.

So, back to Booga. Next posting will be all about the Cheetos sweater from hell.