I am about to send my secret pal her first round of presents. First are 3 hanks of the Robles yarn from handpaintedyarn.com. Then at Michaels I found a bunch of different cards with knitting motifs on the front. Then I had a brilliant idea! Let me just tell you….I found a really fun set of republican elephant stitch markers about a year and a half ago. Because i am a republican I love them. My secret pal is the exact opposite of me in many, many ways. Politics being just one area. So I have had a bit of a challenge coming up with unique really fun gifts suited to her. I didn’t want to do the totally stock sp gifts so I decided to mimic my republican stitch markers with a set of democratic donkey stitch markers for her. Unfortunately I was not going to pay the $15 for the one set of 6 I found on Ebay that weren’t that cute. So I got creative! On ebay I did a search for anything jewelry or bead that was democrat donkey. THis is what I found
Yesterday it came in the mail & I made these with the beads
Aren’t they so cute? I hope she will love them as much as I love my elephants!
Here is the box put together
The box I also found at Michaels for a buck fitty! Not bad at all!
On the knitting side of things I have been jammin’!
I finished all the pieces for the camping sweater
Once the pieces were all blocked & thought I would just try to sew the hood together on the sewing machine & OMG it is amazing! For some reason sewing knit pieces together on the sewing machine has always been taboo in my mind. I guess I thought it made it too much like a store bought sweater. Well let me just tell you something! I will now sew whatever knit pieces I can with the sewing machine. Handfinishing is now only for smaller or bulkier items!
I do think it’s my new favorite thing! Unfortunately this sweater has so many other crazy finishing bits & pieces that I won’t have it finished for another day or two. There is all the picking up of stitches & making edgings around the hood, the front pockets and the front zipper edges. Once that is done & I can start actually sewing the pieces together & putting the zipper in the sewing machine will be a hummin’!
I also am one sleeve away from having the drop stitch cardigan out of the interweave fall 2005 finished out of chocolate bulky wool from handpaintedyarn.com. Once that is ready I will add it to the sewing machine pile to do the zipper, the rest of the seaming I will do by hand. The yarn is to bulky and thick & thin to be easily fed through the machine.
I also started 2 projects last night, the spiral blanket out of some gorgeous ice blue chenille and the Trellis sweater out of some rose pink cotton yarn for my newest niece, Sydney Sedgwick. I will be posting updates on those projects as well as the other thousand that are on needles at the moment! Hopefully there will be some completed projects here in the next couple of days. Whew! All that finishing makes me grit my teeth & get really annoyed! But it’s worth the headache when you get a gorgeous sweater out of it so I will just bare down & get it all done!
Don’t you love the thought that fall is around the corner & we get to wear all these wonderful creations? I do!