Category: Blog

Today I walked in on a huge battle between Rose and Fuzzy (our bunnies). Fur flying, rolling around, flinging eachother in the air. It was awful. I managed to get over my shock, yell at them & then separate Rose from Fuzzy’s back. Unfortunately Rose lost a tooth in the skirmish. Also unfortunately, Rose will have to go live somewhere else. He has never been the friendliest bunny but now he is downright agressive with all of us and Fuzzy. They have been bonded for over a year now & never had trouble like they have had the past few weeks. At first I thought it was possibly having a new bunny in the house but other than a short introduction they have not been with Charlie. I think Rose is just not happy. SO, our goal is to make him happy! He’ll take a trip to a happier place this evening after the kids get to say good bye to him. Here he is as a perfect baby bunny, January 2004!
Goodbye Rosevelt Rabbit!

 

I just finishe a pair of crochet slippers for Trevor. Using 2 strands of yarn held together, caron simply soft and Bernat denim, with a size K hook. I loosely based them off of a pattern from crochet central. I hate sewing so instead of making a separate instep to sew in, I just chained across like a maryjane then decreased around and sewed it shut. If you want more instructions just ask & I will email the details to you.

Stash busting is my goal for the week. I really want to finish as many things as I can using ‘extra’ yarn that I have. Finished projects will appear like magic!!

Tracy, the dear that she is, made me a new pair of slippers! Yay! The other 2 pair I have both wore holes in the big toe spots so we thought doubling the yarn on the bottoms would solve that problem. It did, I think, but it brought about a new problem; lack of felting. The double stranded bottom, of course, didn’t felt as much as the single strand top so I had to felt, felt, felt to get them to fit the length of my foot. But that brought about the problem of getting them onto my feet. The pattern casts off at the top opening where you insert your foot and it had felted so much it pinched my achilles once I got it on. So to relieve the pressure I snipped the back of the heel just a bit so that it would stretch to let my foot have some room. Perfect!! I do love them so much I haven’t worn anything since. No kidding. Okay that could have something to do with the fact that other than taking the kids to & from school (driving due to the cold and rain) I haven’t had to leave the house since Sunday. So here the new ones are! Using lambs pride worsted in 4 colors.

 

The computer/dsl modem went kaput on me Saturday morning so there would be no WWW activity for me! Instead I finished Tracy’s second trekkingxxl sock! Yay! Done!! I will let her do the honors of photographing them & posting pics.

I also used some handpaintedyarn bulky merino wool in verde esparanza (out of stock right now) to make the one skein scarf out of the new Happy Hooker book.

I had enough yarn left over that I decided to make myself a hat to match. It is a typical single crocheted beanie but I started the top with a bit of an open shell pattern.

 Then I moved to the single crochet for the main body of the hat. For the last row across the forehead I used the shell stitch in half double crochet, moving to double crochet around the back half of the hat. Then I worked back and forth for three more rows in shell stitch to make the back long flap.

I love how it comes down to my collar!

I did start the norsk sweater and I am working on the ribbing. I also realized that I had promised one of my sisters, Christi, that I would make a blanket for her living room. I sent her the yarn samples to choose from in January & then we both kind of forgot about it. So since we are seeing eachother in 2 weeks, I thought I would get on it & finish it so she can take it home with her. Using size 11 needles, super bulky cotton chenille in a brick red,I am making the pinwheel blanket pattern. It’s super simple and fast with such thick yarn! I have a picture but for some reason it won’t load, eventually I will get it up. Maybe after it is finished!

 

 

Okay, so the crazed cast on phase continues! I received my yarn from knitpicks to start the norsk sweater. what I am so retarded and didn’t notice was the fact that the merino style yarn and the merino dye your own yarn have different gauges. So I had to totally finagle my way through the swatching last night to make the 2 yarns work together. It was a simple enough solution. By doubling the dye your own merino (the cream, main color) it came out to match gauge exactly! So today I will cast on for that beauty!

I am allowed to cast on because here is the finished back of the Brocade, unblocked, loose/tight floats and all.

I can’t say that I am overly pleased with how the intarsia turned out. I hurried through some sections, tried different float wraps on other sections. Finally about 1/3 of the way through I had the yarn & pattern all figured out so the rest went well. Not too much puckering that is irreparable. I have cast on the front & the ribbing as well as a few rows of the pattern are done. I will work on it slowly while working on other projects, namely the norsk sweater.

I can’t make it to the Java Station knitting group tonight. George has his manly get together night. They meet the last Thursday of every month so I will be missing that one night. Lame! But those weeks I am planning to go to the Mojo Coffee group on Tuesday nights. Melissa, Suzanne & I crashed their group this week & it was fun to meet other knitters/spinners/crocheters. There were only 6 of them meeting & I think we overwhelmed them just a bit with our loud talkiness. Random coincidence (which I don’t really believe in), the people that started the group, Molly and her husband Josh, live 3 houses down from me & we had no idea! Funny, odd and rather entertaining. We spent a good bit of time going over the neighborhood gossip. Just goes to show you how involved I am in the neighborhood, we have been here years, they have been here about a year and we had never met or just bumped into each other. We didn’t even recognize eachother! Kind of sad but hey that is just the way life is nowadays. At least here in California for the most part. It is nice to meet one more neighbor though, even if it’s at a completely unrelated event like a knitting group.

It’s now noon, I haven’t done my apad yet and I need to get some cleaning done. So I suppose this is goodbye for now. Hope you all have a great night at knitting & I will see you all next week!