Show & Tell

Look what I made!

Life's been a little crazy lately, so I took a break from reality and played with yarn and dye all day. I've been experimenting and finally came up with a technique I like. I took some leftover aran weight wool and some fingering weight merino wool that I had dyed previously solid colors and I overdyed them with 2 shades each and created this effect.

I love them both and just knitted up this test swatch with a few different stitches to make sure I didn't end up with some crazy splotches of pooling. So far so good.

My big knitting lessons of the week....give me some natural fibers and dyes and I'm like a pig in mud. Happy, Happy! Ask me to do some lace knitting and you'll find me later in a puddle of tears and knotted yarn.

Dear Santa,
If you're reading this, I'd like 2 bags of Henry's Attic Andromeda from Discount Yarns that I can dye myself and knit up a lovely Clapotis. (I prefer to see myself as not so much a knitting lemming, but rather a woman who knows a good thing when she sees it.) I promise I'll be a very good girl for the rest of the year.
Love,
Me

Star Crossed Lovers

You know how sometimes you see a pattern and think, "That's pretty cute and I have that yarn in my stash. Sure, I'll cast on."
and then sometimes you see a pattern and your little knitter's heart starts to race and you HAVE to make it? That's what happened to me when I stumbled across this shawl pattern from Karabella in an old Patternworks catalog. After picking myself up off the floor I read on to find that it's actually a crochet pattern and I haven't crocheted, with the exception of some decorative edging, for over a decade.

No problem. It's like riding a bike, right?

Then I saw the suggested yarn was Karabella LW Supercashmere which costs roughly an arm and a leg.

No problem. I have some heathered lace weight super soft alpaca from Knit Picks that would probably work.

Then I tried to order the pattern from the Patternworks site only to find they no longer carry it.

No problem. A quick Google search and I tracked it down at Knit Pixie.

Now I will sit by my window everyday and wait for the mail man with my crochet hook in one hand and a ball of lace weight alpaca in the other, because although the odds are clearly against us, with God as my witness, I will do whatever I need to do to make this work and we will live happily ever after.

Li'l Miss Crumpet

I've been wrapping up a flourish of finishing. Here's the completed Crumpets babydoll top in KnitPicks' Shine, green apple. Doesn't she look sweet & adorable. You should know I had to delay this post to call Poison Control because I found my little darling eating craft glitter shortly after this picture was taken. This is the same child who had to go to the ER a few weeks ago when she shoved plastic beads up her nose. (If you ever need to know how to extract beads from the nose of a toddler just drop me a line. I can spare you a trip.) Not content with just sticking one up there, she managed to insert 3 before she realized they weren't at all comfortable. The next day I also discovered that she had eaten 2. I'll spare you the details as to how I know this, but let's just say it came out alright in the end.

Awww...I Think She Takes After Me

Here are my completed baby gifts. Now let's just hope the ultrasound tech was correct and it's a girl. I tried to make everything big enough so it'll fit in the cooler weather and I certainly hope for the expectant mother's sake she's not born with a head big enough to wear that hat home from the hospital. Ouch!

The hat is Miss Dashwood from Knitty. I used cream colored Andean Silk from KnitPicks. The Mittens are from Zoe Mellor's Nursery Knits, the socks are the ruffle rib Better Than Booties socks from Interweave (PDF file) and all of those were done with KnitPicks Sock Memories in Paperdoll.