A Little Yarn On The Side

Really, how many times has that actually happened for me? Remember the October Project of the Month? Ta-da!!!!  A simple little blanket, and my first ever tied quilt because in general I don't really like tied quilts, but on the second-to-last day of the month, I can learn to be flexible. ..... Theo was so thrilled to be sewing again that I actually had to scoot him away from the machine a few times I will never understand how the cats can be positive that the vacuum cleaner equals certain death, but they are both completely unafraid of the noise of the sewing machine.  Personally, I've sustained more injuries from sewing than vacuuming......but that could have something to do with how often I do each one, come to think of it.  I finished the blanket early enough that I had time to finally finish the ribbing on the alpaca sweater. I thought I had taken pictures of my first attempts, but apparently my pride intervened.  I decided to change the neck of th...

My little sidekick is in deep disgrace this week. Now you may not be able to find it in the picture but there is a live bird hidden in the greenery.  This planter resides here which, being inside the house, is a rather unfortunate place to have a bird.   Especially when the bird isn't bright enough to notice the open door below, or to even notice the arctic air blast coming into the house through the open door.  Nope, it took a step ladder, a feather duster, two humans, and this   to catch the darn bird. Jjust in case you ever need to know this, covering the top does actually decrease the number of times a frightened bird will fling itself against a Rubbermade container while your spouse frantically looks for something large enough to slide under the container to carry the bird outside and away from the cats.  Not eliminate, but reduce.  The bird was able to fly away after Andy released in into the yard, though it may be suffering a little post-tr...

Planting the garlic in 32-degree temperatures before the snow came, and baking whole wheat bread.  And it turns out that one doesn't sufficiently warm you up after the other.  Go figure.  Tomorrow is Finishing Friday!  Whoo hoo!!!

You know, some days the commenters are funnier than I am!  :)

.....but there is a garden plot almost ready for the garlic and there's freshly baked zucchini bread.  I know--it doesn't help me much with the Double Dog Dare challenge, but on the other hand, knitting NEVER makes the house smell this good. 

The pirate costume pants required MORE buttons than the pattern said it would. I know, quite shocking, wasn't it?  Who would EVER have seen that coming? Since I am listening to Christmas music in spite of it still being October, so I have decided to be charitable.  Perhaps the folks at Simplicity have decided on some sort of new outreach program where they employ those who cannot read, or perhaps they are working with those suffering from drug addictions, which I could admire.  Of course, I might have saved the actual pattern-writing jobs for those NOT taking drugs, but that's just me.....

Be honest now.  Is there anyone who didn't see that one coming? This one was so predictable that even I saw it coming--and you know, that's saying something.  Last night when I was sewing on THE NUMBER OF BUTTONS THE PATTERN ACTUALLY SAID IT WOULD USE, I made sure to do a little spacing on the cuffs so that the new buttons--which would never match the old buttons--would make a design of sorts.  Of course, as it turns out, there were exactly two choices for buttons in gold and the right size, so I'm not even close to matching here, but I think it will be dark at the party anyway.  The old buttons and the new buttons If anyone asks, we're going for authenticity, because at the time that this sort of thing would have been worn, buttons would have been seriously unlikely to match anyway.  Fair enough, they wouldn't have been all shiny & gold either, but that's another story.  At any rate, I think they'll work.  And he who complains can make...

Andy's FINISHED pirate costume coat complete with the 28 buttons that the pattern envelope said it would need.  I'm off to the store tomorrow to track down the remaining 6 buttons that the coat actually requires.   What is it with designers???????????????

...but I am immensely proud of myself today. There, I've said it.  I know I will probably bring down the wrath of the sewing gods upon my boastful little head, but maybe they're not as vengeful as the knitting gods.  I'll burn a little summer cotton tonight in sacrifice to the just to be on the safe side.  In the meantime TA-DA! My first attempt at continuous quilting with the embroidery machine! Okay, to be fair, it wasn't an intentional attempt.  My intention was to do a few unconnected pieces of design on each side--basically enough to keep the batting from going crazy in the washing machine but nothing too "involved."  That was before I discovered this:  The design I had just embroidered onto the quilt that has taken THREE AND A HALF YEARS to make was only made for continuous design.  Not that there were any directions with the software--which I will point out is the only embroidery software I bought from Husqvarna (the company that ma...

....that lately a lot of my posts have been about knitting but not so much about MY knitting.  That would be because there has not so much been a lot of "my" knitting happening.  Granted, the dratted yoke pullover is finally done, and when we are back on speaking terms I will have Andy take a picture of us together in what I hope will be a new, warm, loving relationship.  Right now the best I can manage is to NOT give it a raspberry every time I pass it, but then again, I have never really been known for my maturity.... Having learned a few lessons (and a few new swear words) on the ribbed yoke pullover, I decided to do a little pinning and double-checking on the alpaca cardigan BEFORE sewing any seams and it's looking good, so when I get some knitting time, I'll be finishing up the second sleeve and MAYBE knocking off another WIP before the end of the month.  The first priority is Andy's pirate costume started two years ago and which my very patient husb...

*  Mr. Rogers would have had more than one sweater *  An "I Love Lucy" episode would have shown Lucy tied helplessly to a chair after her attempt to knit straight from an unwound hank of lace yarn. *  We would have seen Dumb Donald's face on "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" because his stocking cap would not have been the size of a garbage sack. *  On "Bewitched," Samantha could have twitched her nose and actually knit as fast as the rest of us only think we can. *  Pee Wee Herman might have been caught knitting in the movie theater, and might still be on the air......

As you may remember, the Double Dog Dare Challenge is to get down to 10 WIPS (which is sort of amazing when you think about it.  I mean, there are people who could get all the way down to NO WIPS, but to even get close to single digits is a challenge for me), and so far one has been frogged and three have been finished.  Theo is guarding the last one as it dries, just to make sure it's safe.   That puts me at 14 WIPS left--4 more.  OR, if I get really motivated, 5 more and I could have less than 10 WIPS, which would, of course, be amazing, astounding, and possibly a first for me.  A braver person would aspire to NO WIPS, but let's not get crazy here. And on the sewing front, I have started the October Project of the Month! It's just a simple flannel baby blanket, and now that the blocks are together, I think I might add one more row as it's a bit smaller than I think would be useful.  I mean, sure, babies are small but they grow at an astonishing rate...

"It was dreadful," says knitter, Toni Sutton, when asked about her recent foray into the WIP Wilderness.  "It had been a long and brutal battle already.  There were bodies everywhere. "The sweater was there in the distance--lurking.  I could see the results of my last failed effort--that woolly Victorian collar: "It was ghastly.  I mean, a sweater collar that can actually pick up satellite television?  Can you imagine the horror?" When asked, Ms. Sutton admits to some pretty unorthodox methods. "Several knitters had tried the traditional methods--smaller needles, changing the neckline--but the results still weren't good.  Keeping the pattern remotely intact just wasn't enough to control this WIP.  It was time for some alterations.  I took the cable down to a lopsided 5-stitch pattern, then switched one of the stitches to a purl on the third row from the end.  Very unusual, but nothing else would work." Still, even with all ...

Tomorrow is Finishing Friday.  It's me, that darned ribbed yoke sweater, and some audio books.  Someone is going to come out victorious.......

For some reason, when Hagrid pulled out knitting in the first Harry Potter book, it made me absurdly happy.  I don't know what he was knitting, or if he ever finished it, but it was just this little glimpse of a shared interest and it made me happy.  So, I'm thinking that maybe more of our literature could use a little knitting--you know, to make it more accessible....which of course led me to......  Romeo and Juliet :  The besotted Juliet knits her beloved a gorgeous sweater in an all-over cable pattern, which invokes the dreaded Boyfriend Sweater curse and Romeo immediately dumps her, and they both live on to marry others and live to ripe, old age. Gone With The Wind: When Rhett leaves Scarlett after not giving a damn, Scarlett remembers she still has her beloved Tara, which she converts into an alpaca farm and she makes a fortune selling Damn Yankee Yarn, which will later inspire a musical of a similar name. Wizard of Oz:  Dorothy doesn't end up with th...

The slip-stitching of the binding is going pretty slowly (though compared to the THREE AND A HALF YEARS that the rest has taken, it's pretty zippy), but at least Calisto is getting some use out of it as a yoga mat.

As most of you have probably noticed, America is in a bit of a turmoil right now.  If I were feeling like a rabble-rouser, I'm mention that this is generally what happens when a Democrat is president because the Republicans are sore losers & if they can't fry a man for lack of military service (which becomes a nonissue once there's a Republican president who has no military background) or whether or not he smoked pot in his life (and wouldn't it explain a lot if we discovered that Bush smoked pot WHILE in office?), then they go after him for us being in a war that his predecessor started.  BUT, I'm feeling all warm & fuzzy and bipartisan tonight, so I won't.  I will say that we are having some issues here in the good old USA, and if no one else is going to try to do anything about it, I will.  So, here it is, Toni's PLAN FOR PEACE:  * Starting tomorrow, for one month everyone in the country is to take up knitting.  They may discuss knitting, ask k...

*  Every group has its sadists.  In the knitting world, we call them "designers." *  There is no cat so old or so lazy that it won't unravel your lace knitting as soon as your back is turned. *  Knitting probably isn't the answer to every problem, no matter how much I think it must be. *  It's wrong to think badly of friends who choose to live in warm climates where knitted woolly items are completely useless. *  Next time I'm feeling just a little too cocky about my knitting, I will pull out that darned ribbed yoke pullover again. *  Learning to laugh about knitting is probably much healthier than shoving a problem sweater into the blender.....and less damaging to appliances. *  Being allergic to animals is probably actually a good thing.  It's the only thing keeping me from trying to keep an alpaca in the back yard. *  If you want your obsession with knitting to seem "normal," convert others. *  I will never be abl...

So remember when I had all those pictures of unfinished quilts? Yeah, I didn't exactly show you all of them.  This is a quilt I started as a gift for one of my bridesmaids.  As you might remember, Andy and I just celebrated our third wedding anniversary, so this one is nicely aged.  As am I, frankly.  Anyway, it needed one more row of quilting through the center, then it was time for.....  the binding.  Now, there are a lot of ways to do edging.  There's the one continuous strip--which looks nice and is clever, but I ended up with a seriously squished corner.  Then there's the cleverly-cut-enough-material-to-fold-over-for-the-binding method, which as it turns out requires a bit better concept of straight lines than I seem to have.  Then there's the cut 2 longer strips, two shorter strips, and sew them on one at a time approach, which is my normal choice.  I however, opted to forgo all of these and strike out on my own, creating a ...

Carol Burnett said "Comedy is tragedy plus time." One of these days, that ribbed yoke pullover is going to be REALLY funny......

...and it has reinforced my decision to cancel my subscription. Not that I'm criticizing them--I've been subscribing for a very long time and they have provided me with some pretty amazing sweaters.  It's just that since knitting has become "trendy" the patterns have become "trendy," and if I am going to spend a year or two (you never know here at WIP Central) working on a sweater, I want it to still be in style by the time I finish it. Provided that I ever do, of course.  So, I flipped through the magazine, noticed there isn't a single thing I will ever knit, and put it in the bookshelf in the sewing room.  Why not just throw it out?  I was raised by packrats.  It's true. My parents moved into their house when I was 4, and until last summer when their basement was flooded, there were still boxes that hadn't been unpacked since they moved it 30+ years before.  They kept everything .  Somewhere down there, my Ballerina Barbie whose face wa...

Not that the ribbed yoke sweater has exactly won , but it hasn't exactly lost either.  We have, for the moment, declared a truce and are ignoring each other's existence. However, I did have some crafting time this weekend and thought I might spend it with the Kimono Shawl but someone beat me to it.  And let's face it, I am never that cute while knitting, so I let Theo have it for the day and went digging in the WIP bin.  I started this sometime last year, and the body just needed a few inches on the body, which I finished with NO frogging, swearing, or re-editing of a pattern (which made a refreshing change) and I have started a sleeve!  It's a simple pattern and will make great portable knitting, so it is the current favorite project, but it's going to take a little while to finish, and I was in need of some instant gratification, so I finished a few more towels (Obviously, I'm loving this design), and cut out and embroidered some felt gift ba...

--and I am taking the coward's way out. Sort of. I was all set to do battle with the ribbed yoke pullover, but we are having some friends over for dinner tonight, and I didn't think receiving another ass-whooping by a bunch of superwash would put me in the best frame of mind for entertaining, so I have chosen a safer route today. Sewing a few seams on the pullover and a couple pattern repeats on the kimono shawl which recently celebrated it's second birthday without yet being finished. Of course, it isn't actually the oldest WIP--there's a shawl on size 0 needles that just turned 5, but that is a bit more understandable. I mean, size zero needles? I'll be finishing that one the day I file for Social Security...provided my eye sight is still good and knitting hasn't finally snapped whatever will be left of my brain after the ribbed yoke pullover....

How did that happen? So, um, about the September Project of the Month.... It's not so much "finished." More along the lines of "never started" if we want to be technical and everything . I did round up all the cardboard & empty toilet paper tubes to make it, and there was a point last week when I could have sat down to finish it, but then I realized that I don't currently need it for a gift, and by next Christmas all of the cardboard would be bent or crushed. So, feeling guilty and thinking I should finish SOMETHING in September--and it obviously wasn't the sweater-that-shall-not-be-named, I dug out the Christmas blankets I made earlier this year and thought I would put the names on them. To say Theo was excited to be sewing again would be a huge understatement. He was purring and purring and I didn't have the heart to move him, so I decided to embroider a few more gift towels. OK, fine. I decided to grab the fleece blankets then. If I had...