A Little Yarn On The Side

A badly finished project is still a finished project, right? The day started off well.  With my enthusiastic sidekick to cheer me on, I finished the snowflake runner which I am immensely pleased with.  I call it a table runner because I can't think of what else to call it.  It's to go here which is a shelf halfway up the stairs (the picture is looking down from the top.  Fully decorated, it looks like this now from the top--hoping not to give anyone vertigo and from the part-way up the stairs view.  I am REALLY pleased with how it looks--not to mention it is finished project NUMBER 8!!!! Then I decided to embroider a set of towels while I did some knitting, and towel number one turned out perfectly: I thought they'd be cute for the guest bath for spring.  Towel number two I'm not ready to talk about yet.  Let's just say it's done, and it will probably be used in the master bath because Andy will have the sense not to ask why I spelled...

In the future I'm thinking it would be a good idea to either A) combine all my button stash into ONE container, or B) remember that my button stash actually is in several containers.  Not to get all "organized" or anything, but this does seem somewhat logical..... All of that aside, I found buttons! And I think they are perfect.....aside from the fact that they're sort of pointy and catch a bit on the yarn but isn't cuteness more important?  Especially when I'm not the person who will have to button them.......? After swearing loudly about how long the BSJ was taking and how I was tired of working on it, last night when I was ready to cuddle up under the covers with a book I discovered--horror of horrors--that I didn't have anything to knit while reading! Now this might be a tragedy in my life at any time, but in a year when I'm trying to complete an insane number of projects, this was just an impossible situation.  So, after a brief check t...

I didn't get to work on the table runner today either... It seems they're taking turns now. So instead, I finished the BSJ..YAY!!!!! I'm thinking navy blue buttons would look fabulous...which of course I don't have in my stash.  And, just to spite the cats, I made a towel today as well: The stabilizer still needs to be washed off, but I love how it turned out.  Unfortunately, the coffee cup is embroidered with REALLY long satin stitch, so I need to see if I can change that.  Otherwise, it's not a great design for a towel because it won't hold up to many washings.  Now, if I had ever read the instruction manual that came with the software, I would probably know exactly how to do it--and would possibly even know how to check what it will do BEFORE stitching it out.  As it is......I'll be lucky to find the manual.  At any rate..... 7 down - 93 to go!!!!!!!

This weekend I wanted to ASTOUND you with 2 more finished projects.....which is why there were no blog entries.  I swear that the BSJ should be almost done.....but I've thought that for the last 2 days as well.  I do have one finished project to show you.  Remember this? Yah, I don't either, but I started it sometime this fall and I have been moving it around in the craft room ever since.  It is truly lucky to have survived this far, as I missed a step on the pattern and to fix it I had to rip out the zipper and do it over a second time!  It seems that my desire to finish 100 projects for the year has overridden my loathing of zippers and has saved this dress from the Bin Of Projects Which Shall Not Be Named.  Of course, I'm going to chalk it up to "personal growth" anyway.  Hey, my blog....my rules. Theo wanted nothing to do with the dress, but the next project, he is all over.  Literally.   When Theo is through with it, it will ...

There was sewing today!!!!!  Not that Theo cared--it was sunny today so he went out to find me a mouse--which was thankfully dead before I received it.  If I weren't a cat owner/staff member, dead animals in my house might freak me out.  As it is, it's more of a "Whoo hoo!  At least I don't have to catch it" sort of thing. Anyway, we can add 4 gift bags (which I'm counting as 2 projects because they don't feel like 4 projects and I'm not stupid enough to call them 1) to the "finished" tally: You've probably noticed there are only 3--the 4th had a tragic incident involving a cup of coffee, and has been rinsed and is hopefully drying safely in the bathroom (you never know with dry-clean-only fabrics).  I had intended to make lots more bags because I thought they would be really cute to put jars of jam in, but after wrestling with this very ravel-y fabric through 2 wine bags and 5 jam bags, I decided that making both the gift AND the gif...

So, remember that resolution of mine to NOT renew my knitting magazine subscriptions? I might have blown it.  Depending on technicalities. Today I subscribed to Piecework magazine, which technically I didn't "renew" because I've never subscribed to it before, though technically it is sort of a knitting magazine, so it depends which technicality we go with.  It feels like I've blown my resolution, so I think that's the one we're going with.  But maybe I can content myself with just this ONE magazine.  Sure, there's still the issue of finding a place to put the magazines, but there will only be 6, so maybe I can do it.  I have been interested in the history of knitting for a while, but the only book I found on it was boring & not actually much of what I was looking for.  This magazine hopefully is focused on the history and heritage of knitting, crochet, embroidery and other needlework crafts, which I thought sounds fascinating.  There do seem ...

It began with a sulk because I had errands to run instead of sewing then he decided to help me while I hung these which are wooden snowflakes that Andy made for me this year.  We have this huge, blank, curved wall just as you walk in the door, and now that the tree and the festive garlands are gone, it's big, white & boring, so I was looking for something to liven it up a bit.  Anyway, you know how when something is on a string and you push it away from you, it will come back?  So does Theo now, though he seems to think it was attacking him.  He ran down the stairs and took up refuge down next to the bottom of the stairs, but then when I lowered one of the snowflakes (which are suspended by fishing line), he seems to have thought the snowflake was attacking him, and spent the next hour hiding under the improvised "kitty tent" in our room. He was just getting over that, when I frightened him again by taking my blocking wires out of their tube--don't ask me ...