I’m Back

November 5, 2008 in Uncategorized | No comments

So, after a seven month unscheduled hiatus, I’m posting again. Y’all know the reasons for blog-breaks… busyness, forgetfulness, too much time spent on Ravelry, feeling private and not so chatty. So maybe the post should instead be about why I’m going to try to pick up the blog again.

To start with, this gift, that I want to show off to the bloggers:

shower-blanket1

It’s me and Christer, opening a baby blanket that was knit by many friends, and evidently a few strangers at the yarn shop as well. I

Yes, I said baby blanket.

shower-me-and-christer1

It’s no coincidence that the blog dropped off about the time I found out I was pregnant. I was feeling both tired and private. I’d been spending a lot more time talking about knitting at the shop where I cashier and teach. Summer was full of visits and friends, the school year has started with preparations and changes. But now that the little one is almost done, I’m finding myself drawn again to blogs–now maybe a bit more interested in the blogs that combine parenting and crafting. And I’m ready to jump back into this odd little record of my life and the things that make me stop and look off to the side and stray off the path. I’m guessing that the little one is going to be both a responsibility that I sometimes need to stray from, and a blessing that will guide me into new ways of straying.

So, anyone out there still willing to read along on the journey?

Punk Easter Bunny

March 5, 2008 in Punk Bunny | 3 comments

It’s all about the bunnies around here. I’m test knitting a bunny that I’ll tell you about soon (when it gets a face, so as not to scare Laurie). And I’m crocheting (yup, i’m hooking!) this punk bunny out of amigurumi by elisabeth doherty.

So cute. I’m using leftover Knitpicks Shine Sport, and I’m loving the colors. I had plans to make a whole army of bunnies for Easter, but i’m quickly running out of yarn–these take more than you’d think. And I’m running out of time, but that’s beside the point.

My favoritest part about this pattern is the explanation for why the bunny has a little scull on his t-shirt (you can see it on the book cover, just follow the book link.) The designer explains, “Really, he’s kind of timid and twitchy, like most rabbits. He wears this shirt hoping that people will leave him alone. If you were the new kid at the skateboard park, you might wear a shirt like this, too.” All this under a picture of a kid, at a skatepark, looking a little slouchy and wearing a t-shirt with a skull. Love it.

I’m back and forth between wanting to recreate the scull for the punk bunny look, or going with an Easter Egg to be festive. I’ve still got a bit of work to do before I decide.

OMG Puppies!

March 3, 2008 in Around Town | 2 comments

Um, yeah. That was kind of my reaction walking into target tonight and seeing this:

Also, did you know Target has groceries? I’d see the grocery aisle before, but I’d figured there was just some milk and toilet paper and wonder bread… stuff to get you through the night if you were needing to pick up just-one-thing. But they have fresh mozzarella, and organic whole wheat pasta, and a whole line of Archer Farms sauces. ‘Course, they didn’t have the lemon juice, which was the just-one-thing I was looking for. Still, I think I will have to do some real grocery shopping there sometime for variety.

I did, however, leave with plenty of candy for the jar at work. Hershey kisses with coconut, lemon and orange filling. We live in amazing times. Where the kisses come in different flavors every season.

I love target.

March is for Hats

March 2, 2008 in Around Town, March Hat | Comments closed

Thank goodness, y’all, we made it through February! And now that it’s March, I’m on a hat kick. At Joann’s we’re doing a hat drive, collecting handmade caps for chemotherapy patients. We had a kick-off morning on Saturday, and it was good fun seeing old students and good friends and new faces all in one place. And it’s kind of fun subverting the big-box feel of the store and bringing in some of the LYS ambiance, even if only for a few hours. They don’t have free tea, and I still won’t let my yarn bounce along on the floor while knitting (ew), but the company was great.

At Joann’s I was working on a simple cap with some of their yarn, and it’s almost finished now. (and i am adding anything labeled “boucle” to my list of yarns to avoid–painfully catchy to knit with) But at home I’m getting out the good stuff to make a more personal contribution to the hat drive. It will be soft, though, and the colors are nice. I’ll post a picture when it’s done.

One year ago this month my friend Deb passed away from Leukemia. We’d been talking for a while about making hats in our S&B group to remember her. And when I brought up the idea with some students and staff at Joann’s there was a lot of interest–sadly because so many of us have been through or known folks going through cancer and treatments. I usually get 2-3 students at Joann’s classes–but we had about 15 knitters saturday morning, and another dozen picked up patterns to make on their own. And because Deb played such a big role in getting me connected to other knitters here in Indiana, I’m especially happy that there was as much networking happening as knitting. Invitations to groups were floating around, notes on what guild meetings are like were shared, hopes that many would meet again at an upcoming meet-up at the library were voiced. Deb would have liked that mix of crafting and community.

Deb was an expert knitter, and she would have shuddered at the idea of wearing a cap made of fun fur. In her memory I’ve pulled out the good stuff from the stash–two balls of Noro Lily, a cotton/silk mix in a solid, jewel toned blue. I’m about 10 rows into Shedir–a beautiful pattern that Knitty put out in their breast cancer awareness issue a few years back. Oh man, this is slow, slow going. The pattern isn’t tough to remember, but it is little–the cables are all made of one stitch ribs. Still, it’s a hat, so even at a snail’s pace I should be able to finish it this month.

So, the totals so far:
Joann’s hats: 6
Katie hats in progress: 2
Katie hats finished: 0

Anyone else out there wanna make a hat?

Cables in Green

February 26, 2008 in Cabled Bag, Knitting (and Other Craftiness) | 3 comments

I’ve got a pretty picture, so I’m going to squeeze in a quick post while I’m waiting for the rice cooker to do its thing.

One cabled bag, one skein of… oh, shoot, what was it called? some sort of Icelandic wool. yummy, fuzzy stuff. Basically the bag is a cable sampler that we’ll be making in a lys class. Sew it up and add a quick handle and you’ve got a bag! I’ve never been a fan of swatches without function. Sweaters that don’t get worn, bags that don’t hold anything, hats that I never remember to wear, that I’m okay with.

Click, there goes the rice cooker. Time for dinner!

The Sad Fate of the Woodins

February 24, 2008 in Woodins | 2 comments

The moral of the story is, read the directions:

So the woodins felted happily–just a bit tighter, but stitches still intact. But their home fizzled on me. At first i thought it was because I overfelted–and I am a bit sad, after all the work I did making a tree-bark pattern in purls, that most of the texture is felted away. But the real problem, the tree-trunk turned completely flat (this tree is so flimsy you could wear it as a sweater), was a pre-felting mistake.

When the pattern says stuff, stuff. The tree was standing up okay on its own, and the 6 pages printed up from Knitty were shuffled all over the house, and I thought I knew what needed to be done to finish it off, and I just didn’t read the part about stuffing the tree. Now it’s sewn, and felted together, and i’m a bit unsure what needs to be done to fix it. The first step will be to try to cut open the edge and get some stuffing in… but i’m a bit worried that the outer and inner layers have felted together. hmmm.

Will keep you posted. Until then, the poor woodins are homeless.

My First Sweater

February 23, 2008 in Knitting (and Other Craftiness), Nothin' But A T-Shirt | Comments closed

One t-shirt, two weeks, it’s done!

Yeah, it still needs a good wash and block. Because the bottom hem rolls something awful right now. And because there is some dried cheeze wiz on it, from being worked on while the folks on the Seattle flight gave us our ad-in-a-box snack.

I reworked the collar about five times. Finally decided that the trick was to knit one less row than called for, and whip stitch it to the selvage of the body color. That makes the interior of the hem nearly two stitches shorter than the outside, and that seemed to help keep it from flaring out.

I wore it today at the shop, and after a wash it’ll be going to live there until the class. Anyone wanna learn how to knit a sweater?

Today was my second saturday at the shop, and it was all sorts of fun again. This time the daughter (about 10 yrs old?) of one of the owners was around, and she was fun to work with. We were looking through some magazines, criticizing some of the sweaters. She called my attention to one that was particularly hideous, and we laughed at it, and then she noticed the “my first sweater” title on top of the page. “Oh,” she said, “it’s not that bad if it is her first sweater.”

here’s hoping the “first sweaters” in my class will not elicit the same response.

Diving In

February 19, 2008 in Woodins | 1 comment

They’re about to jump!

Going against the directions, I finished eyeing, seaming, sewing and stuffing my woodins and their home before giving them a light felting. Oh, i hope that was a good idea. It just seemed to make more sense, and I like the way felting strengthens seams and joins and whatnot. I’ve heard stories about this Ella Ray Classic wool i’m using–it supposedly felts in an instant–and i want these lightly felted enough so that the seams don’t felt all wonky.

So, there’s a quick pictures of the little guys on the edge, ready to jump in, as proof that they were once cute, just in case such proof is needed. i’m off to check on their progress…

Updated to add: they finished their extra short trip just before i posted–and they don’t look a bit felted. so they’re going on another trip–this one with hot, instead of warm, water, and on low, instead of delicate. Wish ‘em luck!

Lighting a Fire

February 18, 2008 in On the Road | 1 comment

Y’know, February is over halfway over, and I am just now getting around to mentioning project spectrum. I love Lolly’s idea, I’ve always had fun playing along before, but this year I just can’t seem to get myself crafting in the proper colors. But i did catch a bit of firey orange this weekend.

Those are the flowers at my friend Sarah’s wedding. And here’s Sarah with Christer–they were good friends in college, housemates a few times and physics majors together. And somewhere in that friendship she managed to help introduce me and Christer so, yeah, we like her. :)

It was a fabulous party, held in a beautiful and simple hall on a beach. But i have no pictures to share of Sarah and her new wife, because the lighting, while dark and festive, was not liking my camera. I have a whole roll (i can still call a couple dozen pictures a “roll” even if it’s digital, right?) of backlit, blurry, red-eyed, shiny-bra pictures–and none of them does justice to what a good looking couple Sarah and Ash really are. So assuming that they send out some pictures sometime, and assuming that i ever get my butt in gear to make them a wedding quilt (yes, i’m making them a quilt and no, i haven’t started yet, and no, i don’t really know how to quilt) then i’ll share pictures of both together.

We stayed with another friend from college–the one who got this blanket/rug (the one halfway down the page) two years ago at her wedding. She just found out last week that the baby she is expecting this summer is actually two babies. Twins! So there was lots of talk of babies and plans and a bit of freaking out. But for me, a thousand miles away, I’m just excited that there’ll be double the knitting.

Flying out to Seattle and back in one weekend made for lots of knitting time. But today I am a bit sick of it all, and tired, what with the time changes and travel and being social. I’ve got about five projects that are all this-close to being finished, but i’m dragging my feet on the final details. Give me a few days to recover and I’ll try and post about them. Oh, and not a one of them has a spec of red or pink or orange in them.

Nothin’ to see Here

February 9, 2008 in Nothin' But A T-Shirt | 2 comments

So, I spent my day working at the new LYS! Yup, excited about that one. I’m signed up to teach a few classes there, and this week they asked if I’d like to work a few weekends so the owners could take some days off. Would I?

The shop was pretty busy, but i did get around to knitting about three rows on this:

Nothin’ But a T-shirt, soon to be a beginning sweater class at the shop. Knit in Gedifra Mayra. Fun stuff–90% cotton with a bit of synthetic somethingorother. Formed into a tiny i-cord, giving the cotton some stretchy. This shop is carrying some yarns i hadn’t heard of before–lots of Gedifra and Ella Ray. I’m liking them quite a bit.

So i got to talk yarn all day, and someone paid me for it, and I can’t imagine a better way to spend a Saturday. I’m really loving this shop, too–and I hope not just because they offered me a job. The store is light and bright–white and pink walls, pink amy butler prints covering the sofa and chairs, several areas set up for sitting and knitting and talking and learning. They’ve also done a good job of getting fun yarns in prices that fall between the more pricey store down the street and the chain stores. Did i mention that the Fort now has two yarn stores? We went from 1 to 0 to 2 in the past 6 months. And I think I’m kind of liking 2 better than 1, because it means we get more variety, both in yarns and atmosphere. Although my loyalty to the store that pays me is growing quickly.

And, when I was teaching earlier this week, I was excited to realize that I could tell my students to stop by the shop anytime during the week if they needed help. At classes I’ve taught elsewhere I’ve given out my e-mail and some pamphlets with illustrations, but neither is nearly as helpful to a beginner as 5 minutes with another knitter.

They offered to pay me in yarn or money. And i was very proud of myself to turn away the yarn. I think I need the money more than the yarn. Especially since I’ve got a t-shirt I need to finish before I think about any more purchases.