Late Night Knitting Finish…

Don’t you hate it when you lay down at night and your brain just won’t shut up so you can go to sleep?

Since that happened to me again last night I went ahead and got up because I knew I only had about a half dozen rows to finish on this cowl.

This is (again) a free pattern available thru Ravelry… it’s called Elis.  I was intrigued by it because of the Indian Cross Stitch.  It’s very easy and gives an interesting pattern.  I still need to block this – but the yarn is a Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca DK weight.

Here are the Morning Bells Shawl…

and Triplicity Shawl – all nice and blocked and ready to be mailed!

You know what time it is?  Time to make Felted Knit Eggs if you want to include them in baskets for loved ones this year!  I made some last year.

Before and after felting.

You knit them and stuff them and felt them in the washing machine and then you can dye the plain ones with Kool-aide!!

In the end I liked the Kool-aide knitted ones the best because the colors were just so brilliant! 

My local yarn shop is going to order some colored yarns and put together some kits for those that want to make colored eggs but don’t want to dye them.  I think they will be sweet and was glad that she liked the idea enough to order some yarn.

I’ll be linking up to Judy’s Patchwork Times for her weekly On The Needles post… go see what others are knitting this week!

And just a glimps at what my week has been like… Monday brought about 8 inches of HEAVY WET snow…

Not good for bushes…

But pretty good for kids… each age group comes out and climbs up this mountain of snow.  This is the view from my flat roof that needed to be shoveled off in anticipation of freezing rain coming the next day.

And speaking of freezing rain… here is Wednesday!

We did not loose power here but it’s been rough going for many many people here in PA.

I’ve got to ask y’all… do you see the face image in the ice in this picture?  I see a girl in the little icicle… do you?

On The Needles January 31st

Oh my… the end of the month… I’ll need to pull out “Knit the Sky” and get the month stitched up… I knitted thru the 11th thus far.

Today I finished up the Triplicity Shawl and it and the Morning Bells Shawl have been washed and are blocked and drying.

Above shows the three pattern sections prior to washing/blocking and below is the picot bind off.  I just gently smoothed everything out and choose to not try and pin all those picot ends out.

I finished the modified Susie Rogers Reading Mitts for my granddaughter.  They are some kinda sweet!  They will go in the mail tomorrow or Monday.

I decided to try and clean up some of this knitting mess around my chair this week.  Leftover yarns that I’ve finished with went upstairs and I purchased a package of sheet protectors to put all those silly patterns I’ve printed out from Ravelry.  I had planned to put them all in a binder… but I’ll need to either buy a bigger binder or a second binder because they are not all going to fit into the one I have out.

I am trying to decide what to work on next… I do have yarn already to make another Turbulence Cowl or I am interested in using some leftover yarn from the Morning Bells project to make this Elis Cowl which has an Indian-Cross-Stitch pattern in it.  Or I could pick up those socks sitting over there waiting for me. 

Decisions… Decisions… Decisions…

Check out what others are knitting this week!

Cob Farming…

I got in to Cob Farming about 3 years ago… quite by accident really.

You see I broke my knee… and thereby ‘fell’ into Cob Farming as a result of my rehab.

Not an occupation I had intended… it just sort of happened.

It does in some respect go hand in hand with Dust Cropping… not to be confused with Crop Dusting.

I have always sorta dabbled in Dust Cropping… I’ve actually admitted out loud that had my children been allergic to dust I would have indeed missed them.  I know… I’m a terrible mother!

Anyway a little Dust Cropping is easy to manage (i.e. teach your kids not to write in said Dust Crop) but once you cross over and become a Cob Farmer too… well things can get out of hand quite easily.

What are Cobs?  Well a friend many, many years ago introduced me to them whilst explaining that her husband had convinced her of their existence...  you know - the little invisible creatures called Cobs that are responsible for creating Cob Webs.  So there you have it… Cobs make Cob Webs and a lot of Cob Webs is considered Cob Farming…

Anyway – in depth vacuuming and dusting is considered the best method for keeping Cobs in check… but when vacuuming is not a big part of your rehab and then you get lazy just fall into a “quick lick and a promise style”… those little Cobs can take advantage.

So… with Vacuum and Duster in hand I spent my morning destroying Cob Farms all over my kitchen.  Why today you wonder?

The SUN was shining thru the kitchen window and as I stood there and admired the wonderful sight of sunshine… well you know the rest. 

Sunshine can lead to the complete (hopefully) destruction of Cobs.

And no there are no pictures to go along with this story… I might be dumb but I’m not stupid… you’ll never know if this is true or not… unless you visit… and then… well – don’t tell - OK?

PS:  I don’t want you to think that these Cobs have run amuck at my house for 3 years… that - is not the case.  I have whacked at them from time to time and my daughter completely painted my kitchen last year so all evidence of prior farms had been removed at that time… but they can be persistent critters.

Here’s My Knitting–January 24

January 24th… really already?  Goodness…

Anyhoo… I’m trying to finish up the Triplicity Shawl that I took a class for way back early fall-ish I believe.  I don’t have a fresh picture of the shawl but I do have a picture of this Yarn Bowl (holding the last ball of yarn).  I received this as a gift from a very sweet friend (Thank You Again!!)… and it makes me smile when I pull my yarn and I don’t have to chase it around the floor when it falls off my chair… which it always does… well - not anymore! 

I had to clean off the corner of the table so I could take a picture… how sad is that… I need to clean up my knitting mess before my husband makes a comment.  Too many leftover yarn tags, little bits of yarn, little balls of yarn, patterns to look at, books & magazines to plan over… it’s a mess!

The bowl is from Red Hot Pottery out of Sedona, AZ which has an Etsy Shop.

Lovely, Lovely Bowl…

Last night I started a new pair of the Susie Rogers Reading Mitts – I’m making them in the small size again but will be shortening them at both ends so that they will fit my granddaughter in SC.  She wants so bad to wear the ones I sent her mother… I think these will be fun for her.  There was only one skein of the multi yarn so I picked up the purple to use for the patterned rows at the top and bottom.

Go the Judy L’s blog Patchwork Times to see what others are knitting on this week!

The Sky is On The Needles 1-17

Yep I am Knitting The Sky!

I decided to use the Favorite Scarf Ever pattern rather than the plain garter stitch and so far I am happy with how it is going.  The pattern is easy to remember and you just need to be careful with the doubled lace weight yarn. Aren’t these colors lovely!

I finished but have yet to block the Morning Bells Shawl – blocking will happen this weekend.

 

You can see both sides of the shawl above – the left side with the ribs is the right side of the shawl.  Can’t wait to get it blocked and sent out to my daughter as I think she’ll love it.

I did pull out the Felted Clogs and hope to get the last one finished up this weekend and get them felted… you know before spring.  My notes from when I last worked on them was dated April 1st… so it’s time to get them done.  Here is a picture of the first one I finished in Mid-March.  I sure am hoping they felt up good because right now they look a lot like clown shoes… the sole measures 16 inches! 

Check out what others are knitting this week over at Judy L’s Patchwork Times blog.

My Sky Has Arrived

Last year whilst poking around out in the Internet I found a site – Leafcutter Designs - that offered a free pattern to “Knit The Sky”.

It sounded intriguing so I read thru the pattern, looked at the kit they offered and saved the link for future reference… one of those ‘one day’ kinda projects.  But as time passed it kept coming up in my brain… I went back and looked at everything a couple times.  I thought about buying my own yarn – but decided to not waste my time – the kit was a reasonable price so I made an executive decision and ordered it.

Since I didn’t really plan to sit and knit one single row each day – I’ve just been making a notation each day (since the first of January) of the colors I would use for that day.  I’ve programed my phone to remind me each day and I have modified an online calendar so that I can add a color code to each day.

And then my sky arrived…

OOOOoooooo… ain’t it pretty!

Tomorrow I’ll wind them into balls and then hopefully by Friday I’ll have a week or two knitted… unfortunately mostly greys and light blues… but tis the season!

Bye Bye Ghost Poo!

Got your attention didn’t I?  Let me ‘splain…

I received my Organic EVOO order from Jovial Foods on Friday.  When I opened the boxes this is what I found.

I’m sorry but I am just lame enough to be excited by a new product… a new packing material… I was intrigued…

I was fascinated… little folded and locked triangles!!  Please tell me they have a machine that folds and locks those ends together!

But then I realized that this new product might mean an end to Ghost Poo as a packing material.  I have called these ‘packing peanuts’ Ghost Poo for probably decades now… can’t remember where I first heard it – but it was dead on.  You might ask about the color variety pictured above… some white, some blue, some light green.  I assume it’s from ethnic diversity in the ghost population… don’t ya think?  LOL

Anyway here is my new oil from Jovial.  The bottle was still cold from shipping so the oil had solidified in the bottle.  I had pre-ordered my bottles last fall while they were in the process of harvesting and pressing.  I don’t know if you’ve seen the olive oil controversy in the press over the past year or so.  The Engineer and I decided to look for a source we felt we could trust was providing a good quality organic oil.

And that new packing material… did it’s job quite well.

Still On The Needles–Jan 10

I am almost finished with the Morning Bells Shawl for my daughter.  I am on the last row - of 1,100 something stitches… and then the bind off of those 1,100 something stitches.  I have to chuckle because when I mentioned this shawl in the beginning several folks commented that the rows took forever – they were right.  At the end of the shawl section I think you have nearly 400 stitches on the needles – with the increases every other row in the bell section you end up with the 1,100 something stitches.

I had picked up an extra ball of the yarn so maybe I’ll have enough to make some simple fingerless gloves to go with the shawl… we shall see.

When I’m done with this I think I will go back to some unfinished projects like the felted clogs – I’ve been thinking more and more about these now that it’s so chilly – time to finish them and put them to use.

To see what others are knitting… hop over to Judy L’s Patchwork Times.

A Techie Holiday

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with family and friends!

The Engineer and I took a road trip up to Massachusetts for Christmas.

We enjoyed our visit and had a very nice Christmas celebration. 

I must say that Santa was very good to me… I received a new iPhone 5s to replace my antique Blackberry Curve.  I say antique because in tech terms a phone that has been well used (and loved) for just a few days shy of 6 years is antique.  I have been perfectly content with that phone all these years but recently it has been showing it’s age.  The lights under the keyboard had begun to flicker on occasion, the camera stopped working a couple months ago and the roller ball has been temperamental more and more these days.

For months we’ve been discussing what to get for replacement phones – it’s a big decision because we don’t change phones often or easily.  Although we have loved this phone we have not been happy with what we’ve seen come out of Blackberry over the past couple years.  I knew that Apple usually introduces a new phone in the fall so we waited to see what new features the next generation of phones would bring.  We were quite happy to see the addition of a fingerprint scanner as part of the phones security.  We had also considered the Samsung Galaxy 4 but in the end  decided that they are larger than we wanted to handle.

I think we will be happy with the iPhones and expect to get many years of service out of them.  We added the LifeProof Nuud cases to protect Santa’s investment.  Our daughter in SC has used a Lifeproof Case on her phones for many years.  It has survived many a sandy trip to the beach, babies drooling on it, and toddlers dropping it.  I have no plans to hand my phone off to any kids but I won’t have to worry about touching it with wet hands while in the kitchen, taking it along while gardening or shoveling snow, and I can drop it and not worry.  The LifeProof case it is water, dirt, snow and shock proof.

My other Techie gift was a Fit-Bit Force fitness tracker.  I almost got myself a Flex earlier this summer but decided to wait and do more research and ask Santa for it.  I’m glad I waited as the Force seems to be a bit of an upgrade from the Flex.  This ought to help me out with my “Word” for the New Year… Move!

Last but not least is a new case for my laptop – it’s a knitting bag with a padded laptop sleeve!  Nifty!

I hope Santa was good to you this year!

To Resolve or Not… That is the Question

I don’t think I have ever met a resolution I could keep. 

I am consistently inconsistent… and I know that about me.  Over the years it has been my position that it didn’t make sense to set a goal that I know I am not going to meet?  I don’t need to set myself up for failure.

Recently I’ve seen several blog posts written about adopting one word for the new year.

One word to focus on… no guidelines, no restrictions, no must do list, no don’t do list.  Just one word… oh hell yeah I can do that!

So here it is…

Move

Not Move more

Not Move fast

Not Move everyday

Not even Move X number of times a week

Just Move… I can do that!