Merry Christmas! Happy Yule!

We decided to go small with our tree this year. It's just the 2 of us but we still wanted to deck the halls, so it's a living potted 2 and a half foot Stone Pine tree that will get planted out back if it survives being indoors this long :) It's actually a pretty little tree and I'm glad we did it. There's just something about colored lights on a fresh pine tree that soothes the soul.

And we got alot of our decorations out of storage in California last summer so we had to put out some of our Christmas Bear and Stocking collection. This isn't all of them, but it gives you an idea. E.J. put the shelf up with the lighted garland over the window and it's perfect to display them. Now he just needs to put up a few more shelves so we can do the same around the whole living room. It feels very festive and decked out now :)

Merry Christmas!

Back to Knitting

Well, I've been neglecting my blog so I thought I had better post something, anything :) I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'm still waiting for my brother to send me some pictures of the holiday my family shared at his house. I wasn't up to going anywhere, so I bought all the fixings that morning and cooked up a storm. It was wonderful. I discovered that if I add a little milk and honey cocktail to my pain medication, just a little, I can do anything LOL!!! Only a one day solution though, the hangover pretty much wiped out the urge to try that again :)

Let's see, I've disassembled (remember Short Circuit? No disassemble Johnny 5!) the hoodie I was knitting for Alex. It's just plain ugly, but I think if I make the base color the Navy and maybe add a couple of stripes of the ombre, it will be all right. I've decided that I just don't like the really thick super chunky yarns for garments. This yarn is the Bernat Softee Chunky and it's super soft and a lovely yarn, but the stitches are just too big. They aren't so pronounced in the dark color so I think I'll be able to live with it. These yarns would make good hats and scarves and afghans, but for my taste, that's about it.

We finally got our cold weather, had to start heating the house the weekend after Thanksgiving, and my hands freeze at the computer so I knit up a pair of fingerless mitts. I love this wool, it's something I picked up at a thrift store and it's very nice 100% wool. Too scratchy for a sweater though, so I'm going to see how it felts. I ended up with 10 balls of it and I think it might make a nice purse or felted clog slippers. Hmmm... my daughter's favorite color is purple :)

I'm working on my Christmas list. As usual, procrastinating till the last minute. I did get a few things done at the end of summer, but I still have a ways to go and I don't want to give anything away just in case someone in my family reads my blog. Fat Chance! I think I'm one of those out of site out of mind people. Oh well, I love me and I love what I do and so does my husband :)

I've also started a new Dred hat for E.J. He's misplaced the one I made last year, it's around this place somewhere, but I think I can knit one up easier than finding the old one.

Hooded Baby Bath Towel & Dish Cloths

I still haven't fixed my poor old camera so I can't get a good picture with the towel opened up, but these should at least give you the idea, it measures out to about 32 inches long by 27 inches wide with a 10 inch hood. It's folded up from the bottom to the neck of the teddy bear and the sides wrapped around.

There was some discussion on one of the email groups about the colors and how they hold up with use for dish rags. Here's one I pulled out of the drawer that was hand knit about 5 years ago. It gets used all the time and it's really faded out, but still has color :) I imagine that the softer colored cottons, like light pink or pale pastel type colors would bleach out to beige, I haven't used those yet. As you can see, I don't like to waste yarn, when it's functional stuff for me to use, I use up my scraps. Saves money and works prefectly fine, like my scrap bed blankets too :) See what happens when you have a problem with throwing anything away? I'm sicker than I thought LOL!!!

These are a couple of shots of my Thanksgiving/Fall dish cloths. When I saw the yarn, I thought it was awful, but I actually like it all done up. Here's the link to the pattern

http://clarissepatterns.blogspot.com/2006/12/my-favorite-dish-cloth-pattern.html

and this is the more ribbed style tuck in the Christmas colors :)

More Felted Clogs

This pair was made for E.J. He loves the wild colors, and as you can see, Stimpy really really loves all things felted :) We're going to do some re-shaping on the one, it didn't felt evenly and the 2 don't match very well. The bad thing is that I knew they were a little off and decided to see what would happen if I felted them anyway. Now I know :)

Our vacation for this summer

http://clarissecamp2007.blogspot.com/ will take you to the summary and photo's of our vacation :) It was a perfect time, even if I got a little moody because of my inability to do the things that I love like hiking down to go swimming at the natural water slides at Candy Rock, or dancing at the outdoor music festival in downtown Arnold, or walk the arts and crafts booths at the festival. I suppose I didn't make the best first impression for the new additions to the family either, but oh well. It is what it is and as long as I had my knitting, I was a really "happy camper" :)

New Kitten and New Kitten Bed

E.J. decided since we were adding to the family, he should get to pick one out too so he called me up from a clients home and asked me to come get Cocoa Bean. Yes, he's a male, born near the end of June, and we only wanted females this time around, but he's soo cute and his color is really unusual. It's a brownish smoke grey, but he's tuxedo marked. Stimpy loves him, she has someone a little smaller than her to play with, Xena has just about disowned us. She was willing to tolerate Stimpy, but now she has no patience for either of them. Xena chases the babies out of our bedroom and she rules the back half of the house, the kittens run the living room and kitchen area. I guess a second kitten was more than she could handle, but we're attached to the new kids already so she is going to have to learn how to deal with it. Silly girl, she really wants to play with them too. She'll start to, then remember that she is jealous and smak them upside the head and run down the hall. Oh well, I hope she gets over it soon.
The final pattern for the felted kitty bed. There are so many things I will be using this technique to make. I'll put up the pattern for it in a couple of weeks, I still want to refine a few things and it's kind of tricky to put what I did into words. But it's definitely easy to do and makes the bowl shape I was after. **UPDATE** I've posted the pattern. Here's the link http://clarissepatterns.blogspot.com/

The pink and red and blue was a short row experiment that looked like it would make the bowl shape, but when I washed it to felt the yarn, it laid flat and made a felted pad. It's actually kind of fun and can be used for several different things. A hot pad, a little throw rug, a chair pad, but Stimpy likes to sleep on it, so it's hers, but it's a good thing she likes to share cuz Cocoa Bean seems to have adopted it too :)

It's a Hit!

Even 2 sizes too big, it's a hit! Stimpy, the new kitten, liked it first. Xena was interested but this yarn, even though it's been washed 5 times, still has a slight musky ram odor and she wasn't sure she liked it. But I got up from my nap, and there they were. I guess Xena booted Stimpy out, but she didn't go very far away. Xena just decided the other day that I could keep Stimpy, they started playing together and this is the first time they've slept this close together.) Nothing nicer than when the kids are getting along :)

Felted Kitty Bed

I came across this website http://wendyknits.net/knit/kittybed.htm a while back and last night decided to figure out how to make the kitty bed on my bulky machine. This is what my first attempt turned out like.It's too big and poofy, but my technique idea is sound and will work which makes me very happy. Xena is intersted already and it's still wet.

It's sitting on a small 1 bushel ($1 store) laundry basket. I'm going to wash it a couple of more times. I used some old spun in the grease homespun I bought years ago (really pretty icky) and it's taking a bit to felt it up. This is after 2 full wash cycles in the washing machine. The pink furry stuff is Boa eyelash yarn.

Now, what I did was, I cast on 40 stitches, the next attempt will be using 30 stitches and I used the round baby blanket technique. After grafting it together, I cast on 10 stitches and used the SAYG method to connect the round section as I knit the side band. I skipped every other bar to close it up, but it made it a tad too gathered and poofy so I think the next one will be done in a alternate method of like: pick up every bar but skip the third bar. I'm hoping that will make it more of a straight up side than a gathered kind of almost beret looking pouch. Say! That might not be a bad tote bag/purse! Hmmm.... the gears are smoking now LOL!!!

Spring Reggae Hat

E.J. had asked me to make him a cotton dred hat for summer.
I'd been putting it off, but I finally designed a pattern and this is how it turned out.

The yarn had too much pink and purple in it for him though, so he wasn't gonna wear it. In the photo's, what looks orange is really hot pink LOL!! But the hat turned out like I wanted and it is now my prototype and I used one of my Christmas bears for my model :)
I guess he changed his mind though. He came walking through the door today and I was able to snap this shot of him wearing the hat.
He still thinks it has too much pink, but it does do what he wants, so I'll be making a new one, with more "macho" colors for him :) I'm also going to experiment with a lighter weight cotton. This one was done with Peaches and Cream and it's a tad heavier than what I want. I'll be looking for some sport weight cotton, maybe Aunt Lydia's Denim? in white and tie dyed? He'd be thrilled, as long as I don't use pink :)

Oh, it's hand knit, but I think I can adapt it for the machine and use one of the mesh type punch cards, then do the decreases and bill by hand and seam up the back. I'll be sure to post what I come up with. It's gonna be alot easier now that I have my basic design down.

One Panel Afghan from Super LK100

Lion Brand Suede One Panel Afghan/Bed Cover

This is the maiden project for my doubled up Super LK100 knitting machine. A bunch of us were able to snag the Lion Brand Suede yarn when it was .99 a skein at the .99 Stores around the states and I purposely bought another LK100 so I could put the 2 machines together (see how it was done here ) and knit up this luscious chenille yarn as a single panel afghan. In other words all in one piece instead of having to knit sections that need to be assembled because of machine length restrictions. It's laid out on a full size bed, and as you can see, it turned out to be almost a bed spread, if I'd have made it a little bit longer it would be the same size as a comforter. This was using all 160 needles on the combined machine , knit at tension 9.

A closeup of the crochet ends. I just did a single crochet around the whole blanket, this yarn doesn't curl much at all and the single crochet with a size K crochet hook did the job, but I wanted it a bit prettier so I did 3 rows of shell stitches on each end while leaving the sides plain. I like the look and feel of it. Oh, your eyes aren't buggy, there are stripes. Since this was an experiment I didn't want to use up all I had of one particular color so I alternated one skein Spice and one skein of Garnet. A weird color combination but it goes with brown leather, which is what my new sofa will be :)

This is the piece while it was still on the machine. This yarn is marvelous and super soft and cuddly. I will be making more of these. The texture of the yarn is sufficient for interest so no pattern is really necessary for a very nice item.

New Felting Projects

I just purchased this yarn from The Yarntreehouse on Ebay, these are their photos, it came in the mail yesterday and I didn't want to waste my batteries taking a new photo when these represent it perfectly. It's not as soft as merino wool, it's got about the same texture as Knit Picks, Wool of the Andes so I anticipate it felting up very nicely.

This is how the wool is supposed to knit up and I think it's soooo pretty. I can't wait to see how it's going to look as a felted bag! and a felted hat! Wouldn't those colors brighten up a dreary winter day! It's like rainbow sherbet :)

This is a picture of my first felted bag. I was warned that this felting thing could become addictive and it is :)

The Flower Beds

I don't think I'll ever understand this, we moved to the desert and E.J. has decided he needs to turn our yard into Hawaii :) As you can see, Augie doesn't get it either and he thinks it's his personal little hole digging, green eating, shangrilah.
E.J. was told that bulbs wouldn't grow here, so of course, he planted all kinds of bulbs :) and of course, they were all wrong. The day lilies hadn't opened up yet for the picture but the glads are blooming all around the yard. I thought the wind would break the stalks, but so far they are going like gang busters.
and get aload of these! I just love the orange ones, they are perfect and just beautiful. The snapdragons behind them were throw aways from the nursery last year. Guess they decided to tough it out too. I'll get some more shots of the other areas of the yard later, it's really hard to get anything descent because I still haven't taken my camera to the shop to fix the focus on it. It's only been a year and a half since Alex and I dropped it..... Sheesh, shame on me. I just can't seem to let go of it long enough to send it off.

Lace Curtains

Well, I got them knitted up, blocked and Viola! I'm still not done. This darned acrylic yarn just refuses to cooperate, my choices are either to kill it or add some kind of fancy edges to try and tame the curl. Other than that, I'm really rather pleased with them. I knit them on my Toyota KS858, I just love the way that machine handles the lace knitting and I'll be doing lots more of it.

The yarn is a 2/24 acrylic, low fuzzing which is ok for curtains. It would actually make a nice lacy baby afghan or a lacy shawl.

And here is the final product. I killed them a little bit with a steam iron and some light starch. I am happy with them now and will let them brighten up my little knitting room. Huh Oh! There's an uncovered window on the opposite wall.... here we go again :)

Didn't Shrink!

While I was in California this past winter, I knitted up a pair of the Pocketbook Slippers with Knit Picks Wool of the Andes. I figured I would just hand wash them since this was my felting yarn for clog slippers. The pattern http://www.knitwits-heaven.com/pocket_book_slippers.htm was a super quick knit and there is a machine version out there too, I just can't seem to find it at the moment.

Anyway, I accidently washed them today, warm water cold rinse and guess what? They didn't felt! They didn't shrink either, they came out just fine! Yeah! By the way, these little slippers fold up into each other and take up no space at all so I've been carrying them around in my purse (haha look like a pocketbook, fit in a pocketbook how very clever) because several of my friends and family don't allow shoes on their carpets. These are very cute and comfortable too and I just noticed that the pattern site has a toddler version. I'm thinking if I add a couple of stitches I could make a pair that will fit my granddaughter too, they look so much like little mary janes.

What I've been up to lately

Hi everyone, I thought I'd let you know that I've been sewing for my granddaughter and my hubby, I put up a few pictures of some nightgowns and one of the dresses on my sewing page if you want to see.

So, the UFO's that I'm currently in the middle of are:

2 more dresses for Trinity,
1 more pair of flannel pj bottoms for E.J.,
developing a hand knit summer cotton hat for E.J.,
another pair of felted clog slippers,
the lace curtain panels,
a hand knit Barbie coat and a couple more little tops for Barbie,
a felted hat (just have the swatch knit, will felt it to see if this yarn will work),
I've also made a couple of passes at knitting socks on the flatbed with ribber, no luck yet but I won't give up,
and I now have some mylars to see if that part of my electronic scanner box works on my White 1602 so want to get to that today too.

So, all in all, I'm still a busy little girl and I think I have enough on the table to actually stop starting and start finishing :) The last lace panel just got cast off the machine so I'll be blocking them and sewing the rod pocket and hanging them up soon. I'll be sure to post pictures when they are hanging merrily in my knitting room window. I do love making the lace!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The wearin' o' the green, only thing missing is the Guiness. I think instead of braids on this one, I might try the cut and sew (sew and cut) method we've been chatting about on our email group and make it a snug fitting cap instead. I machine sewed the back seam and it was really easy to do, but then, of all the holiday's, a leprechaun should have something a little silly like braids, well, easter bunnies too. Yup, another experiment coming up :)

On the KS858 today

This is how far I got last night so these shots are from day one :) I'm using a very pale yellow 100% Acrylic 2/24 yarn. I thought I'd go through my learning phase with this then I'll try cotton for my kitchen curtains.
I received my new lace carriage so decided to make some lace panel curtains for my knitting room. The windows are small in there so I'm hoping I'll be able to finish them this week. Right! I also have to finish up E.J.'s St. Patty's Day hat so he can wear it for the holiday too. Plenty to get done for sure. On the lace, I thought I had made a mistake but what looks like a missed line is just a crease in the cardboard that I put behind it so you could see the pattern and if it is a mistake, too bad!!! I'm not ripping it out now LOL!!!

Simul-NOT!

This is where I started. I was very optimistic since one big hole seamed like an easy adjustment to fix....

and this is where I've stopped...

Don't get me wrong, I still absolutely love my Toyota machines, the pros definitely outweigh the cons, I just had such high hopes for this particular function of it and it hasn't gone my way, yet. Yes, I will try again. Some other day when I'm in the mood for some more self loathing and torture. These were done on my KS950 with my KR505 ribber. The long strip with the varigated looking band of ribbing will be the hat. It's a little short so I may have to put it back on the machine, but it will be one solid color of plain dark green.

These are the pieces that I figured I could go ahead and share with the world. The wadded up mess of yarn is representative of about 4 other attempts. I finally quit trying to save the yarn and tossed the other disasters.

HOWEVER... See how the back turns out in comparison to fair isle with floats? This is why I will try this again and I am bound and determined to make it work right. Well, that is unless my White doublebed does doublejacquard or at least a version of floatless fair isle, which I'm pretty sure it does. In that case, I will let this be another lesson and excuse for owning and using so many different knitting machines :)

Rasta Hat from Knitty Gritty Show

This is the pattern that was demonstrated on the HGTV/DIY knitting show, Knitty Gritty. It really turned out nice and it was fun to knit. I used Lion Brand Wool-Ease worsted weight and it turned out a little too big, so the next one will be done on smaller needles. Years ago, I had crocheted a snood to hold my hair back, well, E.J. confiscated it and wore it all the time, it was like this but in a mesh and no visor/brim. Now he wants me to make another snood, but with the visor like this one has. I actually think I can pull it off. He'll look silly as ever, but his hair will be out of the wind since he's decided to be a long hair again :)