Finally, some pics

I fianlly got around to downloading pictures off my camera, then uploading then into my online gallery last night. I even found pictures on the camera that I had forgotten I had taken. One is a couple ounces of raoving I dyed with food coloring (I have yet to get around to spinning it up… need to do that).

The other is a couple of scarves I made for my Mom for her birthday. She had told me she wanted “one of those scarves.” Since I wasn’t sure which kind of scarf she was talking about I knit two. The glittery one is knit out of a skein of blended yarn I got at my LYS for $36. The other is made out of Bernat Boa… $10 at JoAnn’s. My Mom prefers the glittery one… the Boa scarf is that one that people identify with (no accounting for taste). My Mom says she’s been taking a great deal of pleasure in telling people it’s a Borchardt Original (*snarf*) whenever someone asks where she bought it.

And finally… the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

The Wool Peddler’s Shawl

72″ wide, 34″ tall… and quite nice, if I do say so myself.

Lace close-up

Approaching the weekend

I first would like to apologise for my inability to spell cappuccino in my last post… I was doing a disservice to a fabulous drink.

Cappuccino Socks
The heel was turned without great difficulty, and there was much jubilation.



The sock progressed along nicely, and was actually completed a few hours after these pictures were taken to even more jubilation. Now to get to work on the second, which should be too hard. This was a nice, simple sock to knit, and it went pretty fast.

Felted Kitty Bed

The felted kitty bed that was finished last week was thrown into my parent’s washing machine and felted on Sunday. (I do my felting at their place because it’s a top loader, so I can check progress, and I don’t have to pay for it.)




As soon as I find a box for it, it will be winging its way to Florida for my sister’s new kitty.


Reader’s Comments
Julie asked where I got the pattern for the scarf.

I got the lace pattern from The Dishcloth Boutique… it’s the Garter Stitch Lace facecloth on page 1 of the knitting patterns. I modified it slightly, doing only 4 rows of garter between the lace segments. This facecloth was the first lace pattern I knitted, so I have an unusual fondness for it… of course, being easy to remember while looking complicated is a bonus.

Update
I finally got around to not only snapping a picture of this, but uploading it so I could share. This is what they pulled out of my tire 2 weeks ago. No wonder it went flat in a couple of minutes, eh?


The patch job seems to be holding up nicely, too.

Is it Spring yet?

In a week’s time we went from 88 F and sunny to 55 F and rainy. I know the Vernal Equinox was on Sunday, but we been suddenlt plunged back into winter around here. On an interesting note, a tornado hit South SF on Sunday.

I’ve had plenty to post about recently, but I’m damned if I’d had the time to do so. Thus, this post is mostly going to be look what I did last week. 🙂

Lace Scarf
This is a lace scarf I knit up as a belated Christmas present for my best friend’s fiance. I used fingering weight Frog Tree Alpaca. It seems to be a nice yarn, although I was a bit shock by the amount of guard hairs in it.


Cappachino Socks
Since the felted kitty bed was finished on Thursday night… well, the knitting part anyway… I cast on for a pair of socks. Back in November I got my Secret Sock Kit in the mail from Inspirations Yarns. It’s a beautiful chocolate-y brown color with variations in the (now let me show my complete lack of dyeing vocabulary) darkness/lightness of the color. It’s their Java yarn, which is a superwash 3-ply that they claim is sport weight. The Secret Sock Kit also came with a pattern. I decided it would probably be best to use the pattern that was written for the yarn. I get out my size 2 dpns and look at the pattern to see how many stitches I should cast on. The pattern has 2 sizes: woman’s small and woman’s large; by the numbers associated with the sizes I assumed I was a large… cast on 42 sts. This is when I notice that if you’re making the small socks you woudl cast on 40 sts. I was perplexed… 2 sts difference didn’t seem like a lot even with a gauge of 6 sts/inch. I decided to give it a shot even though I am feeling great doubt. I got through the ribbing (just an inch, thankfully) and started into the st st. I thought it looked more than a tad small while doing the ribbing, but ribbing can be deceptive. I measured my gauge in the st st… 7 sts/inch. No wonder it looked small. Switching to size 4 dpns got me to gauge, so I ripped back and started over again.


Still looks a bit too small doesn’t it. I slipped it on my foot… the knitting stretched as far as it could. Those would not be comfortable socks; I would feel every ridge of the sts. So, out it came again.


Third time’s the charm, right? I decided I liked the look of the fabric when I was using the size 2 dpns. I have a sock pattern for basic socks and one of the sizes uses a gauge of 7 sts/inch… perfect… I thought. It was huge. I didn’t even bother taking a picture of that one. I ripped it out as soon as I realized it would work for a sleeve.

The too small sock was 7 inches around, the too big sock was 9 inches around, so I settled on something in the middle. I cast on enough sts to get me 8 inches and went for it… this time I’m actually writng it down so I can knit the second sock. I started the heel yesterday – it’s a short row heel that’s a mixture of 3 different ways of doing it. So far, it looks pretty good.

I’ll take pics once the heel is completed as well as before and after shots of the felted kitty bed.