Hexi-puffs, Blocks, Bunnies and a Snood

So I tried knitting Carina's qiviut into a wimple for her. It was a nice knit, but I didn't totally bind off and let it sit for two weeks and tried it on again. I don't have a picture of it on me. It was very snug and felt kind of short. I like the pattern, just not happy with it for this yarn.

I think I'm going to try out Ice Queen and see if that comes out better. It's a larger needle size and I'd do it without the beads.

So while I was letting the wimple ruminate, I opted to do some hexi-puffs and sock blanket squares:

Almost two puffs out of the red sparkly I picked up on the yarn crawl, had to use a tiny bit of the paprika to bind it off. The others were some Abstract Fiber Matisse samples I had gotten during last year's yarn crawl. I had thought to make them into a pair of fingerleI have ss mitts or something but like that they will be in blankets. The block with the green stripe took a few attempts to get a version of the leftover that I liked. I think I made it four times. I have 33 of them now.

There was a bit of the paprika left, but nothing that I could make for Carina, so it went into a block. I had differing amounts of the Matisse, so one complete block and had to dip into one to finish the second block. I have 15 blocks done.

I kind of slid into a bit of a depression. We had learned that Brandon's Aunt Debbie had advanced ovarian cancer that had metastasized. We found out a week before she was going in for surgery to remove organs and parts of organs. After the surgery we found out that it wasn't ovarian cancer but pancreatic cancer and the surgeon was telling Uncle Dave and Judy that she only six to eight weeks to live. What the heck?! So reeling from both news.

His Aunt Mary Lou flew in to visit a few days after the surgery and we had dinner with all of them. I made chicken curry and they had planned to make some cream of broccoli soup, but didn't get to it. Debbie really enjoyed the chicken curry and ate more than she thought she would. She raved about it. She was looking really good after the surgery but still getting used to less energy and how much you really do use your stomach muscles to do a lot of things. It was good to see her.

I have been working on a snood out of a gold lace cone that Judy (MIL) gave me. I've used bits of it for other projects and still have plenty! Andrea used it in my braid at Carnevale. It's slippery even on my Knit Picks Harmony needles, so I was only doing a few rows at a time and putting it down.

Saturday I was home alone, the boys were off doing various gaming activities and I was watching movies and working on the snood. During one of my breaks with it, I was trying to find a quick project to do for the kids for Easter. I thought about doing a different bunny pattern that was in my queue - Knitted Bunny. They lost me when I had to apply knitted ears when I remembered this Knitted Bunnies and how fast it knit up and was finished.

I remembered that I had used my Lion Brand Jiffy for the last ones and that I had some yellow scraps, so it was the perfect one to start out with. Then I found the Fisherman color leftovers and knit one in that and a bit of Camel color. I had two and a half of the squares knit Saturday night and finished the Camel Sunday on the drive to Judy's for the Easter family get together.

Sunday morning I was sewing and stuffing the yellow one. Brandon made me the bunny tails for all three of them while I was sewing and stuffing. I was also making deviled eggs and kind of made my own version of some 'crab puffs'. I had a can of crab meat, took some neuchatel cheese (low fat cream cheese) and cut some garlic chives out of the yard into the mix. Then put the mixture into pre-baked phyllo cups. Super easy!! So I ended up finishing the last bit of knitting on the Camel square on the way to Judy's and actually did the bind off a block away from her house.

I snuck upstairs and put the finishing touches on the bunnies - sewing the square up so it was a bunny on the Camel, putting ribbons on, sewing tails on. I came prepared with my handspun, Kool-Aid dyed Easter Egg in case Corbin wasn't interested in a stuffed bunny. He's seven and a boy after all. ;-)

Little Alyssa picked this one as hers

Madi likes purple, so I wasn't surprised that she picked this one

Kaisha picked this one

Jenna picked this one before Kaisha, so she really did like that it was different from the others

This is the camel one that came back home with me

We were the last ones to leave and so were able to talk more about the latest news on Debbie from Judy. They had a follow-up visit with someone from the surgeon's office and that person was surprised that they had been given the six to eight weeks. They are referring her to an oncologist to talk about chemotherapy and even that is changing from the type that they were originally given. Makes sense since the diagnosis changed. That appointment is this week, so won't know for a bit what the outcome of that is. They did up it to at least six month to a year, but with chemotherapy she could have longer. Yes, its still kind of stage four pancreatic cancer but there are survivor stories of people that with various treatments have lived longer. She referred us to the PanCan site for more info. So I'll be studying that. It was really great to hear though that we wouldn't be losing her in a month, unless she opts to do only palliative care. She wants to fight this as much as she can so unless the oncologist visit is really bad I don't think that will be her choice. I have her in a friend's healing circle but any wishes or prayers you'd like to send her way will be appreciated.

I was working on my gold snood and was re-looking at it and found that something horrible had happened a couple inches down. Normally I would just drop down to those stitches and fix them, but this yarn is so weird that it really wasn't an option. Ugh! So I had to frog that and start over. I have three inches back and really it looks much better of a cast on. I have a goal. We are currently planning on attending an event on Saturday up in Kelso, so I would like to be able to use it there. So I need to get it done by then. Knitting it would actually accomplish that! Haven't knitted any today, so I'll have to make up for it.

Today Andrea came over to use our washer and dryer and so we've been watching season one of The Borgias. We've been noticing that Lucrezia is wearing a lot of different snoods.  I'll have a plain gold one, but I would also like to have one with pearls. I think I'll have to sew those on. Yes, trying to end this on a positve note!

My daffodils

Spring has definitely sprung!

2013 Cowls, Hexipuffs and Thorn

I admit that the Cracklin Rosie Cowl was for some quick satisfaction. Gave me a bit of work though. ;-) I wasn't marking down my repeats and so I did four of the Textured Stitches section instead of three, but of course didn't figure this out until I was almost done with the third on the second half of the cowl. So rather than just increasing it to also be four, I frogged back to that point and re-knit it all. I'm glad I did. It's a wide long cowl that acts like a boob holder but I like it.

Since there was leftover LSS and another cowl in the group that looked interesting, Bridgetown Loop. Stacey had knit it in the suggested sport weight yarn, but I thought it looked kind of thin. I shortened the number of repeats from 16 to 13 and on the picked up bridge edge had to compensate for that so that they sat correctly. I could tell that it was getting about as wide as I was going to want it, so also shortened the bridges down. I have a wee bit of leftover yarn, but not enough to have followed the pattern exactly. I finished this, then blocked it. Haven't tried it on yet, but I love the cabled edge.

Check out my Ravelry project on Bridgetown loop to see the sport weight version I sampled.

I worked on these getting five Haversacks ready to be donated as largess at Ursulmas. We didn't go, but as co-largess coordinator, I needed something for the Baroness to take. So I had fun with the learning curve on how to sew and assemble these haversacks. It totally made sense after completing the first one and stop making assumptions on how things were assembled. You finish with the lining correctly on the inside and just have to sew the inside edge under the flap of the bag.

 Inside of the haversack all filled with the largess items. They were nicely stuffed and should give us a good representation in the Kingdom.

Some people are more familiar with messenger bags or pilgrim bags instead of haversacks. Same bag, different names. Can make it interesting and challenging when talking to people about what you need to have done.

One of the last states of the Fuzzy Delphi Scarf for the Rose City Yarn Crawl Knit Along:

Mohair isn't easy to knit with! So not going as fast as I would like. :-( May have to knit up another cowl!

Sunday I went to Twisted to join in on a Hexi-puff along.  I brought my finished puffs and donated two, one for me and one for Dawn-Marie. The donations got us each an extra two mini-skeins. So I bought another two and with my four I was able to complete seven puffs and still have a tiny bit leftover of the red:

Technically four 'solids' out of each of the mini-skeins. The black-purple in the top right is one of the solids, though it self-striped. Combined the light lavender with the purple to get the striped on the bottom left. Still had some of the light purple leftover and combined with the black-purple. Still had black-purple leftover so did four rows in the red, trying to center them. I like the purples and how the striping came out. Not sure exactly what all the yarns are from, but fun to dip into their big jar and add some colors into the quilt. I have 28 finished now. I can either donate one of these or another from my stash when I go back. I'm going to try to go back again this next Sunday if the $5 is in the budget. There's a yarn crawl coming up after all!

My Thorn looks like this:

I have a boy baby set to complete and then was invited to another baby shower, so will have to come up with a girly baby set. The request was for very girly things. So expect to see some baby sets soon! Also want to knit a hat for Brandon's co-worker. Have until the 18th to finish any Rose City Yarn Crawl Knit Alongs.

Leftovers

I have been in this weird mood to knit through all my leftover sock yarns. Which I guess is an improvement over not wanting to knit at all!  I had gotten the hexi-puff pattern and its a fast knit to get a puff made. I have fourteen of them now:

These did use up a lot of little bits of samples and odds and ends that I had from socks. I'm following the pattern but have noticed that they are not equally balanced top and bottom. You start with twenty stitches divided across two dpns and increase on the ends every other row until you are back to twenty stitches on each needle. Then you start decreasing back to ten stitches on each needle and bind off, after stuffing of course!  I haven't used Judy's Magic Cast On for this, but I could see where it would be very easy to use with this project. I've purposefully kept the cast on as given so that both sides have a ridge. I guess you could also kitchener them closed, but haven't tried that yet. Is anyone else noticing this? Am I doing something wrong?

I had in my queue another pattern that would use up the leftovers, a garter square very similar to the Barn Raising Quilt pattern I've been using on my handspun yarns, this one is by DROPS. The garter stitch square gobbles up more yarn than the BR square, but has been fun to do. I have nine blocks done as of today, the last one hadn't been blocked, but I wanted to get pics:

In fact the just finished block, upper right hand one, was using some leftover ShibuiKnits yarn in Wisteria colorway and I found that I had a moth problem. ACK! I found that larvae had nibbled their way out of the yarn and I was left with long and short pieces. So I pieced them as best as I could and finished the block and threw away what was leftover. Oddly, I don't remember seeing any moths in the house. It has reinforced my desire to knit the rest of the bag up. Luckily my odds and ends were being stored in a ziplock bag in my sock bin. I need to double check that there is a cedar block/ball in the big bin and that all of my other bins do indeed have cedar in them. 

I have a desire to get some other projects done, but kind of have this ball rolling on the blocks and puffs. The other bits don't seem like they've been nibbled on, so hopefully it was just this one poor ball, but you know what I'll be doing for a bit. I think things will do their own kind of change up project wise after September Crown. I do want to try to get a couple projects done for that, may be knitted or sewn, we'll see.

What do you do with your leftover sock yarn, or really any weight yarn? I have another gallon ziplock bag with worsted odds and ends that I suspect will become another blanket project, maybe that mitered squares, or I really like the idea of the Log Cabin which is a take off on the Fussy Cut. Which do you think I should choose?