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!

November Spinning

First I was spinning. I spun up some qiviut that Carina brought back with her from Alaska. She used to live there and so had a source for some inexpensive stuff. Less expensive because it still had the guard hairs in, but still nice to spin up:

One ounce on each bobbin

All plied up and ready for a nice soak

217.4 yards of lace to light fingering weight yarn just before dyeing

Carina was hoping for a teal and we kind of got a green, she's happy with that

Carina originally had planned to have me knit it up into a pair of fingerless gloves. Her husband thoughtfully pointed out how much wear and tear they would take on her hands and thought something around her neck might be better. I thought of a cowl/smoke ring idea and showed her Ice Queen and my Green Ice Queen. She loved that idea. We might now have enough yarn though so I'll have to see what I can do. Maybe go up a needle size and make it lacier?

While we were playing with the dye and over-dyeing dark yarn I brought along my pygora, then remembered I had a small ball of light green it would be fun to change the color of so added them to the dye pot:

Pygora, qiviut, merino

After I dyed the merino, I remembered I had been frogging the last block I was doing with it for the Barn Raising Quilt because I needed to add a few rows to it. Now I have to decide to do it in the new color or frog that part all out and use it to start a new block or what. No biggy. It will work out. I may have to frog the whole block though.

The last few weeks I haven't been spinning and I miss it. I still have eight ounces of the blue-red superwash merino to spin up. Might be able to get that over the weekend or next week to wrap up the month. Will see. ;-)

A shawl and a bag

I was out of town for the weekend and didn't get it posted last week. All that preparation for going out of town got in the way! I finished up Wendy's Meandering Vines Shawl. Soaked it a couple of times, once with vinegar to help set the color a bit since one or two skeins were transferring color while knitting. Then blocked it. It came out really long, but I think she'll enjoy being able to wrap up in it at work. Still trying to coordinate getting it into her hands for use though.

Unblocked on my bed

Close-up of it blocking

Blocking on the bed

Showing the wingspan of it, notice that it drapes over my hands on either end.

Sitting a little high on the shoulders

I wanted a bag that I could use with Miss Molly the Ashford Traditional spinning wheel. Something that I could put the orifice hook and the oil pen into while spinning. I have a lovely large spinning basket but wanted something handy to the wheel. In my queue has been a pattern from Vicki Square's Folk Bags book - The Monastery Tassel Bag. Its done in a fuschia and red in the book and felted. After reading the pattern, I decided for what I want to use it for, I didn't need the full length and so only did one and a half repeats of the pattern. I had some red and black felting yarn from Tammy's destash over a year ago that I thought would be perfect. Other than forgetting to knit inside out while doing the stranding, I think it came out well.

Pre-felted

Felted

I have a little sweater almost done for Leeloo. I just need to join the pieces together and sew on some pearls (I think I have those!) I am finishing up a cowl, Ice Queen, the Version A with less beads, and currently doing the first picot bind off (it has the top and the bottom). I'm using the leftover green that I used with the dragon shawl. Still not happy with the green color and need to over-dye it. Shelia had the suggestion of doing a yellow to add more green. I'm going to test that out once I'm done with the cowl and see if that works. I have the Lemonade Kool-Aid or yellow Wilton's cake dye to see it that works.  With these two projects done, I'll have January all wrapped up, so I can start February projects.