Catching Up Again

Let's see, a few weeks ago I stopped in to see the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Barn Sale:

There were lots of lovely temptations and I do admit that a few of them seemed to leap into my arms and come home with me. I even helped out friend Rachel and brought home a few skeins for her. She really wanted to go to the sale, but with a small child, its hard to sometimes do stuff like this on a weekend. 

I left the sale and went and met up with an SCA friend to learn how to do a fitted Gothic dress (scroll down to the Building a Feminine Silhouette). The class was held in Longview and on the drive home Gail gave me a call. Tina had donated a couple of boxes of yarn to Dina's BSD Project - knitting for Beaverton's Homeless school kids. Gail's problem was she didn't have room to store both boxes until we could get them to Dina at our regular knit night. So home they came with me.

On the knitting front I wanted to knit a couple of hostess gift dishcloths for Kristen to say thank you for hosting the family Thanksgiving dinner at her house. So I started knitting a couple of dish cloths and got on a roll of getting all my cotton knitted up. Knitting with cotton usually hurts my hands but I must have built up some muscles there because my hands didn't hurt, my upper arms did. 

The dishcloths:

There was one 'dishcloth' that seemed a little big, so I'm calling it a hand towel. I also made a bib for nephew Cole who turned one today. He'll get it with his Christmas.

Can you see the Santa face and the Snowman?

The last cotton item knitted up is a sewing pin cushion. I finished it up tonight, but Brandon has the camera with him, so no pics until tomorrow.

I have the piano move schedule for this Tuesday. I had to pack up all my craft stuff and reorganize where things were going to live. It also meant a major reorganization of the extra bedroom we call 'the den'. A couple bookshelves moved into our bedroom and my chest of drawer went into the den. I reorganized the pantry and made room on the floor of it for my bins of yarn and fiber. I figure it would be more easily accessible there, we'll see. 

I found through moving things around an almost completed crochet project. The Easy Ripple Shawl a free pattern from Lion Brand. I was using Lion Brand yarns, so it only made sense. I had kind of created a pattern with the yarns that I hadn't considered when casting on, so had started the 'starting' end again. There were just a few rows that needed to be done so I finished those up and have it all attached. I now just have to deal with all the ends that need to be woven in. I've definitely learned a lot about those and how to deal with them better from learning how to knit. This was one of my last crochet projects just as I was learning how to knit. 

Pics of the shawl before I finished up the end:

I also had a Tudora that just needed a button sewn onto it and it would be ready for gift giving. Its sat in this sad state for a year and a half. I finally got them together and its ready to be wrapped. So where I was feeling stressed because I hadn't been doing all of my planned knitting throughout the year for gift giving, I have been able to throw out those plans, adapt them and just have five things that I *have* to knit and only three of them need to get done in the next week and a half. They should go quickly since they are done on size US 10 with bulky yarn for two of them. I don't want to be overly optimistic and jinx the projects though!

Its been a hectic wheel dealing with family things, Facebook friends are aware but I'm not going to post here. It only took rewriting a paragraph a couple of times to figure that one out! ;-)

Leeloo is almost ten months old - on the eleventh. She's had her first snow and thought it was fun to frolic in it. It ended up not being much deeper than what can be seen here. It stuck around for a few days as the temps dropped into the teens for us. Rather unusual for our part of the world! Leeloo's getting Norbert to play with her a bit more. He's definitely going outside with her more often. She'll check into the backyard through the patio door and let him know if there are squirrels out in the yard for them to go out and chase up a tree. He's also gotten more interested in food since she's been around. He never used to come hang out by the kitchen but does now.

I have ideas for future posts to share, so there will be more in the next few weeks than there have been!  Anyone local to the PDX area want a kitten? I know of some really cute ones in need of a home by this next weekend.

Progress!

What I've accomplished since I last posted:

1. Kyle's Fingergless Gloves - with half fingers, pattern from Knit Picks (omitting the finger cover portion)

2. A Spiderman Mitten - regular pattern:
Much too long to fit on a three year old's hand! So I needed to modify them.

3. Corbin's Spiderman Mittens - modified:


4. I was on a roll with the Spiderman thing so took the charts and alternated them for a hat and then used a modified version of the 'Turn a Square' raglan decreases to finish the hat. I think Corbin is going to be a happy little boy:



5. We found out when Aunt Debbie was going to do Thanksgiving dinner, so we planned to go there after my cousin's. I needed another gift, so made another Turkey dish cloth:

Still working on the Baby Love "Logan's Half Blanket" for charity. I've also added a few more rows, no where enough of course on the Razor Shell Scarf.

More gloves/mittens and hats are in store over the next few weeks.

Thanksgiving day was enjoyable visiting with my family in Dundee at my cousin's house and then afterward at Brandon's Aunt Debbie's house. I made a widely well received Candied Apple Pie Cheesecake. Brandon made a croissant style roll with cream cheese and prosciutto and cranberry sauce. The rolls were yummy and enough leftover that we can enjoy them.

I tried to take my next project with me in the car but was running late and didn't fully read the pattern requirements and so forgot the size 3 needles, but had the 4s. I hope to start them in the morning.

Deadlines - they sneak up on you

I fell into some knitting and forgot to climb out. ;^)

First off to put myself into the holiday frame of mind I made what was supposed to be a 'two hour Santa hat'. I must be slow. Brandon also made a request for more brim:
It used up some long ago stashed Lion Brand Chenille that I'd used part of to make a Speed Stix Scarf for his mom a couple years ago.

I whipped out a couple of Thanksgiving themed dishcloths. One to have as a hostess gift to the cousin and his wife that are doing Thanksgiving for the tribe for the first time this year. They live in Dundee so a much shorter drive than the usual trip down to Corvallis. My Aunt Zoe isn't doing to well with her cancer. I thought the pattern went so well for the first one that I'd use the excess for one for myself:


Put more effort into stashbusting by using the Baby Homespun on a baby blanket for the Baby Love Blanket Drive. I found a free copy of the 'Moderne Baby Blanket' in the Mason-Dixon book online and used that as a guide. It successfully used up the white, yellow, green and purple that I had available. Unfortunately it wasn't a lot and was coming out smaller than their preferred sizes. I tried to make it bigger by adding on a crocheted border also using up some more Lion Brand Jiffy and ended up with a blanket that is 21x30 inches. I'll still give it but it's small:
I'm glad to have this project done because working with the yarn hurt my hands and wrists. I'll give it to Bobbie for drop off on Wednesday. I have some nice soft Cascade Cherub for another Baby Love Blanket, if I can squeeze the time in to make it.

To give my hands a rest I thought I'd work on some nice soft cotton and so made a couple of very soft face cloths that will be part of William's Christmas gifts, Squidge and Square Textures:

Next up was the Brain Monster Hat for Corbin but Brandon didn't think it would be as popular as something with Spiderman. So the hat will go to the next younger male nephew, Logan:
Smokey the Bear, an antique, models the hat for me. He was a bear that was heavily loved when my sister and I were kids that we got from my mom.

Brandon thought the plastic googly eyes weren't as cool as knitted ones would be. So I had to go find a pattern on how to knit eyeballs. I modified one I found for making ball shaped eyes and I think the dimensionality adds to the hat.

I have a lovely Excel spreadsheet that has all the people on our list that we have to give to and the proposed ideas I had for knitted items. This last week after looking what I had on the list and the number of people, number of items, and the days remaining until we see them for gift exchanging, lots of adjustments were made. I double checked finished items I have stocked up, what still needed to be done and then all the things I wanted to also do and made cuts. I think I have a realistic schedule but I also have two weekends that have classes that I need to attend before the end of the year cutting into knitting time. Throw in a need to get some baking done and things may become really interesting.

I thought I was doing really well with getting all the things done that I had gotten done last month. Now I'm feeling the pressure. Anyone else with this problem?

Trying out infusing lavender from the yard into olive oil. I simmered it for most of a day this last week and have strained out the lavender. Tomorrow the plan is to get a batch of lavender Castile soap made. A couple other soap recipes may also be made but I haven't settled on which ones yet. The Castile soap needs six weeks of cure time so I'll probably look for others that don't need as long so as not to run into issues with gift giving.

ETA: Forgot that last weekend I spent time spinning and came up with this:
It's the merino/tencel 70/30 I got from Woodland Woolworks. I'm currently calling it Purpleberry.