the longest, most rambling post this month

its been a busy few days.

First of all, I finished the first of the older nieces' Grace Lace berets. Then I accidentally told her about it, because I sent the picture to her mothers cellphone (during church) and she informed me that she had the cellphone in the nursery with her younger sisters. She promised to pretend to be surprised on Christmas.

Then I got ridiculously sick with fever and coughing and general delirium before I finally agreed to go to the clinic for a checkup on Tuesday-"for an adult body to be at 103 degrees, you are seriously sick and have been ineffectively managing your symptoms" Honestly, that's what the doctor said to me before prescribing various antibiotics and reminding me to eat (I've lost 4 lbs in 4 days). Well, since I have antibiotics I must now be well enough to go shopping, right? So I immediately headed to Fancy Image Yarn in Shelton, because I needed two things: yarn,





and some assistance with writing my own pattern. While picking up my prescriptions at Target, I saw this sweater:

It's not much to look at, and the picture is not in the best light, but I saw its potential. Shaping-good, Design-challenging, Yarn-horrible, Color-uninspiring, Construction-pitiful. I saw this as an excellent challenge for my sweater knitting skills, so I took a million pictures, drew a childish design template,and will work on this using the rest of my red sportweight alpaca from that first trip to Peru, after I finish with Chritmas knitting.





But, as you should know by now, I can't work on just one thing at a time. Remember that fish bracelet I mentioned awhile back? Well, sick time afforded me the chance to get this done:





And right after I finished that, I flipped through my newest book, just arrived from the not-local-online-bargain-book-site:

chose a pattern, and then ran by JoAnn Fabric just before I went to the gym last night to choose some fabrics.

What do you think?

a few more hats

here they are, the fourth and final cat hat {striped to make use of every last yard of available yarn in those two skeins} and that lovely GRANDE sideways grande hat. The hat really really REALLY lives up to its name, or I was completely off on my gauge-it is enormous! but still wearable if you pull it back slouch style and let the top drop. I cast on this morning for one of the Grace Lace berets, this is the style I have chosen for the older nieces. Thank goodness for rainy days and my slightly stuffy nose, because it gave me a reason to stay inside watching ridiculous old movies and knitting all day!

10 nieces & nephews, 1 hat done

okay, okay, so I didn't even bother to sew in the ends before I popped this little number on Rhapsody's head. One down, three to go because this particular hat belongs to the younger set of nieces (Rhapsody, Isabella, Hannah, Olivia), and I still have the older set of nieces (Mariah, Marissa, Rachell) and the set of nephews (Jeremiah, Josiah, Levi) to knit hats for. Also, as I am looking at this picture of the back of the hat, it appears that I contracted Cousin It to shoot the photo, but that is actually how long her hair is now! By the way-quite a few people, upon first glance, that the hat was covered in owls, not cats. Maybe the colors are too similiar for the kittyness to show?

Hat Heaven

The Sakura Hat was finished over the Labor Day weekend camping trip, and the Avalon hat was finished this past weekend. Jenni and I went on a little fieldtrip on Sunday, over to Churchmouse in downtown Bainbridge Island to take advantage of their 10th anniversary sale deals-I was looking for some of the heavyweight Socks that Rock yarn for a new project (top secret), but they didn't have any in a colorway that I wanted so I instead picked out the yarn to knit the Temple Cats hat pattern. All the little princesses belonging to my sisters will be getting their own cat hat at Christmas, and if I figured the yardage correctly I should be able to make two blue hats with gray cats, and two gray hats with blue cats! This yarn is the Berrocco Vintage, and word-of-mouth from another Churchmouse customer is that the yarn is fantastic to work with, and washable to boot. I also traded five pounds of leftover or unused yarn for a five dollar off coupon, and the yarn will be used by the local charity knitters guild!

Also, after doing some all-important Christmas knitting related math, I realized that unless I finish one hat every week, I will not finish making hats for everyone in my family in the next 14 weeks!

another pictureless post

I don't have time to upload the pictures right now, but if you are on ravelry you can check out the Sakura hat that I just finished over the holiday weekend. By the light of the fire, and sometimes my headlamp, I decided that I love the colors in this yarn even if the striping slightly obscures the flower pattern at the top. I couldn't finish it completely while camped out in the woods with the family because I had forgotten my darning needle, but it is done now and I only have to wait until October to gift it to my darling princess niece the third for her birthday. I may even run out and buy another skein to make her some matching mittens, but I am not yet sure about that! She asked specifically for a hat and a bag, but the bag requires the sewing machine that is currently buried underneath the pants project I just started.....
In other crafty endeavors, I went by Shipwreck Beads on my way to visit some friends and bought some fantastic blue glass beads and sterling silver fish in order to make the "river" bracelet idea that I have had swimming around my head for awhile-I'll show you how that one turns out!