Baby knits

I am going to try to get as much done on the baby knitting as possible this weekend. Have to go shopping and get a bag, card and some baby tissue, and perhaps a few purchased items as well. Need it all ready to go for the baby shower next weekend. I am a procrastinator when it comes to finishing up on the "little details". But the shower will be for my DIL and my first grand child... So I want to have my act together. :-) As much as it is possible for me to do that. Then it will be a slightly slower pace for finishing up the rest of the baby knits that I have planned.

This next week will have me organizing what I need for a road trip, yarnish as well as clothing. Need my yarn shop locator book too. Don't know how often or even if, I can get hubby to make a yarn store stop... but I have to try. More to come on this later. I will be taking the laptop, so will be able to post if I can get internet access. Can't wait!

Roving

This is the roving that my friends purchased for me. Pretty colors! I am having a bit of trouble with this however. I literaly cannot draft it. I am thinking that it is the addition of the icicle. Or maybe it felted slightly in it's journey to me. I am not sure.... Any ideas? I will keep playing with the piece that I have managed to work loose. It may just end up being spun up as a chunky.

Dog Tired

Cherries were picked there were 8 of these tubs picked full.

Poured into the hopper ...

and juice was made.

This was a long weekend... not the type with 3 or 4 days to it, but long as in lots of things to do, tho it was still nice. We went to my SIL's in Oregon, a 4 hour drive, and picked sour cherries. Lots of sour cherries. We pitted aprox 11 quarts for pies and the remainder was turned into juice. yummy!

I also picked 6 gallons of blueberries. I don't like dwarf blueberry bushes. Bending over for long periods of time in order to harvest blueberries isn't fun. Luckily SIL has quite a few standard sized blueberry bushes as well. That meant that I could skim over the smaller bushes and just pick from them when there were large clusters of ripe berries. I have blueberry bushes here at home as well, but only a dozen and they are still young yet, and not heavy producers and I want to make jam.

Knitting did happen, and I am back to "fresh yarn" on the Shibui cardigan and have a hat finished to the crown decreases. Photos of those to come.

This is how I feel today:

Dog tired.

This was Fishy all the way home.

I am glad that his water bottle didn't leak.

Lame post...

Not a thing to blog about today.

Thought that I would grab a couple of sheepy photos from the Black Sheep Festival. One of the lovely ladies that I was with that day asked me to take these photos of this sheep. Probably ought to get her a copy of them... Certainly was a cute bugger. Waiting patiently for his/her(? I didn't ask and didn't look for gender) turn with the woman who was shearing.


Have a happy sheepy Wednesday !

edited to add... click for bigger ... wow what a surprise. Is there a way to adjust the size that pops up? Huge, absolutely huge!

Unexpected gifts

My camera battery is charging so that I can take a photo of my present.

Our neighbors went on vacation and saw a yarn store on their way home. Knowing that I knit and spin, they stopped in and got me a little something. They stopped by The Navigator's Needle in Thermopolis, WY and picked up 4 oz of Teeswater Roving blended with Icile by Lucy's Sheep Camp, also of Thermopolis. I hope that the camera will be able to pick up the colors in this. Beautiful violets and purples a hint of white and sky blue. Pretty stuff.

I was able to pick up my stitches successfully on the baby cardigan, running some sock yarn through the left arm of each stitch was helpful. Now have to overcome my disgust at my self for my failure to measure and pick it back up again. Hope to have it completed for the baby shower on the 10th of August. There is no reason that it shouldn't be finished by then. I just have to get busy on it when I get home from work instead of doing anything else. Other than supper... gotta feed the hubby... unless I can get him to cook. :-)

Probably a good thing that all my bobbins and my drop spindles all have yarn in progress on them . Silk on the turkish and the top whorl drop spindles, and some Coopworth ( I believe...) on the babe. I probably ought to order more bobbins from the Babe guy so that I have the ability to change to something new. Oh wait... I have a new drop spindle that I got at the Black Sheep Festival. hmm... gonna try spinning some of this tonight.

Pass the Scotch

Rip-it Rip-it Rip-it.

That's what I will be doing this afternoon. I've been working on a baby cardigan, the Shibui Two Color Cardigan. Nice easy pattern worked from the cuffs to the center first one side then the other. I am on the second side, and about to start the left side neck shaping when I decided to hold the two sides up and look at them together. ARGH! The Right side arm length is a correct 6.5 inches in length and the Left arm length is only 5 inches. Growl! I will have to rip the left side front and back to the armpit, about 3 inches, and restart from there. Going to try and insert a life-line after the fact as I am not that good at ripping back and picking up a good long row of stitches. I inevitably will miss a few and not notice the buggers until I am way past them again.

Wish me luck!

Finishing what I've started

I sat down this morning and sewed up both of the booties and finished up the BSJ, weaving in the ends and doing the shoulder seams and picking up the crochet hook and going around the collar. Then grabbed the sweaters and headed to the store for buttons. $34.00 and an hour later I have buttons. More buttons than I need for the sweaters that I have. More than I need for the baby sweaters that I still plan on knitting before the baby is due. I think I might have a button acquisition problem. I put button holes on both sides... ala Elizabeth Zimmerman... so that they would be correct for either sex. Have to go look through my husband's closet to determine if what I recall about button holes/buttons is correct before sewing on the buttons. (I would have been wrong) His dress shirts proclaim that boys buttons are sewn on the right side and the holes are on the left as the garment is worn. I have very few button up type blouses but I did locate one and the buttons were on the left.

It feels good to finish things up completely. I will have to remember this. There IS a second thrill after the joy of finishing up the knittign portion of a project. Now it is a finished knit and a Useable one as well. Happy Knitting! Off to sew on buttons!

I don't know how it happened

... but when I was uploading some photos of baby knitting to the computer today my photos of the Black Sheep Festival uploaded as well. They weren't still on the camera as I checked there the other day and again today before I snapped the photos of the knitting. Yet they were there to upload when I plugged my camera into the computer. Oh well! All I can say is Yipee! I will take a bonus any time one comes my way.

Baby booties knitted using a Mary Maxim pattern for a womans medium bootie with the changes as follows... sock yarn and 1.75mm addi turbos. Instead of worsted and the appropriate sized needles. I wanted to try out my new addi 1.75's and the pattern and yarn were right near each other on the desk. So... :-) The camo ones are from an unlabeled ball of sock yarn in my stash. The brighter ones are Panda Wool by Crystal Palace Yarns 51% bamboo 39% wool and 15% nylon. Both need to be sewn up.

Pattern in "Babies and Toddlers- a knitters dozen" by XRX books

Mexicali Baby Ole Yarn... Stray ball of sock yarn I had. Smallest size to fit a newborn. There was yarn left. If I can find it I know there is enough to do a pair of booties. Must look.

EZ's baby surprise jacket. The yarn- Cascade 220 (not the superwash either) Must remember to tell my DIL that it is a hand wash item. But if it gets felted oh well. The darker rust is a solid 220 shade, leftovers from a felted purse for my sister. The other is my first hand dyed there were two skeins of that and I should have enough left to finish up the seaming without difficulty. Still needs doing up and buttons.

The baby shower is in August tho baby isn't due till mid Dec. I want to get as many items done as I can before then. Currently in the works is another cardigan and Marihone by Dale of Norway photos of those two later.

Playing hooky...

Sort of any way. I have a dentist appointment scheduled today, so decided to take the whole day off instead of just leaving work at noon. Bonus.... it is an absolutely gorgeous day! Sunshiny and cloud free. Hurray for summer!



Went to visit my friend Ms. M. this morning and trim her doggies nails. She has two good looking dogs, a boxer and a lab. After leaving her place I headed over to Dawn's place to drop off 2 dirty sheep fleece to be turned into roving. I would link to her web site, but I am not sure how to do that yet. As soon as I figure that out, (I may be begging help from friends on this one) I will put up a link to her page.

I bought a length of felt from Dawn in a light grey color that I will be making into a vest. I have some felting needles that I recently purchased from my LYS (will add this link too when I have it figured) and will attempt to decorate said vest with some felted goodness. I think I will practice first a bit tho.
Home for lunch and then back out the door on the way to the dentist and then stopping by vehicle emmissions to get my car checked out so I can get my new tabs. Not exactly the best way to spend the day off... at the dentist and doing emissions, but I will have knitting and the sun is shining. It certainly could be much worse. If I have time today (and still feel like it after dentist) I will be giving the stash a good toss.. have to organize a few things now that the 2 fleece are out of the room.

Now that I think about it... I should have gone through the sheep pens at the BSF and looked to see if she (she being the ewe) was still there after I purchased the fleece. Tho it wouldn't matter really other than seeing her, as ALL of my photos from that trip disappeared from my computer after the transfer from the camera. And yes, I clicked the option to erase from camera after transfer as the photos were only going on my laptop and not the main pewter so they aren't still there either. ::::bad words, bad words, bad words:::::

Failed to take photos of the fleece darn it. One is a chocolate brown Romney (cross?) lamb's fleece that I purchased a year and a bit ago at the Puyallup Fair. Weighed in dirty at 4.7 lbs. The second fleece was a beautiful grey Merino x Corry that I purchased at the Black Sheep Festival in Oregon this year. The ewe's name is "Grey Mom" and her fleece weighed 8.72 lbs in all it's sheepy dirtiness. So all in all, roughly 13 pounds of dirty sheep. Wonder what I will end up with poundage wise? I know it is probably best to figure close to 1/2 the start weight lost to grease and veg matter, and if it you lose less than that consider it as a bonus.

Time to go to the dentist.... ewww....

Happy Knitting

** got the link thing figured out I think**

Well... here goes nothing!

An old (ish) dog learning a new trick here. Well, trying to learn more like. Guess we'll see, or not, how well I manage.

This will pretty much be a knitting blog, with some spinning, some travel, and some crazy animal antics thrown in just to keep it happy.

This photo was taken 31 July 2005 while in Malaysia out at Pulau Tigas. (Survivor Island the first) I followed this flutterby around for about 20 mins before I got a shot I liked. It is here because I wanted to see if I was able to figure out how to up load a photo.