Sunday, June 24, 2007

sunday part 2

This is going to be the back to school vest from fitted knits in green cascade 220 and thefancy tank in allhempo6 in pumpkin. I need to wind the other 2 skeins of hemp.


And look how great this is. I just figured out how to make the squares for Babette ( interwieve
s 06) I'm using some cotton yarn to practice with but I think it's turning out pretty good. There are some errors in my square but I'm still learning so it's ok.
And TA DA the ripple with all it's dangly ends. That's G my by babay girl holding this thing up for me. ( My baby girl is starting high school in the fall and is
5 foot 5 Where did the time go.
And another view of it laying on the table.



sundays

I don't think I mentioned that I finished wool ripple balnket last week. I'll I have left is to finish weaving in the ends. I'm so excited to have a project so close to being done! I have a good portion of picovoli done as well. It's a top down sweater and I'm just about half way through the bust. I haven't decided what will be next. Summer school starts on Monday and I spent the last couple days setting up my classroom. I won't have much free time for the next 5 weeks.

I did finially make a granny square thanks to the purl bee site I mentioned in the last post. I thought I was all set to start Babette untill I read the directiones. Thoes squares are totally different from the traditional ones. So I'm back to practicing again. I may go back to trying to make hexagons instead of taking on the babette.

I wound my hemp yarn for the tank I want to make so I may start that after I finish picovoli. I should make green gable but I'm not feeling it right now. I think it's the yarn I picked it's too blah a color I should send it back and pick a different color.

Hope all is well with everyone. I'm off to enjoy my last day of freedom before summer school starts.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Two of my favorite things, books and yarn

I love getting mail. well, good mail that is. The last two days have been very good mail days for me. Yesterday my yarn and pattern came from Kpixie. These guys are great!! I can't believe how fast my order came. I ordered the fancy ribbed tank and the yarn to make it. It's hemp yarn. I have never knit with hemp so we will see how that goes. Iwanted to try it after reading
about using it on knit and tonic as well as knitty.
I want to knit a skirt but I thought I would try a smaller project first just to make sure I'm ok knitting hemp. It's seriously not soft but it's supposed to be pretty durable and it apparently softens up after time. I also ordered a japanesse crochet book. It has some really pretty projects in it. It will be mostly inspiration because well... Idon't read japanesse but I love to look at thier craft books and it does have charts so I might be able to figure some stuff out.

Then today my AMAZON.Com order came. It was also a fast delivery. I ordered this book. One of thoes take a chance, sight on seen orders. I don't do that very often anymore I have gotten some not so good books doing that. I really wanted a good crochet book and I had seen this one advertised in so many magazines I took a chance. It's a heavy book. I was surprised by how heavy the package was. I was expecting something farly thin so I was excited by the size of this one. I haven't had time to really give it a good look so I'll just give a brief description untill I know more.

It has 256 pages. The cost is $29.95 but it's $19 on amazon.
The first section looks like swatches of different stitches, each one is written in words and has a chart ( I need to learn to read charts so that's good). I don't like the purple yarn on the purple background but that's just me. I would also love to know what yarn it is and what hook size. I'm not seeing that but maybe I'm missing it.
Next section looks like shapes, circles, flowers and hexagons YEA!!! triangles, etc.
Then a section all on granniy squares wow who would have though there would be so many. Again I really would like to know what yarn some of these are.
Chapter 5 is on making flowers, probably not something I would do but it's interesting to see.
The last chapter has projects, only a few and mostly accessories. There is a very interesting scarf that I might try. It's the woven scarf. It uses silk and cashmere doesn't that just sound lovely. So my quick impression: lots of information that I think I will use and worth the $20. When I really sit down and read then I will know for sure, but for now I'm happy.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

blanket inspiration

I have been wondering around the internet this morning looking for some help on making granny squares and hexagons.
Purl has a great one here while I was there I came across the blanket she made. It's the babette blanket I posted a few days ago from interwieve knits. Darn that thing. The more I see it the more I want to make it.
Inspiration for the babette blanket from flicker.

My ripple blanket is almost done. It's actually long enough now but because I bought more yarn to get it this far I want to go ahead and use as much of it up as I can so I'm making it a little longer then I originally planned. That's good though, because my husband is almost a foot taller then me and even my kid is now a little taller then me so I should make it more their lengh rather then mine. Then I have to weave in all thoes ends.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

thank goodness it's the weekend

Wow I['m turning into one of thoes once a week posters. Partly it's because I'm working all the time and partly it's because Blogger is giving me problems. I can read my blog, I can read other blogs but getting to the homepage so I can post is a hit or miss kinda thing. In fact as I'm typing this I just got an error message on the screen letting me know that I am no longer connected to blogger so my post may fail. GREAT

I should probably look into another option for my blog.

Ok ,enough complaining. I am almost done with my blanket. I am going to the yarn shop today to pick up a little bit more so I can make it longer. I have been hanging out at the fitted knits KAL and am inspired to knit either the drop stitch tank or the back to school vest. I'm still working on picovoli right now though.

This weeks inspirational wed had some great knitting inspiration. Go check it out if you haven't.

My daughter is officially a high school freshman. She finished middle school this week. EEEKKK.
Where did the time go? So summer has begun in our house. She is loving her free time and I'm getting my plans ready to teach summer school.
But today I'm working on my blanket and buying more yarn.

Monday, June 11, 2007

new knitty, new projects

The summer Knitty is up. I have been stalking the site waiting for it to be up. I haven't read any of the articles yet. I just checked out the new patterns. I'm a little dissapointed. There are a couple of fun ones but nothing that said MAKE ME NOW!!

How about a ripple slirt. This is such a fun idea. It looks so cute on this little girl.

I do love these socks!! These are called Breeze. Very pretty.
The other patterns were either not practical for my life style or the fact that I'm not flat chested, or I just didn't care for them. One ot them ties in the back wth ribbon. If you have ever had a daughter who wore ribbons in her hair you know they rarely stay tied and it would be hard to tie them in a pretty way behind your back. Then "askew" the front of it, It makes me totally crazy that the colors don't line up. I know maybe that't why they call it askew but it just
makes me want to fix it.

I was going through some magazines this weekend and came across the babette blanket in interwieve. I bought this magazine just for this pattern. I think it was last year spring or summer, I'll have to go back and look. I love this thing. It's wild, crazy loud. I still love it. i would probably tone down the colors a bit and make it smaller ,but l I ove it!!
I haven't really felt like sewing, I don't really have time so it hasn't been to much of a problem. Anyway I went into the local quilt fabric,shop. I pretty much just went in to see a friend of mine . I didn't think I would buy anything. Because as I said, I don't have time and I don't feel like sewing.
Well, I came home with the new AMy Butler pattern "Frenchy bag "and a stack of fabric to start a new quilt . I don't have time to start a project that big but I was so excited and so inspired to sew again I had to bring it home. I'm going to go through my fabric stash and see if I have some more fabrics that will match and of course I need to pick a pattern. I 'll have to pick something pretty easy and quick so that I can actually find time to work on it. I also need to post a picture of the fabric stack. The colors are blue, green and a little brown. No big surprise there.
In knitting news I'm working on picovoli from mag knits. In crochet news I'm so far on my ripple I'm even running out of yarn. It's very exciting. I'm going to try really really hard to finish it up in the next couple weeks. Before starting the new quilt. ( maybe)

Saturday, June 09, 2007

ripples, sewing and I'm so happy it's the weekend!!

Look at at my sea of ripples!! This is ripple #2 I haven't restrated ripple #1 yet. After having to rip the whole thing out I haven't wanted to start it again. I will though. For now this one is growing and growing and I'm starting to run out of some of the colors. It looks like it takes about 25 yards to do each two row section. That's an approximation though.

And there was some sewing today. I quickly made a curtain for the bathroom we have been remodeling. Ignore the dirty tile I haven't cleaned it yet from all the construction mess. We left the tub and shower alone but pulled out everything else.
And yes it really is that orange.
My daughter picked the color. I figure since it's just the accent color I could live with Orange untill her new favorite color comes along.I still haven't had time to start the green gable top. I have been trying to figure out how to make a hexagon granny square. It's not going well.

Friday, June 01, 2007

ripple madness

I had a period between my morning job and my afternoon job today. Because I work 30 minutes away from work it's not worth it to drive back home so I grabbed my cotton classic scrap bag and my hook/needle collection and stuffed them in my bag before I left this morning. I have been searching the web for a ripple done in cotton classic but I haven't found one. I have found plenty of people talking about it but no one seems to have done it. So...I thought I'd play with the idea.
I have a ton of scraps of Cotton classic.

No idea why the software program turned my pictures!!

Here is what I did: The green is on a size H hook and the pattern is provence from 200 ripples. don't look to close, I lost my place somewhere. The blue is soft waves on a "I "hook 3 rows worth. The green is on size 7 knitting needles I'll have to look up the pattern name but it's from the 200 ripple book.
This is why you want to crochet your ripple and not knit it. There are more rows of knitting done on this swatch then the crochet but look how small it is.


Closer view of the H hook. I should use the H hook and do a swatch of the soft waves pattern so I can compare the two.






And here is my cat who thinks he's a dog. He brings me sticks and pine cones. I tried to get the picture of him carrying it in his mouth but he quickly dropped it. He's way to cool to get caught in the action.