Sugar Bunny Boulevard

Afghan Delivery in Five Days!

Here we go!  The time is upon us - the time for Afghan Delivery!  Yay!

DATE:  Saturday, March 8, 2008
TIME:  5:30pm
LOCATION:  First Baptist Church of Greensburg
MAP:  If you are planning to attend please email me for info/directions
OTHER DETAILS:  The afghans will be delivered and presented at the beginning of a community event being held the evening of March 8th from 6-8pm.  They're hosting the Toney Brothers Quartet at First Baptist that evening.  I'll be setting up during the 5:00 hour and doing a brief presentation prior to the concert.  I'm not finished counting but I believe we have close to 50 afghans to take with us to Greensburg!

At this point, Jeff and I are probably the only ones going, though it's possible one or two others from church might come along.  If you have family in the area who you aren't certain will be at this event and you would like them to receive an afghan please contact me - we can plan to be in town early enough to deliver afghans to those families.

I've arrived at a final decision about care labels.  I'm using a sew-in fabric label that I will print the label information onto.  It's special fabric for quilts that people print photos and everything onto - washable, permanent, etc.  Here's what the label text looks like.  What do you think?  Suggestions?  I'm probably printing these tonight or tomorrow and look forward to seeing how it looks printed on the fabric! (ETA:  I'm checking the date - I think it was actually May 4)

What else is going on around the Bunny Hutch?  Lots of yarn dyeing and I just got another shipment today of my Benjamin base yarn!  Yay!  I've been having fun creating ads for Ravelry too...

The babies have been wreaking havoc all over the house while I'm dyeing yarn and making Ravelry ads.  (sigh)  Here are a few pictures of them not destroying anything or flushing soap down the toilet or any of a number of other crazy things they've done in the past few weeks.

I've continued with with my EPS Immersion.  EPS2 has been knit and finished.  It's a teeny tiny little raglan cardigan made from just one skein of Cascade 220 - big enough to fit about... oh... I don't really know.  I don't have a little baby around to try it on but I think it'll fit up to a 12mo baby.  It's too small for Lila Pearl.  The simple but pretty buttons are vintage shell buttons that I bought at Twist.  That little butterfly of yarn is all that was left over from the skein.  This was my first steeking experience.  Won't be my last.  Won't do it the same way ever again - I had a major steeking panic after cutting when I realized that whatever I did Was Not Enough!  Cut ends floating around = panic! panic! panic!  heh  My biggest mistake was thinking I didn't need to sew the steek as agressively as EZ recommends.  Silly me.  Repeat:  Won't do it the same way ever again.  This is such an awesome growing and learning experience as a knitter.

EPS3 has begun and is a striped sweater with round yoke decreases, also child sized, with no color repeats in the striping sequence.  I've finished the body and one sleeve.  This is a slow one because I'm changing colors "X" number of rows, and increasing every 5 rows on the sleeves.  There's been a lot of tinking on this one sleeve that I just finished last night.  I need some good time with it so I can get the crazy thing finished - I don't want to do another quite like this again!  EPS4 will be a gray cardi with some kind of color work around the bottom with saddle shoulders, also child sized.  Most of these small sweaters will be on display at Twist soon to promote the EPS Workshop that I'm leading/teaching beginning March 22nd.

Time to get going - I've got a lot afghans to sew labels on to! 

Take good care of every little thing and I'll see you again this week with some afghan pictures and another shop update!  XOXOXOX

Finally!

A millon things!  I have at least one million things to tell and my crazy keyboard keys are sticking so badly I can hardly type at all.  If you see freaky little typos please don't send me hate mail.  I'm not a bad speller.

SO.... it's horrible but I've been avoiding blogging because I wasn't feeling so great about how my WLC was going.  But this morning started great when I looked down and saw 210 staring me in the face.  I lost 10 pounds in January!  Awesome way to start the year.  By summer you won't even recognize me!  :)

I've started my first EPS sweater.  EPS is also known as the Elizabeth Zimmerman Percentage System.  I spent quite some time over the past few months thinking HARD and searching far and wide for "just the right pattern" to teach a sweater class.  Nobody will learn to seam up a sweater attending an EPS workshop but they will learn a lot of sweater construction info and several finishing techniques that don't involve mattress stitch.

A few weeks ago I did get yarn and buttons to make myself an EPS cardigan but decided to do a "practice" sweater first in Emeline's size (so Lila Pearl could grow into it, obviously).  Using the big box o' Cascade 220 that MargaretD from Canada gave me, I did just that.  And EZ is correct - even if you're using up stash nobody would guess it if you insert some color work.

I started this small sweater (co 135 stitches for body) and decided to stretch the main color as much as possible.  The hems are all contrasting with a heathered tangerine color.

It's amazing that I still have a hair on my head after trying and tryin to sew down the hem the first time.  I really like doing a provisional caston because it works better for me - don't ask me why because I don't know.  I just like the way the live stitches present themselves a little better than some other ways I tried.  Finally I did find a few very helpful photos and description of this method on the Schoolhouse Press web site where Meg Swanson (Elizabeth Zimmerman's daughter) did a Christmas Stocking knitalong.  Toward the end she tells/shows how she seamed down the cuff/hem and included a tip of knitting the last row on a contrasting hem in the object's main color, then obviously stitching it down with yarn matching the main color.  Oh what a difference that made for me.  And here I am wanting to lead an EPS Workshop?  I hope my students don't read my blog and then think I'm a big phony and don't know what I'm doing.

Reaching the body/sleeve join was an exciting moment but I had been a little concerned about my main color lasting through the whole project.  How to stretch that color without a startling contrast to the very strong color section at the bottom??  I settled on a very simple color section with low contrast colors.  It's supposed to be something like a trellis look to compliment the flowered section at the bottom.  Hopefully it doesn't result in a busy overall look.  The idea is to make it appear that I planned all of this ya know.  ha

I still need to finish all of the hems and graft the underarms, then sew in loose ends in various locations.

OH MY G O D.  As I'm sitting here working on this post Lila Pearl just went over and took my embroidery scissors and CUT A HOLE in the front center main color section.  Of. This. Sweater.

Post Over.  Gotta go destress just a little.