Sugar Bunny Boulevard

A is for Arin. Again.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Last year I stopped with the letter C on my ABC-along.  Last fall I composed a post explaining about that.  And picking up again.  But I never actually posted it.  Strange, I am.  About some things.

So it's a new year.  And my sister is still Arin.  And that's what I used for my A post last year.  And it's her birthday today - again!  Funny how that happens once a year!  heh

My sister Arin will be visiting us here in Kansas later this month.  We're all excitedly anticipating her visit.  IF YOUR ARE MY SISTER AND YOUR NAME IS ARIN, DON'T READ THIS POST UNTIL AFTER YOUR VISIT NEXT WEEK.

(Letting her browse away from this page if necessary)

We have a lot planned for Arin's visit.  Emeline and Lila Pearl are expecting many cheerful rounds of CandyLand, Memory, Fairy Princess Dress-Up (accessorized complete with wings, wands, and Fairy Princess Jewelry) and Duck Duck Goose.  Maybe Ring Around The Rosies if there's time.  Lila says "Arin is very good at CandyLand."

Who could resist these two?

 

So, now that sister Arin is supposedly gone, there's also the matter of the annual Very Special and Spectacular Handspun and Knit Birthday Gift.  Two years ago, if you remember, was Argosy.  Last year I didn't show what I made but it was a dear little treasure bag, pink and white handspun singles, stranded, and a hand made hammered silver shawl pin that I picked up from Twist, my LYS.  No picture, but I also felt like I could have done better so it didn't bother me not to document the FO.

This year I have quite a lot more fiber in the stash.  And a spinning wheel (or two) of my own.  And a bit of skill.  But one never has too much spinning skill.  Especially when using a fiber that you don't have much experience with.  The more you spin the more you know that every fiber is different and it's impossible to predict how a new fiber will behave.  Good luck getting what you WANT from that fiber the first time through.  And if you have a limited quantity.... ha.  It's a crap shoot.

A few years ago when I received the awesome red stroller as a RAK from a dear friend she also included some fiber that she had acquired and was happy to pass along since she wasn't a spinner and I was only in the infancy of my spinning life at that time (I think I had been spinning for maybe a MONTH at that time).  She gave me some luxury fiber samples that had come from BMFA.  One of the fibers included there was some baby camel - about 25-30g.  I don't remember exactly, and it's odd.... when I started spinning it for this project I didn't weigh it.  I'm a nut.

So the pattern I have picked out is one I've had my eye on for a while to use with a handspun project - strange how we think about patterns for so long and imagine them into existance.  At least I do that.  I've still got my eye on it for some other handspun that I've done a sample skein for but with this fiber I didn't have enough to do a sample skein.  I did a sample skein with other fibers that I was considering, of which I had a greater quantity, but there wasn't enough baby camel to do a sample swatch.  Here's the yarn.  Already balled up because I wasn't thinking "take a picture" when it was still in the skein.  I was aiming for lace weight, lighter than fingering.  What I got ranged from that up to sport, so it averages about fingering.  I also didn't measure the yardage before I started knitting because I thought I would just knit until I ran out of yarn.  I'm afraid it'll be a scarflette.  But a nice one.  I hope.  ha

 

And the pattern.  It is called by the designer "Cinder's Fairy Godmother Scarf" though on Ravelry you can find it listed as Cinderella's Fairy Godmother Scarf (Ravelry Link).  I got the beads at Wal-Mart.  Kind of generic but just the color and effect I wanted for the very neutral colored camel yarn.

I'm praying for this stuff to relax, stretch, and hold a blocking.  But I'm afraid it's got too much loft to hold any blocking for very long and the beads will disappear a bit in the texture.  If nothing else she'll have a nice little neck warmer with cold little beads on it, and I will have a new bit of fiber experience including beading.  There are a LOT of beads on this thing.  A LOT.

In the past few months I've been busy with a few things like soap making (oh so fun!), hosting a Christmas Swap on Ravelry (also so fun!), and cleaning my house (not so fun).  And squeezing in a bit of knitting and spinning and teaching.  I'm looking forward to more yarn dyeing and more of all of the rest and hopefully I can carve out the time to blog about it.

Happy New Year Everyone!  And Happy Birthday to my sister Arin!  :)

XOXOXOXOXOX

Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks

Back in June when I drove to Estes Park, Colorado for the Wool Market I stopped at a very sweet little yarn shop called Gove City Yarn in Gove, Kansas.  I had read about the shop on my friend Tracy's blog about a year prior and had wished and dreamed of visiting there.  I don't know why.  Maybe to be in the same place as a virtual friend had been?  Somehow it would make me feel closer to Tracy.  After reading about her visit to the shop I would see their ads in Interweave Knits and ask my husband "how far away is Gove?"  I must have asked him ten times over the space of a year.  I knew that when I drove to Estes Park I would be doing everything in my knitterly power to stop and visit that yarn shop.

And I did.  And it made me have a few tears and a lump in my throat when I drove up and recognized it from Tracy's post telling of the quaint little community, the shop, and the shop owner.  The owner was friendly and outgoing and loved telling about all of the yarns in her shop, especially those special ones that could only be purchased there, spun from the llama and alpaca fiber grown locally.  Tracy selected one of those special yarns as her souvenir and I believe she made a shawl.

My souvenir purchase from Gove was two skeins of Manos Del Uruguay in color 113, Wildflowers.  I hadn't seen this yarn in person before (nor many of the others she had there) and had long wished to have just the right yarn to make the My So Called Scarf.  I had tried other yarns and none had just the right look.  It had to be Manos or a similar single ply hand painted yarn. 

While knitting the hat/mitt/scarf set for Lila Pearl I ran across a pattern on Ravelry that was similar to the MSCS  as it used similar yarn but the flow of stitches drew your eye upward.  The delightful name was Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks.  The stich is a star stitch but the yarn paired with the pattern name made me think of birds in flight.  Others see small flowers.  I knew that before returning to the entrelac scarf I had to get out my two precious skeins of Manos and cast on for Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks. 

Pattern:  Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks by Marianne of A Time To Knit
Yarn:  Manos Del Uruguay, 2 skeins, color 113 Wildflowers
Finished Size:  5.5" wide, 81" loooooooong

I have just cleared 4520 unread posts from my bloglines.  Some my own.  ha  And I start anew.  I miss my knitting blog friends very much and I don't think I've been myself without them.  I haven't been playing on Ravelry.  I just haven't been doing much other than chase children and clean house since school started.  I'm tired and overweight but there could be something else.  It's premature to be guessing about anything at all but I have a doctor appointment Thursday morning for a .... something.  Not sure what.  "Small hard lump in underarm" is the only way to describe it.  We'll see what she says about it.  And maybe say a tiny little prayer or think a good thought and send a positive vibe my way.

The afghan project is quietly running itself at the moment while I nap and knit and chase babies.  There are still afghans to be returned from seamers and I have received some contact names in Greensburg from a few sources.  A lady at church who is part of the quilt guild here in town said that they made lap quilts to send to Greensburg and when they were sent there was nobody to receive them so now their quilts are in police cars being distributed to whoever they encounter that might need something like that.  I'm okay with waiting and contacting the churches there when we're ready.  I've said many times that I'm glad I'm the project boss so I can make up the rules as we go along and at the moment the latest new rule is that we're waiting until it's the right time to take/send these afghans.  The hats and scarfs and other miscellaneous items are another story.  I'll keep you posted about how these things find their new owners as soon as I know something and can make a decision about it.  The cold weather is pushing me to find people who are ready for them.  :)

Currently knitting:  Silk Garden entrelac scarf - 65% finished.

Next to knit:  Raglan Cardigan for myself, Mission Falls 1824 Wool, sage with evergreen and brick accents at cuffs and bottom - maybe at collar, haven't decided yet.

Lila Pearl at nap time today, lulled to sleep by Dr Seuss.  Why does it take a picture like this for me to realize how crazy close that outlet is to her bed?  Gotta get one of those special outlet covers.

Everyone have a lovely fall week and take good care of every little thing!  :)

XOXOXOXOX

Knitting Foes

Whelp.... so much for my sidekick abilities.  The Colts won.  Congratulations to Peyton Manning, congratulations to his coach and his team.  Congratulations to the team owner (as if he has anything to do with them winning) and all that.  And I'm sure the boy in Katie's math class will come up with a new lifetime wish.  Fourteen is a sadly early age to have your greatest dream/wish come true.  Aim higher, hon.  But be careful what you wish for.... we all know what happened to Hurley when he won the Lottery!  heh

LOST will be starting up again on Wednesday.  This is a much bigger event to me than the Super Bowl and it is only one fourth as LONG.  I swear I will probably CRY when this episode is over on Wednesday night because I don't have any more LOST for another WEEK.  I just finished watching the last disk of the first season.  Whew!  I was on the edge of my seat for all six disks.  I'm telling you.... it was HARD TO TURN THE TV OFF when it was getting late at night.  At some point during disk four or five at the end of one show Pregnant CLAIRE popped out of the woods and then the show was over... and my husband jumped off the couch, turned off the TV and said, "Time for bed!"  GAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!  ::calm::calm::calm::  I am looking forward to Wednesday night with great anticipation.  And I want NO INTERRUPTIONS.  Honey, do you think we can get TIVO by then?  If not, I might have to rent a hotel room for an hour.  *smooch*

So we have some knitting foes!  Yes, I feel the need to spell it out.  Because people will be wanting to correct my grammar if I don't.  Really.  When you have a knitted Finished Object you refer to it as a FO.  But do people say that in their mind as FOE or as EFF OH ??

I say FOE.  Gramatically that is .... "I have a FOE to show."

Some say EFF OH.  Gramatically that is "I have an EFF OH to show."

Now that we're on the same page... and you know that I say FOE.... here we have it.

Besotted.  In the category of "Norma said if it's not in the mail, don't send it now - save it for next year."

Next up... a long overdue FOE.... Katie Basic Sweater from LB Homespun - the yarn I will never use again unless I'm being tortured on a deserted island in a dimly lit underground bunker and the only way to get home is to knit with this yarn.  BLEH.  They'd probably require that I also count rows which is pretty much impossible even with good light.  Goodbye dear sweater, I am so glad to be FINISHED WITH YOU.  And Katie loves it.  But she doesn't like how it flares out a bit in the back.  I told her "It's not supposed to be a fitted sweater, dear."  I was on Sleeve Island for EVER with this sweater but I have something new in the wings that I'm just dying to work on so this one had to get finished first cause I'm just that kind of person.  I have very little self control when it comes to finishing stuff and I was feeling AWFUL that I hadn't gotten this done for Katie sooner.  It was finished last night at midnight and she wore it to school today - thus, poorly lit photos.

More randomish stuff:

• I really want to make photo albums for my FOEs.
• The Kansas Knit Bloggers webring is READY!  YAY!!  I need to make a seperate post for this but it's not happening today.  I'm still working on links for the sidebar on the home page but the ringsurf joining page is ready.  The webring is intended for people that actually do live in Kansas or who travel here often and might talk about Kansas yarn shops or something on their blog.  The purpose is to help bring together Kansas knitters as a regional community.  Hopefully anyone with an interest in Kansas or who would like to know about yarn shops and fiber farms in Kansas will find our blogring full of helpful information and friendly people.  But really.... current or future residence in the state of Kansas is pretty much necessary, don't you think?  I'm not a born leader... I'm too wishy washy sometimes... so maybe I'm a terrible person to host the ring!  But I'll try - I'll really TRY to put my foot down about some sensible guidelines about participation in the ring.  With a smile too.  :)

Everybody have a great week!  Knit!  Stay toasty warm!  Enjoy the snow if you have some!  Take down your Christmas tree if you haven't already!  :)

When Norma Nags

When our dear Norma nags, people listen.  Maybe it's because when our dear Norma nags, it's about something totally nagworthy.

A week or so ago when I checked in on Norma she was nagging us that it's not too late to knit a scarf for the Red Scarf Project!!  That was January 21st.  The scarfs don't have to be sent until February 1st!  I thought many things.

• It's so nice that there has been such a great response to Norma's Red Scarf Project this year
• Too bad I didn't plan better and I could have knit a red scarf (nag starting to take effect)
• I have no red yarn in my stash to make a last minute scarf
• (at Wal Mart later that day) Maybe there's some kind of red yarn here that I wouldn't hate using for the Red Scarf Project
• (still at Wal Mart) There is not one skein of red yarn here that I would use for the Red Scarf Project
• (...still) Hm.  There is some natural colored Lion Wool here.  I know it takes dye.

Two skeins of wool and a few drops of RIT DYE later, I had some yarn that I believe falls in the red family.

I swatched.

And swatched.

And kept thinking of this "hugs and kisses" scarf.... x's and o's.... where had I seen it.  WHERE had I seen it??

I kept swatching.  For an entire evening.  At least five different attempts.  I tried Scarf style - nothing really worked with this yarn.  And there were already so many Irish Hiking Scarfs in Norma's scarf photo gallery.  If only I knew where that x's and o's scarf pattern was. (I can hear many of you saying "DUH!")

Finally I remembered.... Hello Yarn!  Besotted!  The perfect pattern for this yarn... for this occasion.

When Norma nags I listen.  She tells about her Red Scarf Project Field Trip on her blog.  That post tells me that I've picked the right pattern.  And tells me that putting every other project on hold to knit this scarf was a good choice.  I'm going to start knitting red scarfs for next year as soon as I can.  :)

No, I'm not knitting in the attic now.  For some reason I thought it was a place to find good light.  If nothing else, at least it shows the pattern texture nicely.

For now it's time to get myself dressed and take the babies to Wichita for a Birthday Lunch with their Daddy!

Everybody have a great week!!  :)

Happiness

When I was a little kid my brother and I had Charlie Brown bed sheets that had pictures of Peanuts characters all over them with "Happiness Is..." phrases with each picture.  One was "Happiness is waking up to find you have another hour to sleep."  I loved those sheets.

Today.... Happiness Is...

Happiness is... a pretty girl wearing a red scarf.

Happiness is... a sweet baby wearing an adorable hat.

Happiness is... the view of a beautiful winter day from my kitchen window.

Happiness is... pink?

Pink shoes.

Pink fingernails on a little girl.

Cupcakes with pink frosting.  And sprinkles.

At the grocery store... (or, "A lesson in why small children should ride in the grocery cart")

Emeline:  (holding up box of cake mix) Mommy, need this.
Mommy:  We do?
Emeline:  Yes, need this.
Mommy:  What is it, Emeline?
Emeline:  (looks at box) Honey Cakes!

Who could resist that?

There are several projects I "should" be working on but at the moment the mindless work of unraveling a cashmere sweater is the best I can muster.  It's a good time to ponder and prioritize future projects.  :)

Argosy

She is finished but not yet washed and blocked.  I can hardly describe the pride I feel over this project.  Although I have made a project bag from my earliest practice yarn, this is something that I can count as a real accomplishment - the "next step" sort of thing. 

The dyeing spinning and knitting all came together like I wanted them to which is a lucky thing for me.  This is a gift for my sister who just turned 30 last week.  It wasn't quite finished when I gave her the gift bag with the scarf on a stitch holder inside, which created all kinds of silly questions in her mind like "is Laura wanting to teach me to knit in two days?"  She loves it and will love it more when she receives it complete!  heh

Argosy in pictures.

Everybody have a great week!  I'll be posting more when things get back to "Normal" around here.  We've had house guests nearly nonstop since before Christmas so I'm staying off the computer and doing other things while babies nap and in the evenings.

Now that Argosy is finished..... hmmm.... it's hard to decide what to do next but I think I'll be clearing a few things out of the WIP bags and baskets and getting back to my Fair Isle Cardigan!  :)

Eye Candy Friday

Again....

by dawn's early light
to the tune of babies calling mama
and bacon frying
after a week-long knitting frenzy

the nearly complete .... Argosy.

My dear sister has arrived.

I must go knit! 

Everyone have a really wonderful weekend!  And if you're in the path of the predicted winter storm for the weekend (like we are in Kansas), please stay safe and toasty warm.  Love all you guys!  More posting and catching up next week - I promise!  :)

Random Wednesday

In no particular order of importance (but don't go all the way to the end if you don't want to see something PRETTY Miss L):

1.  It's two weeks until court.  I found out today on the kids' school calendar that Sept 20 is an early release day.  They get out of school at 1:30 - our court time is set for 1:30.  If there's any reason for them to appear (talk to judge or something) they won't have to miss a minute of school for it.

2.  It's incredibly easy to transfer the kids to a new school.

3.  Two sick babies + one sick mommy = no sleep.  We must be getting better because I didn't get up in the night to help a baby who couldn't breathe through her nose but didn't want to sleep without the pacifier in her mouth.  I really don't feel much better yet and now Daddy's feeling a bit *bleh*.  Sorry dear, blame us - not your crazy work schedule.  *smooch*

4.  I like starting new knitting projects.

5.  Picture of Emeline not feeling entirely thrilled about showing off the new scarf:

6.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Or the knitter.  My friend Miss L, who is selling that darling PomPom yarn + pattern on the Destash blog, which I just discounted today SOLD.... yes, that friend.... Miss L had a major stash building splurge when she was vacationing in Wisconsin in July and brought home some very interesting stuff!  She brought me a big-o bag of beautiful yarn including two skeins of Trekking XXL and two balls of Cascade Fixation sock yarn and also two 50g skeins of K1C2 Wick!  Wow this is so soft and really really cool - it's 53% soy, 47% polypropylene - color 516 (chartreuse).  Wowee.  Pretty color - I was thinking I'd like more for a summer tank or something like that.  Chartreuse is a pretty extreme color for me but if you call it Apple Green it's much easier on the brain. 

So Miss L bought all kinds of cool yarn for herself too - one skein in particular was very very *interesting* and very expensive.  This stuff was $50 for one ball.  Probably about.... oh maybe 100g... no.... 75g?  She brought this ball of yarn on her show & tell day after the vacation and was fascinated with it.  It's 100% novelty yarn - we suspect 100% synthetic materials.  The skein is made up of about 20... 30.... 40.... I don't know how many different novelty yarns in various lengths, all knotted together into one long piece of what Miss L calls "trash yarn."  She was absolutely smitten with it at the yarn shop where they had a scarf made up with it and little charms tied on at various locations (probably with the tails where the yarn knots joined each random length of novelty yarn).  The colors here are varied - pinks corals golds, blues greens violets.  Nothing harsh, yet lots of metallics, eyelash, chenille, rayon, shiny stuff, fluffy bits, one mock feather, ribbons, tapes, cables, tubey stuff - various glittery bits here and there.  All completely random novelty yarn, mostly variegated.

Miss L started a scarf with the yarn on an angle, you know - like a diagonal scarf - increase one side, decrease the other side - probably 20-25 stitches wide.  The varying textures made it irregular in width, blah blah blah.  She was not feeling the love for this skein of $50 yarn.  Not at all.  She emailed me and said "if you want it you can have it - otherwise it's going in the trash."

GAH!  NO!  No - throwing away a $50 skein of yarn is not happening if I have ANYTHING to do with it.  So last night she brought it over, handed it to me and said, there's just one rule - if you turn it into something pretty I don't want to know about it.

hehe

Time to turn away Miss L. 

Chartreuse Wick..... Meet Funky Novelty Yarn.

I was just looking at this thinking OH wow, GRAY yarn for a main color would look incredible and give it an entirely different appearance.  I'm actually thinking of giving this to Suzannah for Christmas.  It's right up her alley and she loves this color of green.  It'll go with her powder blue coat very nicely too!!  Making this scarf is giving me all kinds of ideas for using random balls of same-type yarn mixed with novelty yarn for scarfs (think knit longways!), summer tanks, oh, lots of things!  I know.  There are no new ideas.  People out there at the trendy knitting shops are already doing cool things.  I'm just out here in the middle of Kansas with a boring LYS where they've had the same exact knit samples for the whole 10 yrs I've been going there.  Bleh.

I haven't seen too many of various scarves being worked on for the Funky Scarf Swap but this would definitely be something I could see working there.  My first thought about that swap was "I don't want a funky scarf" because it's not very practical for me.  This, however, has helped me a little to think outside of the box.  You really have to be able to take a leap beyond the obvious when you're a designer and when you're trying to find a way to make one man's trash into another man's treasure!  Does it sound like I've been watching too much Project Runway?  hehe

One more word about this novelty "trash" yarn.  As random as it appears, I think the creator was very thoughtful about how she put the random strands together.  No two eyelash yarns too close together, nor metallics, etc.  Thick and thin are at random intervals.  A lot of work goes into making things appear random when they're actually very intentional.  A lot like quilting and sometimes knitting too (thinking of Jon's Rosetta baby blanket).

I hope everybody out there is feeling well.  No word yet on whether papers have been served to X.  I talked with the kids last night and it didn't seem that it had happened but we won't know until the guy tells our attorney it's been done.

Weekend in Review

Hi everybody!  I hope you all had a happy and safe holiday weekend and that everybody is ready to get back to school.  Some have already started (like my kids) and some are about to.

It was awfully sad for us to hear about the death of Steve Irwin.  One of Emeline's favorite videos to watch is "Wiggly Safari" with Steve Irwin so he has been part of our everyday life for quite a while - actually we sometimes watch him SEVERAL times per day.  Thank goodness Emeline is too little to understand about a loss like that.  So far everyone that goes away in her life comes back again at some point.  I can't stop thinking of his children ages 8 and 3 and how they'll miss their Daddy.

Rest in Peace Mr. Irwin - you have made a lot of people happy in your lifetime.

Our Daddy stayed home with us all day Saturday and Sunday - that was like a holiday for us!  He usually works 6-7 days per week so having him with us for two days in a row without having to go out of town was so nice.  He did work on Monday so it was kinda like any other day - just without mail.  Sunday we took the girls to a park nearby.  It was so so SO pretty out and a really nice temperature.  Emeline didn't sit still long enough to get many pictures but Lila isn't running yet so I got a few of her.

As I've mentioned, Miss Margene has been a generous spinning enabler and fiber stash builder.  A while back she sent some gorgeous EXTREMELY RED merino wool to practice with.  There was 45g of it which when you're a new spinner seems like an endless supply of fiber.  Whew it's pretty!!  If you like red you would LOVE this stuff.  I don't know this for certain but I think it's by Judy Jackson and is called Simply Red.  Is that right Margene?  So late last week - Thursday or Friday - I pulled out this fiber - oh, it was right after I spun that blue mohair that I showed a picture of.  Anyway, at that time, I got the red merino out and started spinning it in a medium weight single.  It seemed to go along so FAST!  The spinning is very mesmerizing and before you know it.... Poof!  The fiber is spun and on your spindle!  Wow.  I didn't want to ply this - I didn't want it to be barber poley - you know what I mean.  I wanted it to be just as I saw it there on my spindle.  And I swear I could hardly wait to dig some knitting needles into this stuff!!  This yarn wanted to be a scarf!!  Yeah.  A scarf from 45g of fiber.  Right.  Like feeding 5000 with a few fish and a loaf of bread.  Uh hum.  So I immediately skeined and washed and dried this red yarn.  And looked at it in my knitting basket in a little skeinette for about half a day before winding it into a center pull ball.  45g makes a good sized ball ya know!  Sure there's enough yarn here for a scarf.  Doesn't matter that every other scarf I've made was more like 200g or more.  This one ball.... sure - a scarf.  I cast on and knit until last night.... when it was gone - as in used up.  When it was about half way through Emeline decided that whatever it was.... it belonged to her.  No pictures, but I'm tellin you it was cute.  So last night I used up the yarn and washed the scarf.  And here it is.

Yarn:  Judy Jackson "Simply Red" merino - Handspun by me - approximately sport weight
Pattern:  Single Cable - no pattern - 16 stitches wide (6 stitch cable)
Needles:  US6 bamboo
Dimensions:  3" wide x 48" long (Perfect size for 2yo)

And so that was the weekend.  The only thing I haven't mentioned is that the girls and I are somehow.... sick.  With some kind of cruddy coughy hacky crusty boogery runny nosey watery itchy eyes nastiness.  It started with Lila Pearl having a fever on Thursday-Friday which I do think was a mild case of rubella - then Emeline and I also started feeling yucky.  It might be allergies - maybe a cold.  I don't know what it is but none of the medicine I've been giving the girls seems to be helping.  No more fevers but I'm achey and generally feeling rotten.  I've also thought that maybe we all three have rubella but I really don't know and we would just have to ride it out anyway.

Court Stuff (talked with attorney this morning):  To our knowledge, X was not served on Friday.  I'll know later today or tomorrow when he got the papers but I think he'll get them at work today - maybe.  Possibly at home tonight (the building he works in is not very approachable if you don't work there).  But I think he'll have them today.