The Great Wallaby Revealed

I guess I am officially married. What, you think that happened over a year ago with the shoes and all those people? Well you might be right but I think I sealed the deal late Sunday night when I sewed the last end into my guys Wallaby. It is official I made a sweater for boy! It must be serious!


For those wondering about the yarn shortage crisis, I alternated the new sheep and wool yarn with the last of the original. I alternated every two rows instead of one because I was at the opening for the neck working in stockinet st back and forth rather than in the round. It worked fairly well. I can still see the change but I think that may be my super crafter powers. As you can tell from the above pictures I haven’t seen it in the light yet.

Yarn Bangles

I came across this great idea the other day at See Me Knit. I have a huge box of little odds and ends of yarn that I can't quite throw out but that really are pretty useless. Most of them are even too small for a row of a Baby Surprise Jacket. I guess if I ever wanted to knit doll clothes I would be set, until then I will just have to make these knitted bangles.

I picked up the plastic bracelets for a dollar at a thrift store. I am pretty sure that if I was anywhere other then NYC they would be a dime but here a dollar seemed as good as I was going to find. Then it is a matter of knitting a long strip and sewing it around the bangle. Pretty neat.

Yarn

Everything is going to be fine; I found more wool for the Wallaby that ate all my yarn. I know you have all been sitting there with baited breath worrying your poor selves sick over my Wallaby issues and I sure do apologize for not telling you sooner that things worked out.

Finding more wool was at the top of the list for sheep and wool and the first thing I did, well, after I ate a lamb burger. I was able to find the same vendor who had something very close to the original yarn. It may be a touch lighter but I can blend it by knitting every other row without making things too noticeable. I was so excited to have found it, and so scared to be in the same boat that I bought 2 skeins of 270 yards. I admit I thought about getting 3 but even I knew that was overkill.

Now I just have to start working on it again.

NY Sheep and Wool 2010

there were...

and

and we had a smashing good time

Wonderful Wallaby Woes: part II

Yesterday I told you the very long tale of the wee Wallaby and my inability to count; today I shall tell you the tale of the giant Wallaby that ate all my yarn. In all fairness, we should probably blame me and my inability to count, this time yardage, and not the wallaby pattern.


So my sweetie and I have been together for about 5 ½ years now. When we first met and he learned of my knitting skills he asked for a sweater. And like all good girls I quoted the boyfriend sweater curse to him. What is this? You have never heard of the boyfriend sweater curse before?

It was whispered to me in hushed tones when I first learned to cast on. It goes something like this: never knit a man you are dating a sweater because, inevitably, you will break up before it is finished and you will never meet another man with the same measurements. I kid you not, this was said a lot to me and to a lot of other young knitters.

So I wouldn’t make him a sweater. At some point because of his pleas I wrote to the holy grail of knitters (my old Vermont knitting group, those ladies would steek anything) and asked what they thought of the boyfriend sweater curse. Their ruling seemed fair and unbiased. They decreed that the sweater curse applied to the beginner knitter and not pros. Because I was a fast proficient knitter who could make a sweater in a month or two I would be fine. But I couldn’t make it for a holiday or take on some insane pattern I would come to hate AND my guy had to promise not to break up with me for 6 months after receiving the sweater.

Despite this sound decision I managed to avoid starting a sweater for him. That is until two weeks after we were married when we happened to be upstate for the sheep and wool festival. When he took my hand sweetly in his and said “NOW can I have my sweater?” What could I do but make him one?

I bought yarn on the spot. Lovely yarn from Maine that is hand dyed and set in salt water from the coast. Do you see where this is going? Yup, somewhere around those lovely big shoulders I realized I was going to run out of yarn. Thank goodness this weekend is NY Sheep and Wool and with a little luck there will be more yarn. Of course the dye lot won’t match so I fear it will have to have stripes and of course I may have to rip back so that the stripes don’t all start at the top and scream “someone didn’t buy enough yarn!”

So please cross fingers, toes and nose for me that I find some yarn to ease the pain.

Another Happy Birthday

It might seem a wee bit repetitive to have another happy birthday post right after telling you all about my sister but this is a happy birth DAY post. That's right perhaps my oldest friend of all time gave birth this morning to Hannah (no pictures yet).
Madeline, aka mommy, and I became friends in the third grade when she invited me to share her tire swing.  Our relationship was solidified when we were given the assignment of reading out loud (to each other) Anne of Green Gables. From that moment on we were each others bosom buddies. I am over the moon for her and her family about this new addition. In honor of Hannah's entrance I made her this sweet little dress. I made it from cotton  purchased at last springs Maryland Sheep and Wool helping to clear out the stash for next weekends purchases.

Morning Glories and the Yarn of My Dreams

Last spring when we moved into our new place my sweet man planted me morning glories on the back porch. All summer long they vine has twisted it's way around our fence but until this weekend, ah the second weekend in October, no flowers. Yesterday we awoke to these.

Aren't they lovely! I am not sure why they took so long to bloom, maybe someone out there in cyber world can explain it.  But as the days turn chilly it is nice to still have a bit of new life on the back porch.

As it gets colder here on the east coast I also find myself pulling out more knitting projects. There is something about the air getting crisp that turns my hands to yarn. On Friday I met the yarn of my dreams.  I wasn't planning on it, I swear. In fact I am not even sure I believed in such things but maybe that's the thing about love it always happens when you least expect it.
I spent Friday afternoon at Downtown Yarns, my favorite knitting store in New York.  I was struggling with a project that I was making from some yarn that was gifted to me last spring. Next weekend is NY sheep and wool festival and I feel like I need to have some projects started from my stash before I am allowed to buy anything else. So using up this yarn was really some sort of justification to buy more yarn. But this yarn and I were not really friends.  I am not in love with its many colors,  or to be more specific how often it changes color and width.  So I was on project attempt number 3 with this yarn having aborted a hat and mittens when the lovely Callie told me to stop.  As she pointed out there was no need to make something that I was had no joy in doing. Thank goodness for Callie.I was so relieved to put it down and release myself from obligation knitting.
This left me to wander the store in search of some yarn. My office is ridiculously cold pretty much year round and I am pretty bad at generating my own heat. I pretty much sit directly on top of the space heater from Oct-June. My hands always are the coldest so I have been thinking a pair of fingerless gloves are in order. With that in mind I strolled around the store and pet all the love yarn. And that is when it happened, I met Rowan Lima.  It is so lovely, soft and sorta spongy. It is made of alpaca, merino and a wee bit a nylon to keep its shape.  It is a braided yarn which gives it an airy quality. Alpaca on its own has no real memory so when you knit it it can get heavy and loose it shape but the combination of merino, nylon and the braiding solves this. 
I have enjoyed this yarn so much that I found myself slowing down while knitting with it so the project wouldn't go too quick.  I am thinking that in spite of the yarn investment I will make a sweater this winter from it, or maybe even two.

Sheep! Wool! Maryland!

A

Katy's surprise yarn for me

B
mega sale cherry hill yarn

C

Cotton with black threads

At the beginning of May Mary loaded Molly, Katy and I into her car and trucked us off to the wonderful land of Sheep, Wool and Maryland: AKA Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. We all desperately needed some good girl time and some and had a blast. Now for those who don't know it the Maryland Sheep and Wool is the Big Bertha of sheep and wool festivals. It is huge! and on that May weekend it was also really hot. I admit that touching yarn in 90 plus weather is just no fun. Somehow we all gravitated to fine wool, go figure.

Above is some of my bootee. I am happy to report that I have several projects going with various sheep and wool yarns.

My favorite is A Katy's surprise yarn for me. At breakfast of the second day Katy and I decided to exchange $20 and see what yarn the other picked out for them. We had a few things in the mix for example I hate knitting mohair so no 100% mohair for me. What I got was the lovely hand dyed, hand spun yarn above. Currently the yarn and I are in conference about what it is suppose to become. It isn't a ton of yardage. At first I thought leg warmers but I would have to add another yarn. Fingerless gloves for a overly AC office? I am not sure but will keep you all posted on the plan. Any ideas are always welcome.

Yarn

So I am a yarn-o-holic. I am not sure when it happened and I know it has gotten better since I decided that I wasn't allowed to buy random yarn that didn't have a project picked out for it, but still I have quite the stash.

My guy and I spent the weekend working on the new place and moving stuff that could easily be moved or that I had already packed up. That is when he discovered my 8 bins of yarn hidden in the closet- all labeled quite nicely mind you. All told we moved about 15 boxes of craft stuff- and there is more:fabric, glue, zippers, scissors and thread and really god knows what else.

The good news is it has a nice home to go to with it's own room.

Worry Knitting

So my mom has had a pretty hard week, and without getting into the gory details she has been in the hospital post surgery and is doing much better. But things were a bit scary there for awhile. I realized a bit late in the game that I needed worry knitting. I had some crochet with me but I am not a crocheter by nature. I am a knitter and when I get anxious I need my hands to fly. So I found myself at my all time, hands down, favorite yarn store, downtown yarns petting loveliness.
And here is what I found, hand dyed merino superwash. My hands have been swift and I already feel better, and so does my mom.

More Mini Granny Squares

I thought I would take a few quite moments to share with you all that despite the new job I have still been crafting. Maybe not as much as I would like to but I am keeping true to my roots.
Anyway I have been working on the mini granny square project. I still don't know what it is going to be when it is grown up but I feel I will know it when it gets there. The top picture is of the new addition to the project. I went to the yarn store in search of more yarn for this crazy project (I know that kinda defeats the whole purpose of making something to use up yarn, but I used up all that yarn and needed more...) I added two new and somewhat darker colors. I am not sure what I think but I will keep you posted.

Girl Needs a Hat

There is something in the New York City subway system that eats hats, I swear. Every year I make a couple and every year the train thirst for handmade hats grows. So it is really no surprise that when the weather changed and I went to look in my hat stash there was only one very sad store bought hat. So out came the stash. This is some of my favorite yarn of all time, mostly merino. I fell in love with mostly merino when I lived in Vermont and took a class with the owner Margaret. It has a lovely squishy feel and the colors are saturated without being heavy.
The good thing about hats is they are fast, so after my guy and I sat on the couch glued to our latest netflix obsession I had a hat. It is a simple top down rolled edge hat and it fits just right.

The Olympic Finish Line

Here are a couple of my recently completed projects that I did while watching the Olympics. I confess that both had the finishing done while watching Obama last night. The scarf turned out quite nicely. I still have enough yarn to make at least three more- so don’t be surprised if you get a purple scarf for Christmas! I did learn that even though the pattern was a simple repeat it can be hard to count to ten while holding your breath watching Olympic feats.

As for these lovely coasters I decided that 9 were enough for no other reason then it just seemed good and I always like odd numbers. I may need to figure out a new housewarming gift so that I don’t become too predictable.

Olympic Fever Isn’t Always So Good For Knitting Fever

Well it seems I got too caught up with the Olympics last night, not only did I add an extra row of my lighter color but I seemed to have lost a stitch. I guess synchronized diving is just too exciting for me. Fortunately one of my best events has always been ripping out.

Knitting: an Olympic Event?

I may not glide through the water like a fish or run faster then the wind but if knitting were an Olympic event I would surely metal. Olympic fever has swept our apartment and kept us up way to late the last few nights. The good news is in the last day and a half I have added over a foot to my scarf. A few more nights and I may need a new project.

Proving Yet Again That I Can’t Resist Yarn

My guy and I headed upstate for the long weekend. We had a great time with good friends and good food. He cooked meat over fire, need I say more? We also took the opportunity to hit a good old fashioned church yard sale. We came close to buying a fondue pot but managed to think better of it. I, however, was seduced yet again by yarn. I try so hard to resist, but its siren call penetrates my heart every time. In my defense there was a tale of woe that went along with the yarn. It belonged to a weaver whose studio had burned down. She couldn’t afford to replace her loom and wanted the yarn to go to a good home. Now really, how I am suppose to hold up against that?

The yarn is mercerized cotton with a touch of rayon. It is just lovely and a good summer weight.

I thought it might make a lovely scarf. And the beast is so close to being finished that it really seems okay to start another large project, right?