Well.

It's been quite a whirlwind couple of days.  Last night Friend Gina and I had our little knitting confab.  I've made the executive decision to call it Our Own Knitting Group (OOKG).  I'll let y'all know when Friend Gina comes up with a spiffier name.  It was too fun.  We met at a local Starbucks (first time I'd set a toe inside one), stayed there almost until closing, knitting, talking, and cackling.  Well, I cackled.  Gina, being a lady of fine distinction, even if she does hail from Michigan, does not cackle.  She did, however, laugh when she saw The Bag.

Well, she wasn't laughing at The Bag.  I don't remember what she was laughing at but it made a good picture nonetheless.

She also showed me the second sock, of the two she is currently knitting.

She also showed me the utter cuteness of the swatch she's doing with her adorable sock yarn but I did not photograph it.

So, last night, amongst the cackling and imbibing of caffeine which I truly needed, I finished The Bag.  This morning, I tucked in the ends and began the felting process.

Now, the last time I felted a bag, I committed a Cardinal Sin.  I allowed the bag to go through the entire cycle.  Twice.  I was disabused of this idea through several discussions with Friend Gina this week and resigned myself to much sogginess of wool and other irritations.  As Friend Husband was leaving (late) for work this morning, I had a brainstorm!  If I put The Bag under the wheel of the car as he was pulling out, surely it would squeeze out more water than I was capable of doing manually, and would therefore dry The Bag more quickly!  I ran outside as he was about to pull out and said, "Wait!  Would you run over this bag for me?"

I wish I'd brought the camera to record the look on his face.

Being Friend Husband and accustomed as he is to my hairbrained schemes, he recovered quickly.  "Sure!" he said as I wrapped The Bag in a towel and placed it behind the back wheel of the car.  He ran over it, said, "I helped!" and scooted off to work.

Sadly, Abby was not happy with the amount of shrinkage that had taken place in The Bag, so she asked me to felt it again.  Back into the hot wash, but this time, I figured a way to just turn the agitator on instead of the whole shebang and it took much less time.  Then I rewrapped it and ran over it with my car a few times.  Yes, I did take a bizarre delight in doing so.

Oh, I have to relate this:  When I brought The Bag in for Abby to inspect, she held it up in delight, then said softly, "Oh.  This is sort of foul."  I had to roll on the floor with that one.  She comes up with the funniest things to say.

Anyhoo, The Bag is now happily sitting out on the front porch swing, sunning itself in preparation for being Abby's penpal's birthday present.  Of course, me being me, I didn't finish it until the very last minute (we'll see them this afternoon) but at least it's finished.

And for your viewing pleasure, a slideshow of the birth of The Bag.  Happy Weekend!

Although we did not get the storms that they did in the northeast yesterday, we had the wind.  Naturally, the children wanted to play outside.  So we bundled up and played out in the "fresh" wind.  I tried to knit but the turquoise thread was just determined to snarl up.  I spent hours untangling thread and speed knitting to try to knit in the thread that wasn't tangled.

For those of you interested in felting, here is a link sort of describing it.  I'm sort of running out of time so I couldn't find a better one.

And here is the bag last night:

I'm sorry.  It's just the whole shooting thing again.  What's up with our society anyway?  Of course, you never know when it's going to be your time to go but when I kiss my husband goodbye in the morning, I don't expect him to be killed at his university.

Does anyone else look for escape routes and plan for emergencies like the one that happened at VA Tech yesterday?  I do.  I think it's sick that I have to prepare to do something to help my children in such a situation.  Such a sad, selfish waste of life.

Bleah.

Well, now that I'm recovering from the hives (thank you, God!), let the race begin.  Not only the race to try to get my house back in order after 4 days of utter neglect but a race to get one of those cute little felted bags done for Abby by the end of the week.  She asked me to make her one but she needs it when she needs it.  I'm thinking it's doable, or I wouldn't have agreed.  I'll post a picture later on of what I did last night.  I've got to run now...y'all have an excellent Monday, if such a thing is possible.

Edit:  here's the picture of what I finished last night.

Spring in Siberia, with Steroids

This is April, isn't it?   

Since it's too cold to garden and I've been so stinking hyper on these steroids, I power-knitted the Buttonhole Bag, and felted it yesterday.  Here are the pictures.  I'm just so proud!!!!

David got his stitches out Friday.  Happily, my doctor called in a scrip for steroids that day too...I feel like writing her a formal thank-you note.  I was so so miserable and today is the first day that I've felt half-way human.  Better living through modern chemistry!

David was being goofy tonight and I thought I'd take a picture, looking toward future extortion opportunities.

Currently Reading Mason-Dixon Knitting: The Curious Knitters' Guide: Stories, Patterns, Advice, Opinions, Questions, Answers, Jokes, and Pictures By Kay Gardiner, Ann Meador Shayne see related

Comeuppance

Ok, Friend Gina will love this one.  I confessed to her this week that I like to read while I'm knitting.  If I'm just knitting away (as on Zi's hat), I will also read.  My hands can generally feel what to do without my constant supervision (although mistakes are made on occasion). So yesterday I was reading (and cackling over, to be quite honest) the Mason-Dixon Knitting Book while I was binding off Zi's scarf.  Binding off is not that hard to do but it is slightly different than the knitting and knitting and (yet more mindless) knitting that I was doing beforehand. 

Rachel came in and watched me for a minute or so and then said, "Mom?  Are you binding off?"

"Mmhm...yeah..."

"Ok, well, because it looks like you're knitting and I was wondering if you were still binding off."

I dragged my eyes from the enchantment of my book and sure enough!  I had knitted about 50 stitches instead of binding off. 

 does not describe how I felt.  I tinked it back to the part where I was truly binding off and finished it (finally).  But I must be more careful when reading while doing "mindless" knitting.

Here's a picture of Zi in her hat and scarf (which she did not take off all afternoon...I know the house is cold but honestly!)  Her brother is wearing a hat from the snowman kit which I will explain presently.

A few people asked about what we used to make the snowman "buttons" and eyes and such.  The in-laws sent us a kit (from Lillian Vernon, I think) that had various snowman accoutrements such as eyes, carrot noses, hats, and scarfs.  The buttons do look like Oreos!

On Monday, I was gently chided by a few of you about not posting pictures of my first quilts.  There's a good reason for that.  Once they passed into the hands of my young, I haven't seen much of them.  Abby still cavorts with hers (she calls it "Twilt" and has since she could talk) and I see it often but Sarah's and Rachel's I haven't seen for a while.  I finally got them to dig them up and photographed them this morning.

When I saw Sarah's, I remembered another mistake I made.  That would be the mistake of not using more highly contrasting colors.  I learned about that after reading a book on Amish quiltmaking and working through a few of the lessons.  I didn't know it with my very first quilt:

Here is Rachel's quilt:

I embroidered or quilted the girls' names on their quilts.  All of our children have 3 names, then the surnames, and I just thought it would be special to have their own names on their quilts.

Here's Abby's quilt:

I wish I'd also taken a picture of the back of Abby's quilt.  Hers is the only quilt that I also pieced the back for.  I knew when I was pregnant that I'd make a Burgoyne Surrounded quilt for the baby because I was way way into the Revolutionary War at that point (which would be one reason why Abigail is Abigail).  That's what the center of the quilt is.  The back is a large Abigail Adams star.

Well, my computer time is up and I still didn't get to do Friend Gina's tag.  Maybe tomorrow.  I hear tell that our spring break is next week...I'd totally forgotten it was...yeehaw!  Have an excellent Friday, everyone!

From this, on Tuesday:

to this, this morning:

To this, just now:

(BTW, her sister Rachel taught her to smile in that goofy way, not me.)

Plus a cat toy made out of the gauge swatch and some catnip I picked and dried last summer.  I don't have a picture of the cat attacking it but he certainly did.

Now he's all mellowed out:

Currently Reading Mary: A Novel By Janis Cooke Newman see related

This is Gina's fault...

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

No, it's all my fault, but I can see that I'm at the top of a slippery slope that leads to yet more and more "insulation" in the house over time.  Does anyone know what I'm talking about?  This is what I'm talking about:

The picture does it no justice for it is a lovely mossy green and soft as a baby's cheek.  It was on the sale rack at Meijer for $1.19 and it called to me.  No, it sang a soft and convincing siren song to me and I picked it up off the rack and cuddled it close to my body, paid for it, and rushed out of the store.

So what's the big deal?  It's about $2.50 worth of knitting yarn.  Who cares?  Why talk about it like it's crack?

I know myself.

Soon I'll find other orphan balls or skeins of yarn that is pretty or soft and certainly on sale and they will find their way into my market basket and into my home.  I will have no plans for the beauty and loveliness of them, only to have them rest in my home and delight me with their softness until I can find a good way to use them.  Before long I will have a stash.  This is the beginning of it. 

Before long, my stash will be bigger than Gina's, and she's been knitting for years.

How do I know this to be true?  I know this to be true because I have another stash that I've been working on for about 10 years.  It's a humongous stash of fabric that I use for quilting and sewing and other crafty sorts of things.  Once my children made maps of Africa delineating the different European countries which claimed various hunks of the continent, all using fabrics from my stash. 

I told Gina that one day I will blog about my fabric stash but today I am blogging about my yarn stash, because I stand on the threshold of the momentous today.  I know that this is the beginning of bigger things.

We will not address my book stash.  At all.