Wednesday, November 29, 2006

A Box!

Guess what my Secret Pal sent me? A big box full of my favorite things! First of all, there's the book I've been pining for, Knitting Beyond the Edge, which is just awesome! I've already picked out a few patterns to try. Plus I got three balls of yummy cashmerino aran in pretty shades of green, and there's also a skein of Noro Iro in a beautiful rainbow colorway. And don't you just love the cute little ladybug card? Thank you so much, SP! You totally spoil me!

Monday, November 27, 2006

Season's Eatings

Crazy Baker Lady was here. 11 different recipes made over 5 non-consecutive days (I had to take breaks to eat turkey). This year's cookie fest featured (from top right clockwise):

  1. caramel apple bars
  2. apricot crescents
  3. wedding cookies (followed by more crescents)
  4. cream cheese brownies (with a couple of stray fudge pieces)
  5. caramel heavenlies
  6. white chocolate fudge with raisins and almonds
  7. chocolate fudge with pecans
  8. no-bake peanut butter and chocolate oat cookies
  9. lemon bars
  10. chocolate chip macadamia cookies
  11. (not pictured) pecan bars

We spent a great thanksgiving with my cousin and her sweet but germy children (pass the coldeeze, please). There was lots of eating and laughing and falling asleep on the sofa. Oh, there was knitting too. I even got two projects done and I started a few new ones. I'll post about them soon.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Thoughts as I Inch towards Thursday

A great big thank you to my secret pal! She sent me an Amazon gift certificate, which I promptly blew on electronic toys!

This might have carried over into my knitting. I have a bazillion (ok maybe that's a slight exaggeration) projects on my needles, but I can't seem to stay with any one for long. Over the weekend, I bought a copy of Knit Simple at Joanns (hooray coupons!) and they had a bunch of scarf patterns, of which the leafy lace one was my favorite. I tried out the pattern using an aran weight (way too big) and a worsted weight (still too big). I looked through the more accessible parts of my stash and only found cottons at the dk weight. Now I just know I have something warm that'll work (and not yeild a scarf 12 inches wide!), but "the right yarn" is probably hidden away in a closet somewhere. Long story short, I'm going stash diving tonight :)

Anyhoo, I have no finished objects or newly started objects to share with you. But I did do doodling (slow day at work), so here's the doodly doodle I did:

Monday, November 06, 2006

Stitches East

I took a class at Stitches East on Saturday. It was on finishing, which I sorely needed help with! Up to this point, I'd just been sewing pieces together like fabric - it's effective but not very tidy. The class went on all day, but it's amazing how quickly the time went!

Anyway, what would Stitches be without the Stitches Marketplace? Not to toot my own horn, but I was extremely good and refrained from buying everything in sight. I got some interesting 100% corn yarn:
Some hemp fiber:
and some hemp/merino fiber:
The lady at the hemp booth gave me some helpful advice on spinning the hemp, which feels very stiff, much like euroflax linen. She also said I could dye the hemp/merino using acid dyes. The merino will take the dye, but the hemp will resist it, yielding a muted, flecked, kind of tweedy colored yarn.

I also snagged some short Addi circs and a (not-so-little) something for my SP spoilee. On the whole, it was a great day!

Friday, November 03, 2006

Photo Op

My camera has come home so I got to take photos of my recent WIPs. Here's the sock yarn in the round scarf:
and the Paton's soy wool scarf:
and a cabled scarf made with woolease:
They all need blocking (especially the cabled one). I've got a bunch of other holiday gifts on the needles too, like these two: