OUCH!

It was bound to happen, and my own darned fault.....one of my knitting needles slipped between the cushions of the couch and when I plunked myself down to knit later, I sat right on it! I was pretty lucky, it only went in maybe an inch tops, and into a well padded area of my upper thigh, so other than a tender spot and some light bruising, I'm okay. It was scarey though, I jumped up once in happenned and couldn't tell how far in it was!

In happier news my sister's sweater is getting really close to completion. I'm half done the second sleeve, then I need to sew it all up. Mom's socks are nearly done, I will finish them today I think. I bought red and blue wool yesterday to make a larger jester hat for my brother too.

I still haven't found wool to make another jester hat. I want to make one for my brother but in bright red and blue maybe. The shop downtown seems to be the only place that carries the stuff I want, and I haven't managed to get down there yet. I'd better hurry I only have a few weeks! I'm still working on my sister's sweater, stalled while I wait for arm measurements from my mother.

I made a jester hat with my koolaid yarn this weekend. It was super easy and loads of fun. Basically I just knit for a while on circular needles, then split the stitches in half and decreased on each side to make triangles, folded each in half and sewed them up. I then tried my hand at felting, by hand since I don't own a washing machine. (I'm certainly not about to pay $1.25 a load at a laundromat to play around!) I'm quite happy with the result:



Sorry the image is so big, I don't have photoshop here so I had trouble resizing it. It's toddler sized, so it will be for my neighbour's little 2.5 year old girl. I bought round bells at walmart this morning to finish it off. I'm going to make another one now, larger, for my brother. He's a bit of an oddball and would love something like this. His birthday is in less than a month too. I'm not sure if I did the felting right, It did all bind together and shrink some, but it seems like my stitches still have a lot of definition to them, should they? at the bottom of the hat, where the edge rolled up since I just did straight stockingknit, it bound to itself, which was kind of cool. The seams on the points almost dissapeared too. I just used HOT tap water in a bowl with some sunlight dishsoap, and alternated between that and cold running tap water, rubbing the fabric against itself in both temperatures. Is that right? Tips anyone??

Whipping along on the mate for the sock pictured below, when this morning I discovered a problem. The dreaded dropped stitch! Worse yet, it was about 20 rows back! I couldn't bear the thought of ripping back that much, so I set to trying to just pick it back up. It took a little while but I did it, and you can't even see where! I remember being MESMERIZED when a woman at the knitting shop picked up some stitches for me several months back, amazed at how she managed it with just needles, no crochet hook, and here I am doing the same now. Go me!

New projects are forming themselves in my mind way faster than I can knit them. I REALLY need to think about something for my brother first though, his birthday is in less than a month!

Sock #1 is finished! After many false starts and multiple different patterns, I managed to create a sock from This Pattern. Here it is:




I think it turned out pretty well. This pattern makes a fairly pointy toe, though. I started grafting a couple rows early to combat this, but it's still pretty pointy. I hope I can finish it's mate fairly fast, I want to try socks on 2 circular needles next! Everyone keeps raving about them and it sounds like fun. I'm going to head down to the LYS, Beehive Wool today to see what they have. I want to look into felted slippers as a maybe gift idea for my father in law!

It's finished!

I love how it turned out, I'm so proud of myself, hehe. I'm going to take it to work today for the raffle. I hope they like it, I sure enjoyed making it! I used the hooded baby sweater pattern from Knit It! magazine. The yarn is Lion Brand Microspun, which is wonderful to knit with and came out so soft.

Still working away on the sweater for my sister. I'm done the front and back and am about halfway through one sleeve. It's nearing completion now, getting closer to the dreaded sewing up stage. I really don't like the finishing part, I am not good with sewing pieces together. I think if I looked up how you are actually SUPPOSED to do this, it would go better, usually I just wing it.

I also need to restart mom's socks in that nifty Confetti Jacquard yarn. I need a good simple pattern, my first few toe-up attempts failed, for one reason or another. I may have to start from the cuff on this one. But I still have to decide on a pattern. Most I found so far have detailing and patterning, but with the Jacquard patterning of the yarn I want something plain.

Well, here is at least a low quality image of the dying I did the other night:


What do you think? Funky colours eh? The green is a little brighter than that, but the purple is fairly close. I was just playing around so I didn't want to "waste" my good koolaid colours! I don't know what I will make with it now, maybe socks, as it's about a fingering weight wool. This was so much fun I can't wait to dye some more! I have one more small skein of wool to play with and then I will have to find some more. I've been unlucky finding more at thrift shops, and Michael's doesn't carry any pure wool yarns! Lewiscraft had a couple but they were a little pricey so I'm waiting on them.

I found a cute baby sock pattern at http://home.earthlink.net/~nanknits/5hbssock.htm that was designed to match the "5 Hour Baby Sweater" pattern you can find online. I am doing them to match my hooded baby top I'm doing. I took a crummy photo of that, I will try and scan it in soon. These socks are so cute, much better than any of the bootie patterns I tried before. I have to get busy this weekend, the baby stuff and stamped cards are due next week!

I dyed some wool last night!! Thanks to the great directions Kristi Porter wrote in an article in Knitty.com it was all so easy! I wanted to buy some wool at michael's on the way home from work to play with, but they didn't have anything that wasn't more than half acrylic! So I just got to play around with 50g of fingering weight thrift shop wool I had. I made half of it a bold kelly green and the other half eggplant purple. I'm hoping to have scans of them for tomorrow, or later tonight. I can't wait to dye some more, I need to find some wool!