some summer successes

so far, i have knit one hot pad, and five washcloths, experimenting with techniques and patterns.  i don't know what i'll do with them but they're fun, quick, easy and bright. 

i also have a baby sweater to show, but after blocking...

hope you're enjoying your vacation!

stoplight knitting

i am knitting the holden shawlette with linen yarn.  it's SO easy, it qualifies as stoplight knitting in my book.  i'm sneaking in some extra rows while waiting for my daughter to finish her swim practice.

here's a gratuitous flower photo -- my roses finally have enough blossoms so i can have a bouquet.

ruthless

on an impulse last year, while at my lys, i grabbed some jitterbug yarn and started knitting the lovely coquille shawlette pattern.  i got this far into it, and stopped.  the yarn is NOT right for the pattern.  the yarn is springy and bouncy, and this pattern needs thin and drapey.  the colors change constantly, and the pattern needs longer repeats.

can you see what's coming?  the ball-winder snuck up to it...

... and here we have it -- a mint chocolate chip colored yarn cake of potential!  (the yarn is prettier than in this over-exposed photo.)

cheering up a dirty sink

to tidy up the dishes, i usually use those yellow sponges with the scratchy green side.  but there's nothing like a hand-knit dishcloth to make a messy sink look better.ツ

flip-flop weather

well, it's gotten hot fast here in southern california!  i am no longer interested in holding a hot blanket in my lap in the sun at little league games or swim practice.  i need a new outdoor project, one that would qualify as "stoplight knitting", or knitting i can do without paying much attention.

enter the flip-flop sock (ravlink)! 

i cast on yesterday with some frogged project sock yarn, sensations bamboo and ewe from joanns.  it is very soft, but bit splitty to work with.  the socks are knit from the toe(s) up, as you can see, and start with the interesting turkish cast-on.  it is always fun to learn a new technique!

i am still working away on my hip to be square quilt!  indoors only ツ

best wishes...

... for a happy thanksgiving!  i'm grateful for you, my internet friend.  thank you for allowing me to tame my tempest here with you.

this adorable turkey is a free pattern from webs.  the picture is from the website.

one of these may have to be knit upon arrival at our little campo in baja.  here is a panorama for you -- i'll be enjoying this view for the next week.  as always, double click for a much larger view.

paisleys and washcloths

i used the autumnal palettes i "discovered" on colourlovers.com to paint some paisleys. what i learned:

1. if you don't gesso your canvas, you get a lovely canvassy texture on your background
2. if you don't use your paint in say a year, some colors may be dried up and unusable
3. if you don't have an adequate variety of paint colors, the colors you blend will be remarkably uniform
4. make sure your overlaid color is significantly different in shade intensity than your background color
5. i still love drawing paisleys
6. a painting can be a color sketch

how about some washcloths to consume some stoplight time? i have always liked that basic washcloth recipe, illustrated by the green one with the blue stripe. the center corners always buckle on me, however. this time, i just put a little set of short rows in each corner, and voila! no buckling!

your washcloth hint for the day. you're welcome.ツ

my new toy...

you know how amazon.com gives you free shipping on books if you go over a certain amount? i was ordering some books for my daughter and came up just short. so naturally i needed to buy the barbara walker treasury, seen above. i pored through it, and after my recent experience with päivi's  22 leaves KAL, i wanted to just experiment a little. i found a little lace design, printed out some graph paper and got to work! well, hardly work. but some fun thinking and calculating and figuring.

i thought i'd try a square and just repeat a simple pattern out to make a lace kerchief, in effect. it's really fun, and i can't wait to finish this one so i can start another! i'm using some autumn colorway sock yarn from joann's called sensations bamboo & ewe pattern, a wool/bamboo/nylon blend. the colorway does not allow for much view of the lace, but it's inexpensive and easy to work with. i think i might use a plainer yarn for my next experiment, but it looks very fall-like, and i like it.  if i figure out how to write an elegant chart that someone besides me, myself, and i can understand, i'll write up the pattern and post it on ravelry.  it's just the repeats and exceptions that i don't know how to express on a chart.  but that will be fun to figure out, too!

finally, i have one last picture of my official french market bag in use -- it's so pretty, so handy, and i can't wait to do another. it's one of my favorite patterns ever.

as always, if you click on a picture, it will pop up much bigger.

i love it!

here is my gaia trapezoid with the bead attached.

this is how i have been wearing it.

here it is spread out a bit, showing off the gaia detail and the lovely noro colors.

i'm sorry about the lousy pictures -- i have 20 minutes to do this so only time for snapshots, not photographs.ッ

a trapezoid

my gaia shawl turned trapezoidal scarf is done. knitting complete, 2 ends to weave in. the only thing left is to determine how to treat the one hanging stitch there at the top. i think i will put a bead on there to finish it off.

look how pretty! i'll take a picture once it's dry and the bead has been placed, but i'm thrilled right now to have another incomplete knit off my hands.

if you're interested in the knitting details, you can look at my ravelry page even if you're not a member.  

i'm felting, i'm felting...

what a world, what a world!
my crazy enormous hat felted down, as you can see, to a reasonable size.

it's still really large, but quite comfortable.  it's not supposed to have that brim, but i like it!  the colors are better than illustrated here -- they're actually quite restrained in an autumnally lovely sort of way.   bad hair days, i presently defy thee!

my official french market bag, in these dark days of me not being in the mood for knitting, benefited by getting its embroidery on.  instead of my customary daisy chain, i back-stitched my decor in order to get a finer level of detail.
here it is pre-felting:

and then post-felting, sitting upside down on the coffee maker with one of those square tupperware containers doing the blocking.  it fits perfectly.

you can still see a great deal of stitch definition.  why did i not felt it more?

1. i did not want it to get smaller, as the handles are pretty short when knit per the pattern
2. size 7 needles are really pretty small, i believe, for felting the lamb's pride.  i think i'd go up to 8's if i were to do it again.  this would help the stitches rub against one another and cancel one another out.  ッ  as it were.
3. the flash makes it look more stitch-defined than it really is. 
4. this one is a reminder for me for the future:  the bind-off sections could easily have a penultimate row of garter, to prevent so much curling.
5. well, i think that's it.

i'll take another picture when the bag is dry and ready for its close-up.  but this wicked witch loves her some paisleys, can you tell?  in my former days of gainful employment, the paisley was my favorite doodle.  before i was able to play solitaire on the computer while listening to a customer complain interminably, multi-colored paisley doodles on a desk pad soothed my bored and anxious brain.  i replicated that notion in yarn here. ッ

somehow i never figured out that all i had to do was click my heels three times...

i cannot believe...

... i knit something this beautiful.  thank you so much, päivi, for the wonderful opportunity and for sharing your talent and your lovely pattern with us.

it's obviously a quick blocking job,  ;-) but i had to squeeze in the blocking between school obligations, errands, etc.

click on the picture to make it much bigger, as usual.

i pause to admire...

... oh yeah --  the last row of the 22 leaves shawlette!

we now return you to our regularly scheduled knitting.  i can't WAIT to block this and see how it looks!

well, cr&p.

so much for "Miss High-and-mighty, I'm using lifelines, nyah-nyah"!  i meant to put one in after clue 3.  the road to hell and all...

i mean really, it's like saving or backing up on the computer, isn't it?  you should save/back up when you don't want to recreate what you've done.  since i did NOT follow my own "sage" advice often enough, i have much time invested now in the deep annoyance of:

1. realizing that something does not look right, 
2. trying to fix something 3 rows ago, 
3. realizing that looks WORSE and tinking back, 
4. and the most aggravating thing of all -- knowing that i know better and could have prevented all this by just (say it with me) using a lifeline!

i did figure out this morning that i will NOT have to frog to my lifeline on row 32.  in fact, i this morning i found that i had knit 14 stitches instead of 13 on one section on row 67, setting up my "wait a second, this doesn't look right" moment 2-1/2 rows later.

bbl -- gotta go put in a lifeline. knitting will ensue.  and some ryder cup golf watching.  and some college football watching.  oh, yes, i am QUITE busy.  haha!

ps -- i wish i had taken a picture of the weird stitch arrangement that clued me into my error last week, but i panicked ツ

no joke

this is MUCH MUCH MUCH better.  and may i say thank heaven for a/c.  and may i also say that i hope that my friend madtosh lisa has working a/c soon!

and here's the cardigan she mentioned in the comments.  it's straight up gorge, though i'm concerned i might not survive all that stockinette.  cables could be introduced.  so could a pretty lace insert.

or it might just be perfect plain!

my name is elise...

... and i am a start-aholic.

look how many wip's i have on ravelry.  and those are just the ones i have documented there.  as i was putting my sparkly wrap up as a project, i took a look at my page.


oh boy.

ETA:  i finally added the wip ravelry progress bars to my sidebar.  will that shame me into finishing at least one of these before i start another?  doubtful.

knitting at the opera

well, i was not bold enough to knit at the opera, but check out the nun on the far right at 1:05 of this video from the la opera production of il trittico...

raveler and bkff senoradefarge invited me -- star sighting: barbra & what's his name. well, i barely saw them because i'm terrible at that sort of thing, and sra. stinks too; she sat at the bar right next to their table, looked them over when they were loud and STILL didn't see them. but we breathed the same air. my singing voice has not improved.

the hem of my fls: stem stitch bind-off

stem stitch bind-off, originally uploaded by elisecampbell.

a pretty bind-off that matches the long-tail cast-on (if 1st row is ws wrong)