tired me

i would like to be knitting but i'm tired. i drove from la to richfield ut with thing 1 and thing 2 today. 8 1/2 hours. they are finally asleep. they're excellent travellers, fun to travel with, enjoy the sights as well as can be entertained by dvd's.

free wifi! so fun to sort of catch up on the normal things (knitting blogs and facebook!) when you're on the road by yourself.

playing with the camera

look at my yummy noro seed stitch multidirectional scarf! i am trying to learn how to use all the snappy features on my new camera to make my snapshots worthy of the camera taking them ;-).

i think this scarf may look better in the picture than in person!

for your shower...

this is the soap sweater that joined the wine bag that interrupted the clapotis that interrupted the yellow sweater that interrupted the bags that interrupted the february lady sweater that lived in the house that jack built. ;-)

here's how i did it:
i think i used a 7 or 8 long circular for this (magic loop). i looked at several soap sweater patterns on blogs, then kind of made one up to use up some noro.

c/o 6 st, then kfb in each one. split the stitches to create a round, then just increased by kfb twice on each end every other round until the little sack was big enough. i think i got up to about 30 stitches.

tuck the soap into the sack, then start doing k2tog twice on each end every other row until you are down to 12 stitches. then i just did a 3 needle bind-off.

i striped the noro for the fun of it.

the stripes are wavy because the soap has already been in use and the little sweater has started felting.

this is easily done in an hour or two -- it is a bit fiddly maneuvering the soap there at the end, but i'm thinking xmas gifts with leftover yarn!

it's like the knitting that jack built

this is the house that jack built.
this is the malt that lay in the house that jack built.

i can still recite that entire nursery rhyme/poem/tale by heart -- i loved it so well.

my knitting lately reminds of the layer upon layer that that poem builds, except that each project represents an unfinished interruption of the project before. so, here we go.

this is the project i finished over the weekend:

it's a wine bag i knit with some leftover worsted -- so quick, very easy, very fun. i did not use the colors paton suggested, but assigned my own colors to their scheme of color widths. the pattern can be found in this paton yarn book.
here it is prefelting:
i want this as a sweater!
i started this project because:

a) i needed a wine bag for a party and

b) i was bored with this:

oh, yes, clap me a river, i have begun the clapotis. in knitting as in life, way behind the fashion curve, but the noro sock yarn inspired me, i had queued it a long time ago, so i started it. the yarn colorway reminds me of van gogh's starry night.
look at those gorgeous runners -- so fun to knit the 12 rows and then rip those babies down! can you tell i'm just past the center? look on the right hand side and you can see that i am mirroring the color flow using the second skein. i center-pulled the first ball, and am pulling the yarn from the outside for the second half.

why did i start the clapotis? i was bored with this (you may remember it from a previous post):

don't you love it? it's based on this short sleeved summer cardi, using rowan's all-season cotton.
as you can see, my impulse to knit this included the urge to replace all that boring stockinette with the leaf lace pattern from nancy bush's knitted lace of estonia. here's a picture of that lace pattern in lacier yarn (the third picture on the page).


i've finished the sleeves, and just need to keep knitting down, down, down until it's long enough, then i may block it to see if i need to put button bands down the front. i don't want to button it, i like it open, but the fit is close enough that blocking it may let me know if i need that step.

i started that fun sweater because i was bored with these:

the evolution of a bag!


so i thought i might be teaching this bag, so started a fourth one as a sample, to illustrate in case i needed help teaching it. here's part of that one:

i'll probably be ripping that one out to make something else out of that yummy monochromatic noro.

i think that's enough for now. i started those bags because i was bored with other bags i was making, and i started those bags because it was too hot to knit my february lady sweater. i'll pick it up again next month -- i just have ONE SLEEVE to finish and i'll be done.

they're not knit, but...

the NO DEADLINE KNITTING resolution has reared its ugly head. and because of that happy notion, i have done my teacher gifts for the year. i am shocking myself with my level of preparedness. there are 2.5 weeks before school is over, and i am DONE!

i want to share my $ saving project. it involves a few steps i have been working on for a while:

1. saving all of that paper that comes home from school printed on one side, that you read and throw away. i've done that since september.

2. using credit card "miles" to "purchase" gift cards. our credit card points redemption website has $50 border's cards, and $10 starbucks cards. and, other than paying out the points (which we rack up no matter what!), all those cards are free! i would have spent over $250 on the cards i am giving away if i had bought them at retail.

3. finding a cute website and persuading my kids to write thank you notes

so while i recognize that this info may be useless to you at this time of year, maybe it will inspire you for next year.

so, number 1.
i have long been resentful (oh, yeah, look at me) of the sheer quantity of one-sided paper that arrives from school. i read it, i threw it away. so i decided to save it this year. i QUICKLY developed a large pile of scratch paper. it's been great. i print patterns on it, i print lists on it, kids use it for paper airplanes. i have decided to use it for teacher gifts, and to make simple personalized note pads from these vast mountains of scratch paper. here's how:

start saving paper ;-). what will you do with this 1st grade homework list after the week is over? make a snappy notepad, of course! and big giant costco cheerios boxes? something needs to support that snappy notepad...

cut the paper in half, and cut the cereal box to 5.5" x 8.5":

get together with the kids, and come up with a cute poem that uses the teacher's name, and format it in word. print those half pages out.

clip everything together with binder clips, and glue the top edge with rubber cement. i find it works best to sort of shove the rubber cement down into the paper edges.

clip the top of that note pad and wait for about 1/2 hour, until the rubber cement dries, slap on another coat, let that dry, peel off the top page (it's a bit messy, in my case) and call it done!



all right, that takes care of a little something extra-personal for the teachers, but what about the school nurses? office staff? RSP? OT?

number 2:

no cost gift cards! there is no way to take an interesting picture of $50 borders cards (teachers, nurses) or $10 starbucks cards (everyone else) but suffice to say that i make excellent use of my visa for EVERYTHING (including my phone bill), racking up points for this very occasion.

number 3:

check out this cute website. you can download a pdf that allows you to print this sweet envelope on whatever paper you have around (i used 8.5x11" photo paper). adorable notepaper sheets are included, along with instructions (duh):

get those kids to write a thoughtful note, use simple glue-on picture corners to affix the gift card to the envelope, and you're all set!


so there's a touch of homeyness and personalization for the teachers, who deserve the most effort, and a bit of that also for EVERYONE else who has helped us this year. it's been a hard one, and they deserve a ton of thanks.

there you go! back to knitting...

searchin' for a rainbow

and i found one in these crazy hobo bags.

i have to say i have become addicted to this bag. the first one was an attempt at a sort of sophisticated, subtle, stripey thing:


the next one i hinted at in my last post, as it dawned on me as i dutifully knit stripes on the last one that i had some noro to use up and this could be even more fun.
i call this one sunrise, sunset bag.
here it is in its full noro glory, felted, and either lying on the table in or hanging by the door of my favorite lys abuelita's.

it was so much fun to watch those colors evolve -- the addictive chemical ingredient of noro -- that it occurred to me that i could do even more, so...

i have done a third one as well. i was supposed to be writing up the pattern for the class i will be teaching on sunday, 5/17 (woo hoo!), but i couldn't stop myself from exploring the possibilities with this easy/fun pattern. look, prefelted:


see how much yarn i had left over when i finished it? that's it, in between the handles. i was sweatin' it. out of 6 skeins of kureyon.
here it is, finished, in all of its sloppy, floppy, hobo, hippie glory:

there's no perspective, so what you can't tell is that it is the perfect shoulder bag size, roomy but you're not going to be pulling floor lamps out of it a la mary poppins.

i call this one the "i wish i still had the purple and teal paisley shirt that would totally have gone with this" bag. for every big giant square on the first two that i did, on this one i did four little ones. which makes it look like a hippie quiltie hobo bag for sure! love love love it! i actually bought a zipper for this one and may line it with a worn out pair (many exist) of my little boy's pants. (angela/alittlebird's idea)

i have experimented with the handles each time. i hate to commit to one, but i think the last one, which does not involve any crocheting, and makes a good-looking, sturdy handle, will be my handle of choice.

meaning that, for the class, i actually probably won't have an entire sample to show them.

that is, unless the discontinued noro i got online cheap shows up promptly via the comfortably reliable UPS, and i go ahead and make another one for the class. what? you think i need hobo bag rehab? what if i told you thinking about hobo bag construction was keeping my head from exploding?

i knew you'd understand ;-)

but has UPS' ups and downs delayed my creative knitting insane startitis? no. look what the new "wish i had the paisley shirt" bag holds:



see this? and this? and this?

no, i can't help it if they conspired to make me do this:



another look:


there is a leaf stitch in the nancy bush book. it forms a triangular scarf that increases 2 stitches every other row. you tell me why it shouldn't occur to one to substitute that for the boring stockinette in the weekend cardi? hmmmm? because, you say, one knows nothing about lace, and there's no pattern for the half-diamonds along the front, the part of the sweater everyone will be looking at? that one may have to rip out and reunvent those triangles four or five times? why should that stop one? it's over 100 st. per row by the time you get to the second screwed up triangle?? hey -- the cardi increases at each raglan edge 2 stitches every other row! it's a natural!

and the yarn is fantastic -- not heavy and clunky like kitchen cotton -- it actually drapes and has a sense of itself.

now if i can only finish this thing before the noro gets here, i'll be good to go. cloning is my only other option.

oh, dear.

http://www.masondixonknitting.com/archives/2009_04.html