Merry Christmas!

Lolly’s favorite Christmas ornament is her musical moose. She looks forward every year to when I unpack it and put it on the tree. As well as being soft and fuzzy (her favorite qualities in a toy), when his tummy is pressed he sings “Oh, Christmas tree, Oh, Christmas tree!” in a very gruff, grunty moose voice ending on a raised pitch “huh?” as if asking approval. She can’t get enough of it. No matter where she is in our home, she comes running when she hears him sing!

This year, I allowed her to get a little closer for her cover picture. She was very sad when I moved him back to the Christmas tree. However, like all good girls and boys, she faced the disappointment stoically…until next year!

My Versatility +!

What a beautiful shawl by LeTonBeau! Here is a link to LeTonBeau's Versatility. Be sure to check out her pictures so you can see what the finished product looks like! As I am a larger woman, I added a repeat of the cable/bobble section so it would be wider. Here’s the first 24 rows of the main section…

My very first bobbles and cables! Can you see them? Can’t WAIT to get it finished!

P.S. If you are new to chart reading, don’t forget that you must read the chart from bottom to top AND you must read the odd rows left to right and the even rows RIGHT to LEFT. Otherwise, you will come out with wrong stitch counts and things (bobbles and cables) won’t match up!

Reality Check

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker." - Helen Keller

Maybe that is why I love knitting so much...one small stitch at a time...focused...perservering...never monotonous...each stitch important to the integrity of the whole.

My Fibertrends AC-12 Brushed Felt Beret is finally finished!

Modeling a Christmas present for a friend...

Another Christmas present...the "No Knot Cravat"...

A slit is knitted in so the other side slips through.

No more losing your scarf!

Cinderella is Alive and Well!

I have been working mega hours on the 5th grade play. We are doing a funny version of Cinderella. It took me 2 weeks to get all the costume sheets finished...68 of them!!! PLUS running 30 Cd's for certain of the characters to practice with. But everything got out to the kids on Thursday. Whew! We start after school rehearsals week after next for 2 weeks. MEANWHILE, we've been working on the 2/3 grade musical to be performed in November..."Dinomotion". I'm telling you, there is nothing funnier than seeing kids in dinosaur costumes try to square dance! It ought to be a riot! My kindergartners and 1st graders will be doing scenes from The Nutcracker. They are really excited...as am I! So this weekend I finished working on Cinderella's ball dress. I found this really neat white dress at the thrift that would be a PERFECT Cinderella dress. It was really filthy and yellowed. So I brought it home and washed it up on the delicate cycle (you know you can wash ANYTHING in the washer...dry cleaners are really unnecessary!) It came out beautiful!!! Isn't it gorgeous? Can you believe it was only $10?!!!

I decided that it needed to look a little more period...so on with the drippy lace sleeves...

Add some velcro up the back for quick changes...

And lastly, a poofy overskirt...Voila! A Cinderella dress that any young girl would love to wear!

Before:

and After!

My Sweetie Pea...

Lolly always looks forward to Miss Peggy’s visits. Each time she arrives, Lolly checks quickly in her bag to see if IT is there… the “special chew bone” …otherwise known as her recorder!

However, when Miss Peggy starts to sing instead of playing IT, Lolly rolls on her back, rubs her ears with her paws, barks her “bossy” bark repeatedly to tell her to stop and on occasion, joins in singing with her sotto voce!

I must add this is through no fault of Miss Peggy who has a very beautiful soprano singing voice! I have not decided whether Lolly’s antics are an aversion to Miss Peggy’s lovely singing or just her displeasure that IT is not being played. I strongly suspect the latter!

When on occasion Miss Peggy does play IT, Lolly sits transfixed for as long as Miss Peggy plays, her little face mesmerized as if trying to figure out how those beautiful sounds are made. She does not respond this way to any other instrument or form of music. Somewhere within her little soul, the sounds of the recorder seem to resonate with her concept of all that is beautiful and right in the world.
(Isn’t it cute the way Lolly sits like Winnie the Pooh?!)

DONE!

I just have 3 words to say about this beautiful pair (first ones I've knitted) of luscious socks...SOCKS AIN'T FAST!

My Sock...my sock...my very first REAL sock!!!

Here is the first one finished! Ain't it a beaut? Now...only 4 more weeks until it has a mate...Lord willing!

Lolly gives it the old sniff and feel test......

and APPROVES!!!

New Year...New Projects!

Would you like to see what I have been doing in January?

Here are my Seussical Socks:

Now if those don't cheer ya up on a cold, rainy day, NUTHIN' will! They are knitted and then felted...isn't it amazing how a sock that would fit the Jolly Green Giant can totally shrink down to a normal human size and all shrump together into felt?! Remember that sweater you "ruined" when you washed it in hot water? That is exactly what you deliberately do with felting! You DARE not take a telephone call when felting something...unless you want it to fit a Barbie doll!

I used up lots of yarn remnants to make them. The are knitted according to a free pattern called, "Family of Knitted Slippers". They only took 4 days! That is REALLY fast! Of course, I was a bit driven...my feet were cold! AND Melody had finished her and Doug pair.

I find it a great deal of fun to knit what my sister knits! It gives us a lot to chat about...as if we needed more to chat about! I am SO thankful for Vonage! It allows us to talk at will without worrying about $$$$$ (she lives in Mexico!).

After I finished these lovelies, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and do a REAL pair of socks. My dear friend, Rance, gave me a gift certificate to a knitting shop for Christmas. So, I went down and picked out the yummiest, most expensive sock yarn I could find. I really have to like the yarn and especially the color of the yarn that I knit. I really get into colors. Colors make my brain spit out endorphins like crazy. Endorphins are goooood for us! We LIKE endorphins! Today, I just finished "turning my heel" (no, it did NOT involve a trip to the emergency room!) and I have picked up my gussets (tee hee, that sounds really funny, doesn't it?!) and am decreasing and shaping them. This pattern was devised by a free pattern generator called, "Elizabeth Bennet's Perl Sock Pattern Generator". You type in all of your measurements and it generates a custom pattern for your foot that makes it fit perfectly. A WONDERFUL tool! You can use any type of yarn and guage, with any type of needles and it will do the math for you. Here is a picture:

Ain't it purty?

And isn't that the most beautiful, peaceful yarn EVER?!

The Quest...has ended!

In my quest for the "perfect" hat, I have made many types, sizes, and designs of hats in the past few months. Well, I am very happy to tell you, the quest has ended successfully! I discovered during my trek that for me personally, I needed a rather large, wide-brimmed hat. (the results of having a large (NOT fat and NOT big!!) head and face. I give you (in both coloring and personage!) the "Robin" Hat ...

Can you believe it started out this big?!?

It is knitted using Fiber Trends pattern WP01, "The Wool Pak Felt Hat". Until I can get a better pic of it on me later when someone else can take one for me, here is how it fits on my large head...

Here is the hat I made for my friend Susan's birthday....the Lava Hat...(as she has red hair and blue eyes, it really suits her complexion!) This is a free pattern, "Deb's Derby". Most of my earlier hats used variations of this pattern.

And last but not least, the Bo-Peep Hat (my own design...a tam with a brim):

I'm done with hats now...(for a while at least!)...on to socks and clogs! Check ya later!

Christmas 2007 - part 2!

Melody, Doug and I had Christmas together this year! We had so much fun opening our presents the way we traditionally do in a very non-traditional manner...on the webcam! What fun!

I can now show you the knitting I have been working on for the past couple of months...I decided that this year I would only do three knitted presents. Being new to knitting, I was afraid that I would get all stressed out if they didn't turn out just right. So I only did the three. I was very pleased with all of them.

The first one I did was a hat for my niece-y-in-law, Alyssa. Isn't she pretty? The hat is cute too.

The second one I did was a pair of felted clogs for my friend Susan. They fit! YAY!!!

Then I knitted slipper socks for my friend, Martha. They fit too! Double YAY! I stitched suede bottoms on them for durability...

And lastly, here's my latest hat...MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!

Christmas 2007

One of the most fun things that I do every year is take a new Christmas photo of Lolly. Here she is sporting her brand new festive necklace complete with jingle bells. Needless to say, she was not impressed...all she wanted to do was to play "kill" with it! I didn't let her...which made her really disgusted with the whole affair!

Another thing I like to do is make a "thank you" card with a picture of her and a story on the inside. The kids love getting them and collect them from year to year. I even had a former Fernbank parent stop me in the store a couple of weeks ago and tell me that even though her child has moved on to middle school, they still have Lolly's picture card up on their fridge! Here is this year's:

Lolly always looks forward to spending time with her favorite cousin, Pippa – my sister’s toy poodle. She and Pippa have great times playing mock “battle”! It amazes me how gentle she is with Pippa. Lolly weighs 23 pounds and Pippa weighs only 9 pounds. When they play, Pippa puts both paws up on Lolly’s shoulders to “tag” her while Lolly only puts only one paw very gently on Pippa’s shoulder to do the same. They are quite cute playing together. Here you see Lolly with Pippa’s pink piggy. Every time we visit cousin Pippa, Lolly makes a beeline to “Piggy” and claims it as her own for the entire visit. Pippa is very patient and tolerant of Lolly’s appropriation!

Number 2 and 3!

Here is hat number two (the kids at school call it my "Madeleine Hat"):

And hat number three:

I have discovered that I absolutely LOVE making hats! I am now making one for my sister, Melody, which will be purple with a lively band around the top. I'll post it when it's done. Toodles.....

Ta Da!

Well, here it is...I finished it in only 3 weeks! Now that may seem a long time to you but consider if you will that I had the 5th grade play after school for 2 of those 3 weeks and well...now you see why it is a miracle that it took only 3 weeks! It was great fun learning new techniques with this hat. I learned how to knit "in the round" (not a big mystery after all, you just keep going once you get around to the start!); I learned how to knit on 4 double point needles (sounds scary, huh? NOT! You just substitute one double point for the total amount of stitiches divided by four. Then when you get that many stitches on a stick, you start the next stick and so forth until you have your stitiches on four needles and are knitting with the fifth stick. Ok...I admit, explaining it sounds WAY more complicated than actually doing it! Notice the picture of me learning the "stick trick" at my favorite knitting store, Nease's Needleworks...they are SO nice there!); And last of all, I learned how to "felt". When you knit something in animal fiber like wool, then wash it in really hot water with a little soap and lots of agitation, it turns into felt!! It is really cool. It shrinks up, the fibers all get meshed with each other, and it becomes solid. I also learned that if you mess up, you just redo it. When I cut the brim for the rosette, it left a very raw edge that you can see in the picture where I am wearing the hat. I didn't like that. It looked wrong to me. (Here I am at my other favorite knitting store...Knitches.) Also, the crown was too rounded...more like a derby. So....

I asked the ladies at the two different knitting stores and they both said to go ahead and try re-felting it. The result was the lovely edge you see in the picture where my friend Rance is modeling with Lolly Belle as his "arm candy"! I also made the crown more oblong and egg shaped when I re-felted it. I really like it now. I am STOKED to do another one.

Meanwhile, I am awaiting a DVD that will teach me (hopefully!) to knit socks! I already have my supplies...just waitin' on the DVD to come in the mail. More about that later. Have a great day and when exactly are we EVER going to have cold weather so I can actually wear my beautiful hat?!?! It's October, for cryin' out loud! It is NOT supposed to be 90 degrees! Ah, the joys (????) of living in the south!

p.s. Many grateful "kudo's" to Rance who did not go running into the sunset when I plopped the hat on his head and got the camera out! He just sat there in his benevolent patience humoring me...What a trouper!

Looky, looky!

I am SOOO excited! While I love knitting dishcloths, I felt the desire to try something else. So I decided on this really cute hat by Berroco in a wool yarn called "Hip Hop". But I didn't know how to knit in the round. So, I took my heart in my hands and went to downtown Decatur to a little knitting shop called Neese's Needleworks. Up until now, only my sister has known of my terror of walking into situations that are new and where I don't know what to do or expect. So it was a BIG step for me to venture into such an exclusive shop and ask for help. I walked in and there were several ladies sitting around a table talking and knitting. One young girl with tatoos on her arms and hot pink hair ask, "Do you need some help?". I quickly mumbled, "Uh, no...I just want to look around.". She said ok and left me to my own. I wandered through the small store looking at the various yarns and knitting supplies. I had just gotten to the end of that pretense when a nice lady about my age came into the side room where I was and asked the same question. I took a deep breathe and said, "Yes, actually, I think I do." I told her that I had learned to knit this summer, was knitting dishcloths, but wanted to try something new. At each revelation, she said an encouraging comment and seemed very cheery and friendly. She seemed really interested and happy that I had "found" knitting. I really thrive under words of encouragement and she had me feeling quite comfortable with her in seconds. I whipped out my hat pattern I had downloaded from the internet and asked her if she thought it might be too hard for me. She quickly assured me that it was the perfect thing to start knitting in the round and that I would have no trouble with it as I already knew how to do decreases (where you knit 2 stitches as if they were one...I LOVE doing knit 2's!). She asked if I knew how to knit in the round with circular needles. When I told her I didn't, she said, "Well, here, let me show you." Wherewith, she quickly got some "scrap" yarn, needles, and showed me exactly how to do it! She explained that when I got to the "top" of the hat and needed to use 4 double tipped needles (HORROR!!!!) to just come on in and she or someone else would show me how to do it! Now how wonderful was THAT!?! Anyway, we found my supplies and I started home with a new project, hope and excitement that I had found someone to help with the confusing stuff! Isn't the yarn GORGEOUS?! I LOVE the jewel tone colors...purple, peacock blue, fuchsia pink, and mustard yellow. It is really thick in some places and thin in others. Since yesterday, this is how far I have gotten. Not bad. The hat will hopefully look similar to this one (excepting color) when done. And you can be sure that I will be heading back to the store for help with the top when it is time! I'll keep you posted!