Friday, May 16, 2008

Table Legs Make Great Pillows

This can't be comfortable...
Table Legs Make Great Pillows

Silly Puppy

Have a great weekend!

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Hemlock Ring Blanket

For my 250th post, I have this to present to you:


Hemlock Ring Blanket


This baby turned out gorgeous and matches my kitchen floor nicely don't you think? On the last row before the edging, I ended up with 504 stitches on the 40 inch cable. If I had had any more stitches to put on it, I think the cables would have exploded.

It turned out to be approximately 52 inches in diameter and took 131 pins to pin it all out. I used quilter's T-pins to do this. The T-pins are far stronger than regular pins and very easy to work with.

You should have seen me blocking this on The Eldest's bed last night. I had my measuring tape, a bucket full of pins and one cat (to supervise my work of course) all on the bed. I stretched and tugged and pinned and tossed the cat. Then I stretched and tugged and re-pinned and re-tossed the cat off the bed all over again. It went on for quite a while. I have much stronger arm muscles now. Everyone should try cat tossing for super toned muscles.

I measured each section and made sure that the measurements were the same for each of them. The fan part, from the center hole to the fartherest tip measured 26 inches. The fan, from hole to bottom of the dip measured 20 inches. It took a lot of fiddling to get this all uniform, but it worked beautifully.

To recap this project:

Pattern: Jared Flood's (aka Brooklyn Tweed) Hemlock Ring Blanket
Yarn: Cascade Ecological Wool
Color: 8087
Needles: size 10
Time begun: May 3, 2008
Finished: May 14, 2008

The project goes really fast until you get around row 67 or so. After that it took a minimum of 15 minutes to do each row and a max of about 25 minutes. The edging took the longest time to do.

Took me a whole 11 days to complete. Now imagine how much less time this would have taken me if I didn't have a two year old menace running around the house and demanding my attention 24/7!

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

From Birds to Blobs

We now go from yesterday's birds to todays blobs:

Hemlock Blob

The hemlock is finished! Yeah! I now have to block it and pin it out. The best place that I have to do this is the Eldest's bed. So tonight, he will be "Camping out" on the floor in his bedroom so that I can get this baby blocked and dry. I'm so excited!

I know I promised pics and details of the Mother's Day project, but it will have to wait. It hasn't gotten to my Mom yet. So, details to come.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Bird babies!

This morning I was having some tea and looking out the bay window in our breakfast nook and noticed some bird activity. You see, we had some birds move into one of our bird houses. They, in turn, had a family of birds, but I haven't been able to identify them yet.

Usually the mom does a quick in and a quick out of the bird house. She's a typical busy mommy, she has things to do you know. So I haven't been able to see what kind of bird she is. Last year we had a family of chickadees. This year?

Well today I got a real treat. I saw a bird sitting in the hole of the house. I knew it wasn't the mom, she never sits still. I grabbed the camera and went in the back yard. You wouldn't believe how close I got to the baby. I could have reached out and touched it, no joke. Mommy bird was up in the branches cussing me out. I was good, I didn't touch it. But I wanted to! It was so freakin' cute!

I got some great photos. Take a look. If anyone can identify them, please let me know!
Click to enlarge - check out his little feet!

Just checkin' out the neighborhood
Mommy bird

Monday, May 12, 2008

Not Monday, Fiberday!

Today was take a break from knitting day. I'll pick the Hemlock back up again tonight, but I just couldn't look at it this morning. I'm up to four hundred seventy something stitches per row and it's damn depressing. Takes forever to go around it once. It's fine on the interesting rows with yarnovers and psso's and ktogs and stuff. But the plain stockinette? Not so much.

So. Today was a fibery kinda day. I'm still slogging thru the pretty stuff that the Eldest and I dyed. It's turning out great and my spindling is getting much better. But. It takes me a while to spin on the drop spindle. You can see the fiber progression starting in the top right corner of the photo and going counter-clockwise. Roving, split roving, pre-drafted roving, spun. All while watching episodes of Time Team, a British archaeology show that I've been watching online and that I'm totally addicted too. It's hard being a history geek sometimes.

Not Monday, Fiberday!

I want a wheel so freakin' bad! I could spin so much faster.

I've put stuff up for sale on Craigslist to try and earn the money for a wheel. I've only managed to sell one thing so far, a crib. No one seems to want the 55 gallon aquarium and a ton of aquarium equipment. If you know anyone in the Atlanta area interested, let me know! I put a porcelain barbie for sale up on Ebay. No takers so far. Can't get rid of this either and it would be great for a party.

I did sell 3 skeins of bamboo yarn on Ravelry. Oh well. It'll happen sooner or later, something's got to sell sometime.