Odds & Ends

Alexis spent much of the weekend with me because of Alyssa's working and Andy's hunting, plumbing, and practicing with his band. Alyssa dropped her off between having 'floor time' at the real estate agency in the morning and working at a kiosk in the mall (seasonal) in the afternoon. Lexi spent the night, we went to church, then came back here. She helped me make cookies. I want to use some of the pureed pumpkin I have in the freezer in the cookies for the knitting guild's cookie exchange next week. The recipe we used Sunday is too sweet for my taste, so I need to tweak it a bit. Maybe I'll make another batch tomorrow - Dominic will love that!


Several items have come off my works-in-progress list. The felt stars, which are the ornaments for the LAFA tree at the art museum in Cadiz are now in the hands of the ladies who will decorate the tree this week. This picture only shows half of them. I think they turned out pretty well; the color is actually darker - more like garnet. The LAFA meeting is always interesting - many different talents. Several of the ladies were working on more tree decorations today, but I worked on the new socks I started yesterday for Lexi. She selected the simple (she picked out a complicated one at first, but I wanted one I could memorize easily) lace pattern for me to use, and she wants me to have matching ones.




Here's another picture of Carmen's socks that shows my version of the Harley-Davidson logo better. This one also shows the color more accurately; the orange should be darker, but I'm not the best dyer in the world.

Lexi has mentioned several time recently that they can't find her 'glubs.' I don't think she's really hinting for me to make her some. She doesn't hint - she just comes out and asks me to make things for her. She may not have realized that mittens are a common knitting project. Anyway, I knit some for her one day last week to match a scarf I made for her earlier. The yarn around the top is what the scarf is made of, and the orange and green pick up two of the colors in that yarn. The mittens really are the same size, it's just the camera angle that make them look different. And maybe the warm colors advance, cool colors recede thing.

These are two scarves I made last week as Christmas presents. The brown one doesn't show up well against the dead cypress vine, does it? Lexi helped me take pictures outside of several items on Saturday. She wanted me to hang these in a tree, which I did, but this shot shows them better - no shadows of limbs.

I made these little socks for Rose, to match some I made a few weeks ago for Lexi and me. The big one in the picture is mine, of course. The pattern is an 11-stitch fan and feather variation. I used six repeats for mine, five for Lexi's and four for Rose's.

I've usually just made plain stockinette socks before, but I think I'll make more lace ones. There have been a lot of lace sock patterns published lately, but I'm to ornery to use someone else's pattern. I'd rather just pick out a stitch pattern from one of my stitch dictionaries and plug it into the sock pattern that's in my head.

Now it's time to do a little knitting before bedtime.

Thanksgiving Eve

Well, I finally managed to get that picture of me and Midnight in my profile section. The file was too large, so I had to resize it. Since I'm not the most computer-literate person in the world, that took some playing around in the camera software.

Is it my monitor, or does my hair look blond instead of gray?

I had the company of a five-year-old all day. We played several games of Chutes & Ladders, she drew a bunch of pictures, she played games on the computer, I read a book to her, etc. She fell asleep on the couch while I was cooking supper, and we couldn't wake her to eat. When her mom called to say she was on her way home, I managed to get her coat on her and Dominic carried her out to the car. She sort of woke up on the way home, and then woke up completely when we got there. Of course she denied sleeping at all.

I thought I would get a lot of knitting done today, but that didn't happen. I did several inches on a simple scarf, but that was all. Maybe tomorrow and Friday - Lexi will be here again Saturday afternoon, sleep over, and then most of the day on Sunday. (Please overlook the poor sentence structure.)

I hope everyone has a very pleasant Thanksgiving!

Midnight

That's her helping me knit. I almost poisoned her recently. When I got her in September, I had to buy all new cat equipment, because I had donated what I had before to the animal shelter. I wasn't going to have any more animals. Anyway, I put the bag of food down in the back room, and then realized that the floor was wet. I wiped it up, and soon it was wet again. I finally figured out that the bag of snow-melt stuff nearby was liquifying and spreading around that corner of the room. I put the bag of snow-melt outside, mopped the floor, and put the catfood and litter back. So about a week and a half ago, Midnight started acting funny - just lying around in the weaving room (where she really hadn't spent any time before) and not eating. After a couple of days, it struck me that I was getting very close to the bottom of the bag of food and that it might be contaminated. I threw the rest of it out and got another bag. She's back to normal now.


And here is Lexi helping me make felt on Saturday. After we got it somewhat felted, I cut it in pieces and used a washboard to finish the process. Lexi said she'd seen a washboard on TV. The next day I dyed the felt, and will now cut shapes out of it for Christmas decorations for the LAFA tree. The color is not quite a jewel-tone, but it will have to do.

I finished the lace socks for Rose - toddler things work up really fast. When I started the second one, I thought I was starting at the same place in the color sequence as I had started the first one, but I goofed, so they are fraternal rather than identical. I like them that way, and I'm sure Rose won't care, but I hope that doesn't bother Sara.

I think I finished my Christmas shopping today at the Mayfield Art Guild (http://www.mayfieldgravescountyartguild.freeservers.com), one of my favorite places.

Time to get back to my knitting, and to decide exactly how I'm going to make those felt ornaments.

Second Post

Now let's see if I can figure out how to include pictures. I bought myself a digital camera recently, so I'm trying to learn how to use it as well as how to blog. Old dogs (or is that bitches, since I'm female) can learn new tricks!

Today was not raining, so I burned the paper trash. That's one of the things I like about living out here, although now that I'm retired I still need trash service. (When I was working, I took my non-burnable trash to work with me and put it in the dumpster.)

You can see that most of the trees are bare - the year moves on, doesn't it? The bare branches of one of the bald-cypress trees (now really bald) seemed a good place to hang Carmen's Harley-Davidson socks which I finished last night. You can't see the H-D logo shape on the foot very well. (As I said, the camera is new.) They looked really funny while I was working on them, because I knit them sideways - she wanted vertical stripes. So I did a provisional cast-on and then grafted the last row to it at the end. Then picked up stitches and worked the toe in the round.

I made two felt balls this afternoon to see if those particular fleeces would felt well. Each ball took less than ten minutes; I'd say that's good enough. So I carded enough of the white wool to make the Christmas ornaments for LAFA. The Lake Area Fiber Artists are going to decorate a tree for the Janice Mason Art Museum's Festival if Trees. (http://www.jmam.org) We agreed at the October meeting that we'd each make ten ornaments out of fiber in jewel tones. I plan to have Lexi help me make sheets of felt tomorrow. Then I'll dye them and cut out star shapes. The November meeting is 11/27, so it's about time I start working on them.

Hey! I think I did it - included pictures.

First Post

After reading so many blogs, I've decided to get in on the trend, although I have nothing to write about today.

In future I'll post pictures of knitted and crocheted items as I complete them, and maybe of my herb garden as it morphs from an above-ground pool site to an herb garden. Who knows what else I'll come up with.