Ack!

How could I not have blogged in over a year?  It’s not like I have not been knitting/crocheting.  I’ll just give you some of the highlights of what I have done in the past year.

This is a felted hat that I did last fall.  It was for my 12yo to wear to the historical reenactment group that we belong to , but my youngest is the model.  Unfortunately, the 12yo did not take care of it and it got washed by mistake and can only fit the baby.

I crocheted this Mario mushroom for my oldest son.  We are big Super Mario Bros fans and I thought that he would enjoy this.

We moved in January to a colder climate and our dog also had to suddenly become an outside dog.  I made her this sweater to help her adjust to the changes.

This was for a square swap themed anti-Valentine’s Day.

I made these shorts for my niece’s birthday.

This is just an overview of what I have made and still have saved to my computer.  Next time, I will post what I have saved to my Flickr account.

I’ll Admit It. . .

I am a newbie when I comes to yarn other than acrylic.  My first experience with yarn was acrylic.  Everyone I knew used it.  What you mean you don’t buy yarn from Wal-Mart?  And then novelty yarns came out.  I was gifted with a lot and when it was on clearance for as low as $.36 a skein, who wouldn’t buy some right.  And then came the Internet.  I found other knitters through my homeschooling blog.  And from there I found Ravelry.  I found out that there was thing called a yarn snob and not only do they not use Red Heart yarn or Peaches n’ Cream cotton, but they use things like wool, merino (whatever that is), alpaca, and angora.  And they pay things like $25 (gasp) a skein for them.  And people actually hand spin their yarn.  I have seen some really beautiful yarns that way.  Now I have an Etsy shop that I haven’t really done much with, but I have seen some really awesome things come out of there.  The newest one that I found is from leeloosh.  I really like the violet meadow yarn that she has for sale right now.  Visit her shop and check out what else she has available.

Newest projects

Here are some of the latest things that I have worked on:

A steering wheel cover for my sister.

Slipper Socks for my stepmom.

I also did a black and white pair for my baby’s other brother, but forgot to photograph them before giving them to him.

Buttons modeling Trisch's Hat

A crochet drawstring bag

Knit Purse

Necklace Knit with Beading Wire

Another View of the Same Necklace

Vacation

So I went on vacation, but that is only part of my excuse for not updating here.  But the cool thing is that I got to visit an alpaca farm while in Pennsylvania vacationing.  It also had the most gorgeous house used as a bed and breakfast.  Here are just a few of the pictures that I took.

Challenges

I think it was around September that I decided to start expanding my skills and ideas of what to make.  I was getting tired of doing too many purses and hats.  So I have been giving myself challenges and entering some on Ravelry. The first one was actually something that I made myself.  It was my first time doing anything lacy.  I made it as a scarf to wear when I dress up and entered it in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy workshop where I got the  Improbable Award for Cheering Up Marvin.

For The Wheel of Time:  The Great Hunt Workshop, I got  the Classroom Fun award for a beautiful yellow hat.  BTW – this hat and the poncho were entered in the Ravelmpics and I got Bob awards for them as well.

I’ve been wanting to try knitting and crocheting with wire.  This next one was supposed to be a necklace, but was slightly too small, so ended up being a double bracelet.  Oh, yeah it was also for the March crocheted jewelry of the month group challenge.

I attempted the most gorgeous set of gloves.  Unfortunately this was not a challenge that I was able to complete.  The pattern was in charts which I had never attempted before and used wrap and turns, something else I had not done before.  None of my knitting guru friends were able to help me.  So I gave up after completing this much.

And the last one was for the Bag of the Month Group.  Our challenge was to take at least one hexagon and make a bag or purse out of it.  It was amazing what some of the others came up with.  They did a very beautiful job.

Gifts

The majority of my knitting is for gifts.  An example is the fact that I am knitting some socks for DS#1 right now.   The following are gifts that I have done recently.

This was my stepdad’s birthday gift.

This was the first pair of fingerless gloves that I have ever done.  They were for the neighbor girl’s birthday.

The poncho was for my mom’s birthday.  It is from my own design.

DS #2 has been invited to several birthdays lately.  Here are a couple of the gifts that I did.

This hat was for a soccer fan.  And for the kid who like Legos:

It was just supposed to be a zippered block, but I didn’t have a zipper.  So I used buttons to make a closure and double for wheels.

More Squares

I am still working on squares for the Friendship Square Exchange on Ravelry.  I am doing two a month, one for my afghan and one to send to my partner.  And then I get one or occasionally two from my partner.  For March’s St. Patrick’s Day theme, I did:

This one I did for my partner.  I was just playing around with it, no real pattern in mind.

The theme for these was spring or pastels.  Again just playing around with these.  I liked this one so much that I was going to keep it, however I thought my swap partner would like it better.  The also earned the  Flower Power award in the Cruelest Month workshop on Ravelry.

This month’s theme is pink and purple.  This is the one for my partner that really should be in the mailbox right now.  Mine is the same, but without the ribbon.

Projects, Projects Everywhere

Wow!  I knew that I hadn’t been on here in a long time, but I didn’t realize that it had been that long.  Where to start?   Why don’t I start with yarn dying?  I have been reading a ton on how to dye yarn.  I have tons of crochet thread in ivory.  I wanted to jazz it up a little so I decided to try dying it with Kool-aid.   Right now in our homeschool history, my boys and I have been studying Colonial times.  We learned about how they died with plants and food products.  So for one of our projects, we decided to try it.

The brown is dyed with coffee and the others different flavors of Kool-Aid.

The green is Kool-Aid, purple is purple cabbage, the brown one is tea,and the cream colored one was spinach.

The left one is beets, the middle cranberries, and the right one is mustard.

The Latest

I missed this on my last post, but here are some granny square earrings that I made.  They got me the Jewelry Maker award on The Borrower’s Workshop on Ravelry.

I am also participating in a Friendship Square Swap.  Each month we have a themed square that we either knit or crochet and mail it to one person in the group.  Most of us are also doing a duplicate square for ourselves, so that we have enough to put together an afghan or something.  This month’s square has a Valentine’s Day theme.  This is the square that I made using the Magic Ball method.

I also have knitted a baby hat and washcloth for a client of mine that just had her baby.  Alas I was unable to get pics before giving them to her however.

Oh, and I wanted to post this just for fun.

How to be a Bad-Ass Knitter

1. Knit whatever the hell you want . . . whenever you want.
2. Buy as much yarn (and books and needles etc.) as you want, whenever the hell you want.
3. Never, ever, apologize for knitting.
4. Never, ever, apologize because you think something you knit isn’t “good” enough.
5. Never, ever, apologize about how you knit: right-handed, left-handed, or with your toes!
6. Traditional knitting is timeless.
7. Display your stash with pride!
8. You don’t have to follow a pattern exactly — make changes if you wanna.
9. Never apologize for knitting cat/dog hair into your sweater. It’s all the warmer!
10. Whenever a non-knitter asks you a stupid question, remember that you carry long, sharp sticks.

Granny Squares Galore

I recently went through my yarn to see if there was any that I wanted to get rid of.  Well, I found 8 skeins that were in complementary colors.  I decided to make a giant, granny square afghan with it.  I had made one pre digital camera times and thought it would be fun to do another.  This is what I have so far.

I have also been thinking about taking all my scrap yarn and making either a crazy granny afghan or skirt or something.  I mentioned this at my local knitting group.  One of the ladies had made 99 granny squares and never sewed them together.  She gave them to me.

She also gave me the book that contained the directions.  It also has about 50 other patterns for things to make with granny squares including a couple of skirts.

I am thinking that instead of sewing those squares into an afghan, that I might make that skirt that I want and use the rest for purses.  I have some great ideas in my head and am sketching them out.