Conversations not with myself

I do have progress - I've spun the blue wool, and I am spinning the white angora. I have several more inches on the shawl for my younger daughter. So yeah, progress all around... but today I had a short road trip with my mom - we went to a post office and a yarn store. During the drive many things came up that I need to give her more information on, so here is what I spent half my day thinking and talking about:


...but since that doesn't give her the information she needs...

Dulaan - you can see some good pictures here and here. It's wrapping up for the year...


...but, while we're waiting to hear what next year's goal is, you can always donate (nice little blue button on the left side) to help cover the shipping costs. The trip to the post office today mailed off a grand total of 86 items (I made a small number and collected many more from my mother and another prolific knitter - we're all glad that keeping our hands busy helps others)


We then continued down the road for a while and ended up at one of my LYS. She purchased some lace weight for the Mystery Stole 3 Knit-A-Long (I'm such a bad influence) done by Melanie. The group closes in early July - so join up now if you want to knit a beautiful stole over the summer.

She also purchased some sock yarn and wanted to know where to find some great sock patterns from Wendy - check out the patterns at the top of the page, and the detailed sock pattern a bit lower down.

We discussed different toe-up patterns... Here's at least one cast on. After casting on, you can either do a short-row toe or a more traditional increase toe.

One more link before I move on to the pics of my purchases... I mentioned LibriVox. One of the other blogs I read mentioned it a while back, but I can't remember who. They take books that are in the public domain and provide audiobooks for them. My daughter is in a kids book club and we ran out of time to sit and read it together this week, so she "read" the first half of Wind in the Willows by listening and following along. I've downloaded a couple of chapters of Pride and Prejudice to listen to while knitting or spinning. Take a look!


So yes, I bought some stuff today at the LYS....


That's two sock patterns by Cookie A, a shawl pattern, and two skeins of KPPPM that should go nicely with this...




I'm hoping the yarn that I have will do the middle of the shawl, and then the new yarn will be for the edging... I'm kindof making it up as I go (not the pattern, it's from VLT.. just making up the yarn requirements - since it's for a 3 year old, but I want it to grow with her).

I will now go back to the spinning and knitting... as soon as the girls are in bed.

Not another FO yet

Progress is being made on the Dulaan hat, the SockYarn Melon Shawl, and the Pirate Sock. I also went through my shawl yarn I had spun up and plied it a bit tighter (paying more attention as I plied). Pictures next time perhaps. Nothing is quite done yet...

I also wanted to send people over to Claudia's MS page where she is trying to raise money, and reward people by drawing prizes... If you donate there you can also check out Cara's June 7 post and email two others who are raffling off prizes.



There was also an announcement today about the beginning of Mystery Stole 3. I've been staring at some of Melanie's other patterns for a while now... trying to get up my nerve to buy one and start it. With the Mystery Stole group she will be releasing the information bit by bit (almost) every week over the summer, and slowly it will come together. I've been looking at different yarn... I'm thinking of this - in fawn perhaps (she suggested white or black... or cream or gray) - seeing I only need 1200 yards, that would be plenty. ..and then I have to decide if I want to use beads or not... and what kind.. if I decide to do that option. She's closing sign-ups July 6th, so if you're interested, sign up soon!

Hopefully I'll have something finished (or close to finished) soon...

The Project Bunny

I finished the felted bunny. Last night, while in spindlers chat, I sewed up the stuffing hole, and sewed on eyes and a nose/mouth, and attached a little pompom tail.



My older daughter was still awake, and she wanted to carry the little bunny in to her sister - so I quickly snapped the pictures and we placed it in her sleeping embrace. She was very pleased this morning to see it, and hugged it all day, before placing it on her bed with super monkey and the blue fish and her teddy bear.... (and mommy realized the toy craze needs to end).


I also finished this pretty yarn for a shawl:


I think I might need to send it through the wheel one more time - the ply is a bit loose... but I can do that. I also ordered another bit of angora from the copper moose, so I can spin up the rest of the blue wool, and have more angora to ply it with. I currently have that one skein - about 590 yards. I used a little over half of the blue wool, and 2 oz of angora - so I should end up with almost (not quite) double that.


And of course, since I finished those things, the project bunny brought me new projects to start...

Recovered (frogged) knit picks sock yarn. Two held together, with a US 7 right now - hat for dulaan... I need to mail the boxes off soon, maybe next week.



And other sock yarn from knit picks... My younger daughter wants a shawl. Her older sister already has one and she suffers from 'me-too'ism. I figured with two balls of this yarn (to be further identified later) I could make a decent size shawl for her. The pattern is the melon shawl from Victorian Lace Today, although I'm not sure I'll do the edging that is part of the pattern.

She is so excited when I told her I was finally working on a shawl for her... tonight she made her father hand it to me (I was sitting away from my basket) and once I held it up and showed her again she looked at me and told me to 'knit mommy! knit my shawl!' after I gave her a look she added a 'please'. This one might take a while, as the blue and white shawl will get priority again as soon as the angora comes in the mail (I ordered last night, and already got a tracking number this morning).

Last night, while watching The Painted Veil (strange movie, not bad, but strange) I also ripped back a bit in the pirate sock, and started knitting back up again with 8 less stitches going around. Instead of a slow spiral it now is just a stripe-y jumble - hooray! I am slowly moving back to the knitting - I'm sure the spinning will pick up again next week :)

BPB (Birthday Picture Bonanza)

I have better pictures of some things and also some pictures of fibery birthday things, but first I'll start with mail call:



From my swap pal. I promptly ignored dishes and laundry and sat down to read the first couple of pages. Unfortunately I had to put it down to help the girls and to knit a bit. I'm planning to go see her at Webs at the end of May (already registered), so I really look forward to reading more. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!

and then...

this box sat in the corner until my husband got home. Earlier this week we put a quick order in at knitpicks. As most of the order was for him, I figured it could wait until he could open it. Pictures tomorrow perhaps.


For my birthday I got many fun things, but as far as fibery goes:


A PVC Niddy-Noddy (actually two of them), so I can put the yarn up and wash them while on the niddy-noddy.


...and my husband brought me to Critations. I picked out some brown and some white alpaca roving.

Some more birthday goodness:

basement reorganization so I can sew and we can have family unity (something for everyone to do)


the hancock fabric by my house is being closed so everything is marked down. These are for a new quilt. The one currently on our bed is getting frayed.


Beautiful fabric I couldn't resist (especially since there was only that much of it). ...and fabric for handkerchiefs.



I did finish sewing the two skirts I had previously cut out, so these are the last of the fabric for skirts for the girls. of course, I then have dress material and some material for me too.


While I was at the fabric store I picked up a zipper and button to finish off my bag. I just need to knit up a swatch with a button hole and felt it first.


Some better pictures of the items from last post.


...and finally, some Dulaan items. Most of these were knit by my mother, but I will be weaving in ends on both her items and mine, and then mailing them off sometime relatively soon. There will probably be a couple more items before mailing day, but there's 16 there tammy. :)

Some More Dulaan Knitting

I finished the scarf (same home-spun as the hat) and here it is:

Some Dulaan knitting

Some knitting for Dulaan. Just another 4 to go to reach my goal - I already started a scarf with the same yarn. Does the yarn look familiar? It should, as it was my second attempt at wilton dyeing, and my first attempt at navajo plying. I think it came out pretty nice. This hat is sized to fit child 1, and she loved to try it on, and kept hearing me say that it was going to go to people who were cold and didn't have a hat.