Posts

Showing posts from February, 2021

Winding Up!

Image
Hello on Chicken Stew* Tuesday!!  I hope this finds you safe and well!  We're good here. *That's right - no tacos today.  Instead I've got a new chicken recipe in the crockpot, with carrots, potatoes, and peas.   We're going to have a lot of leftovers!!! I fired up the cone winder yesterday: This is the alpaca sock yarn for Oogyhubby's warm sock experiment.  He didn't want the yarn dyed right away.  I'm now in the process of figuring out how to execute a hem and mock rib on the sock machine.  Fortunately there's a great series of videos on YouTube.  How did we ever figure anything out before YouTube??? I don't have much other news to report!  I've been busy working as well as keeping irons in the fire.  I've also been reinstated as a grad student so that I can earn the remaining three credits for my MPH, so that body of work has entered my life as well.  This is all cutting into my yarn time, but it's all good!!

I Have No Color Sense At All

Image
Guess what day it is??????????  I hope this finds you safe and well; we're good here. I had been telling Neuro about the most recent KamaKama preemie mitts and how fun it was to find coordinating colors for their little ties.  I'd just made some cute orangey ones and thought they were smashing. Until Neuro mentioned Inauguration Purple.  Boom!  Her color sense is far superior; check it out: OK, not the best background for these, but the purple is so fabooo!!!  I'm on to the next pair and am thinking they might have to have a purple version as well. I've also had to dip into the Knitting Swear Jar once again, this time for yarn for Oogyhubby.  He asked for warm socks, and so far has rejected some wool ones I had hanging around.  I wanted to switch to alpaca (I do have a speedy machine now!), but I didn't have any appropriate for socks (and expect that 100% alpaca would just dissolve in steel-toed boots!).  I ordered some alpaca with nylon from Knit...

Inadvertent Yarn Purchase

Image
TGIF!!!  I hope this finds you safe and well; we're good here. This has been a very busy week, and I'm looking forward to catching up on a few fun things later today and this weekend.  We also still need to take down our holiday decorations!  That will happen today as well. So evidently I made an inadvertent yarn purchase this month: So yeah.  I thought it would be fun to get a short subscription from KiwiCo.  They have mostly cool STEM stuff for kids and teens, but a lot of their kits are fun for adults too.  Except this one - not so much for me.  I think I could actually two hats faster than I could knit one with these loom thingeys.  I've been super happy with them and this yarn isn't too bad so I'll go ahead and check it out - probably without the loom thingeys though. So here's what I'm going to do - I'm going to take the February hat penalty.  There's a hat on my list that I want to make, and I have some 2020 yarn to make it with. ...

Not Quite Finished Yet

Image
Hello on this soon-to-be-snowy Sunday!  I hope you're well and safe; we're good here! Yesterday Oogyhubby and I decided the next steps for his Samoyed Hat.  It was very cold and windy out, and he took it for a test wear.  He would like something more wind-resistant, so I'm going to make a lining of sorts with that alpaca/wool blend.  It will get tacked to the inside of the hat to add a warmer layer, so the outside of the hat will look the same as it does right now: I think I can probably get that done fairly quickly, and I'm even going to go down another needle size so that it's a little denser. Storm Clouds has long been off the needles but was waiting for some finishing and is now drying off from its swim: This was a super fun project that does very well with smaller amounts of fingering weight yarn, so it's quick and it eats up those leftover bits as well! Brace yourselves: Nearly 30 years later, Oogyhubby has finally asked me to make him a pair of socks (bec...

KamaKama!!

Image
Hello on this cold and (sort of) snowy Saturday!  I hope you're safe and well; we're good here. We actually had a fair amount of sunshine over the course of the last two days; with all the snow on the ground it created lovely sheets of unexpected ice here and there and also gave you a sense of snowblindness in just a few minutes. I finally finished the first pair of the Kamakama preemie mitts: So I can make more mitts with this awesome yarn, I'm using coordinating leftover yarns to make the little ties.  This combo gives such a strong sense of springtime, it cheers me up every time I look at it! Last evening we decided that Oogyhubby's Samoyed hat doesn't need an alpaca liner, so I'm in the process of finishing off just the fuzzy part of the hat and see where that takes us.  He tells me it's super warm without the liner, and he's afraid he won't get much use of it if it's too warm. I do have another pair of Kamakama mitts started; I tend to work ...

Obedient Plant

Image
Guess what day it is???  I hope you're safe, well, warm, and dry.  We're good here! Like many of us in this part of the country, we got a bunch of snow yesterday and last night as part of that Nor'easter that came flying at us and then parked.  Oogyhubby has been busy pushing all the snow around in his tractor.  It's very pretty to look at, but I'm ready for spring now! Speaking of which - I've finally solved the mystery of the lovely tall pink flowers that are in a couple of beds on our lawn here: I happened to be flipping through an older issue of Birds and Blossoms that my parents had passed on to me, and there it was!!  It's known as the obedient plant, because its flowers will point any way you aim them.  Evidently it's related to mint, so if you know how that goes, so go these.  The pollinators seem to enjoy them as well, and not the deer.  Well, there's that! I've been making progress on Oogyhubby's super warm hat: So the gray ribbing ...