Kailey's Pinwheel

Well, this post has been a long time coming, as this project was finished several months ago. It took me quite a while to actually get this in the mail to Kailey's mommy, but as she has now received it I want to show this off!

Pinwheel!

I had a bit of trouble with the sleeves, but after receiving help from the designer herself, they turned out great! I read the pattern to say that you were to put the provisionally cast on stitches onto a stitch holder and continue knitting around (which resulted in a big mess), when actually you are supposed to put the next 12 existing stitches on a stitch holder, and continue knitting with your provisionally cast on stitches. Anyway. Shelley really helped me out a lot; I'm not sure what I would have done without her help! Thanks Shelley!

Baby wear

What I love about this pattern, other than the utter cuteness of it, is the fact that it can be worn from a baby through the toddler years, simply by modifying the way you put it on the child. What genius! For a baby, the sleeves are rolled and the longer part is worn at the top, forming a cute hoodie.

Toddler wear

For a toddler, the longer part is worn at the bottom, with the edge forming a neat collar at the neck. So cute! And all from a circle??? No wonder this design took Elann's grand prize in the circle design contest. Good thing I didn't enter and waste my time!!!!

There has been quite a bit of other knitting going on lately, which is one of the reasons I haven't been blogging. My LYS hired me to design and knit a few golf club covers for their store display, which has been taking up most of my time. (Can we say YAY?!!!!) Now that those are done, I can concentrate on other things, like my sample swatch for Stitch Diva's Stunt Knitting Program, finishing up Absorba, reknitting my summer top, and frogging Goddess.

I guess that's all for now! Check back in a day or two for more updates. : )

Till next time,
Sarah

Embarassed!

Okay, I'm standing at the fax machine and realize I have a bit of a wedgie going on. I know there's a conference going on in the (glassed-in) room behind me, so I turn a bit out of the way so the wall between my desk and the conference room is blocking everyone's view and do my business. I turn around, and one of the gentleman is standing right in front of my desk, staring at me! I tried to act like everything was completely normal, but I'm sure my face turned bright red.

Come on, we all do it......right?

Till next time,
Sarah

Oh, I have loads of knitting content to post! I am at least 10 good stories/projects behind on the blog. Will do my best to catch up in the coming days!

Owie...

Double Owie!

I managed to run the sewing machine needle right through my finger two nights ago, top to bottom. Right through the finger nail. Not my idea of fun, let me tell you! Lucky for me, the doctor was home to hold me while I cried like a baby and help prevent me from going into shock. (Hey, let's see YOU run YOUR finger through with a needle and see if you don't cry!) Anyway, all is well now and I'm glad it didn't go all the way through! The doctor says the worse that could happen is that I'll lose my fingernail for awhile, though I'm hoping to avoid that. We'll see how it goes! At any rate, that's now 33 quilts down, 117 to go! (Still 200 total, my generous mom volunteered for 50 - yay!)

Till next time,
Sarah

The Frog Pond, Revisited

So I'm sitting here this morning, swatching my blue cotton yarn for the dishtowels I want to do to go with my Absorba bathmat, and I figure, heck, maybe I should try these with three strands, too! So off I go with my gorgeous Lantern Moon 10.5's, and the piece is knitting up nice and thick and sturdy, and I start thinking, "Boy...this sure would've made a nice rug at this gauge, not all loose & wobbly like mine turned out", which of course makes me decide to whip out the measuring tape and sure enough, I'm knitting up at the exact gauge actually called for in the pattern for the bathmat! Oopsy. No wonder I had so much yarn left over! I knew something had to be wrong. . . Nevermind that the pattern called for size 15 needles! Apparently I'm a loose knitter. Which I Can. Not. figure out, because my stitches are always snug at the bottom of the needle, yet loose enough to slide freely. Anyone have any ideas as to what's causing this anomaly?

Anyhoo. It's off to the frog pond with this piece, but here it is in all it's wobbly glory:

Absorba, in all its deceitfulness

Here's how it looks after I walked across it a few times:

Thy shame cannot be hidden!

Will post photos of the re-knit so we can all compare the difference!

In other knitting news, I'm in the process of designing a Chinese-inspired felted knitting bag. This is going to be gorgeous, dahlings! So stay tuned.

That's it on the knitting front for now!

Till next time,
Sarah

14 Packs of Kool-Aid in One Night...

...and zero calories, to boot!

My Knit Picks yarn arrived on March 1st and I was so excited I just had to dye it right away! Of course I'd already gone out and bought my supplies so I was rarin' to go! Here's how it all went down:

All set and ready to go!

I was happy to see that the skeins from Knit Picks were actually just folded flat, instead of wound into traditional skeins. They were also quite long, so I decided not to rewind them before I started. If I ever decide to do self-striping yarn, I'll have to rewind it. For my purposes, I was happy that I was ready to dye right out of the box!

Mmmm...grapey!

I invited a friend over to help, since I was dying two skeins. After settling on what colors to use, (Grape, Cherry and Black Cherry for the man's colorway, and Pink Lemonade, Lemonade and Lemon-Lime for the woman's) we prepared our "dye." We used one packet of Kool-Aid powder per one cup of water. My friend decided to hand paint the yarn using a basting brush, and I used the turkey baster. I'd read somewhere that you can expect to use one packet of Kool-Aid per ounce of yarn, but we used a little over twice that amount. Perhaps it was because we were dying superwash? At any rate, next time I would probably use more Kool-Aid; even though our colors turned out beautifully, I wouldn't have complained had they been a little brighter. Also, the yarn seemed to more readily absorb the dye that was applied with the brush.

This one was my attempt

We decided that one of us would dye the yarn in thirds lengthwise, and the other would dye in thirds widthwise. I think the one that was dyed widthwise will be a bit more variegated, perhaps self-striping in very small sections, and the one above, dyed lengthwise, will have a stronger self-striping effect.

Hanging out to dry

After we set the yarn in the microwave, I reaffixed my shower curtain rod to hang in the middle of the shower, so that any excess water would run down into the tub. However, there wasn't any, as I had blotted the yarn with a towel first to speed the drying time. Twenty-four hours later, my yarn was dry and ready to wind! I just couldn't resist winding them into skeins to get that store-bought effect:

My "swift"

Lucky for me, my patio chairs have a large circumference around the legs, and a smooth finish at the bottom. This is important because you need to be able to remove your yarn after you've finished winding it! (I had a bad experience with my piano bench a couple of weeks ago...I'll leave that one to your imagination...)

Here's the finished product:

Bee-yoo-tee-ful, yes?

That's "Prairie Fire" on the top and "Rainbow Sherbet" on the bottom. We were both SO happy with how this yarn turned out! I will definitely be doing this again in the future. Funny thing is, I was more excited about dying the yarn than I was about knitting the socks! : ) And speaking of socks, here's the pattern I decided to use for these. Wish me luck!

Till next time,
Sarah