We Love Surprises!! - Part II

Usually surprises are far and few between around here, but the past month has been a bonanza of surprises! Did I say I love surprises? Oh yes, I think I did...

Here's the latest surprise to show up in my mailbox last week---the Defeat the Winter Doldrums swap box from my lovely and generous pal, Katie! It was hard to fit all of the contents in one picture...

Wow, what a box! Katie sent a fabulous dishcloth and two matching scrubbies in a pink/tan color that I love, as well as another plus-size cloth with a rubber-duckie motif--hard to see in pic, but so cute! (BTW, Katie and I share a little secret concerning rubber ducks, which shall be revealed at a later date.) The yarn is Knitpicks Cot-Lin, which I've been wanting to try, in a beautiful bright turquoise color as well.

There is also an assortment of tea bags, soaps, a candle, a notepad and a heart-shaped sucker! And down at the very bottom of the picture, there are some truly gorgeous stitch markers that Katie made, which deserve a much bigger picture of their own...



Hard to capture in a picture, but aren't they especially pretty? I absolutely love them and will use them often!

Thanks so, so very much, Katie, for all of the lovely gifts you sent! I couldn't have chosen more perfect colors for everything if I had chosen them myself! Your box and your great note truly made my day!

Katie is not only a swap pal extraordinaire and the sweetest girl ever, she is also adventurous and brave and works as a pilot! Yes, she actually flies big jets for a living. Go over to her blog and pay her a visit, and see a picture of her in the cockpit! How awesome is that? Not just your average knit-blogger, that's for sure! (...but I can see why her mom gets nervous sometimes when she reads her blog...).

In which she proves that there really IS knitting going on...

If you read my blog, you would think that I spend all of my time wrangling minions, untangling ravaged stash, returning damaged stash and acquiring more stash, with no actual knitting going on. Well, yes, most of my time is spent in these pursuits, but not all of it. While FO's are scarce at times, there is occasionally a little actual knitting that goes on around here.

I recently joined the "Defeat the Winter Doldrums" swap, and made this cloth and scrubbie set to send to one of my pals...


The dishcloth is the DW cloth, a free pattern that can be found here. It was a fun and quick knit and great for variegated yarns. I've never made a scrubbie before, but this one was a snap.... The scrubbie is also from a free pdf pattern called "Dishcloth Duo," which can be linked through this page. The scrubbie as written in the pattern is cute, but comes out very small, so I modified the pattern to super-size it! I just increased the number of CO stitches and proportionately increased the number of rows knit, and got a bigger and better version.

Here's a little yarn pron interruption.....

It's the Knitpicks Bare laceweight I also included in the swap box. I have never seen this yarn in person, so I took a chance on ordering it, but I was pretty impressed with it when it arrived. (It was tempting to keep it for myself, but I didn't). It is very soft and cushy, and has excellent yardage for the cost. I even think it looks very pretty undyed as well. I'll definitely be keeping this in mind for a future project of my own!

Back to the FO's---here's a little something I knit for myself with a lonely skein of Noro Kureyon #134 from my stash...

My first pair of fingerless mitts! (modeled by cute hubby so I could take the pic)...He's so good about the knitwear modeling. Remember this? (scroll down past yet another yarn tragedy...). I'm sure he'll be thrilled about me sending everyone to have another look at that one...heh!

Anyway....I've never made mitts before and wanted an easy pattern to master the thumb-knitting thing without too much fuss, and this pattern certainly fit the bill. The pattern is "Maine Morning Mitts," from The Knitters Book of Yarn. (Great book, btw, if you haven't seen it.)

I believe the pattern is also available free on the web, and is linkable on Ravelry. The pattern is pretty straightforward and clear, so if you haven't knit mitts before, this is a good place to start. I only modified the pattern slightly by knitting on two circs, and picked up a couple of extra stitches around the thumb hole. They are comfy and fit very nicely, and after a long soak are now soft and cushy!

One warning if you use the pattern---it calls for one skein of Noro Kureyon, and it does mean the whole skein! So if you only have one, make sure you don't waste too much because it cut pretty close for me with only a couple of yards leftover! Of course, your mileage may vary, but I'm just sayin'...

I have a couple of other recent FO's, as well as the contents of the awesome swap box I received from my fab swap pal Katie, but still waiting for enough light to take some pics of all of it (what happened to all of our sunny days?...wahhh). As the queen of lollygagging and general procrastination, I can't say for sure when that will be, but we can shoot for soon, I hope...

A minion's work is never done...

As cute husband was heading out for work this morning, he came across a certain minion engaged in what can only be described as felonious activity of the highest degree. He found said minion on the floor with a blob of what was once a skein of Frog Tree sportweight alpaca, arms shoved in up to the armpits, nuzzling the yarn with his pointy little nose (can't say as I blame him for that part).

I'm not mentioning any names, but he has a lot of toes, is always busy, and was too inexperienced (or dumb) to realize he was even doing anything wrong. Cute hubby reports that he appeared to be quite pleased with himself and was enjoying the felonious activity immensely---so much so that he didn't even bother to stop or run away when caught! (Which begs the question... exactly how long CH let him continue before he stopped him....ahem).

Since the two older minions probably had the good sense to run away, I'm not sure he was in it alone, or if he got to it after prior assault by minion-y accomplices, but here's the result...

Busy, busy, busy---A minion's work is never done.

We Love Surprises!!

While reading one of my favorite blogs, Chickenlips Knitting, Sharon posed a question in her post about Rod Stewart that only an older-than-dirt person like me would probably know the answer to. It wasn't a contest, but just a question that amused me in my ancient-ness, and so I answered in my comment.

Imagine my surprise when, while later reading her next blog entry, I saw my name mentioned at the bottom of her post....together with the words "I wanna send some yarn." Whaaaaat? For moi?!! In case you don't know, Sharon is a yarn-dyin' Diva of the finest degree and her yarns are lively and colorful and---I have drooled over them many times! It couldn't have been more than just a few days later when.....

"Hey, Mom! Is that the mailman?"

Why, yes! It was! And this is what he brought.....

A wonderful surprise for me! A yummy skein of Sharon's Stitchjones sock loveliness, called "Closer to the Heart." It's hard to capture the colors accurately, but trust me, it's gorgeous! And so soft, too.

Thank you so much, Sharon! I love the yarn and it will truly make a rockin' pair of socks that I can show off under my clear Converse sneaks! So sweet of you to send me such a nice gift, and the note you sent along was equally lovely!

"Can we make some socks from this yarn for me as well? I do have extra toes to cover, you know!"

"Hmmph. I don't know about this sock thing...and more yarn?. I think I disapprove."

"Oh, don't listen to him....he's always a grump. I approve!....Now about those socks...."

We do love a surprise around here---especially in the form of the gift of wool from a very nice person! Thanks again, Sharon! (And BTW, who would have ever thought I'd receive a knitting-related gift for knowing something about Rod Stewart?...and being old enough to know it...heh.)

(If you'd like to see some more of Sharon's great yarn, be sure to go take a look at her new online store.)

Thanks, Nikki! :)

A few weeks ago I entered a contest on Nikki's blog, and I won! I was so excited to win her contest, even though my history with blog contests has not been the greatest (more about that another time, so as not to detract from the thanks to Nikki and the display of goodies...).

Nikki was so sweet and actually "stalked" my blog to see what I might like. So not only was she nice enough to send a prize, but she cared enough to personalize it as well! She sent some lovely wool in shades of denim blues for a future felting project, which I absolutely love, some stitch markers (always very handy and used often by me), and a cute little sheep figure and sheep card. She even sent a prize for my precious minions as well---a catnip mouse!



Thanks so much for the lovely prizes, Nikki, from both myself and the minion posse! You are a lovely knitblogger, indeed!

While the wool was well-protected from the mitts of ravaging minions during the picture-taking and put away snugly after the photos were taken, unfortunately I cannot say the same about the fate of the poor mousie. I had to beat the minions off of the unfortunate creature long enough to get a picture, but then the carnage began---there was nothing I could do. First the toe-cat had a go at him...


After some fierce, extra-toed abuse, this was followed by a steal by the techno-cat....


who then gave the ill-fated mousie an advanced level thrashing of the worst kind....


....the dreaded bite-claw-kick combo! Ouch! Poor mousie. Let's just say he's not looking so good right now.

However, the cat posse would like me to say in their defense, that the mousie had a snarky smirk on his face from the minute he arrived here that they just didn't like, and he had the nerve to come around smelling like catnip, so of course he had it coming to him! They would never condone an unprovoked attack. Almost never. Not sometimes. (Well, mostly always...but they are minions, after all).

Thanks again, Nikki! We all love our prizes :)

>^oo^< >^,,^< >^--^<

My Warm and Fuzzy Heart(s)

I have always loved Valentine's Day. Not so much for the commercially-required purchased shows of affection for our loved ones (paper valentines, flowers and chocolate, all marked up 500% in honor of the occasion), but rather for the celebration of my favorite iconic shape---the heart! I am a lover of all things heart-shaped and Valentine's Day simply gives me an excuse to combine my love of heart shapes with my love of fiber and felting!

As you know, I adore felting and the resulting firm-but-fuzzy felted objects produced by the process. To me, felting is a magical illusion carried out with the addition of some warm water and friction to a usually somewhat floppy knitted object to produce a lovely, fibery piece of art.

How else but magic can you explain the ability to turn this basket full of non-descript pieces of knitting....

into these....

and these!!...

Yes, it's magic I tell you! I have completed many a felting project and I never cease to feel that little squeeee! of excitement every time, as I mold the felted objects into their final shapes for drying---and these little heart baskets and coasters were no exception!

The pattern I used to make these hearts is a Fibertrends pattern called "Heartfelt Expressions" by Evelyn Clark. I used Lamb's Pride Bulky and size 13 needles, dropped them in some hot water and woolwash, stirred vigorously and....Voila! Fuzzy hearts!


Since it's hard to see scale in these pictures, the coasters are all about 6 inches or more across the widest point, so quite generous in size. The hearts are about 6 inches wide by 5 inches long at the opening, and a bit wider at the base. The pattern has various options for bind-offs and height of the baskets or trays. I did each one a little bit differently in those respects, but I love how all of them turned out!

My Valentine's Day will be spent at Madrona, spending some time with the lovely Miss Evelyn Clark herself, and probably crippling my checkbook at the marketplace...


Happy Valentine's Day to all of you! May your hearts be warm and fuzzy....


ETA: Thank you, blogger, for that lovely last pic....I love you, too....

Ketchup

No, not that kind....

Just a little blog post catch up. There have been knitting and things going on here at the Minion Ranch, but I've just not been in the mood to take and edit pictures and actually blog something (read: lazy). I guess I could partially blame it on the evil Enablry Ravelry, which has become an incredible time suck and procrastination device for me lately. It seems I sometimes spend more time looking at knitting (other peoples') and reading about knitting (other peoples') than working on my own WIP's....

Anyway, on to the ketchup. Here's a nifty item that I've been wanting for a long time, and cute husband got it for me for Christmas...

Living in the PNW, trying to find the right time and place to take pictures can be challenging, especially in the winter. With this lovely little tent, external light of any kind can be aimed from the outside, allowing you to concentrate the light and take pictures of even the darkest objects on the darkest days.
(Minions provided for scale---must be purchased separately.) Simply remove optional minions, place your object inside, provide some lighting or place near a bright window, and you can take pics of your most objects without color change or much loss of color (depending on the lights you provide). The folded-up flaps provide a way to leave just a small hole for your camera while taking the picture, or you can use it with the front open as well. This particular light tent came with 2 drapes for the inside, white and black. It also collapses down to go into a small, portable soft case.

It will take a little practice to get things perfect, but here's my first couple of test shots with some beautiful Noro sock yarn...

Not perfect yet, but I love the way it was so easy to capture the colors of the yarns. The colors as portrayed are pretty close to the original with no color editing applied. (Also need to figure out what to do about those wrinkes in the backdrop cloth...). I'm so excited about being able to take pictures on any day, no matter what the light level outside, and at night---no more waiting!

I also got a set of Knitpicks wood knitting needles for Christmas, which I absolutely love! I'm usually not big on wooden needles because of the drag factor, but these are slick with much less drag than bamboo---just a little bit grabbier than turbos or Denise. I'm using them for the first time on my Secret of the Stole-ii. Progress on that is very slow, but it's not because of the needles....they are working out great.

I also completed a scarf for my hubby as a Christmas gift. Even though it was only a scarf, it was not without it's complications. Cute hubby is many things: Cute (of course), smart, lovable.... and picky as hell about some things. It had to be just the right yarn, just the right softness, just the right length in just the right stitch pattern to reduce chance of polite rejection. After much trial and error, I ended up with this...


I'm happy to report it was a smashing success all around and he loves it! The color is actually a more deep Merlot-red than I could capture in the pics. Rowan Cashsoft DK held double-stranded in a nice, manly-looking Mistake Rib.

I have never knit anything in Mistake Rib before, and I have to say I really like it! It makes nice, deep rib channels with a nice stretch, without bunching up together like regular rib. It's more interesting to knit than a normal 2x2 rib, and it also has a slightly more complicated and attractive appearance on the finished scarf than a regular rib, in my opinion. I like any stitch pattern that makes me look like a far more clever knitter than I really am, without giving me a headache. Hey, I did say I'm lazy, after all...