Friday, June 30, 2006

Thursday, June 29, 2006

More stenciled Tees

dragonflyflower
mantis
I got out the freezer paper and some fabric paint again. Little Man has been wanting another stenciled shirt and I found a cute praying mantis to put on it. To continue the bug theme, I made myself a little dragonfly shirt. The flower shirt was a 'save'- I painted the flower on over a stain that I couldn't get out. It covers the stain perfectly and I have a 'new' wearable shirt.

On the knitting front, I have decided to put away my Tshirt Sweater till Fall. It's just too hot to be sitting around with a lap full of wool, even if it *is* Malabrigo merino. I cast on for the Krista Tee from White Lies Designs instead. The pattern calls for an aran weight cotton yarn, and I had enough All Seasons Cotton in the stash to make it work so here's where I am so far:
WIP
The ASC was purchased from Cucumberpatch on Ebay; it's a discontinued color (Orkney) so it was 1/2 the price of current ASC. I've never knit with ASC before and I'm really enjoying it. Cotton is not one of my favorite fibers to knit with in general- especially mercerized cotton. But the ASC has some acrylic in it and gives a lot more than most cotton yarns I've tried.

The pattern is really easy to memorize and it's knitting up really fast. I may just have this sweater done in time to wear it for late summer/early fall.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's pants for Little Man!

Look at the yummy stuff I got from Lesbonribbon: IMG_0229
Missing is some brown ribbon with pink polka dots, and some black ribbon with skulls embroidered on it.

LM's birthday is coming up in a few weeks and we are having a Pirate Party for him. I bought the black skull ribbon to make him some pirate pants. I used some 99 cents/yard clearance fabric for the pants and sewed the ribbon onto the cuffs:

new pirate pants
cuffs
There's a little less than a yard left of the ribbon and I'm hoping that it'll be enough to go around the cuffs of a pair of shorts for Monkey Boy. That way they'll have matching pirate pants for the party!

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

summer

summer posse
Popsicles and a new inflateable pool- what more can you ask for?


Friday, June 23, 2006

'no puttin' sand in yer mouth!'


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The Magic Donkey

Ok, remember my comment about my Green Gable pic? It's this one: Green Gable. Anyways, I was surprised at how many views it's gotten (over 1200 at this point).

Then this morning I was uploading pics to Flickr and discovered that the image had been moved to the Explore/Top20 page! Whoa! These are images that the Magic Donkey picks as the most interesting for the day.

I'm cracking up because compared to the other photos on the Explore/Top20 page for today, mine is definately not interesting, well composed, or artsy. It's just a pic of my b00bs in my recently completed Green Gable.

Amazing, the power of the b00bs!

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Little Knights

Some cute kiddos pics....the boys and their toys:

gotta wear the protective gearswordbearer
little knight

I was looking thru my most popular Flickr images and noticed that this shot of my Green Gable has gotten over 1000 views! I'm highly doubtful that a thousand knitters are gawking at my sweater....more likely that I got on some b00b image list or something, what do you think?

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

This, that, n t'other

A few months ago, I found a big box of old baby clothes in Monkey Boy's closet. The box included Little Man's 'going home' outfit, some tiny little onesies and his first pair of socks. I didn't want to give the clothes away because they are so precious to me- they remind me of LM as a baby. Each little outfit brought back some memories of LM's first year with us and how much our lives changed. But I didn't want to keep them in a box, either.

For a while I toyed with the idea of putting one or two outfits in a shadowbox frame and hanging it up. Then I saw this:


It's a quilt that Hillary made from her son Oscar's baby clothes. I knew immediately that I wanted to make a quilt out of the LM's baby clothes, too. The only problem? I didn't really know how to make a quilt. Luckily I live very close to Material Possessions, a quilt shop with some great classes. I signed up for a Beginning Log Cabin Quilt class and attended the first session last night.

We chose our fabric and thank goodness for the teacher's help because I was pretty overwhelmed with all the choices! Originally I thought I'd make the quilt out of the baby clothes but then decided that it would be better to make a practice quilt from other fabric first. Here are the fabrics I choose:

The pinks are the "dark" log cabin strips, the yellow is the center square and the greens are the "light" strips. The floral is going to be the outside border. I love the colors- they are sooooo girly and fresh. Wish me luck on cutting & sewing the strips all straight!

Yesterday afternoon, while I was perusing the goodies at Les Bon Ribbon, Little Man asked to go play in the backyard. I let him out and got about 15minutes of peace and quiet before I got suspicious. As any mother knows, the quieter your kids are, the more likely they are getting into something they shouldn't, playing with something dangerous, or making a mess. This is what I found when I looked outside:
water + dirt = funsave the plant
toes in the river of his own making
He claims that he was making a 'river' and planting some seeds. I think he was just having a grand old time making a muddy mess of himself. LOL I'm not sure the mud stains are going to come out of his shirt, but it's currently soaking in some Oxyclean so we'll see.


Sunday, June 18, 2006

Happy Father's Day!

the fourth food groupthe fourth food group
eat cake
For Father's Day, the boys 'helped' me make a chocolate cake for the Dearest.

Friday, June 16, 2006

RED Friday

Last day....RED

Color week -Red

Little Man loves cherries. I like to watch him eat them; he will take a tiny bite out of one side, then nibble, nibble, nibble all the way round the seed. It's a very messy way to eat cherries!

Dancing Fools

Ok, trying out the movie setting on my Powershot, and Dropshots at the same time. HOpefully this works!


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Thursday, June 15, 2006

A trip to the frogpond

Remember my "TShirt Sweater" from Ella Rae? The sweater that gave me hissy fits because of the nasty color pooling? Well I had two sleeves and the back done, and last night I had just cast on for the front when I realized that I didn't like the way it was knitting up. The fabric was just too heavy, probably due to the fact that I used a US8 needle. A couple of swatches later I'd decided that the yarn draped much better with a US10.5. That meant a trip to the frogpond was in order:

the frogpond
I've decided to reknit the TShirt Sweater on US10.5 needles. Too bad I had to wait till I was practically done before changing my mind!

Latecomer

Yah, I know the today is practically the last day of Color Week, but I couldn't resist joining. Today's color is BLUE:
IMG_0306 copyblue2

blueberries x2

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

FO!

Does this look familiar?


How about this?
My finished Green Gable
Yup, that's right, it's my completed Green Gable. I think it turned out quite nicely-this is the truest image of the color (green). The sweater has a funny looking fold in the arm in this pic, but it's just way I'm standing. LOL
Green Gable
Some more closeups:

The increases and decreases I used for bust shaping (my modification).


For the sleeves I was able to avoid the problem of a hole in the armpit by picking up extra stitches and then decreasing them away in later rows. I think the armpit looks nice and tight with no gaping.

Project Specs:
Pattern: Green Gable by Zephyrstyle
Size Medium (36in bust)
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in "Rue", approx. 3.5 balls
I knit the pattern pretty much as it's written. My bust is 39inches and I knit the medium/36inch size because I had heard that lots of people had problems with the Cotton Fleece growing ALOT when blocked. The medium would have been too small in the bust so I added four sets of increases, which I later decreased away. For length I used the Large- 13.5inches instead of 11inches. I also added two increases at the waist for some extra shaping.
Instead of just picking up the live sts at the sleeve, I added three rows of stockinette for a little extra coverage before knitting the 1x1 ribbing. This allowed me to pick up extra sts so there would be no grafting or hole at the armpit. The extra sts were later decreased away.

The sweater was soaked in water and Eucelan, then spun partially dry in the washer. I blocked it by hand on a towel overnight. It grew quite a bit as I was arranging it on the towel, so I ended up whacking and slapping it a bit to make it behave. I estimate that it has grown by about an inch in width, and 1.5 and inch in length.

I had fun knitting this pattern and I'm very pleased with the finished product. The Dearest thinks this is the nicest, most wearable sweater I've knitted so far and I have to agree with him.

An Apple a Day

apple

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

I finished another pair of kid socks:
IMG_0025

Project Specs:
Rainbow-ish Socks (named by Little Man)
Yarn: Knitpicks Simple Stripes in Sweet Tarts, less than 1 ball
Pattern: My own

I like this yarn a lot. It's superwash so it's perfect to for kids' socks. Believe it or not, this is the first time I've knit with self striping yarn, and I had a lot of fun watching the stripes appear. The socks fit Little Man perfectly.

He hasn't taken them off since we put them on this morning. Witness the socks in action, worn with LM's new Crocs:
crocs

These pics were taken with my new camera, a Canon Powershot 540. The DSLR I use for work is too big to lug around in my purse so I've been researching compact digicams for a while and the 540 fit the bill. It's not too big and not too small, pretty lightweight and has full manual features (which is important to me as I hardly ever shoot on Auto). Plus at 6MP, it's a vast improvement over our last compact digicam. Here's a closeup of Monkey Boy:
Tech info:
Natural light
ISO 200
AV, 3.5, unknown shutter
No post processing

I think that's pretty good for a pocket camera! No sharpening or Photoshop work here, and it still looks great. In fact I zoomed in on MB's eyes and you can see me there! I'm quite happy with the overall feel of the camera, too. Since I'm planning on carrying it around in my purse, I'm going to knit a camera cozy for it to protect the body and LCD.

The camera arrived yesterday, along with all of this:

I hit this ebay seller and went a little crazy with the magazine subscriptions. She sells so many cool mags at such a good price that I couldn't resist. My mailman is going to hate me- there are at least four or five more magazines coming!

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Not much knitting has been going on around here; I've been sick for the past week and today was the first day that I could actually hear out of both ears. Woot! How sick was I? Last Sunday I was supposed to get together with some friends to knit, but I had such a bad sinus headache from all the congestion that I went to bed at 8pm (my normal bedtime being around midnight). Thank goodness I'm starting to feel better.

Instead of knitting I've been doing this:
solar flare
deep sea
clown bash

These are play silks that I handdyed for the boys. Little Man has been using one of my old, ugly satin scarves as a 'cape'- he asks me to tie it around his neck so he can jump off the bed like a superhero. A few weeks ago, I saw this and thought immediately of making the boys some play silks of their own. I got the raw silk scarves from Dharma Trading Company and soaked them in a bit of water/vinegar overnight. Yesterday I dyed them by loosely pressing each scarf into a small container, barely covering the scarf with water and then apply diluted dyes. After a brief zapping in the microwave, I let them cool and then rinsed them out. I think they turned out quite nicely!

Monkey Boy really enjoys pulling the scarves over his head and face. He laughs and laughs! This afternoon Little Man, Monkey Boy and I spent nearly half an hour chasing each other around the upstairs hall with the scarves tucked into our pants like tails. I think the play silks are a hit in our house. There are four more silks to dye and LM has suggsted "red, cuz that's my favorite color" and "orange because that's little brother's favorite color".

Last night I sat down with my wheel and started spinning some 50/50 merino/tussah silk. It's the first time I've spun with this particular blend and I have to say that I'm not very comfortable with it. Between the super crunchiness of the silk and the short staple of the merino, it's not very fun to spin. Some spinners spin to produce a certain yarn (project spinners) and some spin because they like the act of spinning (process spinners). I've found that I'm a process spinner and if I'm not having fun while spinning, it's hard for me to stay motivated. It's disappointing that I'm not enjoying this roving since I've been looking forward to spinning it for quite a while. :(

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Evolution and other stuff

Six minutes of funniness! Evolution of Dance