No really I am still knitting.

This is not going to be a post about the baby sweaters or the craft show I didn't go to. Instead this is going to be a post about a really fun quick knit I just did. My son E has a love of cephalopods, yeah I have no idea where it comes from but there it is. I knit him a cuttlefish earlier this year. He loves it. At the time I got that pattern I also bought a squid, octopus, and dumbo octopus pattern. He wanted the squid next and I had him pick out the yarn and I've been promising to make it for months now. Well on Thursday morning I decided this was the day and I started on the arms. I finished all 8 arms and both tentacles by that night. Yesterday I started on the rest and by 6 last night it was done. So I present to you Squid Squid and Cuttie...


As you can see they have become fast friends and both enjoy sleeping with a 6 year old boy. Who knew that nearly alien sea creatures could be so darn cuddly?

So I'm going to take some of my knitted things to a craft sale the 1st of November. Towards that end I've started knitting somethings to actually, you know TAKE to the craft show on November 1st.

First out of the pipeline is a little purse. I figured it would serve a dual puporse. It would knit up quickly, and it did, and it would kill some of my stash, which it did. I used Patton Merino Wool, in black, and Noro Kureyon in colorway 170. I have no idea why I had 2 skeins of the Patton's in black but one is gone know. the Kureyon was a left over bit from a purse I made myself awhile ago. My Brother-in-Law brought it back from Japan when he was visiting his then fiance.

This shows the color work I did on it, very little, and the lovely pre-felting floppiness of it. I was pretty pleased with the color work. It turned out a little too tight but not bad.

Here is a close up of the color work, very basic but since it was at a light color point in the Noro I think it showed up well and show the gradation that I love about Noro yarn.
Here it is in the post-felted state. I need to figure out a strap and a button for the closure. Anyone want to give a suggestion for the strap? A leather strap from the fabric store? A felted i-cord strap? Something else entirely?

I'm now working on a baby sweater using Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Suprise Jacket pattern. So far it is lots of garter stitch. We'll see how it looks in the end. It isn't my favorite shape but I have always wanted to try it for the novelty of how it is constructed.

So does anyone know?

As I mentioned we have inherited a 'bit' of yarn. We also seem to have inherited some moth cocoons and I'm guessing some wool moths as well.

So dear Internets anyone know if all the acrylic yarn needs to be treated for moth infestation the same as the natural fibers? There were little cocoons on some of the acrylics but only the ones in boxes that also had natural fibers in them. I don't think there is anything in them since even if there was eggs they would have nothing to eat at this point in the game.

I'm going to go buy some dry ice today and gas the buggers on the wool and like. Well that and I will likely make dry ice bubbles with the boy. No dry ice rockets though.

I have more pictures to share but I have a feeling I'm going to run out of disk space before I can get pictures of all this yarn online. Not that anyone really needs to see what 100 lbs of off white acrylic yarn looks like.

What's 2 months between friends?

Hmmm so maybe I'm not keeping up with this as well as I had hoped to.

That said I have some exciting news. First I am now a stay at home mom. For this month anyway. I'm staying home with my son E to help him transistion to Kindy. We'll see what I can find starting in Sept.

What does that have to do with knitting you might ask. Well a little. It isn't like I'm getting a ton of knitting done staying at home with a 5 year old I have to admit. I did finish his cuttle fish. It turned out ok. Drove me a bit batty, but all in all, ok.

See isn't he a cutie? Dh thinks with a couple of wings, and something about longer tentacles I could make a Cuthulu plushie. I may have to. E loves him and that is what I wanted the most.

I also have started on a pair of socks for the boy made from Schoeller & Stahl Fortissima Socka Teddy, in blue. It is fuzzy and cushy, should make for some comfy socks for this winter.

All that said, the really, really big news is that my sister and I inherited a lot of yarn. A friend of ours grandma passed away and no one in her family did any crafts. She had a room full of yarn, material, embroidery projects, hook rag projects, and the like. I have 4.5 13 gal trash bags filled with wool, wool blend, mohair, angora, and camel hair yarns. The sadest things so far is that the camel hair has been eaten by moths. I have to treat all of the natural fibre as though there is moths in it. There are 3 bags full of cotton and cotton blend yarns, and we have more bags and boxes that I have counted yet full of acrylic yarn. This yarn runs from the mundane to the sublime and everywhere in between. We are sorting now.

Since we had to start somewhere, the first sort was by fiber content, and in the case of the acrylic by color also. The next for the acrylic will be to sort by weight.

Much of this yarn is going to have to find a new home and for that I'm going to be looking at the charity knitting groups here in Colorado and seeing if any of them would like to have it. Yesterday afternoon I was drowning in it. I'm starting to feel a bit better about our chances of passing it on.

Estes Park Wool Festival

Oh, so much yarn and roving, and fleeces and well all things fibery. It was fun. Lots of fun. I went with a co-worker and had lots of fun.

It meant driving up to the mountains a second day in a row, but it was worth it. I bought a Maggie spindle and I am in LOVE! It is a 35 ounce, medium, midwhorl, maple spindle. I spun up what I was given that was already preped. I was given some locks that I will attempt to prep and continue spinning. I think I'm going to take what I've made so far off and then ply the two together. My production with this spindle is so much smoother for a couple of reasons. First there was a wonderful woman in the 'children's tent' who sat and showed me how you card the wool, start it on the spindle and where to hold it to draft it. Second was because this is a much light and well balanced spindle. My other one is a pine one that was not well constructed.

Happy, happy, E spun a bit of yarn himself, and I think I'm going to get an inkle loom from my coworker I was there with on Saturday. Yippee!!!!

World Wide Knit in Public Day....

So we went into the mountains to a lake at about 10,500 feet and fished, well my Dad & my son fished. I knit. While there were not many people there were about 50 up there and I did get the webbing on the left side tentacle done. The right side (which is what I thought I was knitting earlier) is not going as well. I can't figure out the picking up of the stitches. I feel like I'm learning to knit all over. Of course this may be due to the fact that I did not drink any water today, only Pepsi. I might be dehydrated and stupid from having a shrunken brain.

I am done with that baby sweater I was making for a co-worker. Woo Hoo!!!! I can't tell you how happy I was to have that damn thing off my needles. Teach me to knit the same basic thing 3 times in a row. She said she would talk to me the next time she knew someone having a baby & I told her that I have lots of baby sweater patterns to choose from. To which she said, yea I really liked the one you made for K. Ummm yeah see that was the same pattern just different yarn, not different enough for my brain. Thank you very much.

Oh so what I'm knitting right now is a cuttlefish for the boy. He is very exctied about it. I'm actually pretty excited about it as well.

Blah

I had a lovely weekend but it did not involve knitting. I wanted it to. Oh well. I'm still working on the Clapotis for a friend, I had forgotten how long that sucker is. I still have a baby sweater that needs to be knit up by the first of May and the kilt hose that while I don't have a deadline I would like to get them done in April as well.

I want to take the cuttlefish pattern with me to Disney World so I can get started on that for my son. I also want to see if I can knit up a better snake pattern for him. One that would involve stranded knitting. I think the markings on a boa or anaconda would be lovely in stranded knitting. I need to think on that.