So dad and I went to the feed store Saturday to stock up on birdseed for the winter. Apparently, not a moment too soon since this is the scene I awoke to this morning. 
It's November 19th for goodness sake! The weathermen were all calling for rain and a few flurries. We got an inch of snow. Very wet sloppy snow. Weird but very pretty.
I've been knitting up a storm, but as usual for this time of year, none of it can be posted here until after Christmas, hee hee. Well, not quite none. Here's the felted clogs finished.
These are going to my husband's aunt for Christmas. Check out the bottoms
The faux suede works like a charm! I "soled" the bottoms of my clogs and it's made a huge difference.
I finished the Melly's Cousin Bag
So cute. I've gotten a ton of compliments on it. It's a bit on the small side for me. Only my bare essentials fit in it. So I hopped back over to Sharon's site and picked up the Ali Bag pattern. She has it shown in a red colorway and a grey colorway. I'm leaning towards blue with green and purple pipes. I'm still looking at yarns. And since it's going to cost at least $50 for the yarn, it will probably wait until I've finished Christmas shopping.
Sadly, there's been no progress on Mr Greenjeans. I really need to finish my Christmas knitting so I can get back to working on it since I would love to wear it for Christmas. And then there's this...
Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Heavyweight RAVEN KORPPI!!! SQUEE!! I'm not a total STR junky, but I do adore their color sense. So a few weeks ago a reminder popped up in my email that said "STR Raven". I couldn't remember what the hell I set the reminder for, but I had put a link in the reminder and it took me to Blue Moon's site. There was nothing there about Ravens. So I hopped on the Ravelry Socks that Rawk group and found a RAGING discussion about when the Ravens would be up. Turns out they had some sort of trouble and the update didn't go up until evening. I happened to be there when the yarns started showing up. It was AWESOME! And the whole group spirit on Ravelry at the same time made it feel even more like a party. So what are the Ravens? Blue Moon did this whole line of colors based on black. Go look. It is PHENOMENAL. And the pictures don't even do the yarn justice. The colors are intense, almost iridescent. I WILL be getting more of this gorgeous stuff. For now, I had to content myself with one skein. It's going to be mittens. I couldn't hide this something this fantastic in shoes! So it's my carrot on a stick right now. I have to finish my Christmas knitting and Mr Greenjeans before I can start the mittens. Well, maybe just finish the Christmas knitting. We'll see how long I can hold out!
I finally got more Bare to dye. Here's my latest batch
My friend at the yarn store gets first choice, then the rest will be going up on Etsy later this week. I'm taking better notes so I can try to replicate colors in the future. I'm getting to the point I like so many of the colors, I don't want to let them go! Edna told me she was able to get undyed yarn from one of her suppliers. I'm anxious to see what it's like. I love the KP yarn, but it would be nice to have another source as well.
Hubby and I are on vacation this week. We have few plans, which is just how I like it. I've got books and magazines to get caught up on and tons of knitting! Mr. Greenjeans is cruising along. The body is finished and I'm halfway down the first sleeve.
And it looks like I'm not going to run out of yarn, YAY!
In anticipation of loads of knitting time I treated myself to one of Sharon's She-Knits bag patterns, Melly's Cousins Bag. I've ordered Berkshire Bulky in Coffee Bean and Tan from Webs and it should be here Monday or Tuesday. Speaking of Sharon, she's got a group over on Ravelry knitting the Felted Clogs. Mine are starting to develop a hole in the heel so I decided to join in. I picked up some Patons Classic wool in Leaf Green and Old Gold on sale at Michael's.
I also snagged some faux suede on Ebay with the hope of sewing soles to the bottoms for reinforcement. It was cheap so I won't feel bad if my plan doesn't work. I still have 2 pair of socks and the v-neck shell on my needles too! I'd say I've got PLENTY to keep my busy.
Still on the major clean-up kick. I thoroughly cleaned and reorganized the sewing/craft room. Many bits and bobs were tossed, sold, given away or re-purposed. I finished the Tumbler quilt I started last year.
I decided I would never finish the log cabin rug I was making for the kitchen, so I bound it off and it's now a perfectly sized mat for under the cat's food dish.
I'm seriously considering frogging the Montego Bay Scarf. It spites me after all the trouble I went through to get the pattern and how lovely the SeaSilk yarn is. But I was looking at it today, thinking, even if I finish this, I'll never wear it. It would be a serious waste of beautiful yarn to knit something to sit in a drawer. But, I don't have any other ideas for the yarn either. Perhaps a stole. But I already tried it once in the Huck Lace shawl and didn't like it. For now, it's neatly tucked away in a drawer until I decide if I will finish it or frog it.
When Quinn was a baby, she had a favorite toy. A pink sparkle ball. She carried it around in her mouth all the time.
(Note that the ball is almost as big as her head!) We joked she was just about like Gollum "My precious!". Sadly, the sparkle ball was lost rather quickly as often happens with little cat toys. We tried in vain to find her another sparkle ball. They were all so flimsy they'd fall apart in no time and have to be taken away lest the cats eat them. Craft store pompoms were a half hearted substitute. But nothing seemed to please her as much as her original sparkle ball.
Quinn is now 6 and it's been at least 5 years since we've seen that ball. Then, this weekend while we were in the midst of our fall cleaning, I turned the sofa over to attach new sliders to the feet. Lo and behold, there stuck in the underframe of the sofa was the sparkle ball.
All is good in the world. At least it was for about 6 hours on Saturday. It appears, though, that the sparkle ball is once again lost.
Hooray! The heat has finally broken and it's starting to feel like fall. This week the daytime temps were in the 50s and 60s and it's been down into the 30s at night! AWESOME. Some people have their spring cleaning. For me it's fall cleaning. The cold weather really puts me in the mood to spiff up and throw out. We steam cleaned the carpets on Friday, did the curtains and windows yesterday, as well as washing all the woodwork and rearranging the furniture. Today I'm going through all my old quilting and knitting magazines getting ready to sell the ones I don't need/want any more.
I've not gotten much knitting done the last few days with all this cleaning and now my wrist is buggered up from something I did (probably over exertion) so there will be no knitting today. Instead, pictures of what I have managed to get done:
Hubby's (impossible to photograph) sweater
He requested, plain and black. So there it is. Plain. and Black. Black does not photograph at all well. The sweater is nearly done. I have about half of the bottom hem left to bind off and a few ends to sew in and it's finished. I'm doing a sewn bind off that I saw on Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Glossary dvd. It keeps your ribbing nice and stretchy without looking sloppy. For me, though, it seems to take forever to execute. But the results are well worth the extra time if it means the difference between getting the sweater over your head or ripping your ears off because the neck opening won't stretch.
I've been devoting about equal time to the black sweater and Mr. Greenjeans. I'm still just loving this pattern. 
I changed up the cable section just a bit. I'm working the cable every 6 rows rather than every 4. The look is only slightly different...
But it should save me just a bit of time over all. The cables are great. It's just a 4 stitch cable and I'm able to do them without a cable needle as described in the pattern. But there are a lot of cables and those rows still go really slow for me. A few extra plain rows in between crosses is a simple, barely noticeable time saver.
I've worked only a few more rows on the V-neck shell. I would still like to get it done to wear as a vest this fall, but I'm thinking I'll be happy if I finish it by the end of the year.
I do like this project, but cotton still is not by favorite fiber to knit with. This yarn (Aunt Lydia's Denim) is certainly one of my favorite cottons, but I still can't seem to get motivated to finish it.
No pictures of the socks. Neither the Jaywalkers nor the "not" Tube Socks have shown much progress. I've spent too much time working on the big projects and almost no time traveling to get any work done on the socks. Would have loved to have the Jaywalkers done for Halloween since they are in my Halloween yarn, but it ain't gonna happen.
As I've mentioned, I've been reading through the Cat Who series and trying to collect the books. Well, I managed to score the entire series in on Ebay for less than $20 including shipping!! All but one are hardback. 2 of the short story collections were missing, but I already had those. I am thrilled to bits. I'm still on Post Office since I've had almost no time to read this last week. And when I do sit down to read, I invariably fall asleep. This should keep me busy for months!
Finally, progress on the Drops Tube Socks.
Although I've got to come up with a new name since they are no longer tube socks. I did, in the end, decide to put in a short row heel. I'm also only going to put the pattern on the top side of the foot so the sole is nice and smooth.
Jaywalkers in Jack.
I'm so thrilled with how this yarn is knitting up. I fell in love with it when I dyed it and am even more smitten by it knitted up. And this pattern is great. I can see why so many people have knit these.
I spent my weekend dyeing. Here's 5 skeins of Patons Classic Merino Wool, originally Winter White, dyed up for the Mr. Greenjeans sweater.
I had some issues with this yarn. Originally it was too bright.
So I overdyed it with a small amount of black and brown dye. Now it's perfect.
I also dyed up the last of my sock yarn for my friend's shop.
From left to right: Americana, After the Rain, and Shire. I'm going to have to dye up another Shire for myself, love those colors!
Clear out of the blue the other day, my dear husband asked me if I would knit him a sweater. Be still my heart! I of course jumped at the chance, showing him sweaters I'd knit for me so he could pick a yarn he liked. He picked Wool Ease, which is good. I don't expect he'll wear the sweater much so I don't want to spend a ton on materials. He wants plain black, plain sweater. This makes it super easy for me since I can machine knit most of it and have it for him in time to wear this fall. And I'm safe, right? No sweater curse when he's your husband, right??
Through my job, I know a lady who owns the only yarn shop in miles. It's a cute little shop in Brickerville. We got to talking this week and I mentioned I'm dyeing sock yarns and making knitting bags to sell on Etsy. She asked if I'd be willing to make some stuff up for her to sell at her shop. She's along a tourist route and often has people looking for local crafts. I was thrilled and jumped at the chance. I'm going to her shop for the Harvest Festival in a few weeks and hoped to have a bunch of yarn and bags to take with for her. Unfortunately, KnitPicks is sold out of the base yarn I use until the end of October! I was crushed. I have a few skeins left and am going to dye those for her, but it's super disappointing not to be able to do a larger batch right off the bat. I spent some time looking online trying to find a similar base, but came up empty. I found coned yarn that was close, but I don't have adequate facilities to measure skeins for consistent yardage. I don't feel my system of counting wraps on the skein winder is not accurate enough. Plus, pre-skeined yarn is just so much easier to work with. I did have good luck finding fabric for the bags, though. We went to my favorite fabric store, Martin's Fabric Barn, and found a line of marbled fabrics that look perfect. I can't wait to get started on them.
It's been a busy 2 weeks since I last posted. The week before Labor Day weekend I spent every spare minute sewing. I made nine knitting bags for a huge Etsy shop update. I also dyed up some more sock yarn in "almost solid" colors (inspired by a prior week's feature on Knitter's Review). There's still a ton of stuff left so hop on by and have a look.
We ended up dealing with some health drama over Labor Day weekend requiring a trip to the Emergency room. Why is it we have to have trouble that could normally be handled by a physician on a holiday weekend when none are open? Everything is getting back to normal now, thank goodness.
Our heat wave continues. It's been in the upper 80's with humidity levels suitable for growing tropical plants. The library's annual book sale was yesterday and it was the hottest one I could remember. As always, it was a fun day. My family staff's the bake sale portion and we had a huge spread this year. So many donations of delicious food! They had fewer books this year, but better quality and selection of books. The librarian did a good job of culling out the "junk". I got a bag full of books.
Managed to snag 4 of the "Cat Who" books I was missing. Renee found me 3 James Bond books! Also found a vampire book, one of James Herriot's books, a Roddy Doyle and an Agatha Christie. Not a bad score for only $14!
On the craft front, here's what I've been up to...
I finally got around to machine knitting a bag from the wool mom & dad brought me from New Zealand. This yarn was gorgeous, but pretty scratchy, so I figured it would be perfect for a felted bag.
I was right. It machine knit pretty quickly. Although the yarn had a lot of "grab" and managed to jump the needles several times. I restarted the bag 3 times (so much fun casting on 100 stitches 3 times) before I realized I'd have to run the carriage slowly to prevent the dropped stitches. But it was worth the hassles in the end. I need to stitch the lining in yet.
The bag has plenty of structure on it's own, but I decided to line it to keep the fuzzies from transferring to whatever I carry inside. As soon as the humidity drops and I can stand to have wool in my lap I'll get it stitched.
I've started a new punchneedle project.
A cute little ghost for Halloween. I started punching the background in grey variegated floss but quickly realized I'm not going to have nearly enough thread to do the whole background that way. So I've switched to a combination of variegated and solid floss combined. I'm using granny's Pretty Punch this time. It's certainly more comfortable to hold than the cheap Dimensions punch I used for the first picture. But my loops are not as consistent on the front side. I got a bunch of supplies this week...wool floss, a kit, a pattern book and some issues of Create and Decorate. I have plenty of ideas now. Now I just need more time!
The Summer V-Neck vest is coming along nicely.
I've put a lot of time into this as I'd like to have it to wear over a shirt for fall. I finished the back and have started the cabled section on the front. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love cabling! 
Such a simple process creates such a cool effect. I'm glad I changed the pattern to have left and right slanting cables rather than them both going in the same direction.
And on a final note. I'm such a lemming. Wendy has been talking about how happy she's been with the Wen cleansing conditioner. I was intrigued. I'm a hair care junky, although I have reigned it in a lot the last few years. But I still love to try new stuff in search of great hair. So I finally broke down and ordered a bottle of Wen Fig. I've been using it for a few days now and am absolutely thrilled so far. The product is a non-foaming cleanser that is supposed to replace your shampoo, conditioner, leave in conditioner, deep conditioner, detangler. Out of the bottle it looks and feels just like conditioner. The directions call for you to use a ton of the stuff. I used about 1/3 of what they call for. You apply it to your wet hair, massage it in and let it sit for several minutes before rinsing. It feels tingly on the scalp and smells fantastic. I must say, I am completely sold so far. My hair is soft and clean and manageable. I have not put a drop of anything else in my hair, no leave in conditioner, no styling gel, nothing. It's fantastic. I generally can't go a day without at least wetting my hair down to make it look presentable. Even after yesterday's full day outside in the sun and breeze, my hair looks great this morning. I brushed it out when I got up and it looks perfectly presentable. I'm thoroughly impressed. It's early days yet, so we'll see how it preforms in the long run. But so far, Wen sure looks like a keeper.
It's November 19th for goodness sake! The weathermen were all calling for rain and a few flurries. We got an inch of snow. Very wet sloppy snow. Weird but very pretty.
These are going to my husband's aunt for Christmas. Check out the bottoms
The faux suede works like a charm! I "soled" the bottoms of my clogs and it's made a huge difference.
So cute. I've gotten a ton of compliments on it. It's a bit on the small side for me. Only my bare essentials fit in it. So I hopped back over to Sharon's site and picked up the Ali Bag pattern. She has it shown in a red colorway and a grey colorway. I'm leaning towards blue with green and purple pipes. I'm still looking at yarns. And since it's going to cost at least $50 for the yarn, it will probably wait until I've finished Christmas shopping.
Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Heavyweight RAVEN KORPPI!!! SQUEE!! I'm not a total STR junky, but I do adore their color sense. So a few weeks ago a reminder popped up in my email that said "STR Raven". I couldn't remember what the hell I set the reminder for, but I had put a link in the reminder and it took me to Blue Moon's site. There was nothing there about Ravens. So I hopped on the Ravelry Socks that Rawk group and found a RAGING discussion about when the Ravens would be up. Turns out they had some sort of trouble and the update didn't go up until evening. I happened to be there when the yarns started showing up. It was AWESOME! And the whole group spirit on Ravelry at the same time made it feel even more like a party. So what are the Ravens? Blue Moon did this whole line of colors based on black. Go look. It is PHENOMENAL. And the pictures don't even do the yarn justice. The colors are intense, almost iridescent. I WILL be getting more of this gorgeous stuff. For now, I had to content myself with one skein. It's going to be mittens. I couldn't hide this something this fantastic in shoes! So it's my carrot on a stick right now. I have to finish my Christmas knitting and Mr Greenjeans before I can start the mittens. Well, maybe just finish the Christmas knitting. We'll see how long I can hold out!
