A blast from the past (with brackets)

The ol' knitting mojo is indeed rising. I was stymied for a while there, but then I made the buttonhole bag (to be felted next week, now, I believe) and the juices started flowing. My latest ridiculous project is the resurrection of Basalt.

When last you saw it (July 2008, according to Ravelry!) (which now has 2,000,000 members, as I'm sure you know) it looked like this:

Now, it looks like this:

Please forgive the crappy photo; it was snowy and wet and miserable today and there was no light and certainly no taking the knitting outside!

I took it all apart some time ago, and rather foolishly (no, not really foolishly, but I might be in trouble anyways) used a lot of the yarn involved in the jazzy baby blanket a year or two ago. (Oh, did I ever show you the picture with the baby: 

Isn't he cute! And he matches so nicely!)

So, I now have to make at least two half-hexagons and 2 little slices to make a flat thing one could wrap a baby in, and I have about 2 balls of yarn. Can I do it? Can I find more?

The fun never stops.

Some old pictures

I finally got a big memory card for my phone camera and so have been blithely taking pictures without that constant reminder that my memory is full. So, I haven't taken the pictures off till now. I even have pictures with snow! Ancient history!

This sign was up on a post nearby. "I don't know you but I know that" and then lots of little tags. It's nice to see that people participated by taking them! The ones that remained said, "You are creative; You are sensitive; You've been hurt; and "Your mama loves you in her own special wal." Which we have to assume was meant to say "way." Handwritten typo!

Someone else (one assumes!) was also thinking of love -- this must have been around Valentine's Day! They decorated the school fence with wool hearts, about five or six of them.

Bad lighting and not very adjustable camera! Also, the way I tend to hold the phone leads to a lot of these odd-angled photos.

A fine use for pink tweedy novelty yarn!

Some old, some new

I made this dishcloth earlier this month and just didn't get a picture of it till now. Ballband dishcloth made of red Lion's Brand cotton and redyellowblue Bernat. It's gone into the drawer of things being saved for the future.

These little hats will also go to that drawer, and eventually get given to Children's Aid, most likely.

 

I helped a friend pack boxes of gifts at a community centre before Christmas and, frankly, was appalled at the crap hats people had donated! So I am determined to make a bunch of nice hats in a variety of sizes, and unisex in colour and style, before next Christmas comes around. Norma wrote about this issue regarding the Red Scarf project. Make nice stuff! Don't give crap knitting to charity!

The perfect I-cord thingy.

Small, but not crappy.

New and improved and almost done

I used up every last scrap of the Vero yarn and made my bag a few inches longer.

Got a different coloured cup and here's your new, improved before picture. (Yesterday's attempt for comparison.)

 "After" should be later this week!

I'll start a buttonhole bag renaissance.

Lots of pictures of knitting

My friend and I went to the yarn shop and, after several false starts and semi-decisions, chose a dark grey solid DK wool and three colourways of Vero, a variegated yarn that is stocked close to the Kureyon. We bought two balls of each colour, and only used one.

You can see I started at the bottom with the black/brown/grey mix, which has that wee bit of bluish in it. I was quite alarmed to see the rich chocolate brown towards the middle of the ball!

As one has come to expect, I first thought I would have lots of yarn, then thought I wouldn't have enough yarn, then thought I would put more black at the top, then thought that would make the bag too big, then worried it would shrink too much, then thought it was perfect, then thought it was not...

The handle, surrounded by garter stitch because I think it makes a sturdier handle and stronger top to the bag.

Where stocking meets garter! There's the orange at the bottom; green, which was alarmingly beige in the ball, in the middle; more orange at the top. I changed balls every five rows. Though I may have cheated on that when I did the handle because we wanted the orange at the edge.

The new bag with the old. How much will it shrink? Will it turn out too small? Will it shrink lengthwise a lot and widthwise not very much, making an oddly proportioned bag? Should I add more length now, before the final step of tossing it into hot water? The older bag was made with different yarn at different tension; who knows what it looked like before it was felted; we'll use a different machine; there are two yarns in the present bag: will they felt at the same rate??? Oh, my nerves.

And for posterity, the "before" picture with teacup. As I recall from the olden days, this is obligatory.

Edited to add:

Oh, dear. Look at this. I had to go browse through Stephen's iPhoto, back to 2005, where one gets distracted by kiddie shots and so on, and found these.

Unfelted, with teacup: 

 Felted, with the same cup:

I think I need to rip back to before the handles, and add in a few more inches! Oh dear, oh dear.

Sky scarf update and even more knitting

Guess what? I have actually been knitting.

The sky scarf had a bit of an issue with yarn amounts.  I ran out of the white-cloud colour, and didn't feel like buying more, didn't feel like fudging and pretending the sky was clear when it wasn't (though it's just knitting, who cares?) and had about 3 or 4 feet of scarf.

 

I bound the end off with the beginning and made a mobius thingmabob. It's too short to wrap again, but it sits snugly enough around the neck that one could wear it and it would keep you warm. Which is all we ask, isn't it?

Of course, then I wondered what to do with the rest of the sky colours. This little hat will fit an 8-year-old or so. Clear skies below, dark clouds above!

I have still more of the light blue and the greyish, so I am making another little hat. Fun and games.

Future knitting news: I have a friend who always admires my buttonhole bag which I made a million years ago. The inspiration long ago. The recent kick in the pants. $650?!? I could make you that! Here is bag #1, which I never use, and (oh, my, this was a challenge to find) bag #2 (scroll down a bit) which comes out for a few weeks in the fall because I am so coordinated that way, y'know. (It doesn't look that garish in real life, I assure you.) My friend and I are going shopping for yarn tomorrow and I will just whip that bag #3 up in no time at all. (Pattern is here or, more prettily, here; Ravelry projects here.)

I also just have to mention this. I read that entry in 2006, and sent off to the Victoria & Albert website a picture of my buttonhole bag. But now, that website is not the same as it once was. And for some reason I didn't put the picture on my own blog! So, lucky for me I didn't have a blog when I made it, and had to borrow Ann and Kay's.

Phew, that is a lot of stuff for one day!

Edited in March 2014: A lot of links no longer work, but I've updated as best I can!

Now I have red hair

Got a bit carried away at the hairdressers the other day. It's a shade called "Fuchsia Red," liberally applied here and there.

Much fun and games going on around here these days. We are thinking of summer travel, dealing with spring birthdays, knitting a teeny bit, baking cakes and making waffles... It never ends, and I rarely have a camera!

The run-up to the 12th birthday

Two dozen chocolate cupcakes ready to take to school tomorrow. I even made a half-dozen gluten-free ones, because one of Elaine's good friends can't eat the regular ones. So this time, the girl who usually doesn't get any, gets more and bigger than anyone else. Nothing is really fair, I suppose!

Knitting has been very slow around here lately. I finished the pieces of the Botticelli and sewed in a few million ends, but then things got mixed up and it's taken me a while to get back into things. Every time we have people over, I clear my knitting stuff out of the living room and take it upstairs. So then, I have to make an effort to get it back next to the comfy chair!

Excuses, excuses.

Knittin' needles in space

It's February 2

And it is a great tradition of the blogosphere to share poetry on this, St Brigit's Day. Some years I forget, but I got it this year! And what better poem for a grey, wintry day...


I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud  
By William Wordsworth

 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.