New Project

Found some Debbie Bliss yarn at a good price while at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, so I started looking for a project for it. I narrowed it down to two. Kerrera by Gudrun Johnston

or Inggun by Elsebeth Lavold

Top ten on Tuesday.

This weeks top ten is 10 Ways To Entertain a Child. My kids are getting a good bit older Dax is now 15 and Tyde 17, but most of these activities they have enjoyed for awhile now.

1. Beach, this is in the number one spot for a reason. We live about a block from the beach so we spend a lot of time there.

2. Camping.

3. Visiting the library. My daughter enjoys library visits more than my son but there was a time when he enjoyed story book time as much as I did.

4. Art/Crafts. Break out the crayons, paper, pencils or whatever.


5. Baking. Just as fun to make as to eat.

6. Games. I always liked Uno or mancala but my son’s favorite is monopoly. He also likes battleship. They both love the ps3 games.

7. Lego’s yes this is one of the toys they haven’t outgrown. I can still pull out the lego bin and have major entertainment.


8. Hiking or trail bike riding. We don’t have the hills around here like some people do but we do have some biking trails that you can either walk or bike on.

9. Fishing.

10. Theme park, Disney, Universal, Bush Gardens, Wet and wild there all within an hour from us.

Did I mention the beach because yeah, we spend a lot of time there.

If interested in participating in the ten on Tuesday you can sign up here.

Friday Photo

A spider that Tyde brought home and put in one of our wine glasses.

Blogging mojo

My blogging mojo has left me so I’m struggling to get it back. To try and move things along I have for you today a “what I’m knitting post.”




It’s from a pattern and yarn that I got from a vendor calledKiparoo Farm that was at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I have adjusted the pattern. The way it was written didn’t work for me. I have to confess this makes me nervous because I lack the confidence or maybe I should say skills as a knitter to veer away from patterns. In the past it has turned into a disaster. I’ll let you know as time goes on if this can be related to one of the most catastrophic occurrences ever to occur in the history of my knitting. Ok that catastrophic stuff was a bit over the top but Dax thought it fit in well with the post so I’m leaving it in.

To also boost my blogging mojo I have signed up for the Ten on Tuesday that I’ve seen mentioned on some other blogs I read. If you are interested in participating you can sign up at Carole knits to get the topics sent to you thru e-mail.

Hello

Is anybody here? Is that an echo I hear? Sorry I’ve not been much of a blogger lately but things are starting to slow down around here. I haven’t been knitting or crafting as much over the last 9 months but I’m hoping to change that soon.

For now I’ll post about a recipe we tried out. It’s a graham cracker recipe from smitten kitchen. We ended up using our new sheep cookie cutter we got at the Maryland sheep and wool festival. I told Dax we could make sheep smores with our sheep graham crackers.


We went a little too heavy with the cinnamon and sugar but you can just brush it off if it’s not to your taste.

I hope everybody is doing well and enjoying summer.
Take care!

Silver Bell

Happy New Year!

Yeah, I'm still here, just been very busy. I did finish my silver belle. Actually I finished it back in May. I noticed it was over a year ago that I last posted about it so here it is all finished.
Pattern: Silver Belle from Vogue Knitting's 25 Anniversary Issue. The pattern is free online.
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. I loved using this yarn!

I had to order more yarn to finish it. I can't remember exactly how much more yarn I needed but I do remember it took more than what the pattern recommended.I also had to go down a couple of sizes on the needles. I knitted the bottom part of the sweater first and it was huge. I mean really huge.

I found some buttons at the local fabric store that has a celtic look to them. I like how the buttons turned out looking with the cabling in the sweater.
The only downside of this sweater for me is that it is a heavy sweater and drapes pulling downward because of it. I hope that makes since. Overall I really like the sweater and wear it whenever the days are cool enough for it, like today.


I hope everybody is having a great day.

Gale's Art

I hope everybody is having a great week. I'm at the end of my summer break. It's back to school/work for me on Monday. I still don't know what I'll be doing but until I hear otherwise I'm assuming I'll be in the library.
I spun up 4 oz of Gale's Art merino roving in the proud peacock colorway.


There is 385 yards of 2 ply here.

I have another 4oz that I haven't spun yet.

I think I will try and spin the next 4 oz thinner to get some socks out of them. Maybe.

Friday Photo on Sunday

Here’s my Friday photo on Sunday. Ok, I’m a few days off.

I’ve been playing around with a different blog. I decided I wanted to post more photos but didn’t want to overwhelm this blog with my random ramblings. I called my other blog The Ugly Herthen. I got the name from a drawing I did one day when I was sitting around and drawing with Dax. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it or not. I'm still playing around with it.

Anyway, I ran into another type of blogging called, tumblr. I’m wondering do any of you guys know much about tumblr? I heard somebody say it’s a glorified twitter. It looks like a great way to show photos but it doesn’t look very organized to me. In other words I don’t see where you can tag your photos.

If your like me and haven't ever seen tumblr and your curious here are some blogs/tumblr sites that have caught my attention.
That Girl
Live for the stoke Tyde would like this one.
Black and WhiteIt looks like you can submit your own pictures to this one.
Joie De Vivre
Restart My Heart This was the first one I ran into.

Simplicity 2902

I noticed I get a lot of search engine inquiries for sewing patterns I blog about. I can see why, I always like to see what sewing or knitting patterns look like on people before I spend my time on using the pattern. In reality the drawn pictures on the pattern or the pictures of the models don't really give you a good idea of what it looks like on a real person. I think ravelry has really cut back on the inquiries for knitting. But I still get a lot for sewing so here is my review on Simplicity pattern 2902.I made size 9/10 and ended up not pulling the darts in as much as the pattern recommended. I also took the straps in about an inch and they are still a bit to big. And then I moved the pockets more forward then the pattern recommended. I will wear this probably a good bit around the house or at the beach but not out and about. It's a bit on the short side. I guess if I wore some shorts or leggings under it then I would feel more comfortable wearing it other places.

I do love the pockets and thought they turned out nice.
Overall a cute little dress. Not very hard to sew together. I guess the most difficult part would be the pockets with the little pleat and binding but even that wasn't bad.



Anybody want to guess where my babies are at? Rudy took them to visit his parents for a couple of weeks. I'll give you some hints. Most the names in the area seem to have more vowels then consonants in them. With their light colored hair and blue eyes they are considered a minority, Haoles. There are no snakes there and more than one-third of the world's commercial supply of pineapples comes from there.

Friday Photo Rain

We’ve been getting a lot of rain showers lately. I’m not complaining though. It’s much better than the weather we were getting a few weeks ago of unbelievable heat and no rain.
I took these pictures last Friday when I was walking on the beach.

I hope everybody has a great weekend and for those who are celebrating Happy 4th of July!

Summer knitting

I wanted to knit something for the summer so I narrowed it down to three different projects. There was the petal halter from Interweave Knits Spring 2009 issue.
Then there was the Ogee lace skirt from Interweave Knits Summer 2007 magazine
And the last choice I had was Pink Frosting from Interweave Spring 2006 issue.

Yeah I have a lot of Interweave magazines lying around. I also have enough yarn in my stash to do any one of these projects.

I finally decided to go with the pink frosting.I’m knitting this in the round using Rowan 4 ply cotton that I got awhile back from a sale at Webs.
My knit stitches look so sloppy to me and the cables even worst. I have frogged this twice. Once because I had a twist in the cast on and the second time because I just didn’t like the stitches. Finally I went to Ravelry to look at others who have done this top and noticed their stitches were much prettier but also very similar to mine. I’ve decided to just keep knitting and love my sloppy stitches. This must be the nature of knitting with cotton?

Summer Days Photo Friday

Dax and I go to the beach almost everyday.
We try to get Tyde to go with us but he can't seem to get out of bed before 11 a.m.
If there were surfable waves maybe he would get up.
But for now we have those glassy small summer waves that are good for the river rat float.


I hope everybody else is enjoying their summer days.

I got this merino top roving a couple years ago while at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival from Ohio Valley Natural fibers.I don’t know how much I spun but I can tell you I still have a lot left over. My original idea was to spin enough of this to make a sweater but I’ve gotten bored spinning it so I Navajo plied it to get it off my bobbins to make way for something else. I really should invest in some more bobbins.

Here are the singles.
Here’s what I got after Navajo plying.


I thought I had about an even amount of singles on each bobbin, maybe a little bit more on one but I ended up getting 143 yards from one and 238 yards from the other. I haven’t checked the wpi but just from looking at it I can tell I spun one of the bobbins thinner than the other.
Well at least I have another 2 plus pounds of this stuff to play with to try and become more consistent. It is a pretty color and much softer then I originally thought it would be.

We got this post card in the mail a few days ago. I thought I would share it with you.If you can't see what it says, click on it to make it bigger.

I don’t know who Van is and I’m sorry he lost his cat but loved reading his lost cat card. His description of what his kitty responds to and the fact that if you find his cat he wants you to feed it then call made me smile. I use to refer to the shaking cat food box as the intenational kitty call :). It must be more unique then I thought. Hopefully he has found his cat.

Friday Photo and fill ins

Dax had one of her friends over so we started the fire pit and roasted hot dogs.
As you can see Rohan will be your best friend if you have a hot dog close by.
I was thinking of calling this post desire.


And for the Friday Fill Ins
1. I grew up thinking _clowns were creppy and saturday morning cartoons were worth getting up early for.

2. The Friday Fill Ins_ was the last website I was at before coming here.

3. Why don't you _grab a glass of tea and relax some?

4. Knitting__ helps me relax.

5. Thanks for the _comments you all have been leaving. I really sprreciate hearing from you.

6. Having to cast on what feels like a gazillion times is__ very off-putting.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to just relaxing__, tomorrow my plans include planting some flower seeds__ and Sunday, I want to sit at my wheel and spin some Gale's art merino___!
I hope everybody has a great weekend!

Kwik Sew 3497

I made the top awhile back. It's been getting a lot of use. I made view A, with the gather in the front, and used a cheap lycra fabric I got from Hancock fabrics.

I usually wear a tank underneath the top. It would probably work fine with out it but I feel more comfortable with the tank.

I made the size small and had to take it in around the arms. It bagged out a good bit. Maybe if I used a fabric that was less stretchy, an interlock, it wouldn't have done this. Other then that there were no other modifications that I did to the pattern.




On a different note, have you seen the Terrible Yellow Eyes blog? It's wonderful. It's an online tribute to Maurice Sendak, who wrote Where the Wild Things Are. Different artists/illustrators are posting their art work that was inspired from the book. I loved looking at all the art work, very nice.

The book has been made into a movie, which you can see the trailer for here.