jeannie's hands at work

Knitting, crocheting, other handwork, and personal.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

A Contest!

Skeins Her Way is having a contest. Go on over and enter. If you refer who told you about it, they might win a little somethin' too.
At any rate, she has a beautiful blog.

I have totally finished the baby hat to go with the sweater -wait till you see the tassels I put on the top. I don't care for Pom-Poms so I'm always trying to find other ways to "top" a hat. So pictures when I get it washed. I hope tomorrow.

Oh, and those of you who have been in the Saturday group for a Long time, I ran into Emma-Felixe's-Mom. She was in Satellite Tuesday and saw me. I wouldn't have recognized her because she's a blonde now but still a pretty as ever. Felix is soooo cute! He must be about 3 now (?) and his hair is still red. That face, that red hair, and those big brown eyes. Mmm, mmm. What a ladykiller already!
That's it for today.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Moonlight Mohair Shawl





















I had forgotten all about this. I started it way last year after I did a Gold shawl from an Allure yarn pattern. Allure is a super bulky fuzzy yarn - Moda Dea, I think, but the pattern is simple. It's worked from the long edge down so when you get close the finish, you have fewer and fewer stitches. If you work the ends in as you go, it's almost ready to wear when you bind it off.
I worked on it this weekend at the Annual Folk Festival demonstration on Saturday. Then I finished Sunday morning between 6 and 10 am. I don't usually sleep in on weekends.
I adjusted the pattern and cast on more stitches for this one so the triangle point would fall lower on my back. I wanted it to cover the small of my back because I get so chilly at work sitting at my desk in front of the server room.
The first picture shows the bottom edge and the texture of the garter stitch, and the second picture shows the back and how long it is. Much better than the gold one. There are better pictures of the beginning of this shawl in my February 2006 posts - the color is more accurate.
Yay, me! Another UFO finished.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Monday, Monday

First off -Everyone, go to Allie's website and take a look at this beautiful girl! 'Way to go Allie!!!!!
Congratulations on graduation and Everything else. It's good to see you smile and foot-boogie. Eye-Heart-U. (Scroll down to last post to learn about Allie and her remarkable Mom and Dad. Her story is touching hearts all over the world.)

I had a productive weekend. Lots of yarn dyed, plied, spun and some knitted.


I really had fun dyeing stuff this weekend. I over-dyed grey with very saturated color -more than I thought. I only diluted them a little once they were mixed. Since I was dyeing grey I didn't know what I'd get.
It's been far too long since I did "art" stuff -color, value, tone, hue and mixing which is different for dye than paint. Blue and yellow don't necessarily give you green in dye pigments.....ask me how I know.
I have to buy more yellow dye real soon -read, tomorrow. I have enough of red and blue to dye everything I have, but not enough yellow to mix with it. My fire red turned into this viscous goo that needs heating and shaking every time I want to use it. The blue is just fine and so is the yellow. But I sure used a lot of yellow.

I got the baby hat cast on for the Daisy sweater and the buttons sewed on the sweater. They are cute as can be... picture to follow- on Thursday or so. I'm taking Tue. & Wed. off to prep for the Folk Music Festival.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

June - what???? Where did May go?

Well, I have lot to talk about.
First and foremost this morning: I've just read a blog about Allie. http://alliecagen.blogspot.com/
I didn't know Allie, never met her, probably never will, BUT I love her as if she were one of my kids' friends. Her father, mostly, and her mother started a blog to keep everyone informed about her recovery after a terrible accident. She has come out of a coma and is in a regular room; improving every day.
Allie's dad is a hero and model of faith in God and love for his daughter. What courage to keep blogging and be so positive in the "face of a dire situation."
Cagen family, "eye heart you." You have blessed me with your words and your blog. Thank you, and thank you, FlyLady, for sharing.
Go read for yourself and you'll see God's love in action. I can feel it even now -the Positive power of the net.

Knitting content next:I finished working in the last ends of yarn on the baby sweater!!!! Yay!!!!!!!!
I have to sew on buttons, wash, and block it. Done -finished-ready to give to the lady on the bus.......
No, wait - hat - I need to do the hat. No problem..... it won't take nearly as long.

I also am working on 2 more UFO's :
The hot pink silk t-shirt knitted with Cascade cotton and silk,












and the BamBoo Classic Elite Bolero Pattern I started last year. You can see the picture here:
http://www.classiceliteyarns.com/pattern_detail.php?patternID=10

I knitted a few rows on the Ribbon Poncho for my sister in life, not blood- Skye. Truth is, it shoulda been done last summer! But I'm not going to beat myself up. I'm getting farther along with it -so there!
The 2007 Fiber Arts Fiesta was last week. I took the time off to be there for set-up and every day. I have no pictures because my DD had maxed out the memory on the camera. I didn't know how to erase the pics she had, so no pictures. But you can check out the website: http://www.fiberartsfiesta.com/
I really had a great time volunteering, demonstrating, and shopping when I was done with booth duty. I would have liked more vendor yarns and rovings to be available. I bought from 2 companies, but I would have bought more if there had been more choices.
Other than that, I thought there was a great variety of booths, and crafts represented, and such beauty to look at. Mmmmm, mmm!
On the DD front- I won't go into great detail about the finding a dress saga -my blood pressure is almost back to normal. Just let me say between work-stressful, apartment chaos -stressful, and dress shopping-where are the tranquillizrers?stressful, that this has not been my favorite few weeks.
The results of the Dress shopping were that 1:30 PM -she had to be at the Country Club ready to go at 5:30- we were all the way across the river the mall in a last ditch effort to find SOMETHING for her to wear. A LOT more money than I had planned to spend, and she decided that would deign to wear this:

The picture is lousy, I know. But she looked really great - oo, I think I'm supposed to say hot!
I missed the black sparkly high heels.
So here are more pics from that night.