woolythyme

random things....

A simple cowl.  It was so simple that I had serious doubts about how it would look finished.  That's me doubting me...since this wasn't a formal pattern.  My favorite multi-coloured cowls are done in the round to avoid seeing the colour changes (and to avoid the need to tuck in stray ends!)  I have several fair isle ones, but few color block ones. I had a mini skein kit from Wonderland Yarns, the need for something mindless, and a very long car trip pending. This seemed to be a given.

CO 100 stitches.  Join in the round.  "Chevron" to the end of a mini skein, chevron a dividing section with a background colour (why, I think I'll use grey---hee hee), alternate until the yarn is gone. 

Simple.

And I think pretty cute.

And timely...the temps have finally taken a dip; I wore it this morning.

I think it actually qualifies now for cold in the mornings (30s), so the sweater making urge is consuming me at the moment.  Can't decide what to make.  Should I tear apart an unloved one and be frugal and reuse the yarn?  Frog a partially finished one that I may or probably will not love when finished and find something for THAT yarn?  Or just do what I usually do....find a pattern, order the yarn, and wonder why I have a stash at all.

In the meantime...

I guess I'll keep making Moravian stars.  

I have another talk to give in a couple weeks. If there's one thing I've learned about audiences over the years, it's...feed them something and give them something and they won't really care what you say.

I'm counting on that!

weekending....

 

A little of this....

• road tripping with friends to a fiber festival
• popping into a yarn shop
• popping out of the yarn shop with some yarn

A little of that....

• road trip knitting on this
• finishing this
• peach/blueberry pie baking

And a whole lot of this...

This piece is finished except for putting something on the 'banner'...any ideas? and turning it into something.....any ideas?

I finally got around to covering an old cigar box...did a little embroidery on the top and had planned to do more.  Got a bit carried away with the glue too soon.

 

  

Its job is to hold current embroidery WIPs.

 

So far so good.

 

Colored eggs....naturally

From bottom to top...

(2) tumeric dyed....one set on the counter for about an hour in the dye bath, the other (on the right) in the refrig for an additional couple hours.  I didn't see much difference.

(2) beet dyed...same as above, and pretty much the same results.  I think less time would have resulted in the pretty pink that the dye pot held.

(1) surviving Easter chick.  Freddy ate all his chick-friends.

(1) spinach dyed....overnight in the refrig.  Pale and rather uninteresting.

(4) red cabbage dyed....probably my favorite dyed eggs with some green showing through.  Again, on the counter and additional time in the refrig seemed to do little to change the color.

(2) brown eggs, straight from the chicken.  My overall favorites.  

Unlike me, those chickens know what they are doing.

 

outside...inside...

While it's doing this outside....

 

We're doing this inside.....

repairs

 

hemming napkins

 

picking colors for Kelpie and... chewing needles??!! FRED!!

?WHAT?

 

Life is good.

who are they trying to kid?.....

 

I am house-bound.  Nothing awful.  Nothing bad.  The eye doctor agrees with my daughter that I most definitely would be a 'scary driver' until my other eye is operated on.  So here I am.  I'm embracing it.

When would I have found time to clean the oven?  (You should have SEEN it!!....No most definitely you shouldn't have seen it.)

Or repot my houseplants?  (Well, I'm going to do that....it's on the 'list')

I plan to 'tackle' the 'scary' basement (lots of things are apparently scary in my life at the moment?),  finish a quilt I started years ago if I can find it, walk everyday to the market like the French do, sew a new spring wardrobe,  wash the car (but not today because there is still snow on the ground), read the stack of books I bought at the last library sale, try some new recipes that I've wanted to try---and it won't matter if I have the ingredients at hand, since I'll be making that daily trek to the market.

Yeah, right.

I might repot the plants, though.

 

BUT!....!!!  I DID dig out my kiddie metal potholder loom.   My idea was to start cleaning out the craft junk stuff.  I love these potholders.  They are the only potholders I've ever used and every few years I make a few more.  I thought this go-round (with all the time I have on my hands!!!) I'd just make a lifetime supply and use up all the loops (freeing up a huge amount of room in the basket??  hee hee)

I linked to this so you could clearly see....it says right there, ages 5+.  Trust me.  I'm older than that.  First of all...these took f-o-r-e-v-e-r.  Friggin' FOREVER .  The loops kept popping off the loom.  The yucky plastic thingy to weave the loops was next to worthless.  Half the loops were too short for the loom.  The other half were too fat.  There weren't enough grey loops to do much with.  Just as I was 'binding off' the last side....the whole row leapt off the loom (in spite of the fact that I had it secured between my knees---something I found useful, but not included in the directions)and the loops immediately started unlooping. (Thank goodness I'm a knitter; I could rescue this, although trust me on this one, too....yarn is MUCH easier to work with than cotton loops.) Now I remember why I only drag this out every couple of years.

I ended up with bloody fingers, a whole new vocabulary that I'm not very proud of, and.....two potholders.

 

I guess I need to give this to my 5 year old granddaughter.

 

 

Black Friday backlash.....

You are stepping on MY holiday, oh you consumer-driven big-box-stores...the names of which will never darken the pages of this blog.  Not only have you been inching up with earlier and earlier opening hours, but you've now encroached on what was the one 'non-consumer/pro-family-and-friends' holiday of the entire year by opening on THANKSGIVING!!!  For this...I do not, and will never, give thanks.

 

And what makes it even worse....you are starting to tell us all about it weeks before it happens.  Enough.

I came across this post by Beverly Williams.  I'm in.  I'm seriously making my holiday lists and purposely avoiding the 'big-boxes' this year. (This is not much of a sacrifice for me; I've avoided them pretty much for the past ... oh, dozen or so years!  It's nice to have a soapbox to climb on, though.)

In Black Friday Backlash, though, I thought you might like to join me in sharing ways you are making this season more personal and heartfelt.  It might be a pile of yarn destined to become a handcrafted gift; it might be a mound of crafting goodies that will turn into something special;  perhaps some foodie ideas...or how about plans to share the gift of time...quality time with special friends instead of consumer 'gifts'.  I'd love to hear your ideas....(hee, hee---there is still time to incorporate some of them into my ideas!!)

Here's my start...

last year's amaryllis

 and a holiday knit....

are going to be this year's Christmas cards.

 

Care to join me?   If I was the least bit techie I'd have one of those cute little linky-things, but I had a hard enough time figuring out how to make the cards.   Just comment below and add your link there.  

'Til next Friday.   

Blog Hop....Creativity

 

Last week Karen from PumpkinSunrise invited me to join a blog hop and answer some questions about creativity.  So here it goes... 

1.  What have been the doings/makings/scribblings at your desk/making table this week?

 

 The workspace was pretty much clearned off last week.....getting ready for a little jaunt to Cape Cod.  The journal/s and camera, though, are always somewhere nearby.  The tiny brown journal has  gathered all kinds of knitting 'things'...patterns, quotes, drawings; when I'm hunting for my lost mojo, I often find it squeezed between those little pages.

On rare occasions, this space finds my sewing machine!  The machine is overdue to make an appearance and after the last workspace 'activity' --- it's next appearance is imminent.

 ALL my favorite project bags are filled with pending projects....

 

but, there are still a few 'homeless' ones kicking around.  Time to sew.

 

2.  Where are you currently finding your inspiration?

 Some friends and I went to a little (20 vendor) market a couple weekends ago, and you couldn't help but be inspired and overly stimulated with all the eye-candy EVERYWHERE!!!!  Spending time with friends, either in person or online, is always an inspiration; being the copy-cat/lemming that I am, I'm very likely to want to cast on anything I see on someone else's needles!!!  

BUT, note the camera on the desk.  I tend to see my knitting world in black, white, and shades of grey. I love these 'colors'!!!  I gift a great number of things, and just because technicolor knitting is not my strength, I can't assume everyone has the same love affair with neutrals that I do.  That's when I turn to all the colors in nature....my photographs help me put together colors all the time! (My teleidoscope is another great little indispensible color-assisting tool I use!!!!)

 

 

3.  How important is being creative to you and how do you blend this with your work-life-family balance?

I'm never not knitting.  Never.  (This is only the slightest exaggeration.)  Friends and acquaintances comment on how FAST I knit, but I keep telling them it's not the SPEED but the AMOUNT of knitting that produces so much.  For example, at knit-night I KNIT.  I don't stop.  I knit and talk; I knit and eat.  My friends knit.  Then they talk. Then they eat.  See the difference???

I have 'car knitting' and 'kitchen knitting' and 'purse knitting' ..... I'm compulsive.  (I'm still trying to figure out how to blog and knit.  Any ideas?)

So, it's sort of expected that I will be knitting most everywhere.  Family and friends know this and they are OK with it.  Grandkids chase me down with yarn in hand. 'Grandma, don't forget your knitting!'  At this stage of life my children are grown,  I'm mostly retired, and I'm very blessed that this crazy compulsion is now so much easier to feed  than it used to be!!!

But I have a bit of a problem with the word 'creative'.  I don't see myself as a creative person at all.  Yes.  I create (make) a lot (a whole lot) of things, but I design and truly c-r-e-a-t-e very few of them.  I may substitute the yarn, insert a different pattern, change the sizing, and adjust the design....but the creative 'kernel' of the work is usually someone else's.  For all those truly creative designers in the knit world, I am truly thankful!! 

 

Thanks, Karen, for letting me share this little corner of my 'creative' world.  I'd love to pass the blog hop on to two of my favorite creators, Wanda @reinventingmother who just recently began a cottage business with her project bags and Tien @autumngeisha who seems to be my personal shopper.  I copycat her more than I would like to admit.

(craft) life beyond knitting?….

I should have known.  All that casting on....all that 'bunny froo-frooing' over the weekend.  Around here, that is usually a sign of a restless knitter.  

 

OK.  I can give the needles a rest for an hour day or so.  I do other crafty things occasionally.  Sometimes I even really like doing them.  Sewing is not my favorite thing, but once the mess is made (the machine is out, the thread has been unburied from the stacks of sewing 'stuff', I've found plugged in the iron--I'm usually OK with it.  I'm not good at it.  But, I'm pretty happy.)  Rug hooking?  I like it.  It's hard on my hands.  And how many hooked rugs does this little house need?  I do LoVe (!!!!!) a little hooked pillow a friend gifted me at Valentine's Day---little pillows might be something to drag out....again.  But---finding all the stuff.  Making the mess.  BLECH.

 

There is Russian embroidery.  This is really fun to do, but I've never figured out what to do with the finished things.  A couple little pictures, a little mat...then what?  

 

Crochet?  Needle felting? Needlepoint? Start something totally new?  Natural dyeing?

 

 

OK.  How about this?

  

 

 

I miss my yarn already.

ouch...

 

 

OUCH!

 

 

I'm sorry.

the Santas are nestled all snug in their beds...

The Santas are gone...and the snowmen are out, dreaming of a white winter yet to come.

 

 

It was pretty easy putting Christmas away this year...half the ornaments had fallen off the brittle tree, the amaryllis bloomed around Thanksgiving--leaving just the floppy green leaves, and the Christmas cactus is down to a couple flowers.  The Dollar Store nativity set is still out until next week (yes, the one Freddy LOVES!); the large family Hummel set was gifted this year to our DIL.  She loved it.  (She even loved the fact that her husband had decapitated Caspar when he was little.  --Never fear, head was glued back on.)  

 

While we were visiting son and his family, I thought it would be fun to make a beeswax nativity set for the littles to play with. (I sort of had a theme going this year.) I had brought the molds, the beeswax, and a dedicated wax saucepan with me...we carefully melted the wax, and ever so c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y poured it into the molds.  So far, so good.  After about 30 seconds, the novelty of this project wore off, and off 5 of the 7 grands went for something more exciting than watching wax set.  (The refrig was too full to speed this process along.)  As they ran off, the remaining 2 grands barged into the kitchen from outside (knowing they had missed some unmistakable Grandma-fun)and proceeded to toss a jacket onto the wise men, the shepherd boy, the lamb, and the camel.  Because they also were traipsing mud in their wake....we missed the initial jacket landing.  Do you have any idea how FAST fleece soaks up melted wax?  Instantaneously.  Believe me.  I know.

 

After about an hour of picking wax (and ironing it and freezing it--I now feel well versed in wax removal), I gave up and grabbed the guilty grand and out we went to buy a new coat.  Phew.  Solved that problem.  (There was a little holiday miracle out of this....while the wisemen didn't make it, the shepherd boy was footless, the camel had no head, the angel lost his wings---Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus escaped totally unscathed.)

 

We got home with a pot still half full of wax.  Why not?  I'll make my own beeswax set without any little people help.

I melted the plastic wax molds.  oops.

 

New Year's Resolution....

I'm sticking to knitting.

 

Happy New Year, friends!!  Have you made any resolutions this year???