Quick knit FO

I have another finished item to report! Wow I know, I can hardly believe it myself.

A little while back I bough myself a birthday present. Two tickets to the Paw Sox annual Stitch and Pitch (Rav group here). It's the weekend before my birthday and Hubster and I love baseball, especially the (Boston) Red Sox. It's the kind of thing we would go to before we had kids. Not that we wouldn't go now, but the kidsters make it logistically harder to say "Hey, let's go to a ball game!", if you know what I mean.

So I find myself with just enough time to make up a few charity items to bring to the game. And I have all this unknown, unlabeled, inherited acrylic just waiting to be made into cute kidster things.

The first is a girl's bucket hat. I did it in two days! Hey, that's a whirlwind for me. It's the first girly thing I've made and I kind of like it. I cast on with a pattern in mind, then changed it the very next round. Then I thought I'd do the Scrap Hat like I made before, but then changed my mind again. This is what I came up with:
I wonder if I can keep up this pace?

Renee Award

Darcy is at it again, giving me this most cherished (my first!) blog award. Yay!

A little bit about it, from Darcy's blog:

This Award was created by Bella and Ces in honour of their friend Renee, an incredible lady who in the face of a frightening life battle is tackling each day with great spirit and courage.

Here is what Bella says of this award: “this is a brand new award and I have the pleasure and honor of spreading the seed, watching it grow. I hope it finds it’s way to those who are like Renee: the acorn, becoming a tall and sturdy oak, giving acorns…”

Growing tall and sturdy hmm? Well, at 5'10" I'm just tall enough, but I would love to grow "sturdier" and feel like I have something important to pass along, my acorns, so to speak. I love this metaphor. Plus the button is cool, and goes with my outdoorsy theme, no?

I'm going to also pass it on.

1. c'est Moi! the tink-n-frog I think we have the same sense of humor!

2. knitspun daily stitches My newest fiber friend, on a sock adventure.

It's finished!

Finally I can report an FO! Oh, I am so excited!
With about 20 feet of yarn remaining, I finished the sage cable handled tote bag this weekend. I did remember to take a picture prior to felting, which is unlike me since I usually get too excited and run to the washing machine as soon as the yarn needle finishes it's weaving job.
Before:
After:
In the words of Hubster, "Wow, that came out really nice. It was just a big blob before." Thanks honey, that was the plan.


I took lots of notes, so yes, there will be a pattern coming soon! And I'm on a kick to get more of my stuff "faved" over in Ravelry. So if you like it, let me know!

Thursday Thirteen

My fiber friend Darcy tagged me to dish a little about myself, so here are 13 "interesting" things about me:

1. I have a freckle constellation of the little dipper on my arm. Or maybe it's the big dipper. Astronomy was a long time ago. Can you see it there?

2. I hate soft/crunchy foods like deli salads (tuna, egg, chicken, etc.) because of the celery. Yuck. Or onions in meatloaf. Yuck. And don't go sprinkling any granola in my yogurt either!

3. I do not wear light pink. Maybe a fuschia, once or twice.

4. I do not exercise on purpose. All that sweat. Besides, think of the computer time I would be wasting!

5. Swimming is one of my favorite summer pastimes but I do not like to swim in the ocean past waist-deep. It's the little fish/big fish paranoia.

6. I love it when it rains or is windy because I can wear a hat without feeling guilty that I was too lazy to do my hair. Yes, it rained today (I wrote this post on Weds).
7. I cry when my in-laws go on vacation and leave me to fend for myself.

8. I put my 4 yo to bed in school clothes so we don't fight in the morning about getting dressed, and I am proud of that.

9. I consider myself a creative person but cannot even draw a stick figure:(

10. I have known hubster for half of my life and he is my best friend (and he doesn't read this blog so I'm not just trying to win points or anything!).

11. I have never paid for a babysitter. I don't stiff them, just have never hired a babysitter that wasn't Grandma or Auntie.

12. When I am sick, I never, ever sniffle. I think there is something gross about sniffing back in what your body is trying to get out. I go through boxes of tissues! It takes everything I have to deal with kidsters' sniffling (which about this time of year is constantly).

13. I love everything orange. Orange juice is my coffee. I love oranges, orange smelling stuff like lotions & perfumes, even the color orange. I HATE warm orange like General Tso's chicken and Duck a la...whatever.

14. I am intensely, insanely, (and probably clinically) fearful of spiders.

Ok, I know that was 14, but I thought you should really know about the last one. See, fiber friend Leeanne has one of the blogs I check in on, and for some reason I always seem to hit it when there's a spider thing going on. So be nice and give me a little warning, now that you know!

Here are the blogs I'm tagging:
craftsandstuff

tink-n-frog

Shortly Stitches

Wool & Cotton

Come on ladies, I want to hear about you!

Knitting in childrens' stories, part 2

Continuing with the subject, here are two that are quite humorous. Without a lot of words, the hilarious pictures get the point across. They are by Nancy Shaw. My favorite is this one.
The story is not about knitting at all, but as you can imagine with sheep as the main characters there is one lovely lady that is knitting at every turn, even when they get themselves into sticky situations! To top it all off, the story has such a funny punchline at the end.

The other one in the series that we did read was this one. Also quite funny.
There are three more that we don't have at our library, but I'll be ordering them through the inter-library loan soon!

Sheep in a Shop
Sheep in a Ship
Sheep out to Eat

Sheep Blast Off!

Sheep Trick or Treat

I can only wonder (and hope) what kind of shop they are in? I'll let you know when we've read it!
ETA the last two titles, found when I was reserving some of these other sheep books from the library! Looks like we've got more reading to do.

Hell week(s) again

I am sorry there haven't been any pictures of the sage cabled purse lately, but I'm trying to get it finished and don't really want to spoil the surprise! I've made it to the second side and am knitting the last two straps at the same time. Soon it will be a few Kitchener stitches and felting time!!!

It's school vacation week once again, and in case you didn't know, this actually means less knitting time. (Sigh.) And next week my in-laws are leaving me, um... I mean leaving on a two-plus week vacation. (Double sigh.) I will have to take a lesson from my childhood friend Tom, of Tom and Jerry, and prop my eyelids open with toothpicks in order to get anything done after the kidsters are in bed.

I won, again!

I think I'm on a roll or something. I found out that I won an awesome sterling silver butterfly cable needle necklace from my fiber friend Darcy! She was giving away a bunch of stuff on her blog for her 'versary and I was one of the winners. I am still in shock. I saw this necklace on my first visit to her blog and have wanted one ever since. I even showed it to hubster! And my birthday is coming soon. How did she know?