Dimples Cloth

I made this cloth for a friend.  Being me, I couldn’t just find a stitch pattern. I sat down one evening after flipping through some stitch dictionaries, and doodled out a pattern.  I wanted something simple enough that I wouldn’t be staring at it all the time, but complex enough to be interesting- at least for the length of time it takes to knit a washcloth. This is what I got.  

It's a fairly simple textured cloth- similar to a basketweave, but with some garter striping to break it up. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. A fun, fast knit. Just when I needed some instant gratification after that huge pink project. :D  

It is available for sale on Ravelry for $1.00

All Wound Up

Last night, I had the pleasure of going to Powell's Books to see the YarnHarlot present and sign her new book: All Wound Up.

I tried to get there early; but I'm a mom of 4 hungry kids, and I had to go to Costco on the way there. So I wasn't as early as I wanted to be, but still early enough to get a seat. And not a bad one, either.

Before the fun began, many knitters were taking pictures of the crowd. There was a big crowd. Standing room only.  I got a picture of Tina Newton taking crowd pictures.

I don't know what it is, but I absolutely cannot take a picture of Tina that is not blurry.  I have tried and tried. At 2 Sock Summits and here- and I don't have a single picture of her that is clear.  My camera is jinxed or something. And I'm pretty sure it's her. It used to be her and the YarnHarlot, but I realized last night, that that is true of pictures of them together.  But I got some clear ones of the YarnHarlot last night, so I'm convinced now that it's just Tina that jinxes my camera.

Here is Stephanie taking her obligatory photos of the crowd:

And Stephanie reading. This photo was very difficult to take, I'll have you know. It's hard to take pictures when you are laughing.

As always, Stephanie wrote a fantastic collection of humorous essays on, yes, knitting.

I thoroughly enjoyed what she read, and am looking forward to reading the rest of the book. If you knit, I recommend this book. If you don't knit- buy it for the knitter in your life. Don't bother reading it yourself, you won't get it. But we do, and we laugh. :D

I got some more fun and laughter this morning at home.  When I came out to the boys playing with the boxes from Costco: 

Laughter is a great start to the weekend.
Hope you have a good one. :D

The Winner is:

The random number generator said 6- so...Dawna! You have won an autographed copy of my book! Sending you an email now!

Thank you all for participating. :D

In other news-
I'm not as far along on the pink blob as I was hoping. I had to frog.
       I was just running out of yarn too fast- and to complete the pattern attractively, I had to frog back a bit and start the end of the pattern sooner.  I wound up ripping out 10 rows, then doing some stitch dropping and fixing to put some extra patterning in.
       It took me all day to get in a lifeline- then all of the next day to get all the stitches on the needle and the drop-down fixes finished. But I'm back up and knitting normally again, and very pleased with how it is turning out.
       It does seem a bit small to me right now- especially for putting almost 2000yds into it- but I think it will be much bigger when I get around to blocking it.
       Tomorrow I write up the pattern whether I've actually finished the last few rows or not. I have to get some other stuff knit up this weekend, so even if I haven't done the bind off on the pink blob, I'll be knitting with cotton for a Christmas design for The Unique Sheep tomorrow.  It will make a nice break. I'm looking forward to it.



This morning I got a surprise.  UPS brought me a big box with a brand new crockpot in it.  Remember the Bread Machine story?  Well, the amazing woman behind that was paying attention when I complained yesterday (yesterday!!) that my crockpot cracked. I use my crockpot a LOT. Like 3 or more times a week. Well, Karen stepped in again to bless me and my family.  What a lovely early birthday present- yet again.  We have a lovely new crockpot that I will be using first thing in the morning for our dinner tomorrow. Thank you, Karen. Everyone needs a friend like you. :D

Monday Meanderings

1.  My family is home. They went to see Joel's parents over the weekend to help celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. (Isn't that awesome? We are so blessed to have them in our lives, and so happy to get to celebrate such a wonderful thing.)  I should have gone, but Roo got himself a fever Thursday night; and there was no way I could take him for a 6 to 8 hr drive in a car seat on Friday when he was sick.  We were sad, but we stayed home together.  It turned out well. For everyone.   The celebration went well, Joel and the kids had a good time; and Roo and I had a great weekend together. He woke up well on Sunday, and I got a lot of quiet time. That was a wonderful blessing.  Except for the poor sick baby, it was almost like having my own personal retreat at home. :)

2. This afternoon, I took Bear for his 2nd hearing test.  All I can say is that God is awesome- and thank you so much to all of you who have prayed for him!  His eardrums are moving, and he is hearing all the frequencies in a normal range.  He is borderline, but the Dr said that that is probably because there is still some fluid draining out.  But compared to the last test 6 weeks ago, he is doing wonderfully!!! We are so thankful.

3. I am 8 rows and a bind off away from finishing the "pink blob" and turning it into a shawl.  However, with 1192 sts per row- that's about 9 hrs. (yes, I am unfortunately a much slower knitter than I would like. I can knit at about 35sts/minute, but I think I've been doing closer to 20sts/min on this. I suppose I should stop reading while knitting- but if I do, I'll never get any reading in- and I kinda like to read....)  However, 9 hrs isn't too bad, and that means that if all goes well, I should be blocking the blob out this weekend. I am very excited to see what it really looks like.

4. I need to play chess with my son. Joel said today that he thinks Buddy is at least as good at chess as he is. I totally believe him. Buddy learned to play chess about a week ago, and it is all he has wanted to do since. He plays all day- as long as he can talk his brother and sister into playing with him!  I think it's my turn to get beat. :)

5. This is my 170th post since starting to blog in 2008. I think I should have something special for that....

Leave a comment on this post before 12pm Pacific Time Friday the 21st to be entered in a giveaway for an autographed copy of my book from The Unique Sheep- "More Socks Inspired By the Lord of the Rings".

8 patterns in this book- including the 2 new ones- Faramir and Eowyn that are available no where else at this point. :D  The others are One Ring, Undomiel, Mithril, Dunedain, Fangorn Forest, and Days of the King (my personal favorite).  Leave me a comment telling which sock you would knit first. :)

Birthday Boy

It is incredible to me that it has been two years already- and yet at the same time, I can't believe it's only been two years.

Happy Birthday to my sweet busy happy crazy Roo. 

I am so blessed by all wonderful kiddos. This guy is no exception. The only one who woke me up in the middle of the night before he was even born just because he was so very busy. He hasn't changed. I'm glad. :D

The Pink Blob

I think it will be beautiful when I am done.

I love The Unique Sheep yarns. This one is Marici in their Love Spoken Here Gradiance.

This is the largest project I have done to date with lace weight yarn. 2000yds. It has taken me 5 weeks to knit up 1000yds.  That seems a bit ridiculous to me when I remember that I have knit sweaters that take over 1200yds within 3wks. Granted, I had to do a lot of frogging. I got to a certain point; had a stitch pattern in mind, and for the life of me, I could not make it work! I finally scrapped it and found a new one.  Sometimes the yarn has most definite ideas of what it wants to be, and no amount of finagling on my part is going to make it work any other way.  I think I wasted a week on that one; but once we got past it, it has been going fairly smoothly.

I think it will be beautiful when I am done. I sure hope so.

This is a special project. A special project for someone very dear to me.

 I hope she likes it when it's done. Really likes it, not just says so likes it.

It's also meant to go in the book I'm working on. I figured a bit of a teaser would be okay. ;)

I think it will be beautiful when I am done. I hope you think so too.