I've decided on my current charity project, I've been wanting to do some preemie knitting or some other sort of knitting for a cause. When my mother told me that one of her friends sisters was trying to get up some tiny burial clothing to donate to the NICU at their hospital I knew it was something I wanted to do too.

Here's the progress on my first burial bunting, it has a triangular pocket on a small bias knit baby blanket, it's to swaddle some little dear who never had a chance in life, but has beaten us all to heaven and will be held in our dear Savior's loving arms until it's mommy and daddy can come to take care of it.

Please bless these babies, dear Lord.

I usually try not to post more than once a day, but I've been really wanting to blog this, and I just got pics this morning!

First we'll start off with the specs ('cause I don't know where else to put them... :-P)
Pattern: Flower Petal Shawl by Elann.
Yarn: Elann's Peruvian Collection Pure Alpaca
Needles: 5.5mm size US 9 clover bamboo flex needles
Gauge: psh, who knows??
Finished measurements: ummm... 60 something inches by 30 something inches?

Ok so maybe I'm not so hot at this 'specs' thing, well I tried. Man, you just can't please some people.

I took the shawl out today and got some pics!!

he's rather dilapidated now I know, has been for the last week or more, so I thought I would warm him up a little with my shawl... wait... *blinks* oops...

*cough* um... moving on...

Then I tromped around trying to find a sapless tree that would support my shawl, but no luck, everything was either too young or two risky of sap (I'm not risking getting anything on my baby). In the process I thoroughly filled both my snow boots with snow, and got my pant legs wet half way to my knees...

But I did finally go to the sunniest spot I could find and lay it out (notice I said sunniest spot I could find, which was true but it actually wasn't really sunny at all - I don't want to lead you under false pretences that it's actually a SUNNY picture...)

click to enlarge

I'm sure you can really tell that we're heading out of our first week of spring just by looking at these pictures *glare*

This shawl was a ton of fun to knit up, the last 35 rows or so got rather grueling, but overall it was really fast, and the miserably long rows only lasted a few days, so I lived to tell the tale...

In terms of size, the picture in the pattern is a little misleading, I think they used a really small model, and then the picture where she's holding it out I noticed that it's aligned with her arms and neck, not wrapped around her whatsoever. Since the upper area isn't wrapped over her neck and shoulders it looks longer, and the sides aren't wrapped around her arms or shoulders so it looks wider. Though I've seen this done with other shawls, so I should have expected it I guess.

While I don't think I actually altered the intended pattern, I did alter the actual directions on the points, they say that the fishtail point edging is a garter/eyelet version of the full lace pattern, but when I started to work it there was actually no garter involved, I changed that so I was knitting the last 2 stitches on either side as garter, so points had no chance of curling, and it gave the points a more finished edge (imho at least)

Though they may not have been intended design elements there are a few things I love about the way the shawl 'wears'. At first I thought that the little rounded point at the center top that hit the back of the neck would bother me, but in reality, if I pull it up around my shoulders it forms a collar that keeps my neck warm and makes the whole shawl feel more snuggly. Not to mention it also looks really neat the way the high-backed 'collar' shapes around my neck when I'm wearing it. Then there's the points along the edging, I'm sure these were probably put into the design just because they looked cool, but they also split up and drape on either side of my arms and it helps to keep the shawl draped over my arms and on me when I'm doing something.

I finished it at just the right time since it's still cool enough to have real reason to use it (ok so that's not saying much for here...) and not so cold that I prefer my coat. I think with it's loose knit and the eyelets, despite being Alpaca, it will be cool enough for summer evenings over a tank-top! So overall, I'm VERY pleased with the shawl!

If anyone want to relive the whole experience from sticks and string to a shawl worthy to warm a snowman, without sorting through other blog posts, you can use the little link in categories on my side bar, it should be obvious which one it is ;-)

Do you remember this:

Or this:

(note the icky pointy heel X-P)

Well the first sock was finished a couple weeks ago, and over the last couple days the next cuff became this:

Well  I  er... a friend was sitting there watching M*A*S*H when  I  this friend realized that somehow the cable was off set by 1 rib, there were 6 ribs on one half and 8 on the other! How  I  my friend could be so stupid, knit a cuff on size-toothpick needles for 6.5 inches and not notice this, I have no idea! (I know, I should be easier on my *cough* friends). While sitting there glaring at it  I  my friend got out my her other sock to take a better look at it and see what could be done, when  I  she put it on, and it brought to mind several things that were 'ok' but not loved about the socks, of the least, the cables didn't show up very well, of the most, it was extremelly difficult to pull that tight cuff knit on size-toothpick needles to yank over my her heel, and the heel was really really pointy (I mean, I've got a... um... well she's got a pointy heel, but really!)

SO in the end it came down to -

Socks that rock "Fire On The Mountain" rocks way too much to waste it on mediocre socks that I, er, she only kinda likes...

So, she'll frog it. Both the cuff and the socks and then I'll of course make a very lovely pair of socks with out any stupid mistakes in them.

Because I'm too perfect to have done anything like THAT!

Well, as promised, I have pictures of the Flower Petal Shawl!

lots.

First there's the 'icky jumbled mass' pre-blocked picture that all bloggers are required to post when they do any form of lace knitting:

There it is on my lovely [*cough*] kitchen floor, it's just so... so... retro! (Can 'retro' be used when it's an original antique?)

Then I gathered my weapons and prepared for the attack!

we have here...

• large expanse of carpet
• baseboard heater
• pins (lotsnlots)
• stack of towels
• spray bottle
• shawl (um.. duh)
• toes
• ...hair

I'm not sure how those last two fit in... I'm sure they'll prove usefull for something...

I positioned my men...

We have here

The Top pin - Col. pin


The Left Pin - Cpt. Pin


The Middle Pin - Maj. Pin


The Right Pin - Cpt. Pin
(not to be confused with Cpt. Pin)


The Bottom Pin - Pvt. Pin

We carefully plotted our strategy...

You can see the spray bottle kicking back and relaxing, but oh it's time will come, you'll see.
My snowboard boots can also be seen, they're over there in the left right (bleh, I'm mixed up today... I think it was that 3 hrs on my hands and knees blocking)... they're only spectators, this wasn't their battle.

But even with all that careful planning, there were still some casualties..

Sadly, somehow, we lost a few inches... That's right, I hit the dresser and ran out of room :-P . This took some carful figuring, considering that bytime I realized it was lopsided, which was sometime after I took this picture, I had already thoroughly pinned down the other side 'just perfectly' into the carpet. So I had to summon the inner field medic within to save my shawl, I'm not really sure how I did it, but somehow I managed to get it to spread out alright.

I'll hold out the suspence a little longer with a closeup of the fully blocked shawl:

And the picture you all have been waiting for!!

Now I just have to wait for it to dry to get some 'real' pictures!

how in the world did it get to be 3:30am?! Have I seriously been on my hands and knees for that many hours blocking this thing?!

eep. Bed time for me.

Pictures later tomorrow today...

...ok so maybe 'hate' is too strong of a word, but right now ImageReady and I are not on good terms, actually we're not even on speaking terms. It refuses to save what I need saved (slices of a webpage) as a jpg, only a gif. Worst of it all - it's put me off schedual for finishing my shawl, now that's inexcusable! So I closed the program and I refuse to open it again until it promises to be good. That'll show it!

I did technically finish the knitting, but I need to weave in the 13 ends and block it, and I really wanted to block it tonight *pout*. I need to clean my floor though to have any hope of even having a place to lay it out for blocking... :-P

yup. That's what I am.

I haven't been knitting much the last couple days. Yesterday I spent a good chunk of my time very constructively, working out DDR dance steps to NewsBoys "Belly Of The Whale" and anxiously awaiting the arrival of my RecOctane dancepads - which shipped on Tuesday.

I decided that I wasn't getting out enough this winter, and now that it's spring and going on mud-month as we locals not-so-affectionately call either March or April, depending on when the snow starts to seriously melt, I'll be getting out even less. The outdoors has got to the point where everything is either mud or slush or about to be mud or slush, and any amount of snow that's still on the ground gets mushy, so all the lovely hard packed paths get soft just off the very center, if you step off and you're almost knee deep in soggy snow X-P .

So as a solution to not moving enough - I decided in my infinite wisdom to purchase 2 dance pads - 2 so that I can let someone else look stupid with me - and the Konami DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) game for PC (which I got lucky and found on half.com for cheaper than I ever expected to find it for, since it's out of print).

I purchased the game before I purchased the dance pads, and it shipped really fast, so I've had the game for awhile now, and I got tired of playing DDR on the keyboard (though I must admit, while it's not as addicting on the keyboard, it still has a strange power over one... and it is pretty amusing to hear the announcer/prompter voice say "WHAT AMAZING TECHNIQUE!!" and "LOOK AT THOSE MOVES" when I'm only using my fingers on the arrow keys...) so I downloaded StepMania (don't all these games have such clever names?? :-P ), I didn't download any songs for it (You try getting yourself to download a song titled 'Hugs N' Drugs' or 'Wuki Wuki' (makes me think of ewoks "Kabooki-uki!!") so I started using their step editor to put steps to some of my own MP3s I've created out of my personal CD collection.

I really really want to put steps to Istanbul [not constantinople] by They Might Be Giants off their album "Flood" but I want to get a little more 'experience' with setting in my own steps first.

Aren't I using my time so well?! I mean can you possibly think of a better use of time?! (that's one of those rhetorical questions BTW)

On the knitting front I've done 8 of the 12 points for the shawl edgeing! It would be really nifty if I could finish it tomorrow and block it over night, but we'll see if that actually happens. If it does I'll try to get pics up tomorrow evening of it being blocked. Assuming of course that if I finish it on schedual I'll also block it on schedual...

It's one of those things you're just sure of; Designers write up patterns for top down shawls, just as a big joke on knitters...

The pattern starts with "cast on 4 stitches", well, that's easy enough! You start knitting, and complete 3 pattern repeats in less than an hour! Wow! This is going great!

increase...
  increase...
    increase...
      increase...

By time you hit 100 stitches things are going a little slow, but no slower than that 'size 1' sock you had been working on, on those glorified toothpicks trying to pose as double point needles...

       increase...
          increase...

150 stitches... rows are starting to get a little long... but not too horrible, after all you only have 75 rows left! How bad can it be?! (of course at this point the designer is softly sniggering behind their hand, their evil plan is working...)

            increase...
              increase...

200 stitches... things are getting tedious, but it's too late, you're HOOKED you MUST finish this pattern. There's no turning back now. You're addicted, all is lost...

                increase...

You can hear yor pattern snickering at you as you sit there knitting for 15 minutes on ONE single insignificant little row... setting it down out of sheer boredom from your purl.purl.purl.purl.purl.purl.purl.purl.purling...

...Well... ok, maybe you can't actually hear the pattern snickering, but if you read between the lines you can certainly see it. Oh it's there, believe me.

                  increase...

You're SURE the designer had to have let out a cruel chuckle when they typed out "(220 sts)" at the end of that last increase row...

                    increase...

Even the pattern itself has gone from mere snickering to full blown laughing in your face. It can barely be contained BETWEEN the lines. That pattern is having a hard time keeping the letters on the page for all it's evil glee.

                      increase...

As the designer entered "(284 sts)" into the pattern with 10 rows left, STILL with some upcoming increases, they could contain it not longer and - I'm convinced of this - were convulsed with maniacal laughter.

And you're still stuck with...

...10
   ...more
      ...rows
plus increases
will it ever end?

oh! and when you're done with that, if you're ever done with that - don't forget the 12 fishtail points that finish off the edge!

<sarcasm style="bitter">Oh yes dear designer, I find it all VERY amusing.</sarcasm>

I've been slowly watching my total number of comments climb the last few days, getting more and more excited and then I hit 90...

91...
92...
93...
94...
95...

Then today I got 5 comments, Joli Gee was the 5th which hit it up too 100!! You have no idea how excited I am!

I'm sure that she's attained her lifes goal now, if we asked her mother we would probably hear "Little Joli had always strived to be the best commenter she could be, and to leave the 100th comment on a blog one day!". Well Joli Gee, you've done it, so go celebrate and buy yourself some yarn!

I've been asked more than once now for my counter images, since I have a couple more than are displayed here, I thought I'd go ahead and share them all in one easy place.

You're more than welcome to use these permitting they're saved to your own server, I wouldn't normally worry about this, but my blog isn't posted on my own server, and the hosting was a gift. Crediting and/or a link back is certainly cool but also certainly not required. Some of these are only edited versions of indigirls original graphics.

So here they are, my custom indigirl gif counter images that I've made for my own projects...

INSTRUCTIONS:
FIRST to get Indigirls Original code and images go to Indigirls Knit Tracker Page

Once you have it, save these files to your computer - on a PC, this is right click, save file as. NOTE: don't change the file names or they won't work with indigirls code.

Upload them to the same place your other indigirl code images are uploaded

Go into your blog or website template whever you've implemented the indigirl code and enter in the respective command for whichever item you wish to use at that time.

use command: projects[projects.length] = "Title Here, 37, ladybug";

use command: projects[projects.length] = "Title Here, 52, cablesock";

use command: projects[projects.length] = "Title Here, 73, myst1";

use command: projects[projects.length] = "Title Here, 32, myst2";

use command: projects[projects.length] = "Title Here, 86, shawl";

use command: projects[projects.length] = "Title Here, 24, shawl2";

use command: projects[projects.length] = "Title Here, 39, teapot";

use command: projects[projects.length] = "Title Here, 57, tipless";

I'll be adding to these and editing them into this post to keep them all in one place, sometime I ought to write it all to an html page I know... but for now use the permalink you get in your browsers URL bar when you click the little teeny page icon up by the post title.

I got the picture :-D

See??

This is right between rows 120 and 121 and the last pattern repeat.

I'm starting to get really excited about the Flower Petal Shawl. If judging by how warm it is when it sits in my lap is anything to go by, it's very warm, and yet it's so lightweight that it will roll up and fit into my little pink knitting bag!! It should be a perfect spring time shawl - and that's just about when I hope to finish it!

My biggest frustration is, apparently my gauge is about 2 rows and 3 stitches per 4 inches less than theirs, so my shawl may turn out smaller, though it looks as if it will likely turn out plenty wide, I'm worried about the length, this looked like such a nice long cape like shawl, and now I'm wondering if that's not a 5' model they have it on! lol...

I guess I should have measured how the finished measurements hit on my own person, but I didn't even think about that... you don't think about 'fitting' a shawl :-P ...but my 5' 8" frame is begging for a nice long shawl *sniffle* and if my gauge is smaller, it's possible that it may not even be as long as the one in the pattern! Though if their finished measurements based on the number of stitches fit pretty well to my gauge, so I don't really know what's going on... I guess I'll just have to wait and see how it blocks I hate uncertainty.

At least I know that I'll still love it even a little short, it just might not have obtained absolute perfection. Won't that be just terrible if it is't absolutely perfect?? My inner perfectionist is having a fit right now, but this will be good for it. ;-)

Oh! and check back soon - I'm taking progress pictures!

Yes! I completed my first successfull spit splice, I even resorted to using a little bit of real spit!

*pauses for a collective "eeeeew" from the audience*

That's right, I slobbered all over my yarn, but only a little. I used water at first - so call me a sissy - but then when my yarn dried out a little and I needed more moisture for the felting, I resulted to saliva.

Atleast my shawl is safe - maybe nobody will try to steal it if all of 6" of the 770 yards of yarn has my slobber on it! (ok so maybe this is giving me a false sense of security...)

As far as comparing the different yarn joining techniques, I'm a little torn, I like the spit-splicing because it doesn't get as thick even as the russian join, but the spit-splicing made my ubber soft Alpaca yarn a little stiff and scratchy since it basically felts it, but I can see where I added in the russian join when I hold it up to the light...

So I think my conclusion is, if it's a texture/touch issue the russian join technique is best, as long as it isn't too bulky, and if it's appearance issue , or something that's already a little rough, like a straight wool or something that is going to be felted, I'd go with the spit splice technique

Well, I've got a pretty good start on the flower petal shawl... It's sorta hard to take a picture of now that it's a bunched up little heap of stitches , but this is the photo I took while it would still fit on one needle.

I failed to photograph while it fit spread out on two needles... bad me.

as of two nights ago, I had this;

I'm using a pair of clover flex needles, so it's sorta like working on a med length circulars, except that the needles are seperated and a little longer as far as the actuall needle length. They can be akward for small projects, the clear cable gets tangled in yarn and such, but for large projects, they're pretty nice, imho.

So in short Elann's Flower Petal Shawl is coming along pretty nicely, though I'm sure it will slow down, I haven't even used half of the yarn that the pattern calls for. X-P

No, this has nothing to do with drinking vodka and shouting "HEY!" at random intervals while dancing on my knees, I said joins, not joints.

I decided that for my shawl, since I was needing to add on a new ball, and I'll have atleast 6 more times that I'm grafting in a new ball of yarn, I would try the russian join that my mother was telling me about the other night.

I'm not usually this bad at catching on to new things... at least... I don't think I am... actually come to think of it... oh never mind. Anyway, back on subject - I sat there and carefully wove in my yarn ends into themselves, in and out and back and forth, and then pulled them through, smoothed them out, sat back and looked at my first attempt at the russian join... and realized...

that something went wrong... very wrong...

for one thing, my yarn is obviously NOT joined together, I'm thinking that for a 'join' it would be good if it atleast remotely ressembled something attached to something else. So I snipped off one of the ends and started again - and did the exact same thing!! So I calmly broke the end off again, and this time, I fed the string through the first loop and made the loop on the second string yet again - but, and here's the horrible part - FAILED TO INTERLOCK THE LOOPS. AAAAAAARGH.

BUT! 1 yard of yarn and 15 minutes later, I finally got... THIS!!



TA DA!!!!

I don't know why this was so difficult, it should have been horribly simple, but I just kept skipping that one crucial step, the 'join' part...

The moral of this story is - If you need to learn how to do a russian join DON'T ASK ME.

Go HERE or HEREand make it easy(er) on yourself - no promises though, this is where I was learning from ;-)

...or something like that.

I got a package! :-D It contained 8 lovely lovely balls of Elann's Peruvian Collection Pure Alpaca bought specifically to make a lovely lovely shawl. But first I promised myself I would atleast get a good bit of this going - yes that, over there to the left. I'd already finished that much of it, it's the cuff to the second in a pair of Double knit socks I gave my father for Christmas, it's been sitting in that state since mid December of '05 and I lost momentum. It's not that I don't want to finish it, or I don't like it, I simply lost momentum.

I don't know why this happens, but it does everytime. If I stop working on a project for some reason, even if it's a perfectly good reason - like I have a week before Christmas and 2 other things to make and I won't finish the sock in time anyway so I might as well leave it more unfinished than less and have those other things finished instead of just barely started on, or not made at all. Does anybody else have this problem? No, not the week before Christmas knitting cram problem, the problem of losing momentum in a project, be it any project?

The only thing that gets me working on it again is a looming deadline (birthday.. or next christmas... ;-) ) or bribes, even if I'm the one doing the bribeing. SO when this (look to the right now) came in the mail(yes I do have pink carpet, but for the record - I didn't choose it) I decided, as cruel and unusuall as this may be, I would bribe myself with it. Since my mother was actually the one who bought me this lovely Peruvian Collection Alpaca Yarn in 'Malt Heather', we decided that this must be payment for some webdesign I'd done for my dad, this seemed the perfect thing to bribe myself with. (No... that doesn't make any sense to me either. Oh well. I tried.)

BUT! I'm almost there, I've turned the heel, started in on the gusset, and added in the alternate color for the double knitting and the sock can now almost be classified as a 'mindless UFO' instead of a 'attention required UFO', so in mere rows, it will become my take-along project and I will get to start on THIS! (um... to the left again)It's Elann's Flower Petal Shawl and a free pattern I might add! And to all you stalkers out there - no that's not me, I'm not that pretty.

Even now I'm printing the pattern as we speak! The only difference here is that my Flower Petal Shawl will be brown and look more like this (to the right now... getting dizzy yet?) that I edited the color in and not red like in the original.

Now I need to make a little shawl icon for my project counter!! *totally and completely excited*

I've never posted the answers to one of these things - they're usually lame or wrong. But this one got me LOLing. Maybe because it's all too true?

You Are the Swedish Chef

"Bork! Bork! Bork!" Your happy and energetic - with borderline manic tendencies. No one really gets you. And frankly, you don't even get you. But, you sure can whip up a great chocolate mousse

The Muppet Personality Test

Actually... that would be moose... mickey moose to be exact.

YES! I finished them! So I could finally give them to the giftee - who happens to be my sister! That was convenient because I have a horrible time just keeping my big mouth shut and hanging onto a finished knitting object that's a surprise until the proper time to give it. I generally get too excited about whatever I made - especially if it turns out well - and want to rush up to whoever it is that the item was knit for and thrust it upon the the moment I weave in the last end. Luckily this time, the gift was for no particular reason, and I HAD to give it to her before our winter runs out! (because you know with 2+ ft of snow on the ground spring has nearly sprung! :-P)
I think the groundhog was afraid of his own shadow this year... and then he came back out and was scared again... fraidycat eh... hog. Is that possible? Wait... has the groundhog even shown his groundhoggy -for lack of a better derogatory adjective- little face yet? psh. I don't know anything about groundhogs day*... or groundhogs for that matter... except they're ugly and they try to make people think that they can alter the weather. Oh yeah, and Bill Murray was in a movie called "ground hogs day" which I've only seen little pieces of - just enough to thoroughly confuse me on what was going on in the movie... so just ignore me on the subject...

...What was I talking about anyway?

OH! yeah... the gloves! So I guess you want pictures now, eh? (ooh maaan I'm going Canadian! *cough* I apologize for that tasteless comment, to all our Canadian neighbors that may be reading this)

I'll start off with the "raw materials"
We have here Viking Patterns for Knitting by Elsebeth Lavold a wonderful book for celtic knot cables, there are loads of designs in there, and while she includes some lovely patterns in there, the charts are all stand alone and ready to be worked into anything else you have laying around just begging to be spiced up witha celtic / endless knot! For the glove I used the "Tipless Gloves" pattern out of Holiday Knits by Allison Issacs and Sarah Lucas, it's another wonderful book of patterns, it has a variety of small and large patterns, including stocking(s?), a needle felted ball ornament, a mother/daughter poncho, a pullover sweater, little stuffed snowman, and mittens among many other things. I made the gloves out of 3 25g balls of Peruvian Collection Baby Cashmere from elann. It's a 60% Baby Alpaca, 30% Merino and 10% cashmere blend. A very soft and dreamy yarn, that felt lovely to work with though I did find it to be a little itchy on my wrists to my seemingly extremely sensitive skin (some Merino's, Cashmere's, and even Alpaca fibers are out for me! - luckily not all!) this was the only way I could give away these gloves . I knit it on size 2 needles, this was actually smaller than the pattern called for, but any larger needle would have been too loose for this yarn. I just knit a size up, and most of the length is told to go to X number of inches of "until desired length" so it didn't really matter.

This is a wide shot of the gloves on my Sister's hands.

This time I could get a picture of both the gloves in all their glovey-glory because I was not the one wearing them.

I just barely dipped into my 3rd ball for the index finger and thumb of the last glove, that was a little irritating because I was so close to making it on two. Oh well.

As you've probably noticed, to the left here is a close up of the celtic cable work.

I was pretty happy with how it turned out, though there IS a mistake in the cable... but I'm not going to point it out for you like I did for my sister, you're on your own to find it, so there :-P .

Each glove had 10 ends to weave in! 2 for each finger excepting the pinky which only had one, and one for the cuff! Bllleh. Once I was on my 4th glove (counting the braided cable gloves I made myself) I finally mastered the trick of keeping those holes from appearing between where each finger joined, it involved attaching the yarn a little to the side of where the finger joined, and picking up an extra stitch when I was starting each finger (if nessecary this also involved decreasing that extra stitch again), this was mucheasier and nicer looking that going back in and 'sewing' those holes closed. But nothing got me out of having to weave 10 ends in on each glove! I always wanted purple Alpaca/Merino/Cashmere carpeting in my bedroom!.

So there you have it folks! The first "Mystery Gift" is solved! - though I'm afraid I didn't let the suspence last very long... I couldn't handle it myself.

*upon further research I came across groundhog.org - the official site of the Official site of the Punxsutawney (wow, say that ten times fast), Penn., Groundhog Club. Aren't you glad you have me around to figure these things out, and make these little discoveries for us all???

wheeew.... that was long....

I've been tinking around on my weblog a little and I've implemented a few new minor changes...

The largest change would be that the comments no longer require an e-mail addy - so comment to your hearts content, and I won't be able to spam your inbox ;-) (*snerk* like I would have in the first place...)

You're still perfectly welcome to leave your e-mail address if you'd like to, sometimes it helps to differentiate between people (like people with the same common name - it has helped me to see who's who in the past). But there's nothing forcing you to because I'd rather have comments than make you stick to some silly rule that says posts must have e-mail addys.

This 'feature' is on trial. 'Pink Dandelion' reserves the right to change this back to e-mail required without notice ;-)

also, you might notice a links section in the side bar, right now it only has my mothers weblog, but someday I will be adding more links in there...
By the way, go check out my mom's blog, there's some really adorable knits in there, like the Jean Greenhowe Baby Doll and a Jene Greenhowe Beer (ok it's actually a deer... but because it shares the pattern with the bear, my father and I affectionately call it a beer...). And her yarn stash - which I'm lucky enough to have full access too ;-) - is amazing!

Last and possibly least, is the new 'mystery project' in my project counter. I've started in on my Christmas presents along with the usual 'year round' presents that I almost always have going. I won't be saying what the project is, so don't ask ;-) . You can just watch the counter... well... count... I'll post pictures and details when the giftee recieves the gift from the gifter. That may be tomorrow... or it may be next year... or if I get fed up with the whole thing for some reason unknown to you (It IS a mystery after all) and frog it all, it may be never.

I've been meaning to share a picture of the Turtule Fur brand Alpaca hat I got off of REI.com when they were having a super duper sale in both their outlet and on the main site That was the same sale that I also bought my snowboard, jacket, boardpants, and snowboard boots - remember? Anywho getting back on track... I'm justifying this post on the premisse that the hat is knitted... and this is about Alpacas, that's almost like a sheep post right? Sheep posts count as knitting posts... SO there's the hat on the right (duh), see the cute little Alpacas knit all a round it? That's why I bought it, I can't resist cute little Alpacas.

hah, and you thought something would actually be here? I'm just trying to get this picture to move doooowwwwnnnn and it WONT, but a simple paragraph tag won't work without something around it, so I have to type and type and type to get it to work. It's really annoying actually.

On the hat was this funny little tag, I imagine that the little alpaca on this is what a little alpaca would look like on an alpaca-restroom sign... but I thought of a problem... How would the illiterate ones be able to tell which was which? I guess, being alpacas themselves they might be able to figure it out, when us stupid humans can't see the difference... but what if they couldn't? Would they forever be mortally embarassing themselves by walking into the wrong Restroom? That would be simply awful, so I decided they must do something a little like this

Well, I'm glad I figured that out, that's a load off my mind.

I just found out second hand that I had a lurker on my weblog, I had no idea at all that this person read it, and it gave me warm fuzzies!

I was just curious... Who else out there lurks here? Ok I know asking lurkers to tell me if they're lurking is sort of like asking sleepers if they're awake... but really, if you don't mind, I'd love a comment just to know you're out there!!! I'm really the only one who will see your e-mail address (it doesn't even go through a 3rd party first!), and If you don't want to leave an e-mail addy at all, you can make one up! You have my permission, go ahead!

A simple "HI" or "I'm Here!" is fine, you don't have to use up any hard earned elloquence, and if you're completely uncomfortable with commenting at all I'll forgive you, and you can still lurk ;-) . But it would be really spiffy to know who's reading!

Thanks!

A few days ago happened to be a day for surprises...
First off I was notified that this had had been recieved by well, the recipient... It happens to be the pomatomus socks that I painstakingly slaved over for hours and hours in time to be completed right before a coming birthday just to sit for two weeks waiting to go to the post office... How do you like the bounty paper towel wrapping trimmed with the giant scrap-yarn pom-pom? Yeah I thought so too. OK so maybe recieving a birthday present isn't much of a surprise... but I'm sure she was a surprised that it show up in the mail almost 3 weeks late! (Well, no she probably wasn't suprised about that either... she knows me too well.) The pomatomus socks seem to have been appreciated though =D and I quote from an e-mail "Those socks are absolutely amazing. they came yesterday. Mom and I just sort of stood there and looked at them and tried to figure it out." I think that was figuring it out in a good way . Pretty sure it wasn't like "Dude... um... socks... for my birthday... uh... thanks..." sort of figuring it out... ;-)

The card that went along with it had this on the front.
I thought it suited her. I wish I'd taken a picture of the whole finished card... ah well, the rest of it was ok but didn't really turn out that fabulous.

Oh yeah, for the record, no, the birthday girl does NOT dress like that, OR have hair that even remotely resembles this image... It's was a joke.

The other surprise was finding this:
I was digging blindly in my knitting bag for my measuring tape, and I came up with this little teeny police helicopter. Apprently all crew survived, I didn't find any teeny bodies or dismembered... members...? to speak of. Presumably the crash was caused my the loss of a propeller, a necessary component for a helicopter, or atleast, one that plans on flying anywhere. I guess if I were flying along minding my own business when my propeller fell off I would like to be over a knitting bag. Permiting I didn't impale my chopper or myself on one of those knitting needles in the process.

At some point after the crash the helicopter sunk down to the depths of my knitting bag among a tangled mass of yarn. The specific date of the crash has not yet, or may ever be, determined. Names of the pilots and crew aboard at the time of the crash have not been released.