Category Archives: knitting

Felt

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There are a few definitions for the word “felt” and I’m going to talk about a couple of them today.

Mr. Aitch and our daughter have strep throat.  Mr. Aitch was at her house last week so they probably were exposed to it at the same time.  They felt pretty badly on Monday and Tuesday but feel better today after taking the right medication.

A couple of years ago I tried my hand at making felt Christmas ornaments.  I ran out of time.  Thinking about doing something is not the same as actually doing it.

So I am reviving that project.

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I have a few shapes cut out already.  Now comes the embellishing part.  I printed out some of my Pinterest pins from my Felt board for inspiration.  (You may need to join Pinterest (for free) to see that.)

pins

Sorry for the poor quality in these photos.  I was in a hurry and the lighting wasn’t good.  Plus all I had was my iPad camera.  Excuses, excuses.

I’m also working on my original  felted  CCM hat.

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I still wear it with only the one partial paisley embroidered on it.  It’s very warm.  And I love it with or without the paisley.

hat-2

I knit another one last spring and have not felted it yet.  The yarn sheds.  And I mean S.H.E.D.S.  I was afraid to felt the hat in the washing machine as I didn’t want to plug up the hose so I used a new plunger and bucket of hot water to felt the first hat.  It was quite the workout!!  It was too hot this summer to engage in that activity so I waited until it got cooler.

hats

What’s stopping me from felting this new hat?

I just haven’t felt like it.

Excitement

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I’ve got a few things to be excited about.  I found a few things in my house that I forgot I had.  Plus I received a newsletter from one of my favorite authors with the release date of her latest book.

Excitement #1

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This is a little antique spice cabinet that belonged to my Mom.  I’m not sure how it came to be hers but I always thought it was so cool.

I just realized in the photo on the left is some embroidery my Mom did when she was a teenager.  She embroidered her initials, RK, on some window pane linen.  I have them on the backs of the chairs in our living room.  There’s also a photo of my parents on the far right in front a cute little Oriental Express brass lamp.

Excitement #2:

And there were still things in the drawers.

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Drawer-2.00

Excitement #3

I also found some yarn I bought a couple of years ago with the hopes of dying for socks.

There are a total of four hanks of fingering weight yarn and a knitted yarn blank.  The yarn blank is knitted with two strands of yarn.  When dyed, the resulting yarn and socks should be the same.

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Excitement #4

Some other items I found were in my daughter’s closet.  Ok, short story long:   We are transforming her old bedroom in to a REAL guest room.  I really want this room to be relaxing and fitting for guests and not the dumping ground for all my yarn, fabric, polymer clay, shrink art, etc.  When our daughter moved out into her own apartment many years ago, she left a lot of her “stuff” at our house.   When our son moved out, he took everything with him except the dust bunnies and curtain rods.   Anyway, her old bedroom at our house has two closets.  I cleaned out one of her closets and used it for the things I have from my Mom when she died.  Like the little spice cabinet.  A few weeks ago I took a car full of my daughter’s said “stuff” to her house.  Since I was on a roll cleaning things out, I started to tackle the “other” closet, the closet with MY stuff in it.   For this redecorating project  I needed a nightstand for one side of the bed in the room and remembered this corner unit she had, which was basically a large 18″ square box about 29 inches tall.  The top lifts off and you can store stuff in it.

Well, I unearthed that corner unit and opened it up.  It was full of more “stuff”!! I found old stuffed animals, a quilt Mr. Aitch’s aunt made, pillows, her old baby blanket and some children’s books.  Books I looked for when our grandchildren came to visit but assumed they were gone.  These are not all the books I found but I selected a few that were loved by both our kids and us.  I never got tired of reading these over and over and over and over (you get the picture) again.

books-first

Socks for Supper by Jack Kent is a knitting story by the way.

Excitement #5

Speaking of books…my last bit of excitement came in a newsletter.  Janet Evanovich has a new installment in her Stephanie Plum series*.  I started reading these about ten years ago.  If you aren’t familiar with this series and want to read it, start with One for the Money.  Each book kind of builds from the previous ones.  Many of the situations are laugh-out-loud hilarious.  Warning: Don’t eat or drink anything while reading or you may find food or drink spewed on your book or e-reader.

E-is-for-002

Takedown Twenty will appear in stores later this month and I must confess that I haven’t been keeping up with my reading.  I think I stopped at Eleven on Top.  Why?   Because the local library started charging out-of-state book borrowers an annual fee and I live in another state.  And I rarely purchase books.

Yes, I’m that, ah, cheap, eh, frugal.

*(As usual I don’t get any compensation for plugging Janet’s newest Stephanie Plum book….I just wish I did.)

I know these are very personal things to be excited about but this is who I am.

Anything exciting happen to you lately?

One fish, two fish, pink fish, blue fish…

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Recently my daughter and I went to a baby shower for one of her close friends, Alicia.  Alicia is expecting twins sometime at the end of the year.

A girl, pink fish.

And a boy, blue fish.

The theme was Dr. Seuss.

green-eggs

We had Green (deviled)  Eggs, Ham (sandwiches), red (Swedish) fish, along with pasta salad, fresh fruit and cake.

cake

The favors were ice cream scoops and HErSHEy bars.

favors

My daughter found some cute Dr. Seuss bags at a big box store (sorry, no pictures of those) so we filled them with some handmade and store-bought goodies:  Burp cloths, Converse booties, box bags in Seuss fabric, books, toys, baby wipes, outfits, onesies, teething rings, pacifiers and clips, and lots more.

My daughter made “girl” burp cloths and I made “boy” burp cloths using my pattern.

I also sewed box bags using Dr. Seuss fabric.

The groom, ushers, and the rest of the men in Alicia’s wedding wore Converse shoes so I knit Converse booties, one in black and one in pink.  I adapted three different patterns to suit my patience level and ended up doing a duplicate stitch for the toe part.  I did not do laces as IMHO parents of newborns (let alone twins) don’t have time to mess with laces.  I found some star button and sewed them on a white disk of iron-on batting.  As usual, I ran out of time and was knitting in the car on the way to the shower.  But I got them finished in time.

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You can see a small part of the bright blue Cat in the Hat box bag behind the booties.  And the blue and pink burp cloths jelly rolled around each other.

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bootie-3

Apple cosy

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I don’t know if you remember the apple cosy I made a while back.  Some people made fun of it and me for “wasting time and yarn” on such a thing.

20130418-211058.jpgI usually take an apple to work to eat at lunch and I just drop it in my purse.  This week we’ve had some warm days and my cold-just-out-of-the-refrigerator apple got condensation on it and made things in my purse wet.  Apple cosy to the rescue!

My apple stays protected and so does my purse.

Make fun of me and my apple cosy if you want.  I really don’t care.