Cupcake hats

I’ve been working on these for a couple of weeks and finally got around to photographing them.  I think I still want to add some sparkle with small beads.

The bobbles are different.  The pink hat has half the amount of bobbles as the purple hat.  Too much time elapsed between making them and I didn’t remember how I placed them.

They will fit the twins and I don’t have any small heads to model them so you will have to use your imagination.  If I’m lucky, I’ll get some pictures of them wearing the hats.

Cupcake Pattern: Chile Con Yarne

Cherry on top: Cherries are the Bomb

Yarn: stuff from my stash.  Lion Brand tan heather for the ribbing, Caron  Simply Soft Strawberry for the pink hat, Red Heart Super Saver Lavender for the purple hat, Lion Brand dark green heather for the cherry stems, and some unidentified red yarn for the cherries.  I over stuffed the cherries but I’m not removing any.

I’m still going to do it

Last Friday I wrote about my decision to knit fingerless mitts for Christmas gifts for the people in my office.

Today my boss told me that a friend of hers just crocheted a hat and fingerless mitts for her.

It’s hard to come up with an idea that will work for both men and women.

I’m still going to knit them.

A hippo and a fish story

I made three of Rebecca Danger’s Harriet the Haberdashery Hippos for our three granddaughters a couple of months ago. 

The twins weren’t as smitten with their finished hippos as I had hoped but our 2-year old granddaughter loved hers.  (Remember her age.  It’s important for the fish story.)  She received the hippo this weekend.  Her brother, our 6-year old grandson, also loved it and asked me to make one for him. 

Caron Simply Soft

His will be made from the blueberry – second from the left though it’s not quite that intense.  Both legs and a third of the body are done.

Now for the fish story…

As you may recall in my previous post, we cleaned the 75-gallon aquarium Friday morning.  It’s a 2-3 hour process but very necessary.  The water usually stays clear from one cleaning to the next but not so this time.   Mr. Aitch called me at work and asked if I noticed the aquarium.  Negative.  I overslept and didn’t have time for breakfast let alone notice the aquarium.  He said it was cloudy.  Very cloudy.  Hmmm.  That’s unusual.

He opened the cabinet under the aquarium that houses the filtering system and reservoir that flows into the aquarium and discovered why the water was cloudy. 

A disposable diaper was in the reservoir.  Guess whose?

I left work early afternoon to come home and help clean the tank again.  (We didn’t have any other filters as we used the last ones on Friday.  They have been ordered.)  Since tropical fish are sensitive to abrupt changes, it is not good to replace more than half the water at any one time so we took out about half the water and put clean water back in.  We only found one dead fish.

The water is still pretty cloudy but the remaining fish don’t seem to be as stressed as they were before the partial water change.  Once the new filters arrive, we’ll repeat the process and change the filters, too.  It will take several weeks of partial water and filter changes to get the water clean and clear again.

Yet another reason why I hate disposable diapers.

Miscellaneous

A BIG thank you to all the veterans for making it possible for us to pursue our lifestyle.  Without your dedication and service to our great country our lives would be very different.

Knitting:  I decided to knit fingerless mitts for office gifts this year to match the hats I gave last year.

Office hats

I still have yarn leftover so it won’t be a problem of matching dye lots.  These will be very basic using 2-3 colors in some simple striping.  It’s only four pair and I don’t have to buy more yarn.  I needed size 6 double point needles for this pattern and looked high and low for them.  I knew I had two sets but could not find them.

So I used my 40% off coupon at Joann’s yesterday and bought 2 sets of 4 needles.  Guess what I found when I was searching for the leftover yarn for the mitts?  They were in the bag with the Fetching mitts I made, ripped apart and restarted last winter.  They’re almost finished.

Oh, well.  It would cost more in gas to drive back and return them.  Besides, can one really have too many sets of size 6 double point needles?  Don’t answer that.

I really wanted to show you my progress on the Garter Stitch bag I started when I went to Vegas as well as the Linen Stitch Scarf.  No pictures of those today.  Plus there are some finished projects to show but that will have to wait until I can get the camera, knitting and daylight all together at the same time.

Cleaning: I was off for Veteran’s Day and I started cleaning the house as soon as I got up this morning.  Our son and family are coming for the weekend and the house needed some tidying up.  And the big aquarium needed a partial water change.  Mr. Aitch does everything else with the 5 aquariums we have but he needs my assistance to do the big tank.  That took about an hour.  Lunch, a quick trip to the market, more cleaning, dinner, and I finally got to sit down to knit around 8:30 this evening.  Too dark to photograph knitting.

Future dinner:  While I was fixing dinner tonight, I spied these two turkeys running around our back yard.

Each stood about 36 inches tall.  They were “talking” to each other then something spooked them and they flew away.  Maybe one of them will end up on my table for Thanksgiving …