I bet you'd say, what can make me feel this way...

My girl, my girl...

Meet my Cherry Blossom Fortune Cat! Remember when I posted the link to this pattern back in the day? I finally got around to it! I used Cascade 220 and US8 dpns. I embroidered the wee blossoms with some angora yarn. She's only half felted because I liked her shape after one cycle.

Notice the orange snow fencing in the background? It's January in upstate New York, and normally we'd be unfreezing the cows with hair dryers and digging out our cars every morning at 5 am...but here's what we've got:





I wound up some very sticky handspun mohair and angora and other sinfully delicious yarn on the front porch today. I received a box of goodies from my aunt in Colorado, who bequeathed her stash to me. How lucky am I, huh? Of course, that was before Christmas and I'm just now having the time to play with it. I haven't had one intelligent thought all vacation. I go back to school on the eighteenth and tackle Shakespeare...As my dear buddy Heather said, "Better make my hat one inch bigger than my head, in case I learn something."

This is really cool.

There's a little antique store in my parent's town, and their prices are cheap and their treasures inspire much lusting after. My mom gave me a gift certificate for Christmas, and I was down there browsing through the vintage fabric when I found this:





It's made of linen, and at first I thought it was one of those wall calendars that used to be so popular. It's actually a sort of rundown on Aran stitches and their symbolism! I think I had a hazy idea of there being some meaning behind Aran knitting, but since I haven't attempted it yet, I didn't know much. I love the idea of making a sweater and knitting significance into it. It gives me the shivers.I believe in that kind of witchery. You know that feeling you get in the pit of your heart and veins when you know something is true, at least for your own soul, superstition or not? Symbols in fiber do that to me. I just re-read A Tale of Two Cities, and damned if that Madame Defarge wasn't chilling. I now wonder exactly what her knitting code was. I may try to find that out.

It'll be so great, with waffles on my plate! Please help me with short rows!

Well, I've got the back and left front pieces of Amelie done; observe, unblocked of course.



Two pieces in one day is some awesome knitting, and far faster than I thought I was capable of on size nine needles. They look itty bitty, don't they? That's because there's a beautiful crocheted ruffled border at the end,(is that called a peplum?) which will be the best part. I am plowing through in hopes of having this done for the first day of school on the eighteenth. My roommate often tells me that my knitting is really just an offshoot of my general stuff-acquiring disease. I'm sure she's right, but at least I only have ONE maxed out credit card, since I make so much of my clothing.

However. We have hit a problem. The problem is this:

Cast on 31 stitches.
Row 1: Purl 11, wrap and turn, knit to end in opposite direction.

That's the first row of the left front, which begins a series of short rows which creates that nice scalloped look on the bottom. That's fine-I got that.

For the right front, I have to reverse all shaping. I don't know how! What will the first row look like when reversed? Does anyone out there know? Please help! In the meantime I'm knitting a sleeve, and I've posted on the White Lies discussion board, where the very nice and funny designer, Joan Mcgowan-Michael, has previously helped me out with yarn substitution for Amelie.

Quit your knitting and scratch me between the ears!



Right now!

Amelie!

It feels like it's been months since I started something for myself! All that Christmas knitting was really down to the wire...and I don't even have pictures of it! It's a darned shame I couldn't be bothered to do some photography, because I made the Gatsby cloche
from Stitch Diva, a pair of cabled slippers I designed myself, a zombie doll, a striped hat,the cowl from Loop-d-loop, and a big pillow. I will definitely be making the Gatsby again, it was a party to make and it's the only really unique free hat pattern out there. There's a million cloche variations, but Gatsby really stands out.

I do have pictures of the pillow. I used a circular placemat pattern from Frugal Knitting Haus. The yarn is a handspun wool (I think) that I got at the Finger Lakes Fiber Arts Festival. My mom made that excited "OOOO!" when she saw it, so I snapped it up for a Christmas gift. I used 10.5 DPNS. I only knitted the top and made the rest out of denim because there wasn't enough yarn and also because it was Christmas Eve. I only started my Christmas knitting when I got home from college on the 20th.

Pictures of pillow:





Pretty pretty yummy eggplants! It does have these odd yellow bits, though, as if a mustard-yellow sheep was dyed purple rather carelessly. I wonder.

But, on to the star of our show! The lovely Amelie
has been languishing as thirteen skeins of Cascade Sierra in Sage,a lovely wool/cotton blend that I bought on eBay because my tiny local yarn shop didn't carry it. It took the seller three weeks to ship it to me, but it finally got here, and then I had to start knitting for Christmas. I've had the pattern for five months! Now I've finally started. I've got three or four inches done on the back, and this pattern is really easy to memorize. She is so delicious, my lovely Amelie. She will be the first purchased pattern I have ever knitted, the second sweater, on most definitely the smallest needles I have ever used. I am working my way towards grown-up knitting!

Are those dropped stitches intentional?

Cute picture from a vintage Begin To Knit booklet that retailed for 35 cents, on loan from Michaels' mom:

Shawls with prayer involved.

I suppose most of you have heard of prayer shawls before? They are traditional Jewish garments intended to be worn during prayer. However, some people make them for cancer victims and other people who are having health problems. The idea is that the maker of the shawl puts all kinds of good wishes into each stitch for the recipient. Our SNB was lucky enough to have a dear lady from Circle of Love, a prayer shawl ministry, come in and teach all the newbies in our group how to knit and crochet. In exchange, everyone made a shawl to donate to the local kidney dialysis patients. We had a lot of fun and it felt so good to be doing something nice for someone else with our creativity. However, I don't take naturally to generosity. I really, really wanted to keep mine. And while I tried to put good wishes in every stitch, I was watching Family Guy when I was making it...so a little more irreverence than prayer is probably in there.


Here's the shawl I made. I used a pattern from one of my vintage magazines. It's being modeled by the director of volunteer services at my college, Joyce.






This was Heather's first knitting attempt. It's more of a scarf than a shawl, and can also be used as a babushka.







This was also Sarah's first attempt at knitting--this girl learned to knit in TEN MINUTES. She's a prodigy. It took me four attempts over two years!



Last and least: I really, really hope I'm not as tiny as I look in this picture.



And a sweet picture of the neighbors' chickens hanging out in a tree.

An Overabundance Of Yarn

SO last night I walked into Stitchn'Bitch and there was a girl standing there with two of the biggest black garbage bags I've ever seen. You know what they were full of? YARN. They were being donated to us. For whatever purpose we see fit to use it for.
Naturally ,the purpose we saw fit was to spread it out all over the floor and roll in it. So we did. I wish I'd had a camera, but I'm sure you can imagine the sort of meeting this was when I tell you that one of our members stuffed two large skeins up her shirt and danced on the table.

I began to look this gift yarn in the mouth, however, when it came time to leave, and I remembered that I had to take the bus home. Hmm. Well, I'm sure I can handle it! How much can yarn weigh, anywhow? Right?

A lot, especially when some of it is an industrial-sized cone of dyeable cotton.

So I'm dragging these bags in fits and starts across the campus, and I stopped on the way to help raise money for Katrina victims, by paying $3 to smear a plateful of whipped cream all over the face of a fraternity member. As a gesture of thanks for my generosity, the gooey fraternity helped me carry the bags to the bus.

I got on the bus, where the bags took up two seats each. I got off at my stop, which is about half a block away from my apartment. I couldn't lift both bags at once-they were really almost bigger than me. I decided I would drag them along the sidewalk, which worked for about half of the way, when they both developed huge holes (this should really not have surprised me, seeing as they were thin plastic and I was dragging them across gravel. But still.) and suddenly there was yarn all over the moonlit street. It was like Hansel and Gretel used their yarn stash instead of bread crumbs.

As I scuttled around under the streetlamps picking up yarn, I wondered: does this qualify as a dream come true, or a nightmare?