Earthwhisper Fiber Arts

Sorry to have left you hanging with the last post.  I was going to come back and post about my wonderful valentine weekend at the beach.  Tony took Thursday, Friday and Monday off work, so we thought we would have a nice time looking for shells, riding our bikes (I got a new one)(thanks to the recommendation of Claudia)(and…yes, I will blog with a picture of it when I am feeling better)  and all of those fun things we love to do when we ge free babysitting.  We were even planning on having a date night at a fancy schmancy restaurant.

Except for one little thing.

Madeleine got the flu.  Then Sierra.  Then me.  Fever, chills, aches pains, cough.

We are all recovering, but we didn’t go anywhere over the weekend and Tony spent his vacation taking care of the family.  The next time he gets sick (the weekend before,) I am sleeping on the couch as I swear he must have coughed in his sleep and I got it.

Also, next year I am getting a flu shot.  I would much rather deal with being slightly sick from the flu vaccine then getting the flu again.   I have read online a lot of people are out with the flu now.  It is a bad year for ye ole influenza bug.

Tony’s boss said to him last week, “Tony, when I look in your eyes, I see the flu bug.”

It is our big joke, since it happened around valentine’s day.  “When I look into your eyes hunny…”  Said all lovingly.  “I see the flu virus.”

Sadly, that has left zero time to study for big, looming test on Wednesday.  Can someone please prepare me for Membrane Potentials, how vision works, and other sensory physiology information.   Sorry again, my knit and fiber blog has nothing related to that…  I am hoping to feel better by this weekend so I can get to Stitches West. 

I have been meaning to share this gem of a story.  The other day  I heard the neighbor’s dog barking very loudly and some voices near the front door.  I live in a townhouse and my front door is pretty close to the neighbor’s front door.

I innocently opened my door to see what was going on, only to see this man dressed in black, pee’ing behind the neighbor’s garbage can but on their house.  Yes, he was about 6 feet away from me pee’ing on the neighbor’s house (or maybe towards the ground there…I didn’t go and examine.)

Even worse, he saw me see him.

Those who know me personally would think that I would have said something.  I am a pretty direct person.  However, I have to tell you that I was so shocked that I just said “GROSS!” and came back in the house.

Thank goodness the girls weren’t with me when I walked outside.

The next day, I saw the neighbor-lady of the house and I told her what I witnessed and described the man and his car, time of day, etc.  She also said “Gross!”

That whole day I had that image in my head.  I kept wondering why he just didn’t take two steps into their backyard where it is fenced to go.  Or, better yet, why didn’t he just go in there house to use the restroom.

Sadly, this is the second time in about a year that I have witnessed someone pee’ing outside our house.

I told my husband that maybe we should get a little sign.  You know, some people have “Beware of Dog” or “No solicitations.”  Our will say, “No Pee Zone.”

Okay, enough about that.  I have no knitting stuff to share.  I can tell you I finally re-organized my yarn desk.  There was some major yarn creap all over my house as well as my desk threw up yarn onto itself and it became one tangled mess.  It is all fixed now, thanks to Target’s canvas cubes.

In school news, I got a C on my first test.  The class average was a D.  I got an A on my second test.  I am divorcing my lab partners and will get new ones at the next lab.  Basically, they want to speed through the lab and get it done quickly.  I want to take my time and learn.  It is hard for me to compromise this.  One of my lab partners told me “that is how life is, some people are just faster at learning than others.”  So…that is how life is, huh?  I am thankful she tried to teach me that lesson.  I let her know that while she might believe that, I will still be asking for new lab partners.

Don’t you worry about the C grade.  I am not.  I still have the option to drop one test score.

Finally, I wasn’t feeling good a week or so ago with bad back pain, headaches, sore throat, chills…type stuff.  After a few days of sleeping and not knowing what was wrong with me.  I even at one time thought the screws in my back were unscrewing.

It ends up I had the flu, probably a mild version of it.  Tony got it over the weekend and was bad.  He rarely gets sick, but when he does it is absolutely terrible.  He even missed 2 days of work…GASP!!  (He is a workaholic, so that is rare.)

My father took pictures of this outside his kitchen window and asked my mom to send them in an email, with the subject: Large hummingbird disguised as a woodpecker.

Sierra and I had a great laugh. So, here is a Monday laugh for all of you.

Pattern: Child’s Party Tank Top by Dawn Leeseman
Yarn: Trendsetter Yarns Taos
Needles: Size 8

edited to say: I had interpreted the pattern to have some errors, one of those is when you crochet the borders the numbers do not match up. I figured the crocheted border would have the same stitch count as the knit border.

However, Andrea suggested (and the designer agreed) that in this pattern you must crochet 3 stitches and then slip the 4th stitch, and this is to adjust in the gauge difference of knitting and crochet.

The crochet section well…you can tell it was written by a knitter.

Also, I am not particularly fond of how the shoulder straps were knit and finished off. I really like 3 needle bind off for shoulder straps so I think I would do that a bit differently.

edited to add: I forgot to mention that one of the shoulder straps in the front and the back has one extra row of knitting. I ended up modifying the pattern so that when you join the yarn and the neck edge on the purl side that I only purled across 3 stitches and then bound them off, so that way I ended up with the same rows on each shoulder edge. I don’t really know if this is an error, but honestly I pondered if it was meant to have the extra row or not and then decided to do it how I wanted to.

Overall though the pattern was fine and any experienced knitter and crocheter would be able to knit/crochet this in a few days. I was happy with how it turned out and so was the recipient, Madeleine.

The designer of this pattern is going to be having a book published in July, called “Casual Elegant Knits-Classy Designs for Men and Women.” I look forward to seeing what this designer has done.

Finally, I wanted to point out that I sometimes forget how many people randomly come to my blog. I don’t always have very much time to write a blog post and at times just write off the top of my head, without edit. I suppose what I might have considered an error in a pattern, may just be a difference of perception and style. I did not mean for this to be a negative review towards the designer or design.

The top worked up really fast and Madeleine wears it all the time, which is a winner in my book. I am appreciative of the work it takes to design knitwear and am also thankful for the free patterns that are out on the web.

If you are in Cali, get out and vote!

I finally finished this top down baby pullover. It isn’t for any baby, just something I knit for the store to draw people into my knitting class. I added a few fancy details, such as the beading. It is super cute. I am happy with it. Now I can move onto other projects in progress I haven’t finished.

Yarn: Patons Tweed

Needles: Size 10

Closeup of Beads:

and Collar

I have done a small bit of knitting. I just made this scarf with some handspun. It was a fun accomplishment to take some of the yarn I spun from roving and knit it into a scarf. The yarn was actually a lot nicer then I thought. I really didn’t do a bad job and I am happy to have a warm scarf to show for it.

Yarn: Handspun from corriedale roving

Needles: size 9 (brittany wood)

Pattern: CO 22, knit 1×1 for about 6 plus feet.

Here is a little something I was knitting on before Christmas but didn’t finish. I probably will hibernate it until November and then finish it. No sense finishing it now. I am just in the process of sewing on ornaments, then need to stuff it and crochet a bottom for it.

My new class started last week.  I already have made some waves in it.  The class was not allowed a break and after 5 hours, I got the worst headache last Monday.  The teacher told us that class didn’t get a break.  After a phone call to the department division, the counseling off, and then to the dean of teacher’s, I was able to get a break for the class.  It will be announced tomorrow. 

I am unhappy about another thing.  Apparantly Monday labs are due Wednesday, but people who have Wednesday lab time have theirs due the following Monday.  So I get 1 day to work on a lab and they get 4.  I don’t find that fair at all and am going to work on how to get equality for that.

My work scheduled has finally lightened, the money was nice, but I am happy to have a break from cashiering. I really needed the break to get down to studying.  I already have my first test on Wednesday.

Finally, girl scouts is getting interesting.  I am starting up my own troop in March after cookie sales (going on now.)  It is a good thing.

Happy New Year, everyone!! This was my last project of 2007, a baby hat and pullover for a coworker.

Pattern: Caron Baby Caftan (without girly embroidery, added white stripes for boyish look.)

Needles: Size 7 & 8

Yarn: Caron Simply Soft - Country Blue and some misc white acrylic baby yarn doubled for contrast.

This was a fast, easy weekend project.

The hat is from this pattern: TLL Basic Knit Hat Pattern, though I increased the length of the hat a few extra rows.

Also, I started the decreases at Knit 4, Knit 2tog, because with a cast on of 54, 6 is easily divisible. The pattern starts it at Knit 3, Knit2tog…and well, 54 isn’t divided evenly by 5.

Also in December, I knit 2 pairs of wrist warmers (not shown) and in early December I crocheted the Sweet Pea Shawl from the Happy Hooker book.

I took the picture in the evening, right before I gave it to my friend for her birthday, so the picture/lighting isn’t the greatest.

I have also been working on a few other projects, but that is all that I finished.

In 2008, Tony and I have both decided to work on our health more, exercise more, eat better, get more organized, work harder on our finances so we can buy a house, be nicer to each other and the kids…you know, all of the usual things. Probably things everyone can hope to do better. Maybe I should add, be a better blogger in there…

Tony added, may we not have to visit the ER more then once in a month…and I added…may we not visit the ER at ALL this year.

I am sorry for the absence from my blog.  I guess it is one of those things that after you stop posting for a period of time, it is hard to get back into it.  An interesting post on ravelry caught my eye.  I have been following it the past few days, and even put in my two cents worth.

May I direct you to the blog post on how to knit a $94 tube…er…I mean neckwarmer.

I haven’t had much time to blog about the knitting I have been doing. So I took a picture of some of the finished and in progress knits. Also in the back of the picture is a crocheted baby sweater and hat in Patons SWS. I made this in the spring time and didn’t have time to take a picture of it. It became a store sample. I decided to bring it home, though since I am not teaching crochet right now.

1.  Top Left - Ribbed Wristwarmers (and next to it hat) in Manos

2.   Snowflake Hat from Newton’s Knitting, I added some additional colorwork on the top and used the third color for the top of the hat.  I am going to teach this in my December’s knitting class.  :)  I love how it turned out.

3.  Mosaic Knitting hat - I attempted the endless knot pattern on this sock, but did it on this hat.   It turned out “neat” but there isn’t enough contrast between the variegated yarn and the gray yarn to show the endless knot.

4.  Light Blue top is a top down pullover I was making for a knitting class I have been thinking about teaching.  I didn’t finish it because I panicked thinking the neckline would be too small.  I think I need a little person (ie. baby) to try this on for me.  Maybe when I have more time next spring I will finish this.   Oh, and you probably can’t tell, but it has a row of beads on it. 

5.   Trekking Sock - pretty November colors…very orangy!

6.  Top right - Doll head and part of body.  I thought about making my girls dolls for Christmas.  I need to pick this back up.

7.  Austermann sock (the one with the Aloe in it…)

8.  Blue hat - Iceland wool.  I made this for when Sierra went to Brownie camp.  She wore it twice, maybe.  It was definitely a warm hat, though.

The snowflake hat deserves its own picture, so I will try to take a picture of it tonight.