Knotty Mouse

The weather here in Georgia has been gorgeous for the last week- in the mid 70’s and overcast- thanks to the tropical storms. While I feel like I’ve done nothing but open and close windows (not an easy task in an old house) because of the wind & rain - I’m loving the cool breeze and lots of curling up on the couch with a cup of hot tea and some knitting. Fall weather puts me in a crafty mood and I’m doing a lot of knitting & spinning lately (plus some other stuff) in preparation of re-opening my Etsy shop. While I will still be doing the knitting & spinning supplies, I’ve also wanted to introduce a line of hand knits made with my own handspun into the shop.. which required the creation of some patterns of my own.

These mitts are the product of my hit or miss pattern making skills - which apparently involve a whole lot of ripping, swearing, use of a calculator, more swearing, and prayer - and I’m pretty happy with them. They have right & left thumb gusset increases which I think helps to make a better fitting hand area.. something I’ve really had issue with in some of the patterns I’ve knitted for myself and ended up ripping out or giving away. I think its partially because I have larger hands and very slender wrists that many of the popular armwarmer/mitt patterns out there end up making me look like I had giant man hands even though they were perfectly gorgeous on 1500 other knitters.

The hands in the photo belong to my mother-in-law who agreed to play hand model for me the other day. I had to pry these mitts off of her hands because she first tried to run away with them and then tried to con them out of me as a Christmas present. The yarn is my own Two Paws Handspun in Spunky Eclectic “Leaf Peep” colorway & South African Fine wool. I like to re-name my yarns when I spin them because I find that the colorway that was given as roving changes into something else after spinning… but I haven’t come up with a name for this yarn yet. The mitts themselves will be going into my shop when I open in September.. unless MIL comes and steals them back!

I’m still trudging forward with the ABC-Along with a tea related I for the ingenuiTEA from Adagio teas. Its a cool tea brewing gadget that I use for my morning cup of Earl Grey Creme tea - you just put your loose tea in the bottom, pour hot water over the top, and after it brews you set this gadget over your cup and the brewed tea pours out the bottom. Teavana (where I get my Earl Grey Creme tea..) also has a similar gadget, if you happen to live next to one of their stores. Its a great invention and makes my morning tea a little less time consuming. Its also the only “i” word I could think of.

(BTW.. I’m not pimping Adagio but if anyone is interested in ordering from the site, I can send out $5.00 discount coupons via email.. just let me know in the comments. I think I get points good toward freebies or something if anyone uses the coupon. )

H is for Home. This is a pre-move in photo of the kitchen of our “new” house… its one of my favorite rooms in the house because of the crazy handmade built ins and nifty range. From what we know at this point.. the original portions of the house (kitchen, living room & ‘master’ bedroom) was built in 1945. The rest of the house (2 more bedrooms, 2 baths & the dining room currently being used by my husband as an office..) is newer though the rooms are still much older than I am. Unfortunately one of the other bedrooms is currently unusable because of an unstable floor.. so we’re using it as storage.

This is my second favorite room.. the living room with huge working (we assume.. we’ll find out this winter..) fireplace. The hardwood floor (currently only in the living room) was also a plus - and were on my list of things I was hoping that our new home would have.

The last “room” I wanted to show is actually not a room at all.. but the huge covered wooden deck coming off our master bedroom which has a great view of the 6 acres the house is sitting on. We haven’t done much out there yet but dump our lawn furniture and hang my ’seen better days’ wind-horse prayer flags but I hope to spend a LOT of time out here this fall with my spinning wheel.

(note: I’m trying to continue on with the ABC-Along even though I’m horribly behind. This post was originally written right after we moved in May but I was never able to post it and it got lost in my drafts folder)

The onset of slightly cooler weather has finally kicked a little knitting mojo into action around here and I’ve started and finished a hat. This is Le Slouch by (Knit & Tonic’s) Wendy Bernard made with a skein of Malabrigo worsted that I picked up at my LYS during a visit with Ms. ShadKitty last year. While I have always admired the pretty colors of Malabrigo it was one of those yarns that I looked at in the skein, eyed the price tag, and put it back down while muttering “I could spin THAT for much less” in order to keep me from buying the lot of it at the yarn shop. I ended up breaking down and purchasing it (along with another skein in fire colors) due to peer pressure (*snort*) and the fact that the yarn shop was having a ticket sale and I got 40% off my whole purchase. I’m so sorry that this stuff has been marinating in my stash for close to a year now.. it is WAY too nice to not be knit up immediately or petted like a kitten. Come to think of it.. this was the stuff that Shadkitty and I wore around our necks as makeshift scarves because of the softness factor. lol.

As for the hat itself.. I loves it. I was worried that it wouldn’t be slouchy enough because I didn’t have access to a size 9 circular and instead knit the entire hat with a size 8 (magic loop of course) and tried on regularly. I ended up knitting for another inch past the patterns suggested 6 inches to fit my big hair and because I wasn’t entirely sure how much more length the crown decreases would add to the total length of the hat. Mine (for anyone who is interested) ended up to be 9.5 inches long and 10 inches ‘wide’ unstretched and unblocked with a wonky gauge of 5sts to an inch on size 8US. I deem this hat “Absolutely perfect in every way” and will be wearing it to death as soon as its cool enough here to do so.

Quick Project Stats:

Pattern: Le Slouch by Wendy Bernard
Yarn: Malabrigo worsted -less than one skein - 66/100g or approx 143 yds
Needles: size 8 Addi Turbo circulars throughout - knit Magic Loop
Mods: knit to 7 inches before beginning decreases. gauge was 5sts vs. pattern 4sts.
Finished dimensions: 9.5 inches from cast on to crown, 10 inches ‘wide’ unstretched & unblocked. fits my big hair quite nicely.
Knit it Again? Yup. Yup. Yup. I’m definitely planning on making a few of these for fall/winter.

Due to some sploggers.. I’ve been forced to install a bunch of anti-jack@ss plug ins and I’m testing them. Unfortunately I’m going to have to change my feed type and anyone on a feed reader is going to have to visit the site to view the whole post. I’m sorry. Blame the jack@ss that is re-posting my content on their blog.

Edited to add:  It all seems good. I did reset a bunch of settings so if anything seems ‘weird’ here at the blog please let me know.  Also if anyone with WordPress wants to know what plug-ins I’ve installed.. feel free to email me and I’ll let you know.  *sigh*

Its that time again! I’m totally blown away by the fact that we’ve got to get up and get Munchkin off for his first day of school tomorrow morning.  We had orientation earlier last week where we found out that our new house was NOT on the bus route as I was told that it would be when I called the school a month earlier. Much paper shuffling and phone calling later..  they’ll be picking my son up directly in front of our house tomorrow — Hooray for door-side bus service!!  After 2 years of walking 5+ blocks to the bus stop - I’m definitely excited about this, and I KNOW that Munchkin is thrilled to be getting picked up and dropped off right in the driveway. Apparently there IS some advantage to living on the side of a major road - it makes up for the fact that getting my mail or putting out the recycle bin seems a bit deadly with cars whooshing past at 45 mph.

Munchkin is definitely excited to go back to school this year after meeting some of the kids in his class at orientation.  He picked out this snazzy orange bookbag last week during one of our school shopping trips and we’ve packed it with his lunch money, snack, new blue water bottle, and Camp Rock notebooks (yes.. my son has been sucked into the Disney dimension and is obsessed with the Jonas Brothers *sigh*). He’s already got his clothes for tomorrow picked out and hanging on his door…  I think I’m more nervous than he is!

None of us are free until ALL of us are free

campaign for a free Tibet

Students for a free Tibet

*thanks to Pippi & PoMo Golightly for their idea to bring awareness to Tibet today via our blogs.

Just a quick FO post for my stashbuster head scarf because I’m in the middle of trying to frantically get everything ready for Munchkin’s first day of school on Monday.. which crept up on us WAY too fast. There are still shoes to be bought and pants to be ‘taken in’ at the waist (my son is tall and skinny.. therefor NOTHING fits him as bought off the rack) but most of that is going to have to wait until later. I’m also way behind on returning emails & comments.. hopefully I’ll get caught up soon.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it or not (because it happened while we were in the whole moving panic) but the school did end up holding my son back and he will be repeating grade 1 again this year. We were lucky enough for our ‘new’ house to be within the same school district and we were granted permission for Munchkin to remain with the same teacher as last year. I’m glad that he was given permission to stay with the teacher that he knows and likes.. it will make things easier for him this year and hopefully he will be able to go on to grade 2 next year without problems.

Finished Object Stats:

• Pattern: Dream Swatch Headband
• needle size: 5
• yarn: Alabama Fiber Dreams sock yarn in “Avada Kedavra”
• mods: none
• Knit it again? Definitely. I have tried this pattern in a few other yarns (worsted weight & handspun) and not liked it but I really think this works out great for leftover sock yarns. The pattern is easy enough to be quickly memorized yet challenging enough that you don’t get bored out of your mind while knitting it. Perfect tv knitting.

Happiness is receiving a free washing machine and having it moved into the laundry room without having to life a finger (thanks to hubby & his dad). Its an older model but it works quickly and well.. which is really all that matters. After spending the last 2 months doing laundry at the in-laws, this was a welcome addition to the house. It was perfect timing because I was starting to get concerned as to how I was going to keep up with laundry once Munchkin was back in school .. which starts NEXT MONDAY.

While I haven’t been able to locate a decently priced (read: cheap or free) dryer as of yet.. Hubby did set up a few wash lines outside so that I could hang our clothes out. In our current heatwave the laundry I put out dries in a very short amount of time, saving us boatloads of power which is getting used instead by the air conditioning unit. *sigh* Can’t win ‘em all.