Knotty Mouse

Did everyone have a good Thanksgiving? I spent yesterday with the in-laws (no comment) stuffing my face full of turkey, stuffing, potato casserole, cranberry sauce, and lemon whip dessert. Other than the food.. I would have rather been at home with a hot mug of tea and the House marathon on USA, but Munchkin had a good time AND we were able to score some HOT Krispy Kreme donuts on the way home (I’m sure you can hear me bloating from your location.. seriously.)

I’ve been doing a little shop updating with more to come between now and Monday – the newest things are these cool alphabet beads which spell out yoga words, spinning words, and my favorite thing.. Mantra Markers! Right now I have “Om Mani Padme Hum” and the Maha Mantra (“Hare Krishna, Hare Rama”) but there are more coming (“Om Namah Shivaya” is sitting here on my desk.. ) as soon as I am able to photograph and post them. My head has been spinning (har) with ideas for these Mantra Markers – I think they’re great for anyone who does mantra meditation and knits. As with all shameless promotion posts- the items can be found at my shop on Etsy. (thanks for suffering through the irritation of a self promotion post.. its THAT time of year again and all purchases benefit the House of Mouse and the Munchkin Christmas Gift Fund. )

As for the dreaded holiday knitting.. I’ve got a list which is growing more and more silly by the day. I do really need to finish a hat for my sister-in-law which has been hibernating since last year when I found out that Hannukah skips all over the calendar like a rabbit on crack and sometimes falls 3 weeks EARLIER than Christmas. Doh. This year its a respectable 3 days before Christmas.. which may save the teeny tiny shreds of sanity I have left. I’m also back to picking up the crochet hook in hopes that I can get some scrappy handspun hippy tams & headbands into the shop for the Giftmas season.

Thanks for the concern about us freezing over here at the House of Mouse.. so far the temp has dipped down into the mid 20’s at night a few times and we’ve been relatively toasty with the use of only one or two space heaters running only a few hours a night (the timer on the larger heater is the coolest thing!) and early in the morning so we don’t turn into Mouse, Munchkin, or Mister Bearsicles. We’ve also used our huge fireplace once which heated everything up very nicely.. even Ms. Kitty learned that the best seat in the house is the meditation cushion at the foot of the fireplace!

I’ve been in a fall state of mind and wishing that the weather would cooperate with me.. but alas, its still in the high 80’s here in GA. I’ve spent the last week getting my supplies out and set up in the kitchen where I’ve been keeping myself busy making and assembling stitch marker sets for the shop… you can see some of them in the photos above. <insert blatant self promotion here> This means that the Mousie Masala shop is back open and ready for orders! I’ve still got some teeny tiny (smaller than a tic-tac) candy corn stitch markers to upload but that will happen in the next week and I’m going to try to upload new items every other week from now through the holiday season. </blatant self promotion>

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!