Yarn Is My Crack

While I haven't been doing much knitting and such lately, I've at least been thinking about it. On Saturday I managed to hit my FAVORITE yarn store in Cuyahoga Falls. Sadly enough, good yarn stores are hard to come by, and Stitch, Piece, 'n Purl is a tough act to follow.

I haven't been able to find a good sock machine yet, but I'm getting ready for when I do! I've found some wonderful yarns just itching to be socks. I don't think the picture does the turquois/indigo yarn justice. The name of the color is "Salty Dog". Once I saw it, I just couldn't put it down. It's just so rich and deep and it called to me, I wanted to lick it. The skein on the right is a fun orange/yellow/green/blue.

I found that my favorite yarn company, Brown Sheep , is now making tweed yarns. I picked up a vintage baby sweater design a month ago and I'm thinking that might be just right for this yarn.

It's been quiet...

Sorry I haven't posted for awhile. I haven't been very creative lately...

Houndstooth

The Houndstooth bag has been felted and it turned out wonderfully! So much so that I think I shall make another, this time in green and black. I finally got my simple knitting machine in the mail and have spent some time getting it up and running. After a few rough starts, I finally figured out what had to be where and how to keep it from dropping stitches. When knitting the bag by hand, I can knit all 4 sides at once. On the machine, I have to do one panel at a time. Doing intarsia on the machine doesn't seem much faster than by hand since I'll have to sew it all together, but we'll see how it goes. I actually like the idea of sewing the panels together because it might help give more distinction between each side of the bag.

Closet's done, dude

The utility room closet is DONE! I cut the last shelves today and have started to move everything back in.

Everything tastes better when chocolate coated....

I decided to dip the caramels I made in chocolate and wrap them up. Yummie. I think I forgot to take a pic after dipping, but here's the pieces ready to dip... Brad's favorite way to eat them is straight out of the freezer. I prefer my chocolate and caramel at room temperature so that it melts in your mouth. We're meeting friends for dinner, so I'll be offloading much of this load on them, you can tell we like them way too much. Can't have all that candy sitting around for Brad and me.

And I now have 8 repetitions of the hounds tooth pattern done on the bag, just 6 more to go and it'll be ready to felt. It's going a lot quicker than I thought it would. It looks more hounds-toothy in the picture than it does in person. I'm not sure why. Ruth - I think this might be a good pattern for you, I'll have to send it along when I get around to sending you the hat pattern I promised.

I had been trying to get my grandmother's knitting machine to work for the last few months with no luck. I've spent many many frustrating hours with it. Ugh. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with the machine, or if I'm not doing something right. Grandma's machine is pretty fancy and has lots of bells and whistles, so I decided to start on something more simple. I won a basic knitting machine off eBay, I hope it arrives soon! It doesn't do anything but just knit. No intarsia, no ribbing, no tucking, nothing but knit.

We're off to see "Better Off Dead" at the Cedar Lee tonight and meeting friends for dinner beforehand. Should be lots of fun, I'm just hoping I don't get paged from work during the middle of it. Time to go check my databases to see if anything looks like it might cause me issues later.