The Crochet Edition...

I am very pleased with myself. I started, well...an unknown project, supposedly a scarf. I started my project yesterday and I finished it TODAY! Due to lack of yarn, it really ended up being a neckwarmer, but I'm very happy with it!

You see, there is a woman on Ravelry who decided to sell a bunch of purple scarves to raise money for Pancreatic Cancer research. Thread is here. I offered to send her some purple yarn and in addition to snagging up purple yarn from generous souls at Purlescence Yarns Sunday, I thought it would be nice to perhaps make a scarf to contribute, as well. Among the purple castaways was a mohair-ish (yes, the stuff I'm allergic to!) nubby-light yarn, seemingly DK weight that someone threw at me as I stuffed the last of the purple yarn into a bag.

I decided that I would use it to make a scarf to include. It was just the one skein.

Faced with the prospect of starting yet another project, and seeking a 'quick fix', I decided to crochet a scarf with this skein.

Long story longer...the pattern I chose from Rav seemed to be missing a part of one of the rows in the instructions. I had to rip this glue-grip hold mohair back a few inches and dug through this crappy old crochet book I had picked up from some second-hand somesuch place.



Low and behold, a WONDERFUL crocheted stitch! See for yourselves...



Once you crochet the set-up row and knit the second, the rest is all a repeat of the same row 2! Gotta love that!

In the long-run, I didn't have nearly the amount necessary for a scarf. So I seamed it and made a neckwarmer! Ta-DUH!

Stinkin' Cute!

These have got to be the cutest little things! If you go to the Rav page, the ones shown are even CUTER! And now, onto the meat of this post...

OK, I realized there were a few pics I'd taken and never shared. I'd like to share with you now...

The other week (specifically, the first Saturday of this month) it was raining. And I mean raining. Heavy rain. Big drops of water rain.

Of course, this meant that this was the day my friend HAD to go to Cotati (a 45 minute drive or so from the City...). So, being the good friend that I am, I accompanied her.

See the puddle of water? and you can't tell, but it is still RAINING in this picture...

What is this place? Oh...we entered through the wrong door?


And here, is the front of the building!

And inside, a freezer with a sign reading, "We trust you...please take what you need and leave the money on the table". GEEZ! No way! Dorothy, we're not in San Francisco anymore!

By the way, the lasagne is ok. The ravioli pretty stinking good! But the real reason we were there?

To claim her 1/4 cow that had just been freshly slaughtered! (sorry, Vegetarians...) Yeah, we were there to pick up, oh...100 pounds or so of organic beef!


And to prove I am not a yarn snob, look what I had caved and bought when I saw it on sale at Joann's the other week?
I'm a total sucker for the Vanna White yarn colors! And, as always, was inspired to buy an afghans worth of it! Gotta love crochet-I crocheted up one of the popcorn squares quite quickly. But alas, it is not a gift for this year and I need to keep the gift knitting priority, so this now sits.

But look what else I kinda had to add to the stash?
But allow me to clarify: the center red color is some Malabrigo Worsted in Pagoda and came out from my stash. I used these for a Capitan hat (picture later...). You see, that same rainy day was the same day I lost a favorite crocheted (not by me) hat and was sad. I decided that this capitan hat could justifiably jump ahead of the gifties so I could make myself a new hat.

Admittedly, the two plain yarns on the left were grabbed up at Dharma Trading Co. for future dying. And I'll again point out that I am a big sucker for the garish (some call it 'clear') colors of some of the Malabrigo Privada collection. I decided I needed to again go beyond my comfort zone of colors and get two more from the ImagiKnit sale wall. So I did. And while at it, I threw in a Malabrigo Worsted Tartuga to round out the purchase!

I have a great project in mind for the Privada and am excited to eventually knit it up!

Still not over, but a few things complete...

Phew! I got this second pair of Fetchings done for my friend by Christmas Eve! I actually finished them over the prior weekend, but still had 2 purses to make for her two girls!


Instead, I cheated. I used the one purse that was 99% completed for my other friend's daughter, since I wouldn't be seeing her right away. Just had to pick up stitches along the bottom, then cast them off. Since I ran out of the purple color, I used black, but then decided I needed to do the same at the top to balance the colors. On Sunday (yes, the day before it was to be gifted!), it went into the washer, then out to dry. I stuck it by the heat vent and crossed my fingers...

while I feverishly crocheted this...
OK, so it was another change of plans-instead of a felted bag, I did a crocheted cupcake purse. I had been naughtily procrastinating, checking out Ravelry, when I came across some crocheted cupcake purse pics. I decided that this was cute, I had the yarn in my stash, and by-golly, this couldn't take longer than a felted purse! And besides, then I wouldn't have to wash it and hope it dried in time! So in a way, I made up for the fact that I had used up valuable knitting time playing on Ravelry!

Actually, the pattern choices I found on Ravelry were both $4 patterns and I struggled over which to get. One pattern was also offered as a set of purses-all 5 patterns for $10! But I needed the pattern NOW and I wasn't sure how quickly the PDF would get sent to me! Should I wing it? It seemed simple enough...should I take the chance I'd get the pattern by the next day (folks, I think this was Saturday or at the earliest Friday night-late night-like 2-3am morning kinda late...) Besides this, where was my reason? I was supposedly doing this with very short time left and I was supposed to be justifying my enormous stash and somehow trying to make amends for all my yarny spending by saving money knitting my stash as gifts!

OK, I'm kinda proud of myself...after the "brilliant" idea of googling for a freebie pattern of this sort (hey-it was late, I was tired and it took that long to figure it out-DUH!), I found this pattern by Cynthia Gurisko! Thanks heavens for Google, Crochetville, free patterns and clever people willing to share!

I went down 2 hook sizes, knit the bottom in Cotton Fleece (Lamb's Pride) and the top with leftover Ella Rae (remember the felted slippers?...)...I severely increased the top, ( 4 evenly spaced increase per row for the first several cupcake top rows vs. the single increase per row instructed in the pattern...). And I was pretty darn pleased with it at 4am on Christmas Eve as I watched the Smurfs and then some other wannabe Smurfly type cartoon that followed...

So I still have a felted purse to make, and another pair of fetchings (for my bros GF), some Dashings for a friend who whines about how I never knit him anything, Dashings for my good friend's son who got me a Wii for Little Emperor with a two days notice (it wasn't planned, but worked out well...spoiled LE!), Fetchings for my quilt teacher who liked the first pair I was working on, so how could I not offer to make her some?, and a pair of Dashing for my bro (another thank-you for his awesome favor of drawing up some designs for LE's school to use for t-shirts and what-not...)

And when am I planning on starting Twist or swatching for my Secret of the Stole II? Yeah, I'm insane and don't know if these will ever happen! Keeping my fingers crossed and my needles moving!

And amidst the planning, wrapping, knitting for Christmas, I received my naughty, me-being-out-of-control Yarn Wench purchase of (not the original 2 I ordered, but) THREE bags of roving! If you care what colorways they are, I'll post them later. Right now I'm too lazy to go look again. I think one was amethyst something-or-other, gothic whatever, and orchid somesuch name...Beauties, aren't they? Oh-how about this...I did get around to sneaking a bit of spinning in to see how they'd look, so I'll show them with their names later...
And I also got me and Nartian's "Digetessa" kits! I'm only showing one because, well...you know, they look identical except one was wrapped in brown tissue paper and the other in green...the Digetessa and accompanying special-dyed Woolmeise yarn! And these yummy gingerbready tasting droplets attached!

And for now, I'll leave you with this...the guest of the Christmas Season! No, don't be fooled-it's not the Bob of Ravelry fame, but my canine niece, Nico! Here she is, wondering where her masters are and why she was dumped off at the Mouse Hutch!

Merry, Merry everyone! And have a wonderful 2008! Maybe I'll post again before 2007 comes to a close, and I hope everyone had a good Chanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, or whatever you celebrate during this time of year!