Help from Blogland! Yarn in need of ideas!

I'm trying to decide what to do with some handspun Ile de France x Dorset cross yarn. I purchased some great roving from High Prairie Fibers. I just love the roving, the ease of spinning, and the fact that she will custom blend your colorway. Love at first sight. Needless to say, I have ~600 yards of a slate blue and ~600 yards of a blues ends mix. I am at a loss as to what to do with it. I think I would like to stripe it somehow, but I can't decide what I want to make. It's single ply approximately 10 wpi, so about a worsted weight yarn. Any ideas out there in blogland?




In other news, my cat is due with kittens and I am eagerly awaiting the mewling little things. I keep thinking that she will pop, but her belly just keeps stretching. I know she'll have them soon.

My roommate also got a dog, sweet little husky/lab mix, 4 years old, very well behaved. Monica adopted her from the pound, which I whole heartedly approve. Sadie and Beau are getting along quite well. I think this might be a lot of fun.

The socks are still doing penance.

The Beast Lives, and Other Things

I began knitting a pieced afghan for my brother some time ago (say Feb.), and then he pissed me off. As such I decided not to work on it for some time. This last week I decided that it was time to work on the beast again and knitted several rows on it. Then I decided that I was tired of knitting the acrylic beast and I was going to turn it into something useful and smaller. Specifically, I turned it into a dog bed. Take that you acrylic yarn, ha ha! (To all of you who love acrylic yarn, my apologies. I just can't seem to like it any more.)




Here are the promised before and after pictures.

Notice all of the yuck, including the plastic trash.








Now look at the happy flower bed. I cut down the tulips and daffodils after this picture. Then I seeded some poppies in the bed. I have a matching bed to this one and a corner bed too.

I can't wait until all of my little poppies come up.


I will post my pictures of my beds with poppies when they bloom. :)

BTW, Mom was kind enough to loan me a laptop to access the internet. Thank you Mom.

Thunderstorm= Lightning= Poof, no modem

AHHHHH! Lightning hit my house. I now have no modem. It will be a day or so until I can get a replacement and my entires will probably be very short, sans pictures.

Sad Bunny today.

Buh-Bye Weeds, Hello Poppies

Yeah! Ding dong the weeds are dead, the weeds are dead, the weeds are dead! Ding Dong the wicked weeds are dead! I'm thinking of planting hostas and moving the tuplips and daffodils out of my corner box. It's very shady and the lily-of-the-valley really likes it. I'm thinking hostas would look great with the LOTV. I'm still working on pictures and will post them soon.

All of my boxes look great now. It seriously cut into knitting time, but I can't wait for my poppies to grow. I was cruising ebay and found the One Stop Poppy Shop. The seller was very courteous, sent my seeds immediately, and had the cutest little seed packages. I'm hoping the sweet little things start growing soon.

While I'm thinking about ebay, I bought my dog a bed from ComfyK9Creations and he loves it. He used to beg to sleep on my bed every night and would resign himself to his bed only after a pathetic sigh. Now he goes to his own bed at night, in the afternoon, at any time. I'm so happy to have found a bed that he likes as well as I do.

Ok, now for the knitting. I've been looking at the sock. Well, glaring at it really and I just haven't brought myself to pick it up to work on turning the heel yet. I should, I really should, but I'm a little angry at the sock and as such it is doing penance in the corner.

I'm off for the evening. Making dinner for the roommate, fiance, and a friend. I'll post more about them later.

Every day is a happy day when you can knit and hug your bunny.

Thistles and Grass and Dandelions, Oh MY!

This weekend is very busy for Knitter Bunny. I've spent most of the morning weeding my flower beds (gosh no knitting?) because I have neglected them for so long. As a result I had some very tricky dandelions and thistles to extract. Before and after pictures will be posted sometime soon. I'm rather proud of it myself. On to pie bakin', barbeque makin', and of course some evening knitting.

Keep smiling, the world will smile back.

Socks, Eating the Toe

I have, once again, embarked on knitting socks. As I was preparing for my graduation from Purdue University it dawned on me that I would have absolutely uninterrupted kntting time. PURE Knitting. Just me in a sea of hundreds of other students all sitting, waiting for the same thing. Of course, this inspired a flurry of "what will I take with me to knit?" Socks, gloves, the inevitable scarf crossed my mind.

But socks had been lurking in the back of my mind for some time and having been encouraged by the chapter in Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's latest book Knitting Rules, I began my journey into socks once again. I was completely ignoring the fact that the last pair of socks I had knit, I had frogged three times, reknit the heels twice, and reshaped the toes on each sock at least once. (There may have been some late nights and the occassional OMG, while consuming increasing amounts of chocolate.) Not to mention that I had knit them for my friend, Monica, with the size 12 feet. So even imagining that I would finally break into the stash of sock yarn that I had been hoarding for some time, was daunting.

Finally though, I cast on Thursday night dutifully following the theme in Stephanie's book for when you want to knit socks without a pattern. I measured around my ankle, made a swatch (gag!) and multiplied my gauge by the inches in my ankle. (These socks were going to be for me. My one time trip down the road to sock glory by finally finishing a pair of socks that didn't need to be frogged.) Dutifully I cast on my stitches in the round and worked my sock.

Prime knitting time on Sat. rolled around during the ceremony and I was able to finish more than two inches (and I didn't even knit during the whole ceremony) of the sock. I decided that it was time for a break and worked on my lace shawl that I've been knitting since Mid-March.

It dawned on me midweek after graduation that I should probably check my progress and I hauled out a pesky tape measure that had somehow gotten lodged in the recliner. The sock was coming along nicely. Time to start the heel. After carefully rereading the chapter about socks, I worked the heel, back and forth, always slipping the first stitch. It wasn't until I had finished the heel that I thought to look at how big my sock was becoming. . .

At this point I have decided that I am quite hopeless with gauge, swatching still sucks, and Monica is getting another pair of socks.

Projects, Projects, And Never Enough Time

Ok, So I'm going to add some pictures of the projects that I've finished. Be forewarned, the picture quality is terrible and the knitting is, well so so. I would like to contend that I knit better than a three headed chicken, however, the three headed chicken is giving me nasty looks.

Ok, the Green Shawl is knit in the Cobweb Pattern which was generously free on the MagKnits website I think ( I will check later this evening). The yarn is a handspun (2-ply) Cotswold that turned out beautifully. I ordered the Cotswold from WI thinking to use it for something entirely different, but the shawl is gorgeous. It's going to be Monica's present for her birthday on June 5. Shhhhh.

The Gloves are being modeled by the beautiful hand model Monica, and yes I know the finger tip is missing. You'd be surprised how long it took me find a pattern that had all ten fingers. Ok, now I'm joking. My brother asked for Hunting gloves for Christmas, aka no trigger finger. So I dutifully got out the handspun Millends Superwash yarn that I had created for just such a project and whipped up a pair of gloves for the brother. Not that he appreciated the time it took me to find a pattern and modify it to fit his big teenage man-boy hands.

The Final Picture is of a shawl that I made for my friend Stephanie for her birthday. The colors are a little intense, but I think that they worked well together. It's also big enough to cover her: shoulders, boobs, and butt. Oops, guess the gauge was a little larger than anticipated. Oh well, that's why its fun to knit shawls.

Start Somewhere

Well, I've decided to hop on the bandwagon. This blog is just for fun. Hopefully I can chat about the bunnies and knitting and meet some great new people along the way.

This picture is of one of my litters from last year. Just a few days old, and absolutely adorable.

As I get more involved with this blog I will try to post updated pictures of knitting projects and some of the new "hopefuls" in the barn.