Sahara Is Finished!

Woo! Now for pictures. :^)












Is it time for sweaters yet?

Anniversary Pictures

We did have a very lovely anniversary. Here's our anniversary pictures for this year (I haven't skipped a year yet, although there's a couple years that are kind of rough looking).



(Our friend has a beautiful side-yard, huh)?



It's just not fun unless there's peek-a-boo involved, heh. ;^)

More Sahara

Another progress pic. I'm not that fast, it's just that the last picture I posted had been sitting on my camera for a while.

Look, only one sleeve left to go!


Kokomo is fascinated by this strange ritual. Why did the food-provider spread this mysterious blanket on the floor?


Hehe.

Finished Anti-Tink Bag

I hate that I forgot to take a "before" picture, but here is the "in progress" pic again for reference:




And here is the completed masterpiece!


I added additional jewelry, including a stud in the top of her ear and a ring in the wing. I gave more weight to the outline of the wings, and I added a lighter brown to her hair and eyebrows. I gave her a beauty mark. I outlined the ribbon in her hair with more purple, but it still doesn't really show.

It was so much fun drawing on this thing that I keep looking for other little details I could add. But I really can't b/c I like it the way it is.

The Doomed Shirt

Here it is, the shirt that was bigger every time I tried it on. I tweaked it to make it fit, it fits, I wash it and it's bigger yet again.

Also I kept running out of yarn. It was very frustrating.

I love this yarn and it wasn't cheap, but this is one for the botched file.





It comes close enough to fitting in the cups to have been wearable around the house. Maybe. But check out the rest of it.




And this is after I took it in some and moved the buttons. It hangs all the way down to the small of my back. Bah. Anyone want some pre-knitted fabric?? It's bamboo.

Sahara Progress

I finally got around to editing my pics. This one is a bit outdated but it shows the shaping of Sahara coming along.




I bought myself a knitting bag to hold it because my other bags were a bit small. I found the perfect bag and it was on clearance... only problem was it had Tinkerbell on it.

Here's a pic showing the beginning of the transformation:



I forgot to take a pic before starting. I've already added brown to her hair, outlined her wings in purple and her dress in green, added brown to her eyebrows so they're not just lines, added curved lines to show the sides of her nostrils (it was just one long line for her nose and a dot for the nostril opening before). I shaded her eyes in with green, gave her purple eyeshadow, gave her jewelry, and drew in purple nail polish. That one is really subtle.

I'll take a picture of the finished bag soon.

Coffeeeeee........

I ordered a fancy coffeemaker on Monday. It got here today. From Texas... I think they must have got my order, and immediately jumped in a truck to zip it up here. They're lucky they didn't get caught for speeding.

I mean really? Two days for standard shipping? Woo-hoo!!

I was nervous about the website, because it looked a little sketchy but they have definitely impressed me so far. And I haven't noticed any additional charges on my paypal. ;^)

So, the coffeemaker. It's called Aeropress and it's kind of like a french press, but engineered and tweaked a bit to make even smoother coffee. Supposedly. I looked at reviews on this and other french presses on amazon.com and this one had nearly unanimous raving reviews. And lot of them, too.

I just tried it. With this particular coffee it's definitely a heck of a lot better than my little coffeepot. It's a breeze to clean. I think there's less grounds in the coffee, but I haven't got to the bottom of the cup yet. And I already had a thermometer so the all-important temperature factor is something I can control.


Also, in unrelated news, I got into Ravelry. Yeah... I'm already in the coffee & tea lovers' group. It's going to take me a while just to get my older projects loaded into the system. And the websurfing, yeah, I could lose a few days in there.

Since I probably won't be able to sleep after testing out the aeropress, maybe it's a good thing? Just pity my husband, haha.

So.....Close...!

You might not be able to see in this picture, but I'm only 397 people away from being invited to Ravelry.





In vaguely related news, I've been sick. Watching my number approach on Ravelry's checkpage has helped cheer me up. It's also just about all the knitting content I've been able to manage for the last couple of days.

I have some pictures on my camera but I definitely haven't felt good enough to sort through them. Sorry.

Also that thing I was working on, with only a teaser photo, came out cute-looking but didn't fit at all. I'm going to see if I can pawn it off on someone else to use for the fabric... or something..

Five Years

Five years ago today, something very special happened.





You took my hand.





And you spoke to my heart.




You danced with me.

<



And then... you did all three "takes" of the champagne sip with me.




Happy anniversary, darling.

Another Dicebag & Ramblings

I spun up that lovely dark roving and got this:




And I couldn't leave it alone, so I wound it into a center-pull ball and knitted another dicebag with it. My tension(drape) and gauge are very different from the first and the shape and size of the bag reflect this discrepancy.

Front:


Back:


We visited el husbando's folks over the 4th of July. I gave his dad the hat I made for him and I gave his mom some bright green and yellow yarn. It was neat and bulky, but I couldn't quite figure out what to make with it. We managed to completely miss the 4 hours the yarn shop was open on the 4th, and they're always closed on Thursdays so that kind of sucked. They have a large variety of roving and spinnable fibers so I feel like I miss out if I don't go, but I really do have a ton of roving that I could be spinning...

On the way back to Raleigh we stopped in at Asheville to get ice cream (and let me go to a different yarn store, hehee) at Grove Arcade with hubby's aunt & uncle. The last time we were in Asheville I discovered the Home Crafts store for the first time, and bought some lush merino/silk blend from Mackey's Acres, and also some delightful black alpaca from Battman. I love the alpaca so much, but I've never had anything spin so happily as that merino/silk blend. So of course they didn't have any available this time. She kindly made a request of Mackey's Acres, and our Aunt offered to pick it up for me and bring it to Raleigh on her trip in a few weeks...ummm, I'm not actually sure when her trip is but she should be visiting us before we're back out that way.

So now I'm standing in a yarn store with money hypothetically intended for roving burning a hole in my pocket. Burning, burning... I wander through and pet the yarns and admire the expensive silks and the amazing alpaca yarns (almost bought one of the alpaca too, if it hadn't been bulky weight I probably would have). Then I came across the bamboo. I want to try spinning this stuff sometime, and soysilk too, but it's new and really popular right now and I'm kind of hoping the price will come down a little bit. There were a couple of bamboo yarns there and I got to touch bamboo yarn for the first time. It was almost as decadent as touching silk and had a sheen to match, with the friendly softness of cotton, and so smoothly and finely spun. And it was much less expensive than the silk. I had to have it.

I found a pattern in Knitting Lingerie Style that had a chance, and I got gauge right off the bat. Unfortunately I did run out of yarn (I bought all 2 balls in that colorway at the store). I hunted down the yarn locally, they didn't have that colorway but I found a coordinating solid. I barely had enough of the first to knit a stripe into each strap so it wouldn't look like I had just thrown it together. I had to dismantle the button band from another piece to get enough yarn. All of the pieces are knit now and I have to finish sewing it together and...

knitting the trim... I'm not sure if I will have enough of the contrast color I bought.

I'm pretty sure this yarn has officially driven me insane. I've been knitting and working on it pretty constantly to the point that my husband accused me of ignoring him all weekend. I'm scared I'm going to run out of yarn, and I'm terrified that it won't fit right when I finish it. Why do these factors make me want to work on it as if compelled by dark forces??

I don't want to show it until I'm done, but you can see some of the stitch pattern in this teaser:


I also got a lot done on Sahara during the trip. I'll have to take pics of my progress on that later.

Charts And Graphs

I'm working up charts in the normal alignment and removing the sideways ones when I do. (I still have the sideways ones. Just ask if you want the link).

I've just gotten the autobot one replaced. I probably won't put up any new posts as I replace the rest. So keep an eye on the "My Stuff To Share" in the sidebar!