A HAPPY BIRTHDAY POST

It's my birthday today and to celebrate I am giving away a little surprise or two from my STASH! Just leave a comment, telling me what type of fiber you like to knit or crochet with. I will randomly select a winner and post her/his name on Monday, February 28th. I will select that fiber or a reasonable facsimile thereof and send it to you. So leave a comment at the end of this post!


Now February is almost over and I feel like I still haven't caught my breath from all the holiday knitting deadlines! I also have several new projects added to the long list of old projects waiting in the wings to begin sometime, hopefully, in the not too distant future.

Meanwhile, here are a few completed gifts:

I knit a slouchie hat for my brother who is starting to bald a bit. I used a skein of a tweedy gray Plymouth Alpaca Grande and probably size 9 circs since I knit loose continental. Very soft, warm and happy to have one less skein languishing in my stash!
Slipper socks for Bigfoot, my16 year old son, size 11 shoe. Lots of knitting with a skein of Red Heart Supersaver. He has a thing for neon green, otherwise everything else he wears has to be black. Teenage boys, you know.

I doodled with some Sugar and Cream cotton yarn and came up with this thing. Knit baby size, it's my alternative to the everyday utilitarian baby drool bib. I think it's a bit elegant. It also fits the cats nicely, so it would work as a collar for a smaller dog too. I'm happy whenever I am able to knit something from my dishcloth cotton stash. How much do I have? Enough to completely fill a large floor trunk! And I offer no apologies for that, either, because I love my stash! Perhaps in a future post I might show you my yarn room and The Stash Entire.

Happy knitting until next week!

SO, DID YOU MISS ME?

Yes, I know. Much time has passed, Dear Gentle Knitter, (and I'll also say, Gentle Crocheter!) since the last time I posted to my blog. No excuses to offer because everyone IS busy these days! My New Year Resolution: To blog weekly again, as before, as in the days when this blog was new and I was so enchanted with the idea of having my very own knitting blog! Can anyone relate to this?

Instead of blogging, I've spent a lot of my time online soaking up inspiration from all those truly wonderfully talented, creative knitters and crocheters out there!

I have been knitting too, but also rediscovered that there is a great big crochet community out there doing some really beautiful things with the hook!

So, I've become really smitten with crochet, so upcoming posts will certainly include links to new blogs I've discovered, as well as more personal crocheted projects. Knitting too. But, please don't make me choose between the two!

Meanwhile, today I have a few items to show from the tail end of 2010 into the beginning of 2011.

An apple cloth for an October birthday gift. From a Susan B. Anderson free apple pattern. Don't have the link but it up when you Google. The pumpkin is from my brief affair with needle felting with roving, and the cloth was stitched during the pre-bifocal counted cross stitch period in my life!



This are really, (I think) really quick, cute and easy gifts to make with 99 cent square retractable measuring tapes (discounted from Pier One) and my collection of DMC Perle cotton floss! So its NOT Lantern Moon, but just as nice IMHO! I believe I worked them with no. 5 steel hook. Not difficult at all. Just two different grannies joined together with single crochet and then finished with a shell border. The center hole of the square is positioned over the little push button.

My usual 14 x14 reading pillow needed a new cover as the quilted square cover bought in Lancaster years ago was tattered and worn beyond repair. I dug into my DK weight yarn stash and crocheted a new cover over one of those recently miserably cold weekends. I used a C hook and I really like the look! This is the back/sometimes the front of the pillow.....

And this is the other side! I don't duplicate the patterns because I get easily bored! I just use the same yarns throughout in a different pattern. I crocheted a shell border in red. I think the yarn was mostly Sirdir DK weight. Makes one feel good to attack that yarn stash and actually accomplish something, doesn't it?

So now, since I have broken blog silence, I'll not be a stranger, and will try very hard to live up to my resolution and post updates weekly.

Until next Monday-Happy everything!