Sunday, August 19, 2007

Finito!

Woohoo, I finished my Embossed Leaves socks! I am very pleased with the results.

I did these toe up and I did the chart as written, so my leaves are going in the opposite direction. I tried flipping the chart but the yarn overs didn't seem to line up correctly and it was just a big yarny mess, so I frogged and re-knit them with the chart as written. And I am very pleased that I did, I am really happy with the results.

I used Panda Wool for these and I am very happy that I did. The shine on these is amazing, it really sparkles. I am a wee bit concerned how long they will last, the yarn seems to break fairly easily (yes, Saylor did chomp through the yarn on sock #1 halfway up the foot) but maybe that is just when there are sharp kitten teeth gnawing into it.


It will be hard to keep these off my feet, they are delicious. And did I mention the stitch pattern is beautiful? I wonder why it is that leaf patterned laces are so interesting to my brain. Maybe it's my childhood in the wilds of Wisconsin.


Xi Xi says, "Did someone say yarn?"

Friday, August 10, 2007

Catching Up

I have been a bad bad blogger of late. I don't think I quite realized how much I was thrown off by losing both the girls so fast, but I've been trying to get back into the swing of things.

Before too much time goes by, I want to thank everyone that has sent me an email or left a comment here. Your kindness and sympathy has been a huge help and I wanted to just say thank you to all of you. The kittens are adjusting to living in the house. I cleaned up my yarn stash area in the living room last weekend, so they have been having free reign of the house. They have liked it very much. I still feel pangs of sadness when they do similar things to what Bratty and Chubbo did, but they are doing their darndest to keep our spirits up.

The Chubbo is home now. I burst into tears when I saw her urn (hubby picked her up). I was expecting something more plain, but I was surprised at how beautiful the urn was.

I swear that the Chubbo angel is whispering in the little ones ears. Instead of just one watermelon fiend, I now have two:

They aren't quite as into it as the Chubbo was, but Xi Xi tends to be more into it than Saylor. (I think Xi Xi listens to the Chub a little more, she's pretty naughty like the Chubbo was when she was small and she hangs out with the watermelon a bit longer than Saylor does.)

I'm knitting a bit. I finished the first of my embossed leaves socks (like a week ago now, sheesh), but for whatever reason I haven't been together enough to remember to actually take a picture of it. I started knitting branching out using the Fiesta Boomerang I picked up at Calistoga Yarns a couple of months ago on the Bobaknit retreat. I have to say, the Boomerang is a really nice yarn to knit with. It is very smooshy and soft. It is making a very pretty scarf. I can't wait to finish it and get it blocked, I think it will be gorgeous.

Oh, one thing I have photographed and uploaded the pics for is my Adara Rainbow Shawl! I have yet to block this, but it is still pretty nice unblocked.

My camera did some weird shadows in the pic, I'm not sure why. Maybe because I was so strained to try to fit it all in. This is supposed to be 60" wide, I don't think it is right now unblocked, but it is alright. I did the ruffle edge which was an interesting challenge for me. It was my first 3 needle bind off, not hard at all. Plus it looks pretty cool with the ruffle as a finished edge:

I would say that most of the colors of the 12 colorways used in this shawl have enough yarn in them to make 2 shawls, but the last couple of colors I used have hardly any yardage left at all. I am happy I made the project though, it is beautiful. I originally made it for myself, but I am considering giving it away. I don't think I will though, I do like it. I might consider just buying 2-3 skeins (actually it might be closer to 4-5 skeins) to make up for the ones that were depleted with this project and knit another one to give as a gift.

I got this a little bit ago now, probably nearly a month ago, but I managed to place six orders with The Loopy Ewe and I became a Loopy Groupie! When you become an LG, you get a gift from Sheri. I got this lovely TLE bag and two skeins of Regia yarn and "Loopy kisses":

Pretty fantastic to get a reward from a seller I love to spend money with! So now with every order, I get more Loopy kisses. It's a very cute treat to get. It really isn't that hard to get to six orders if you have a sock yarn fetish, Sheri carries some fantastic yarn.

I will now leave you with a cute pic of the girls. I think the camera caught their true inner selves with their demonic glowing eyes: