KT collaboration bag, part one.

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a lovely skein of Malabrigo worsted in variagated colorway 'verdes' at a very nice yarn shop in Hood River, OR (we were camping semi-nearby, and came into town to escape relentless rain). There was a sample felted bag in the store with a note that it could be made from just one skein (217 yards - a fairly long skein). And it was only $10.50, and I need a smaller bag to go with the giant felted one I've already made - how could I resist?

Later that week, I discovered that my college roomie, KT, had a knitting blog and was in fact a published pattern-writer. (as she put it, we are terrible about keeping in touch, but love each other anyway :)). In fact, her blog was the inspiration for me to start this one! Anyway, her specialty is bags, so I figured I'd ask her what I should do with this lovely soft, green yarn. She emailed me a list of questions to help her in determining the best design. Then I started my blog, and we decided that we'd collaborate on the bag via our blogs! So she posted her questions, and soon I will answer them!

Quick note from Phoenix

So, I made a fairly last-minute trip to Phoenix (Chandler, to be exact) for work, and wanted to note that a direct flight from PDX to PHX was exactly the right amount of time to knit one (1) tank top strap from the Cabled Tank Top that I am working on from the Spring/Summer KnitSimple magazine. Mind you, this was my first ever cabling, so I was pretty proud to initiate it at takeoff, squashed in a middle seat between a couple of rather grumpy seeming folks.

It's so cool how the cable emerges - after the first one I was convinced that I had done something wrong, but pressed on, and it all became clear. What most knitting books don't seem to show is how the fabric really is doubled around the cable, and how much the width pulls in compared to an equivalent number of plain stitches.

Pictures later - I didn't bring the camera on this trip! I'm flying back tomorrow afternoon, and expect to have the second strap done and be working the front body by the end of the flight!

Edited to add a the picture from the magazine - this is what I've been working on, but in glacier blue "2nd time cotton". Ain't the cable nifty?

Finishing up FOs

Last FO, and from here on out it's all WIP (heh, that's a slightly different acronym at work!) until I actually finish something else. I made a lil lacy bag (pdf) for my Mom - an early mother's day present before my parents went off to Africa to visit my brother in Botswana:

The yarn is Araucania 'Pomaire', a lovely skein of variegated blues given to me for my birthday by my sister-in-law. It's 100% cotton and quite soft. This was my first (and so far only) lace knitting, and I quite enjoyed it once I had finished ripping out the first 5 rows for the third time! (I suspect that is common to first-time lace-knitters worldwide!)

Here's a detail of the stitching - the pattern came out quite nice. Andy (old-school D&D player) likened it to a hip pouch. I haven't heard from Mom yet if she found any small treasures in Africa to store in it.

Next post: WIP! And possibly geocaching, too!

As a preview, let me post a random geocaching/PNW (that's Pacific Northwest, of course) picture from Memorial day weekend. We canoed across a gorgeous mountain lake and found a geocache on the other side...

Finally, congrats to KT on posting her first patterns for sale! They're supercute! I think I need to find some of that yarn...

More back-dated knitting FOs

Documenting previous FOs...

#2 was the umbilical cord baby hat from Stitch and Bitch, knit for a college friend's newborn son. Finished Feb '07, made of TLC 'Amore' - I wanted a soft, washable acrylic, and this fit the bill. It came out well; my Mom turned out to have knit an afghan for my cousin out of the same yarn (I found this out after I bought mine) and recommended it, but warned that it tends to split, which it did somewhat on the icord part. Here, Cirrus is not-quite-modeling :)



March was a knitting, not a finishing month, I guess. #3 is was finished in early April, and is now my staple (huge) knitting bag - Brown Sheep lamb's pride bulky wool, knit according to a Fiber Trends pattern but with one strand bulky rather than 2 strands worsted, and felted reasonably aggressively.Oh, and there's some novelty yarn in there too :). I love how it came out, but the mohair content makes it rather fuzzy - I had to give it a good shave with Andy's beard trimmer! Shown before and after felting.

About the same time I finished 2 more baby hats for a friend having twins (and I still have tons of the TLC yarn left, now in two exciting colors). These baby hats were all knit on DPNs, by the way, but I have since taken a Magic Loop class and will probably go that way in the future. Much easier cast-on!

Hello, sticky world!

It's bedtime, so of course I'm posting a brief note. Let's see, can I display a picture? My first finished object knitwise was a garter stitch scarf, of course, at the end of January 2007. (And of course, blogger won't rotate this, and Andy's homebuilt image management system won't either, so I'm stuck with sideways-Andy modeling. Or maybe it's the amazing gravity-defying husband (and scarf)!)

And, our first geocache find, back in 2001, was White Sand Beach, near Monterey, CA, where we had gone for an Andy's birthday / Thanksgiving getaway. The cache is long since gone, of course (though amazingly our 3rd cache find, at the Berkeley Marina, is still in existence), but I remember leaving Andy in the car with a sore back and making my way into the scrubby bushes by the beach to find treasure!

(gah, geocaching won't show archived caches, and won't show much cache data at all unless you're logged in. Sorry to the non-cachers out there (it's free to sign up with geocaching.com...)!!)