Happy New Year!

Wow, 2006 is gonna officially start in a couple minutes. Everyone have a happy New Year! Enjoy 2005 while you still can...

The Christmas Rose bag is progressing nicely. I'm knitting on it to keep awake. I'll probably finish tomorrow.

Oh--an 'oops' note...sorry for all the "Dulaan" misspellings. It was pointed out to me that it's actually Dulaan, not Dulann. (I do that a lot.)

2005 knitting review:
Human sweaters: 1
Doll sweaters: 4
Doll skirts: 3
Doll shoes: 2 pairs
Doll scarves: 2
Human scarves: 7
Purses/bags: 2
Facecloths: 1
Turtleneck Egg Cozy: 1
Sock: 1 (haven't finished the other)
Ponchos: 1 (OK, OK, it's crocheted)
Tank tops: 1/2

Well, that's all I can remember. I'm going to be way busier next year. I've gotten way back into knitting. I'll give the intended list tomorrow. If I'm not too tired, that is.

Lots Of Knitting To Be Done

So, I'm trying to free up room in my stash. Here's a list of ideas... and reality:

• White Light'n'Lofty scarf (finished)
• Christmas Rose bag - just about to pass the halfway point on the Fair Isle. Overall about 38% done.
• Camera case - just for fun. We just got a new camera, but we'll buy a new case, for sturdiness. But I want to knit one, too.
• Doll stuff for Anna. Any ideas?

Here are your pictures.

Christmas Rose dance bag.The color isn't quite true; in person it's a bit darker.

And a closeup of the Fair Isle area (blurry). My stich marker is actually an earring; it has a chain attached to the front and back. It works well.

Zoomed out, you get a better sense of the colors. They're nice colors.

And the white scarf.

And that's all for now. Bye-bye.

But I Like It Being Brown

Your Hair Should Be Orange

Expressive, deep, and one of a kind. You pull off "weird" well - hardly anyone notices.

What's Your Funky Inner Hair Color?

Happy holidays everyone (anyone? hello)! It is currently the second day of Christmas/the day after Christmas/Boxing Day/First day of Hanukkah/First day of Kwanzaa. I love December.

PS. I do pull off weird well. :)

Merry Christmas!

We're all lounging by the fire, the Christmas lights on, inside and outside, with our pj's on, drinking hot chocolate, and in general having a good time.
Just a note...I probably won't be posting tomorrow, but I hope everyone has a great Christmas. Happy holidays!

Pretty as a Picture (so here they are)

Here's the Christmas Rose bag. (and quoting SpongeBob...) Yes of course it's on the tree, you silly.
Isn't it cute?


Here's a (very fuzzy) pic of Katie's spinning and my knitting. Left to right: rather scratchy but very nicely spun wool, ditto for the next tiny little hanks, then a little swatch of the yarn from the hanks. Then at the other end of the feel scale, WE HAVE A 100% ANGORA YARN. OMG is it ever soft. The wool (fleece? fur? or just angora?) was a gift from a friend, who raises rabbits and knows KT spins.

All the spinning is from a long time ago, but she recently brought it out again. The amazing thing is that it's so beautiful, but all of it was spun on a drop spindle. Well actually that ball of wool on the far left was wheel-spun, but come on, I think she was about 9 or 10 when she spun all this stuff. Isn't that just so cool? I always wanted her to teach me how to drop-spindle-spin, now that she's brought all the stuff out again, she probably will. She spins so nicely, beautiful thick-and-thin stuff.

And here is a cute little crocheted poncho (sorry Jessica) for Anna. It's RH Super Saver in Cherry Red. I am debating whether to call it "Diamondback Poncho" or "Basketball Hoop Poncho". You can tell why. Sort of. The picture sort of hides the diamond pattern look. But it's very cute.

I also would like to show you how festive K and A are. Anna and I made this and she put it up between their rooms.



Merry Christmas!

Oh, my gosh

Sorry I haven't posted. I haven't been able to get to the computer at all this week, and now I'm in a hotel room, on my laptop, with wireless internet, in LA. Not to mention the fact that I don't have a camera with me.

OK...Xmas knitting (more...yag), sweater unraveling, book recieving, etc, etc all happened in the last week.

1. Xmas Kuh-nitting
Like I said, (gah) I don't have a digicam w/me at the moment, so you will have to settle for words until Tues.
1st thing finished...I made a beeeeeeeautiful scarf for a friend of mine (who just so happens to be about seventy-something). It's made with Red Heart Plush in Light Berry and RH Foxy in some color that's just bout the exact same, but variegated (did that make sense?)
*updated* I gave it to her yesterday. She loved it!!!
Next...I made a minimini Christmas Rose bag as a gift for another friend. Probably it's only big enough to hold her cell phone and some loose cash, but she's only twelve. For those of you who have Handknit Holidays, (by Melanie Falick) here are my mods.
I used Red Heart Super Saver in Hunter Green (MC) and Cherry Red (CC) with size US5 dpns. Both the yarns were leftovers from other projects, and the needles were all I had free, so obviously I didn't get gauge. I couldn't check it anyway b/c I forgot where I had put the ruler (which turned up eventually...). As you can see, it was an extremely 'freelance' project. I only casted on 40 sts (two chart reps) so it would be small (it's for a twelve year old, it's probably only big enough to hold her cell phone and some loose change). For the part where the patt says k2MC, p2CC, I only did that for 3 rnds to make it shorter. I also did less rows whenever it said "work 2/3 rows MC", otherwise it would have been way too long. I did one pattern repeat, and then for the base, I decreased 4 times per rnd, so it ended up having a squarish base. I'm fine with that. I fingerknitted the ties to make it go faster, and all in all, it turned out pretty cute (and very small).
(BTW, this was copied off the Handknit Holidays blog, b/c I am so tired.)

2. Sweater Unraveling
I didn't unravel the crazy sweater because I realized it was basically 5 strands of thread knitted like yarn. I did, however, unravel a pink sweater, which I had been meaning to do anyway. I did a sleeve really quickly because I needed the yarn. The rest of the sweater followed shortly after, except for the back, which I kept b/c it was so soft. I'll probably find something to do with it. The rest of the yarn that I didn't use will be a Christmas gift for my sister. :) I did get before and after pix.

3. Book Recieving
Yesterday morning Handknit Holidays and Last Minute Knitted Gifts arrived. All I will say is, HH is probably now my fav. knitting book. It is so wonderful. I have several projects in line. LMKG is good, too. I got it mainly for the Hourglass Sweater patt, but all the others are wonderful, too.

Well that's all folks. I'm tired from being in a car (passenging?) for eight hours to get to LA. Even though that was yesterday I'm tired. I'm going to bed....bye-bye.

ReKAL

Though I am still not added to the ReKAL (and it makes sense, since it's ReKAL 2005 and hello, it's December already) I've still been ReKALing.
Starting today.



















I picked up a crazy looking sweater at St. Vincent De Paul. Yes it's crazy looking but I think the colors will be nice[r] on their own.














Here's the tag/loose stranded colorwork/shoulderpad. Yes, shoulder pad. It's that funny black thing on the right.



















Here's a better view of the shoulder pad.

Bye-bye. I'm going to start unraveling it now. ;)

sorry

totally unrelated but i need this, sorry guys





















*update* I needed this for the Little Stuffed Animals (a page I made when I was like eight) sewing up page. It's for an elephant. Smart people who read my blog (not like anyone reads my blog) will figger out the pattern. The rest can just klik the link. It's a very easy pattern, too.

Well the blogger picture-poster just went on strike, so as a last resort I used Hello. 

Stashbusting

The following items are all from stash. Except for the cardboard.
Here is my new sweater.














I am sorry this is such a crappy pic...
Pattern: Turtleneck Egg Cozy from Weekend Knitting
Yarn: Lamb's Pride Worsted in (hm lemme get the ball band, ok I'm back) Roasted Coffee
Needles: US5 Boye (*cough* I only have one pair of nice needles so I always use Boye because that's what I have)
Mods: I had a smaller gauge (5.5 sts/in instead of 4 sts/in, but that was good b/c I didn't want a very big sweater) so I had knit shorter lengths, obviously. I also only did a crew neck instead of a turtleneck. I also made bell sleeves to make it more 'girly'.
When I blocked it, I used cardboard. Stupid. Never ever do this...this is how it came out.















(That stuff on the bottom right is where I poked in all the pins after the sweater was done blocking.)
Here is a pic of all my latest stashbusting, minus the two minisweaters I made (I also made one in Sept. for Anna's teeny knitted doll Aria, using my own pattern with green and cream stripes).
Oh jeez. I just sent the pic of the rest all the rest to ther blog w/Hello...it didn't work like I thought it would. Hmph.

Explanation: The sock is my first Dulann sock, which is also my first sock, which I didn't have a pattern for. Seeing as I didn't have a pattern, it looks a little short in the foot, but other than that I think it came out fine. The new pink scarf is for Justina...I cranked it out last night. Literally. The thing behind it is what I used to make it...a barbie knitter. It works very well and I'm happy with the finished product.
Everything else I'm sure you know. Not that anyone reads this blog anyway.

The Percentage Bars

Here is what the cool fonts looked like. I just recreated them.

WIPs...

Holiday Sweater

My Christmas Knitting (Xmas knitting in general)

Lacy Pullover size 14

Holiday Sweater size 2

And on the back burner...

Dulann Socks
But of course the actual bars are javascript so I can't post them. And anyone who doesn't have java won't be able to see the bars anyway. So I think you should get it here. That said...I'm going to take my temperature.

*Disclaimer*: Some fonts used here are not on most computers. So what comes out looking like Arial is a font you don't have. Poor you :(

OK I took my temperature...

Photoshop tidbit...One of the designer's names is matt wormley.

*Update* I have recreated the whole bar things (it wasn't actually that hard). Blogger SHOULD update it soon. Of course all fellow Blogger users know this is not going to happen...at least any time soon.

And another *disclaimer* I'm too lazy to re paste the html of the different cool fonts, and right here in the window it just looks like 'font'. don't blame me if it doesn't turn out right. (although i think it will, somehow...but you just can't tell.) and if they're still a cool font but all the same or something, that's not how they are supposed to be. And another *disclaimer* Blogger is doing something with the font sizes. Sorry if it turns out all wacky, which I know it will. RRR.

**Second update** I hate blogger even more now, every single blogger blog I try to look at (including my own) says 'page cannot be displayed'. RRR. and there's not s'posed to be an outage or anything like that. This lasts for oh, three hours, then gets back to normal. w-e. P.S. I plan to knit a mini sweater from Weekend Knitting tonight. Don't ask me why. It just appealed to me.

The Queen of HTML...before the computer crashes

Those new percentage bars I just put up? Well I had just the basic stuff up, saved it, and then I did all sorts of cool fonts (which Matt didn't say how to do, btw) and colors, but RRR! Then the computer crashed!!!!!! RRR!!!! Oh well, I'll try to recreate them later using this color code site I used before. But I obviously couldn't memorize every single six digit HEX code...so I'll have to match them up!! Waah!

Here is PBAB. #107 is bottom right exactly. So now you've seen the color and the shape of the ball ;) so you can pretty much see it in your mind. This site has it even cheaper the Kaleidoscope Yarns, which had it cheaper than Knitterly.

PS...I know I said that that other post would be my last today...but I'm not feeling very sick anymore, (in fact I'm feeling rather chipper) and my temp is going slowly down...98.4 right now.

***Update*** Blogger did something weird with the links on this page. (They all say aqua-star.blogspot.com/blahblahblah instead of just blahblahblah.) Oh well. If you're smart you will figure out the actual link. You know? I'm only a few days into this and already I'm sick of Blogger's antics. I would switch over to TypePad but I don't want to have to pay $5 a month...at the very least, for a basic account. rrr.

Fluffy Stuff

My latest FOs are all fluffy. Go figure.
First, this.















The olive green scarf for Mama. The picture doesn't really give you the right color, but w-e.
Yarn: A "Light'n'Lofty" lookalike
Needles: US15 (make for a quick knit...approx 2.5 hrs) Boye *cough*

And then these.














The scarf for Magda (aka Maggie, Mag, MiniMag [because she's two and tiny], Magazine [yes, sometimes I do call her that }:)], or Magdalena, her real name) in supersoft Bernat Lu Lu, and the fleecy facecloth for Grammy (aka Grahndmothuh or POCGHG).
Yarn: I already told you. Don't you people pay attention? OK, it's supersoft Bernat Lu Lu.
Needles: US9 and US I/9 (the scarf is crocheted) Boye *more coughs*
Here's the second picture. Although it still has crappy quality. Sorry about that. And neither of them have the right colors...that reddish-pink is really lighter than it appears. And it's just the way the facecloth is laid out that makes it look uneven.

















This pink stuff is so fleecy and soft! Even though Bernat is "cheap", I've seen almost exact replicas of Lu Lu. And the stuff is a lot cheaper than getting the "better" brand from the LYS. Anyhoo, I really do love LU LU. (Why is it two words? Plus 'Lu' isn't even a word anyway.) Must get more. Must get more. Or something.
You know, the funny thing is, I have a sweater from Wal*Mart that appears to be made from Lu Lu, with two strands held together. Makes sense, because W*M (and no, that is NOT Waste Management) always has cheap stuff, as in not expensive, not as in crappy, and the LL is cheap there.

And somehow, the PBAB still does not work, yet everything else I just posted did. Go figure. Again.

Since I'm sick (probably from staying up knitting this stuff), I guess that's all.

Now For The Pix

My Holiday Sweater against a shirt model in the background...with my knee and the camera cord in the 'frontground' (as Grahndmothuh likes to say).
And I still can't get a pic of the PBAB...because of a 'data error' trying to copy from a floppy disk. Fine, be that way, picture.

I've also just sent a message to the ReKAL person, to add me to the participants list. I just love unraveling sweaters!! =) The button will be up soon...as soon as I can figure out how to put it up!














On a completely unrelated note, here is what's been happening to the whiteboard lately.
Don't you just love it??

My Revised Christmas Knitting List

Here it was before:
KT: Lacy Pullover* in blue speckled
Anna: Outfits for K,S,V in various colors
Me: Holiday Sweater* in aqua and lavender-blue
Mama: Scarf in olive green
Maggie**: Holiday Sweater*
Grammy: 3 facecloths*** in pink and green (her favorite colors)
Grandad: Ribbed scarf in brown (his favorite color)
Kylie: Lacy Pullover* w/beaded skulls on sleeves in black (yes, her favorite color...or non-color)
As you know, this is way way too much knitting (4 sweaters!?!?! Even though two are in sz US15s, the other two are in US5s!) for me to tackle.

Revised:
KT: Some nice yarn from Knitterly (aka PBAB seen, I mean said, in last post [and hopefully will be seen in next] and maybe Touch Me or some nice sock yarn--she's been knitting a lot of socks lately w/worsted weight b/c that's all she has.)
Anna: One article of clothing each for K,S,V and one boot each for S,K.
Me: Still the Holiday Sweater.
Mama: Still the scarf in olive green (which I finished last night, BTW)
Maggie: I'll make her a scarf in supersoft Bernat Lu Lu, and see if I can finish the HS for her bday in Feb.
Grammy: One facecloth *** (finished the night before last.)
Grandad: I think I'll just buy him a scarf.
Kylie: You've seen her present. You know what it is.

I'll try posting pictures from another computer - IT STILL DOES NOT WORK ON THIS ONE. And blogs are SO boring without pictures.

*My own patterns
**The cute lil toddler at my church
***will be wrapped up w/some nice soap

Lemme see if it works now

crud. it doesn't. Well I'll just have to say the other pictures, until they work.

So yesterday I went to Knitterly and bought Katie a skein of Plymouth Baby Alpaca Brush, in colorway #107. so go here. http://kyarns.com/plymouth-baby-alpaca-brush-acrylic-blend-bulky-weight-luxury-yarn.html. This stuff is incredibly cheap and incredibly soft. Well if I'd waited until today, I'd have been smarter and not have bought it yet. Why? you ask? I just won a $200 gift certificate to Knitterly, from a Chicks With Sticks knitting contest - make a knitted square, 7x9", and the most creative one wins. All squares get donated to Warm Up America. Mine was a green background with i-cord knitting needles that were 'knitting' a sampler scarf thingamajig with all sorts of stitch patterns on it. Lisa (a judge, I guess) called today. Yaaay!

And my holiday sweater - I'm sweating to finish it by Christmas. I'm almost finished with the back, so I still have to knit, hm, the front, the left sleeve, and the right sleeve. Don't think I can do it. But I'll try. It has a stripe patt I made up, with two different colors. It goes like this: 6rMC, 2rCC, 2rMC, 6rCC, 2rMC, 2rCC, r being rows. The yarn is nice, I think it's an acrylic/wool blend. But it's very soft and has a pearly sheen. It's in two different shades of blue, but together, the more blue-green-aqua one makes the softer one look almost lavender. Which it's not. But that's okay.
***Update*** I've started the front (which obviously means I've finshed the back).

Anyway, I will be done saying my Xmas stuff.

I can't wait for KSH! and Touch Me! And Debbie Bliss!! Yaay! For free!

As promised, the next post

I got some pictures and thought I'd show you my Christmas knitting etc.



Kirsten and Violet, modeling their clothes. Yes they're dolls. They don't care whether they know about their Xmas presents. The clothes are actually for Anna, anyway. You can't really give presents to dolls. But Anna, being a human, and their owner, can receive these lovely outfits. Well actually, the blue skirt is crocheted by Katie, and is owned by me...so not quite an outfit... And the "natural colors" outfit with the black boots is for Kirsten and Samie (well that's how Anna spells it, I would say Sammi, and BTW that's her hair on the left side of the pic) to split. And the sweater is actually even. It's just a bad picture.
I think I'm happiest with the sweater and the boots...they turned out best, despite the fact that I was totally making the boots up as I went along. (I used another of Violet's sweaters as a model for the pink and blue sweater. In fact, the sweater I used was handknit, I could tell. But I can't figure out who would have handknit it, since it came with her from the factory, or wherever she was made.)

The "natural colors" are SO acrylic. That yarn is the most acrylicky acrylic I have ever seen. Well except for this one 8oz skein which was for sale for 50 cents. It was so acrylic that you could have probably knit a Rubbermaid out of it and it wouldn't leak. Yikers. But, that's what you get in a "super assortment" (although there was wool in the assortment as well. And the pretty two-strand pink and blue that Vi is happily modeling came from the same assortment, as well as my Holiday Sweater. So ya can't really complain.)

And here is Violet trying to model Kylie's scarf. Lookin good, Vi. Kylie is a human, my best friend to be exact. The scarf is a long strip of garter stitch on 12 sts with size 15 needles. The yarn is worsted weight, but kind of thick, I would call it heavy worsted or aran, so it produces a lacyish scarf. It's 3" by approx 38-43". I live in California. It's not meant to be a warm scarf. It's very pretty though (even having been knit with Red <3).

Well crud. none of the other photos I tried will come up. I'll try again in another post, in a few minutes.

I'm starting this thing!!!!!

Okay, I'll quote Jessica, and say this:

Okay, so I'm starting a blog. Obviously. I've been doing so much knitting lately I needed somewhere to share it. Hopefully someone will stop by and look occasionally. I'll try to start putting up pictures as soon as I can.

Which is true for me, too. Expect another post today.



Spongebob...my hero (sorry if the HTML doesn't come up.)