Sunday, April 16, 2006

Happy Easter Knitting Day


As promised, these are the booties for the twin girls my sister had a few weeks ago. The pattern comes from the book Knitting Pretty Yes, there are three pairs for two kids. They are twins, they will share for the rest of their lives. They can start now. In fact, they probably already have. I will put them in the mail tomorrow, along with some yarn pieces so she can pick a few more colors. She insisted that no pink gifts arrive, and though it was hard, I stuck to it. I will include some red and maybe one pink (just in case she's changed her mind) and some lavenders and blues.

There were Peeps this morning. And then french toast with nice Grade B syrup and some bacon for breakfast. Dinner was extra special, a replacement pb&j lovingly crafted after I almost threw the first across the room when the wildlife crawled off it and up my arm. I'm not one to be afeared of wildlife, and I have taken a phrase from my grandmother that I realize offends some of my friends, "It's just protein, dear." She was a scientist. But this was too much, and I had skipped lunch, so I was a wreck anyway, so before my boyfriend went to his music meeting, he made me a sandwich. I won't even tell you why I had left the first one on the counter long enough for someone else to start snacking on it.

The newest scarf swatch...

You can see the curling that still happens, blocking would probably fix that. You can also (maybe) see the moss stitch border that I added. The pattern is 16 stitches wide, on a background of reverse stockinette stitch. All the way at the bottom the side borders are five stitches of moss and then the five of reverse stockinetter. Clunky. So for the next pattern repeat I went to three moss. Still clunky. Then to just two. I like that, but in Worsted weight yarn, this 36 stitches is a bit much for a scarf. So I might try it in something finer on smaller needles. I have some blue Alpaca Peru, and I can get that in a green or a brown if I like the way it knits up. This is Plymouth Encore right now, which I like for knitting, but sometimes it's scratchy when it's knit. Also, the skeins I've gotten lately have all been huge messes on the inside, requiring at best a long concentrated untangling, and at worst, as with this skein, some scissors.

And as a final Easter Treat, this is one of my cats, Mable. The feet of her friend John can be seen in the background, and that sad thing she is, uh, holding, is a toy we call "Fat Mouse." Which goes pretty well with her, because we call Mable the Fatkins. As an aside, Mable and John are both girls. They are both spayed. John sometimes finds herself feeling confused when people refer to her as he. I tolerate that, since I caused the confusion with the names. At a later date, the kitten naming stories.

3 comments:

Katie Collette said...

Thanks for the comment!

I love your cat names! Mine are both boys: Fred and George. And while they don't eat laptop keys or cockroaches, they do like to munch on small spiders, which I wholeheartedly encourage. I hate spiders!

Ry Pepper said...

Those booties are soooo adorable!!

Thanks for the comment with the tips for the One Skein book. Can you believe I haven't even started something from it yet? I can not wait to make the cable scarf now that I've seen yours. It's really gorgeous!

Shadkitty said...

My cats are Hobbes and Romeo. Not much fun there. lol

And...I love baby booties. I think that I'm going to use my pregnancy as an excuse to knit a ton of them.