Penguin Kindle Cover

To celebrate my 50th birthday on 12/12/12, my DH got me a Kindle Fire!

By the next day, I was already knitting for it. I may have heard a comment or two along these lines....

"You've been knitting for your Kindle more than you're been using it."

That may or may not have been true, but my Kindle needed to be fashionable, didn't it? Anyway, I designed this cover, wrote up the pattern, and listed it on Ravelry.

 Click on Penguin Kindle Cover if you want to make your own penguin.

And then your Kindle can be fashionable, too!

Flash Your Stash 2013

So, I was on Ravelry and saw the thread for "Flash Your Stash 2013". Every other year I had decided that this was way too much work to do, For some reason, though, this year it seemed like a good idea. 

A long while later.... (along with several comments along the lines of "are you going to put that all away when you're done?") and I was done.

This is what I have at the start of 2013. Here's my roving (the fleece is new, bought in the fall, and waiting until I get up the nerve to start):

Here's the handspun by me:
(the spindle is a red herring.  The yarn was exclusively spun on my spinning wheel.)

Here's my wool stash, the biggest group of them all:

Here's the sock stash:
(most of this is now good deals from various websites bought for M4A purposes. Not too much really expensive yarn left. Good thing? Bad thing?)

Acrylic, cotton, and random bits and pieces:

Here are my FOs.  They're waiting for a need somewhere and until then it's nice to have a stock of things.  Some will be for M4A or for new babies.

Lastly, here is a pile of UFOs.  More socks than I realized, but one is a current project and one is almost current.  (And one is waiting until I find that missing ball of yarn.)  One vest, furthest on the right, is my oldest UFO.  I have thoughts of finishing it in January.  The blue blob in the middle is a sweater for me that I started in the fall.  I picked it back up over the weekend and hope to get it done soon.   Well, as soon as I knit some sleeves.  So I guess I should say....  soonish.

While I have a nice-sized stash, and I could certainly knit exclusively from it for a couple of years, at least it still seems manageable to me. So, I'm not going to really go on a yarn diet, just try to continue on, only buying yarn if it's a really good deal, or if I really need it for a specific sweater or such.

Dear All the Mamas

Last winter, several ladies from our Mittens for Akkol knitting group got the brilliant idea of writing an ebook. This book would contain patterns that we've created and used to make woolies for "our" kids in Kazakhstan and would be a fundraiser for buying other items for the kids. When Nanci goes and delivers our handknit goodies, she also buys lots of items for the kids. Things that we might consider basic, like their own blanket and shampoo, to things like oranges and nuts for their party, to shoes for the babies. This will help her with all those items.

Well, time has passed,the ladies have put in countless hours of work and it's now ready for purchase!


Dear All the Mamas; Knitting for the Orphans of Kazakhstan is available for a donation of $15.95 to the Motherless Child Foundation through Ravelry. ALL proceeds flow directly to this 501(C)(3) nonprofit public charity to help fund our work for the children in orphanages in Kazakhstan.

Not only does this 70-page eBook feature a collection of 21 PATTERNS, but the knitters of the Mittens For Akkol Yahoo group also have shared our knowledge and experience about knitting for extremely cold weather. We have included several stories about the children and experiences in Kazakhstan, sizing charts, and information for all knitters who enjoy working in wool and providing warm items for others.

To purchase, you can click on the title above, or you can click on this "buy it now" button.


I actually have 2 patterns in the ebook. The first is called "Pick-a-pattern" where you can pick from several 4 st patterns to make socks. Different designers contributed the stitch patterns and I included the coffee bean st.

The other pattern is "Diana socks" that I wrote when knitting socks for Diana, one of the grads from a year or two ago. It's been on my blog for awhile, but I've taken it out and now it will be available only in the ebook.

This is the first time that my patterns have been anything other than self-published and it's all for a good cause.

 Don't you want a copy???

Now back to knitting some socks....

Stitch Surfer

A finished object! These are the Stitch Surfer from Knitty.  They would look much better modelled on some feet, but they're too small for any at my house.  Check out the pattern for a better idea of how they look.

They're made by knitting half a row in each color and then doing a wrap and turn and then purling back that row.  Increases and decreases are made in each knit row to get the pattern surfing to the left, and then surfing to the right.

The hardest part is really doing the purling on the way back, and that's just time consuming and not really hard.

They were really quite fun and will be going to M4A on their way to Kazakhstan for their fall sock challenge.  I have time to do one or two more pairs, but this time I think I'll make them plain vanilla.

Homecoming

Here are a couple of quick pictures of tonight's Homecoming.

This is DS#2 and his date. First time going to homecoming, and first time with a pink tie!  It matches the sparkles on his date's dress.

This is DD#2's senior year and her last Homecoming. (Her dress is really navy blue, even though it doesn't show up that way.)

Her corsage was on her left arm and deserved to be shown, so here it is:

A Parade of Socks

Since February, I've knitted several kinds of things, but almost the entire time I've had a pair of socks on the needles.  Mostly they've been plain vanilla socks, but I did a couple pairs of fair isle.  Here's the ones that I've taken pictures of.

What I'm working on...

Note to Lynn:  I'm not sure how old the vintage Red Heart Fingering is, but it has a price of 39 cents.  That HAS to be pretty old.  Plus, the heart says "Start knitting here" and is attached to the inner end of the skein.  Boy, do I wish they still made them that way!

School started last week, and with that came the need to start a sweater.  Yes, it's for me.  Yes, I know it's a man's sweater.  Too bad.  It's still for me.  I tried finding a woman's sweater to make using this yarn, but I kept coming back to this one.  It has a collar with a short zipper, so I'll have a new-to-me challenge to face at the end.

I've also been knitting socks.  As always.  These are worsted weight socks using Patons Classic wool and a broken rib pattern.  All that's left is to Kitchener the toes.

And last, here's a pair of plain socks that go with me where ever I go.  This is the first sock that's just past the heel.

The socks are both for the M4A sock drive that will be taken over to Kazakhstan by Nanci at the end of the year.

So, that's what I have on the needles right now.  (Well, that I'm actively working on.  I do have a couple of other projects that I really should finish up.  Sometime.   Maybe tomorrow.  But not today.)

Fake Cross Stitch Sox

(I decided to blog like I haven't actually been missing for months....  I'm trying out a new browser and it's working better with Blogger and I might be less frustrated with the whole thing.  If it works, I might even try to catch up a bit.  Not with everything, of course, since some things have no record of being made.  But even though I've been missing from this blog, and I might not be able to find many photos to prove it, I have actually been knitting.)

The current pattern from Six_Sox_KAL is called Fake Cross Stitch Sox.  It's a fun pattern to do because it has 10 rows of pattern work and then 10 rows of straight knitting.  I used some vintage Red Heart fingering sock yarn in a pleasing blue.  It was part of a big lot of yarn I bought from an online friend selling yarn to member of M4A at a great deal.  (This will be one of those missing pics since I've already used several skeins.)

I used 2.5mm dpns and 60 sts and they came out on the small size;  the foot measures 7.5" in length.  That's okay, though, since M4A needs socks of almost any size.

Here's a closeup on the cross stitches.   I should've rotated this picture so you could see the pattern better, but if you turn your head you could get the same effect.

Well, that's the end of this post.  Blogger has changed some since I last posted, but I still can't come up with a good finishing sentence.  I guess some things just stay the same.

Dull

I've been plugging along, working on the Kaz grad items for Mereke.  This year I'm making all the knitted items for one grad rather than doing random items for different grads.  His colors are white, black, and bright blue.  I made his hoodie last spring, so now I'm doing all the other things.

You saw his hat a couple of days ago, right before it got frogged and started over.  I think it's done this time, but am waiting until I block it to know for sure.

Here's his scarf, being made out of Patons Classic wool.  The pattern is Diagonal Mistake Rib Scarf, which is going very nicely, although I can't seem to memorize the pattern.  The edge stitches, I mean.  The middle is all K2, P2, which I can do...  :)

However, it's kinda boring, being mostly k2, p2 the whole way, plus it's in black.  Uggh.  Lovely to wear, horrible to knit.

It's also not a knit that I can take to the Bball games and such, so I cast on for Mereke's socks.  These are plain vanilla with 72 sts on size 1s using Lang Jawoll Aktion sock yarn.  The yarn fits into the color scheme pretty well (and was picked out by my DS as being something he would wear.  Manly and all.)  However, it's also boring.  And... I'm not sure there will be enough yarn.  Mereke has 11.5" feet so these have to be really long and I did a really long cuff as well.  They're in a mini-timeout while I hunt for contrasting yarn for the toes, just in case.

I needed something different to work on, so I started this hat.  It's not any more colorful, but at least it has interesting texture, being skeins of wool that I spun from a mystery bag of roving.   This has no purpose, other than to give me something interesting to make.  When done, I'll save it for when I need it, as a gift or something...

However, it's not very colorful.

So...

Yesterday I cast on for this:

Yep, this is colorful enough.

I had 1/2 hour at a car service center and 2 basketball games to sit through yesterday so I got a lot accomplished.   At the service center, I had a nice talk with a couple of ladies, one of whom does lots of knitting and crocheting and had a daughter who spins.  I'm not sure if I've ever randomly run into another knitter before.  She was eyeing my yarn quite enviously, too, as she had forgotten hers and was stuck there an hour longer than she thought.

At the end of yesterday, I had the bright beginning of sock and a new key for my car (I had only one before, which would periodically set off waves of anxiety that I would lose it.  Or that DD#2, aka the new driver, would lose it.  But mostly me...)  Also, both basketball games were won.  (DS#2's season is done, but DD#2 still has playoffs.) 

Today, I don't have anywhere to go.  (Imagine that!)  Plenty of time for knitting, both dull and COLORFUL!