Hats4Cats

Olympics, clouds and buttons, oh MY!

2006-02-02T16:23:00.000-08:00

I will be trying to work on the Philosopher's Wool sweater I started two years ago for the Knitting Olympics. I guess I am cheating though because one sleeve is already cast on and about 3/4 of the way completed and my goal is to finish that sleeve and the second one. Yeah right, that would be an Olympic feat for me! So lets see how it goes.

I have photos taken of some finished stuff and stuff in process. I am hoping to get a new card reader installed in my computer which right now might need a whole new hard drive as well. Husband is talking to the Dell Dude as I type. I am still working on fair isle mittens, the first one is long but fits good around my hand, I should have done the fat but short size.

My first Knit-a-long

2006-01-13T16:30:00.000-08:00

I am all signed up for the knitting! I have a few (like 6!) skeins of Socks That Rock yarn in my stash and am waiting to patiently by the phone for the phone to ring letting me know my circular needles are in. But first I have to finish the Fair Isle mittens I cast on this week and get the little things on Husband's sweater done. Its a long weekend, YAY!

I hate posting without pictures

2006-01-10T12:18:00.000-08:00

That's why I never post. I am too lazy to take pictures and I don't like to post without pictures. I love looking at everyones pictures in their blogs!

Reading my last post I kinda left you guys hanging. The camping trip went well, was a ton of fun even though it rained but we had miles of tarps and kept very dry. Husband was able to walk around a bit in the mud with his walker and the fresh air and burnt campfire food cheered us up.

I did get some knitting done over the holidays, I knit my mom a new flared lace smokering because the original yarn in the kit shed so bad all over her dark coat. The angora yarn it came with was to die for, so soft! So I think I will frog it and make mitten liners out of the angora. For the second one I made, I ordered some KnitPicks Shadow in the Oregon Coast colorway. At first I thought the yarn would be too thin for that scarf but after soaking it and blocking it out the yarn bloomed wonderfully and is so soft. I did go down a needle size and added one or two more pattern repeats. Maybe that helped. I have the Redwood Forrest colorway for myself and might carry along a strand of Autumn Alpaca Cloud with it to make it a little redder and soft.

Mom requested a hat with earflaps that was washable so I created a pattern for that. I used my mitten pattern from the fingers down to make the flaps and then cast on stitches between them to make the hat and knit from the brim up. She is happy and was able to put windproof fleece inside the "mitten" parts.

I am sooooo close to finishing up Husband's sweater. I had to redo 1/2 of the collar because I read the instructions wrong (they were from a book/magazine 100 sweaters to knit and crochet published in the 70's for acrylic yarns) . It has been blocked and the pockets sewn down. Just needs buttons and loops crocheted on to hold the belt. Before blocking the sleeves were perfect but they body was too small, now the sleeves are too long but the body is perfect. I knew I was going to have to adjust the sleeves anyway when I started out so I have a plan of attack for that. I am going to do a little fold and hide it under the cuffs. That way if they need to be lengthened I can just let out the fold. Tried looking for buttons this weekend, I found some that would do but they just didn't have enough, I need 8. I was saving Fabric Depot for this weekend. I am hoping they have what I need so I can finish it up.

My next project is going to be some Fair Isle mittens knit from KnitPicks Essential in the Navy colorway and Mountain colors Wildflower in a pattern from this book Knitting Marvelous Mittens by Charlene Schurch. I am so worried I won't have enough yarn to make them as the pattern is written, I so want to do a provisional cast-on, knit the mitten, do the same for the second one and then knit the cuffs so I can use up all the yarn. I HATE having leftovers when I would love to have longer cuffs. So we will see. I undid the cast-on that I had on DPNs and ordered 2 different lengths of #1 circular Addis. Hoping that will make doing the Fair Isle easier. I hope the needles come in before the long weekend so I work on them.

In the meantime, while I am not working on the sweater I have started a quick little project with some home spun. Its a felted bowl and I knew starting out I didn't have enough color for the rim but dug through my stash and will have the rim 1/2 one color and 1/2 another. I am not picky about this project, it will be used to collect the cat hair from combing Kashmire. I have one for Ember already. At lunch I have been spinning on my Golding Ring Spindle the cat hair blend from Mom's cats, Lily and Tabitha. The cat hair was blended in the class I took at OFFF and the instructor so wisely had me blend it with wool and silk. The long silk strands help trap the shorter hair (even though they are long haired cats) in the yarn. I have 3 skeins of 2 ply already spun up and have enough for one more skein. That will give me approx. 200 yards of laceweight. Mom wants a nice wide lace scarf so I am going to have to make some more to spin. I will try to get a picture of it, its quite interesting.

So, even without pictures I got an entry in! I hope the links keep you entertained and will work to get more pictures next time. Hopefully of Husband's sweater with him wearing it!

Frost on the Pumpkin

2005-10-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

Went out the door today and the dew looked a little thick on the windshield of husband's van, ran my finger over it and it was solid ice! Wooweee its getting to be fall. We haven't had to turn the heat on in the house and its the end of October so I think we are doing pretty good.

Now that husband is home, the first thing he did was call my brother and make a date for camping. Guess what we are doing this weekend. Ever take a wheelchair car camping? I haven't but it can't be that bad. He gets around well with his walker and we are planning to just sit on our butts all weekend around the campfire. We have an EZ-up canopy we bring along so we should stay warm and dry. My brother is the master camper/wood provider and his only job is to keep us warm so I am sure we will be fine. Lots of warm clothes.

Husband had a little setback the week we thought he would be coming home and had to go in for emergency surgery. Because they took him by ambulance, OHSU was on divert that day and he ended up at a different hospital. We are sure getting the tour of hospitals in the Portland area. He was in for the weekend and doing much better now. The frustrating part is that on Tuesday of that week we took him to OHSU to have it looked at and they said it was fine! NOT! Oh well, like I said, he is doing much better for having the surgery and can get around better with less pain.

Knitting wise I have been busy. I plied the cathair/wool/silk blend I spun on my drop spindle and it looks really neat. The cathair acts like angora rabbit, makes a nice halo. The hair is from my mom's cats Lily and Tabitha a tortoiseshell Main Coon X and a buffy colored sweetypie. The dropspindle I was using broke, it had been glued together after husband stepped on it but this time the hook broke after I dropped it and tried to rebalance it. It was made by a local and was a beginners spindle, nothing fancy. So I replaced it with this!
Its a Golding Ring Spindle, 0.9 ox in the Tsunami design. I love it, the single I have on it now is more even than what I spun on my first spindle. I am on the waiting list for a Bosworth Mammoth Tooth spindle I should be getting in December. I have a wheel but just love drop spinning, especially on smaller amounts of fiber.

I also have finished a sleeve for husband's sweater and past the cuff on the second sleeve. I plan to work a little on it tonight when I teach class and take it along camping this weekend. Since it will need to be soaked and blocked before its finished I am sure the smoke smell from the campfire will be removed. I have never done a shawl collar before and the directions are not very clear but we have time to figure that out yet.

I want to get pictures of my new toy (besides the drop spindle) that I got from Ebay. It will be taking my fiber hobby in a different direction!

Pink Shawl Part II

2005-10-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

Michael says he is going to try and come home from the nursing home on Friday. It will be so much better having him back at home. We went out to lunch on Saturday to the little restaurant next door and he had a good appetite which was good to see. His fevers have gone away and he is pretty cheery!

Here is my coworker modeling the pink shawl. Grandma was so happy to get along with the ribbon and judges comments.

And the back
I got one more skein done of the Tortoishell yarn for the sweater and finished spinning a sample of mohair wool yarn on my drop spindle. I finally got to spin a single of some wool I blended in my class at OFFF. It was the assignment of blending 12 colors of wool, when its spun it sure looses alot of the colors and gets muddy, almost reminds me of the recycled silk yarns from Tibet. I bet it will get more muddy when I go to ply and and knit it up.
I haven't been knitting much lately. I knocked my hand on a doorknob somewhere and it has been giving me pain. I did finish reading "Zen and the Art of Knitting" by Bernadette Murphy. My coworker modeling the shawl let me borrow it. It was interesting but not one I would recommend buying.

Thank you

2005-10-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

Thank you for all the emails and comments about my husband's motorcycle accident. He is recovering well, he spent 15 days in the hospital and is currently in a 'skilled nursing facility' where he is the youngest patient there. The good thing is that it is VERY close to home and we go out to eat once or twice a week to the restaurant next door to the facility. I just push him over in the wheelchair and the friendly waitstaff helps me get him up the step and to a table. They have great food too! We still haven't heard if the insurance is going to total out the motorcycle yet, my guess is that they will, with the frame bent and the insurance guy spotting some moisture at the bottom of the cylinder heads its probably dead. We have one more Harley and are not sure if we will be giving it up or not.

Good news is that I won second place at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival for a hand spun, hand knit shawl I made for my grandma! Here I am pinning it out and a close up of the stitch. I have a picture of it being modeled I will get up this week. Grandma got to see it in June when she was up for my wedding but I asked to keep it to enter in the Festival. I sent her the ribbon with the shawl this week and she is so happy.

I spun 18 oz of roving into approximately 1700 yards of two-ply yarn at 24 wraps per inch using short draw spinning technique on my Lendrum folding wheel. I chose the best skeins to knit the 'Marialis B' shawl from Stahman's Shawls & Scarves by Myrna Stahman. It took me from Thanksgiving to the 4^th of July to complete the whole project. It was a great project and I would do any of the other shawls from Myrna's book in a heartbeat!

Next project is a sweater for my husband. I am still spinning the wool for it but will use some Lamb's Pride wool and mohair in the oatmeal colorway for the main body.

Motorcycle accident

2005-09-06T20:45:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday my husband was in a car vs. Motorcycle accident at a busy intersection here in Portland. They ambulance him to OHSU where they did CAT scans and all sorts of tests and thank God he didn't have any injury to his head or neck. He did break his right femur pretty bad and his pelvis in the front and back, his right arm is totally black and blue but haven't heard if its broken or if they are going to do anything to it. The surgeons don't think they will operate on his pelvis, its broken but not too bad and it will heal as it is. If it's giving him lots of pain they will operate on it Friday. He kept getting his surgery postponed because there were worse cases then him coming in so he didn't get operated on for a day and a half, last Saturday. He was conscious through the whole thing and remembers flying through the air for 15 feet or so too!

I did get a lot of knitting done in the waiting room and in ICU. Made a pair of short socks, a baby sock out of mohair, a cat hat and worked on the vest some more. The vest is getting close to being done! Don't know yet if he will be well enough for our honeymoon cruise the first week of October. I am thinking that would be cutting it close to have him fly for 5 hours but being on a cruise ship might be nice!

Here is the bike, a 1999 1200 Harley Sportster. Not sure what the car looked like.

Extending a vest part I.

2005-08-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

This weekend I worked on the cabled vest project, trying to make it longer. I managed to extend a front panel 9 inches in the same pattern it was knit in, the only place the stitches look goobered is in the seed stitch but its almost camouflaged in the pattern.

I cut the yarn at the edge, as I unraveled the stitches I picked them up with my knitting needle. Here is a picture of unraveling and picking up the stitches. I picked up stitches all the way to the seam under the arm. Click the picture on the left to see it better. I then found where I was in the cable pattern (2 rows above a cable twist), I then started on the 3rd row of the chart and worked it in a normal manner, right to left, bottom to top for another 1.5 pattern repeats. Here is the finished extensions showing the newly added 9 inches and twisted rib hem. Just to the left of Dunsyn's head is the 'old' hem.
He is such the helper.

Good news on at the yarn store, its moving! In two weeks we are helping The CozyEwe move to a few blocks away to a new space. It's a much better space and free parking! There are going to be lots of 'yarn addicts' volunteering time and DH and I are going to be there of course!

TGIF and nice weather

2005-08-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

Class was a hoot lastnight, I have 3 wonderful ladies that have been with me since the beginning when they learned to knit their first projects besides scarves. They all made The Oregon Vest in our first class, then was socks/stockings and now they are working on lace/cables, one is starting on her first fair isle and another picked out a pattern to learn intarsia. We kitchener stitched together lastnight. One was working on her sock toe, the other was finishing up the bottom of a cellphone cozy so I read the directions on how to kitchiner and they did the stitching. They were quit happy with the results !

I got some feedback on what to do on lengthening the cabled vest, I will do about 4 inches of seed stitch at the hem to make it longer. I think I am also going to leave splits at the side so it won't ride up when I sit down. It's almost time to start keeping the vests handy, definite fall notes in the air.

Poor Ember kitty is at the vet for her shots and checkup, since I got a new debt card her automatic payment for August on her health plan didn't go through, DH had to drop her off so she will be there all day until I can sign something and pick her up after work. He said she did good on the ride there but there is construction noise at the vet and dogs barking she is not going to be happy. Poor baby.

Should be a good weekend for a Harley ride though!

Which Incredibles Character Are You?
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Baby crochet done!

2005-08-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

Lastnight I finished up writing the pattern for the booties, crocheted a second booty and finished it up with some pastel eyelash yarn that I had. Here are all the baby gear finished and ready for display at The CozyEwe.

I also plied the yarn I am working on, it came out to about 107 yards in 3-ply worsted weight. I have almost 300 yards spun up so far, I have enough for one or two more skeins then I will start on my chocolate colored roving that I will use in the sweater. I have been thinking of getting some Lamb's Pride yarn to supplement my homespun in case there is not enough for his sweater. I will need to make a large size and the amounts of yarn are given in ounces of acrylic yarn and I am trying to do it in wool.

Here is a picture of the roving on my Lendrum ready to spin up. It's very soft with llama, silk, mohair and soft wools in it.
There is some vegetable matter in it, most of it falls out as I prep the roving for spinning but it still gets into the finished yarn. I will try to pull it out as I knit up the sweater.

Tonight is class, I teach knitting and crochet at The CozyEwe on Thursday nights and hang out there on Saturday. I am going to pick up stitches along the bottom of my vest to begin that project of lengthening it. I am hoping to get some feedback on what stitch pattern to use for the addition.

Kashmere is our new kitty, we adopted her last month. I have a soft spot for Tortoishells. Kashmere is super fuzzy and has 3 inch long hairs growing out of her fuzzy paws! She plays Troll by camping out in strategic locations such as near the bedroom door and the top of the stairs and growls as the other cats come by wanting to pass. I think they are still trying to establish the new pecking order but it sure is funny to watch.

Blue Aspen Originals

2005-08-24T13:23:00.000-07:00

Before I got into spinning and knitting I was a soapmaker. I had a small wholesale business going in Seattle. I taught classes at community centers and private gatherings of interested people. Since moving to Portland 3 years ago I decided I was a bit bored with soapmaking and didn't pursue any more wholesale accounts or teachings. I still make soap for my family and friends and a few clients I still have from Seattle that won't let me completely quit soapmaking. We haven't had a commercial bar of soap in our house for 5 years or so.

I did try making lotions, body butters and scented oils but have given that up because I didn't like dealing with packaging. Soap is easy and always useful. It makes great quick gifts too, especially with a handknit cotton washcloth! Here is a link to my soapmaking site. It has recipes and lots of how-to pictures. The links page takes you to some suppliers I used.

This is one of my more popular soaps, I don't have any right now because I am trying to use up the 2 milk crates of fragrance oils I already own. Soon I hope to order new fragrances. This is cowboy and I used baking chocolate for the swirl!

As for knitting or crocheting, lastnight I worked on that baby bootie pattern. I got one made, had to take half of it apart and re-crochet it but I have a pretty good pattern now. I used the last of the green yarn on one bootie so will make the other one out of different yarn and a different way of finishing the top since these are examples only. They don't need to be a set. I will probably get that done tonight and finalize the patterns so I can take them to The CozyEwe on Thursday when I teach class and drop them off. I haven't seen the owner in 3 weeks, Lindy has been in Hawaii with family so I am excited to see how tan she is! I also have my wedding photos to show off.

Ember looks all sweet and innocent, not part of the rowdy crew that knocked over the coatrack in the middle of the night.

'The Incredibles' Evening and teddy bears

2005-08-23T12:04:00.000-07:00

Finally got to see 'The Incredibles' movie lastnight. What a hoot! I especially loved the short film "Boundin'" with the little pink sheep of course. Here is some cool trivia for 'The Incredibles', I love the trivia on movies from this site.

I finalized the pattern for my shell blanket and wrote up the draft for the crochet baby hat with a shell edge. I REALLY need batteries for my digital camera to get some pictures. I am still going through my photographs of past projects here to keep you entertained.

Here is a picture of the wedding bears my mom made for Drittz and I. She made the bears from a pattern but all the clothing were made by looking at photographs. The jacket on the male bear is satin lined, he has sock flags and a kilt pin. The bagpipes are cloth and Fimo clay and she made those by looking at photographs I found on the web for her. Same with the claymore sword. The bride bear's dress is styled after my own wedding dress. She made her own bead appliques by beading tule, cutting it out and attaching it to the bear's dress. She even gave the girl bear fuzzy boobs to help fill out her dress!

After reading a knitting tip from Maggie's Rags, I think I am going to try to pickup a row of stitches from my cabled vest I want to lengthen, remove the current twisted knit ribbing and knit down from the hem. I don't know if I want to make the hem a longer version of the twisted ribbing, seed stitch or something entirely different like the cable around this sweater for the hem. Actually, I think the cables going up the vest wouldn't go well with cables going around the vest in a 90 degree angle to each other. Here is a shot of the back of the vest before I got it all put together. What's your opinion on lengthening it at the hem?

Crochet Shell Baby Blanket

2005-08-22T13:57:00.000-07:00

I finished my homework! A group of us are making samples of baby blankets and accessories for The CozyEwe yarn store in Oregon City, OR. Since I am one of the few crocheters I decided to come up with an easy pattern and make a model. Lastnight I wrote up the pattern for it to give out with yarn purchases from the store. I need a better official photograph of the blanket but the camera batteries were wearing out fast. It is 27" x 30" and the blue is a Sidar acrylic, the green is a Sidar wool/acrylic blend that I held doubled because it was dk weight and the blue was Aran.

I also have a quick and easy baby hat from the leftover yarn, mostly the blue was left over so its blue with a stripe of green and green shells along the edge. It's pretty darn cute. Then I will create a booty pattern and turn in all my homework with extra credit for the hat and booties!

In June I took a week to make this (Mananita) for my wedding on the 4th of July. I never got around to wearing it because we had such beautiful weather when all week long they were predicting RAIN! I used the pattern out of Shawls and Scarves: The Best of Knitter's Magazine It is made out of Madil Kid Seta ( I think, I need to find the tags, and I think it took 1 1/2 or 2 1/2 skeins of it) I didn't follow the edging in the pattern because I was short on time and did a loopy crochet chain with a clear glass seed bead at the midpoint of the loops. The beads add a little bit of sparkle and help weight the edges down. The mohair is soft and its an easy knit on 10 1/2 size needles starting from the center out with no purling involved. The large holes are triple yarn overs with 18 stitches worked into them on the next round. It took me a week to knit this. I plan on taking it on our honeymoon, its perfect cruise attire!

I spun yet another bobbin of Tortoiseshell yarn this weekend that I need to Navajo ply, probably tonight if I can. My coworker brought in his DVD of "The Incredibles" for Drittz (a.k.a the husband) and I to watch so we might be doing that instead. My next project, after the baby booties, is lengthening a cabled vest I knit earlier this year. It's a perfect plus size, just not long enough. It's a design I created loosely following the Oregon Vest that I taught a class in at The CozyEwe. I have plenty of yarn left over so I am going to pickup the stitches around the hem and knit longer, though I don't know what pattern I am doing to do the lengthening in. Must do some research.

Today I got our photographs from the wedding photographer! Now the hard part is choosing which 40 we want out of the 190 she has. Mom wasn't much help and has ordered a parent's album leaving me to choose her 25 photos that go in it!

Nightshade says " I can help choose photographs!"

Clackamas County Fair

2005-08-19T20:53:00.000-07:00

I took the day off of work to go to the fair. First we had to stop at the insurance ladies shop and consolidate our insurance plans now that Michael and I are married. We saved a bit but the best part is they are all on one bill! Yeah! No more writing of multiple checks to pay insurance.

Michael dropped me off at the Fair because he had a job interview to go to, then he would meet back up with me. My friends Janet and Alan have a llama at the fair and so I made a beeline to where they were hanging out, but first I cruised through the 4-H building that had all the cool sewing, knitting and cooking type projects in there. Alan had a Grand Champion skein of yarn and a fancy felt scarf he made that won a spot at the State Fair coming up. Congratulations Alan! Check them out in his blog Knitboy's Life I took a few pictures for him that he will probably be posting on his site. I am not going to spoil the fun and post them here.

My favorite parts of the fair are the bunnies and goats. I pet any goat that would stick it head out for me or was close enough to reach over and pet. There was one that we stopped to talk in front of its pen, I think it liked all the hide off my hand. It kept licking and licking. She was a sweetie! I love goats, can you tell? I really want an angora goat, they are soft. The bunnies were sweet too, a 4-H girl let me pet her Lion Head bunny that was 8 weeks old. I used to raise Red Satins and Rex rabbits in 4-H and my mom had all kinds of Angora rabbits she raised for wool. I still have 3 coffee cans of angora wool to use for spinning.

I took my crochet baby blanket project but I didn't have time to work on it. I did get a picture of the baby booties I finished this week. Last night at class I had 2 women that came in early to get help. One was easy, she had twisted her stitches when she was taking a row out and they made it too hard to slide them along the circular needle. I untwisted them and she went off to knit some more. The second lady had some knitting come apart in the middle of her project. I re-wove the stitches (garter stitch) and kitchener stitched it back together. I surprised myself being able to do that.

More on Monday!

Pearl when she was alive, In her flower hat of course!

Purple Baby Booties

2005-08-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

Looking through my pictures of projects past I found purple baby booties I made for a highschool friend's baby girl that was born in February of this year. The booties are made of leftover cotton I crocheted with some leftover eyelash yarn. Lastnight I finished a similar pair that is white with pastels through it and pastel colored eyelash yarn. My coworker bought them for her daughter's baby but she can't have them until I show my students in class tonight. The pattern is from Bernat but I couldn't get them to turn out right by following the pattern so I modified them a bit.

Meet my Wall-O-Yarn. My homespun yarn lives on this wall going up the stairs. Sometimes I stop and fondle it madly while walking by. The yarn on the far right is what I spun in spinning class. It's quite slubby. Next to it is some white wool that is what I dyed to make my mom's fingerless gloves. The dark brown is a yarn made from Jacobs sheep, its nice and soft. The silver stuff is Border Leister that I got off of EBay, I had to wash and card it myself. I used the handcarders that my mom gave me. The purple is Blue Moon Fiber Arts Targhee in the Aubergine colorway. Its very soft and I am having a hard time trying to figure out what to make with it.

Currently the Wall-O-Yarn has some small skeins of sample yarn spun on my drop spindle from Twin Brooks Farm . I LOVE Carol's stuff. The Wall also has 2 skeins of the Tortoise Shell colored yarn I am spinning for Michael's sweater. I did finish plying what was on the wheel yesterday. With Dunsyn's help of course!

Green Gloves

2005-08-17T13:57:00.000-07:00

I am going to post about my past projects that I have photographs for until I get my camera working to take photos of my current works in progress.

My first project I made out of homespun yarn was fingerless gloves/mittens from the knitty.com pattern Broad Street Mittens .

I had just started spinning probably a month earlier and dear mom wanted me to make her some mittens. I had some white wool that was easy to spin, just had to learn to spin it thin, I was shooting for sportweight yarn that was 2-ply. Next she asked for green. Now I wasn't quite ready to get into dying wool yet but I gave it a shot. I had read on the internet about microwave dying. I got some dye mixed it up and zapped it with the wool a few times in the microwave, I didn't measure well and just glugged a bit of vinegar into the water with it. It looked nice and bright and green!

I am more proud of the spinning and knitting than the dying. She is going to keep them on their little fishing boat. She says they are great because she can always find them and a handwarmer fits inside the finger cover nicely. That's a picture of my mom modeling them for me.

I had a bit of the green yarn left but ended up giving it away at one of the Glam Nights to a nice gentleman knitter that fell in loved with the color. Merry Christmas!

I haven't dyed anything since then. I just buy roving that is already the colors I like, if I don't like it I don't buy it. I do have a dyekit that goes with the Twisted Sister Sock Workbook that I hope to play around with someday. For now I am happy spinning my natural colored wool and the wonderful stuff I get off of Ebay.

Lastnight I worked on the crochet baby blanket until I ran out of yarn. I didn't grab enough when I started so I have to wait until tomorrow night when I teach class to get more. I put that aside and spun some more wool for Michael's sweater and worked on some baby booties that a coworker has requested. Tonight I hope to finish the second booty and perhaps Navajo ply the yarn that is on my wheel.

Hats4Cats?

2005-08-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

That's a dumb name.
No, its a fun name.

Last winter I used leftover yarn I had to make little hats, I really had fun knitting in the round with DPNs. I really wanted to make a little garland for the fireplace with hats and mittens, I only got a far as the hats and there here is what happened:

Ember got the little Santa Claws Hat, doesn't she look thrilled?

Nightshade was caught napping, she is yawning, not pissed off.

Jasper (a.k.a "Little Man") played cool looking like a snowboarder dude.

Dunsyre was too busy doing kitty yoga to partake in the meriment. Actually the poor guy didn't get a hat. Maybe next year!

Well that's it for my first posting. Who is putting money on how long I will keep this blog going? If its like my online photoalbum it won't last long. I really think I will keep the blog going because I want a place to post and keep track of all the cool crafts I do. Most of my knitting and crochet get sent off to family and friends so I don't have a chance to show them off. I will dig around and try to find pictures of shawls I have knit, gloves, scarves, vests and some yarn I have spun to post here. Currently I am working on a crocheted baby blanket for a pattern/yarn sample at the CozyEwe in Oregon City, OR and spinning tortoiseshell colored wool for my husband's sweater I hope to knit for him this fall. More pictures tomorrow!