Idyllic Chick

Labels: Geeky grrrl

I don't think I'd be able to live in a house this small, but OMG what I would give to be able to vacation here for a month at a time!
http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm

Over the past two days I have knit approximately three football field lengths of yarn. That's a lot of yarn. All for a good cause! With those three football field lengths of yarn I knit the biggest hat in the world, which is felting in the washing machine right now. Wish me luck on this prototype for the Lime Green Bowler! It's either going to fit perfectly, or be waaaay too big. Either way, I'll know what to do for the real thing. This is only the second felting project I've done, and I forgot how magical it feels. Taking this huge mis-shapen hunk of crap and turning it into a real, fitted, classy hat is pretty exciting. Well, as exciting as we like things to get here at Chez Idyllic, anyway. =)

Labels: Knitta please

Oooh! The productivity! I finished the baby bunny bonnet yesterday, making my 'Finished objects' list start looking a little longer. My last few projects have been small, but the gifties abound, and that makes me happy. Katie called last night to tell me that her differently sized socks kept her toes warm and toasty while she was in Cape Cod this past weekend. That makes my heart warm and toasty!

While I had every intention of getting my Hot Tamale back on track yesterday, my brain seemed to be heading in a different direction. See, over on the Snarkland forums (What? You aren't a member yet? What the fuck!? Go sign up now!) we were chatting about what movies we are looking forward to seeing this summer. C&I are very excited about going to Jacksonville to see the new Harry Potter movie with the rest of his family. Months ago we had talked about doing costumes for the opening, but decided not to due to the time and money involved in such an endeavor. But yesterday morning, I realized that I can still make a Lime Green Bowler for my sweetie to wear to the movie, and it won't take much time or money at all. And it will go great with his dark mark tattoo! So I spent most of the evening knitting up a big swatch to felt for that. Today I'll start on a full-sized hat with the yarn I have on hand. I want to do a prototype to ensure proper fit and shape of the final product.

Today will be a big frogging day as well. I have way too many projects on the needles, especially now that I've added yet another one. A few of those projects aren't destined to be what I originally thought they were, so I'll be starting over on some. It'll be... liberating... Yes. It will be liberating to rip out all of that work! Huzzah!

Labels: Knitta please

Pattern: Top Down Bonnet from Hello Yarn. Another very fun quick pattern! What's with me and the bunnies for babies lately? I did one ear in reverse of the other so that they would be mirror images, and I kitchenered the ear closed instead of running the end through the loops. Not that you can tell that I did either of these things, because, frankly*, I didn't do either very well.

Yarn: Bernat Cottontots in color 90420, displayed on a ball of Cascade 220, because that's the closest thing we have to a baby head around here. This yarn is very inexpensive and very soft! I enjoyed working with it.

Needles: Size 5 Addi Turbo (insert light saber sound here) circulars using the Magic Loop method for the very first time! I only used the ML because while I have approximately 382 size 6 dpns, I have absolutely no size 5s. So it was a move made in desperation . A move that I'm very happy to have made! I'm going to try my next pair of socks using the ML, and not just because it'll give me a reason to buy a new pair of Addi Turbos (Schwoooooop).

Began: June 19, 2007

Finished: June 22, 2007. Probably the second fastest thing I've ever knit.

This will be gifted to an unsuspecting parent for his/her unborn child. Tee! I love not-so-surprises!

*Quit called me Frankly.

Labels: Knitta please

No I'm not going to eat the yarn for lunch. But I will be drinking the beer!

Labels: Boozing it up, Knitta please

I'm taking the day off of work today. Not a paid day, as I just started this job a year ago and only have a measley five days of vacation until I've been there for two more years. Hey people, it's not like I live in Italy or anything. So there will be knitting, and tv/movie watching, and lunch with my sweetie, and more knitting, and some ripping out, grocery shopping, and knitting. And I guess a bit of blogging and net surfing. And knitting. It's going to be a Very Good Day, and I bet the weekend won't suck either.

Labels: Knitta please

I've officially got Friday off this week! Woo hoo! Nothing special going on, I just want to take a day off for myself. I'll go have lunch with C at work, and hopefully spend most of the day knitting up on Hot Tamale. My goal is to have her done in time for Necronomicon in November, and as slow as I knit, I'll be working right up to the line. Knitting daydreams today have led me to the idea of designing a sweater, since I can't seem to find a pattern for something that I have in mind. We'll see how far that thought actually gets!

Labels: Knitta please

Pattern: Jess Hutchinson's Bunny. Fun, quick knit! I don't know if I'm cut out for the making of the stuffies, though. I think I'd rather make a garment. I do want to try the hedgehog first, though, before going through with such broad statements. Betharoopie always has such fun with that one!

Labels: Knitta please

You know those weekends where you don't really leave the house, but on Sunday night you realize that you'd just had a wonderfully perfect, quiet weekend at home? C&I just had one of those weekends.

I still try to plan and cook dinner on Fridays, even though I'm back to working normal days on Fridays. I usually opt for something easy, if not quick. We've had frozen pizza on more than one of 'my' Fridays. This week it was Shepard's Pie. Mashed potatoes on the bottom, saucy meat* in the middle, and a biscuit-y concoction as it's crowning glory. Make one for now, freeze and save one for later. As I was deciding what to cook on Friday I emailed Chris to ask him if we had any butter at home. He replied that we might have a stick or two, so I said that I'd buy some more. When he realized the recipe was put together by Paula Dean, he understood why we needed more butter no matter what. That lady makes some good shit.



Our nice, homey, comforting dinner on Friday was followed up with a lot of work on Saturday. I had brought home a ton (And I really mean a ton. Not like, 'Oh, I have a ton of homework to do.' More precisely like, 'There is a ton of dirt in the back of my truck.') of dirt from work so that I could start building up my flower beds. After unloading that from the truck (With Chris' help, of course. And yes, I'll put a tarp underneath it next time.) I mixed about half of it up with six bags of cow manure and started building up my beds. Six full wheelbarrow loads of enriched dirt doesn't go nearly as far as I thought it would. I figure 4 to 6 more wheelbarrows worth and I'll be ready to put in plants and drip lines and mulch along the first, oh, maybe ten feet or so of flower bed. And that's the most narrow part of the future bed. I had no idea how huge this bed was going to be until now. I'm thrilled that it will be a gorgeous entrance to our property! But it will take me at least the next several months to make it all happen. Baby steps, people! And real plants soon, thank gawd. I was beat after that, so C&I mostly just hung out and watched movies and tv and stuff for the rest of the day on Saturday.

Sunday brought a total house cleaning, all of the laundry washing, and the smoking of a pork butt. So much house cleaning that I even organized my craft/storage/junk room, and so much butt smoking that we'll be eating meat sandwiches for weeks. I love waking up on Monday morning to a pristine house, and I love eating meat, so I'm set for the long haul.

I found no less than seven knitting-projects-in-process in the craft/storage/junk room. So what did I do Sunday afternoon? I started another. It should be done tonight, though, and I don't think the receiver of the knitted gift reads here regularly, so I hope to have some knitting progress to post soon. And I plan to start another knitted gift as soon as I'm done with this one, so those poor seven unfinished projects will just have to wait.

Labels: Gardening, Knitta please, Yummy in my Tummy

Pattern: Harry Potter Bookscarf, very tiny knitting! Very very tiny! When I first saw this pattern I knew I had to make it for my friend, Chrissi. She received it in the mail today, and she said, 'you are just too fabulous for words!!! this is the greatest gift, ever!!!!! i love it in so many ways....how'd you get so sweet??!! it's perfect...and just my size!!!'

Labels: Knitta please

Pattern: Several months ago my friend Cathy asked me to make a coozie for her teapot handle. When I visited her home later, I saw that the coozie I had made was waaay too big for the tiny handle of her teapot. This, coupled with the desire to learn double knitting, led to the idea of Cathy's Kitchen set. I didn't enjoy the double knitting at all (It was easy enough technically, but it was a pain in the butt moving the yarn forward and back over and over again. Plus it was very hard to keep the tension even.), so I found this alternative hot pad pattern. I then whipped up a a couple of simple garterstitch dishcloths and a smaller teapot handle coozie, and there you have it!

Yarn: Sugar 'n' Cream (100% cotton) in a bluey and a bluey-greeny-yellowy variegated, purchased at Yarnwerks.

Needles: I dunno, probably US6s or so.

Began: Around April 16, 2007

Finished: June 10, 2007

Labels: Knitta please

Pattern: I started with the Baby Cable Rib pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks, but instead of doing the cable every four rows, I did it every eight rows, alternating every four rows. That doesn't make much sense, but if you look at the photo you can see what I mean. I used the magic cast on, the Widdershins heel again, and the sewn bind off again, and I think that I may never knit a sock differently. I made plenty of mistakes in these socks, so I hope Katie doesn't look at them too closely.

Labels: Knitta please

I've been way too lax in posting my finished objects lately. Since I mailed two of them off earlier this week, I should do come catching up here, don't you think? I'm going to split up the posts so that I can link to them individually from the sidebar.

Labels: Knitta please

I made a mistake at work yesterday. Not the huge end-all, be-all of mistakes, but enough of a mistake that it's going to be a pain in the ass for a couple of us to fix. And a big enough mistake that I feel pretty crummy and stupid for making it. When I apologized to my boss for it this morning he said, 'Thanks, but eh, I make mistakes every day.' How nice and different this is than what my previous boss would have said, which would have been along the lines of, 'What the hell do I pay you people for?!' Yeah, it's nice to not wake up hyperventilating in the middle of the night. =)

Or it might be a foxy man, but we saw the fox this morning! Our neighbor, John, who spends a lot more time outside than we do, has seen him a few times, and Chris saw him the other night walking across John's lawn. This morning he was just standing in our side yard, looking into the woods. By the time I reached over for my camera phone, he was trotting away from the house, heading up the road.

I've only seen a fox once before. Chris and I lived in town, and were walking Monty before dawn. I thought a cat was crossing the road, but his tail was too bushy to be a cat's. Raccoon? No, too tall. He was gone by then, but on our return trip up the same road, he crossed the road again, closer to us. Totally a fox! And this was just a couple of blocks off of 8th Avenue, one of the busiest roads in Gainesville.

I'm happy that we have fox visiting our yard. It makes me feel like we're living in the country. Though a website that I read said that foxes are moving to more urban areas because it's easy to get food (They'll eat pretty much anything). So maybe our place isn't so special after all.
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Had a lovely weekend so far! The last Kellyoke in Gainesville was on Friday night. It was great fun, but a bit sad, as we were seeing Kelly and Robbie off to North Carolina. They are going to do so well there! And we will have to go visit en masse so that we can try to relive the Kellyoke days of old.

Yesterday started with delicious homemade blueberry pancakes (Thank you, Sweetie!), then lunch and a beer at Ruby Tuesday's with a handful of knittas. Afterwards we went to Knit in Public (I keep trying to type 'Knit in Publix'. That would be weird.) day at the maul. We had a good turnout! 15-17 knitters (And supporters!) showed up, some of them new faces. I hope we see them again at S&B on Sundays. Went home after that to pick up the Chrises, then off to Celena's for Brody's birthday party. We met a wonderful group of people, and had some good cold beers in the heat. I had every intention of mobile blogging the day, but I'm not quite sure what happened. I think I was on such a roll knitting my sock that I didn't think to pick up my phone to take pictures. So sorry!

Today brings some work around the house, and S&B. I'd love to get some posting done for some knitting projects that I've completed, but don't hold your breath. That'll happen, just maybe not in the next handful of days. Hrm, I wonder if I'll want to continue to keep track of my finished objects here when I finally get my Ravelry invite? Hrm. I'll have to dwell on that some this weekend.

The guy behind me in the check out line at the grocery this evening had nothing but a huge frozen Turtle Pie, an equally huge bottle of wine, and a 12-pack of Samuel Adams. I told him, 'You're either in for a really fun evening, or a horribly depressing one.' Happily, he smiled and affirmed that he planned for it to be *very* fun. I think he thought he'd be getting laid. And with the size of that cake (ahem), I would bet on it.

Check out my mum-in -law's new shoes! She says, 'Aren't they cu-ute?'