"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
- Barbara Bush, 3/18/03

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coming home

hi there ~ hope everyone’s holidays were great. as always, i’m just getting used to writing and thinking 2004, and now 2005 is just four days away!

christmas was great, and crazy busy in a very happy way. this year i made three of my gifts. my immediate family, including spouses and kids, has grown from 7 to 12 in just three years, and it’s sure to keep growing for a while still. (after all, my little sisters and me haven’t even started yet with the whole kids thing!) so, this year i made a decision that i will make three or four gifts a year, and the rest will be storebought. this way, i reasoned, i wouldn’t be killing myself trying to get gifts for everyone done, especially since this invariably means staying up all night christmas eve and being horribly tired all christmas day. belatedly, a friend pointed out that means i have now committed to making gifts every year – eek!

this year i made three gifts, two of which you see here. the first is claudi’s felted bag. she’s a gal who likes bright colors, especially in the winter time, so i knew this bubblegum pink would thrill her. and she’s a girl who likes her bling, so the brooch works perfectly. i made the bag out of lamb’s wool worsted, just barely over a skein’s worth, using magknits’ sophie pattern, changing it slightly because claudi requested two handles versus the one twisted one the pattern called for.

the second handmade gift is shown in this great photo of my sweet niece rileigh right after she had opened her present and just pulled the kittyville hat on (thanks for taking the photo, luci!) i made the hat a while back and quickly decided it would fit rileigh to a t, and indeed she seems to like it a lot. yay!

i also made my older sister daniella a booga bag, using the same kureyon yarn that’s shown in the pattern photo. she loved it and was using it the next day, which was thrilling.

for both of the felted bags, i used my mom’s washing machine which had not very hot water. and since i couldn’t figure out when it was going into spin cycle, i ended up putting both bags through two cycles each. i think both of these things ended up shrinking both bags a lot and on top of that made them have much more of a ‘halo’ than i had with my first felted bag. i’ve read online that one could easliy just cut the halo away using scissors, but my sisters said they liked the halos.

other than that, i was supposed to be back in l.a. already today! the thing is, i got a call this morning saying my flight was canceled and that they were sorry but i wouldn’t be able to find a flight leaving d.c. until thursday. i was mighty pissed off – called half a dozen different places and finally got the last seat on a flight leaving tomorrow at 7 am, arriving in l.a. at noon. i’m so ready to go home!

ok, off to sleep for a half hour till i gotta get up to go to the airport (yay) – g’night and thanks for reading this thrilling post ;)

~ andrea

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posted 27 December 04 & filed under kittyville, sophie bag

frogger

so, i love the paris loop poncho. but it just wasn’t working for me. as you can see, the yarn itself is lovely lovely eye candy (and so soft to the touch! i feel like a baby’s bare butt is in my hands as i knit..) but, in the end, with only inches to go, i frogged the whole thing. that’s what i get for not only using a different yarn than the pattern called for, but also not doing a single gauge (much less the three gauges the pattern specified) and using entirely different needles (13, 11 and 9 all in 24”) and lengths. ah, the hubris of the “advanced beginner.”

after digging around online, i found enviable examples of the paris loop (here, here, here and here). now combine those pretty examples with paper hat’s wise point: “There’s often all sorts of dire consequences for making a mistake. In knitting, you get a DO-OVER. A DO-OVER—for free! Who doesn’t love that? You can rip it out, wet it down, start over. You can try the same thing again or try something different. ” so, with all this in mind, of course, i heaved a mighty sigh and tried to frog with relish (not that hard, actually. :P )

i have not given up on paris loop, i’m just determined to cast-on with no more than 90 stitches (the poof yarn is much thicker and fluffier than cicco, the original yarn) and might even do some decreasing towards the top. also, i will not knit the stripes so big,
maybe cut them in half. one of the things i like best about this pattern is that the poncho ends right around the waist (and even a bit above, depending on torsos, etc) but with this fluffy snowball yarn, i was in danger of ending up with a knee-length poncho.

(by the way, that second picture shows me wearing my mid-frogging poncho a la beauty contestant. yes, it was that big. see why i had to frog?!)

but (and this is an important redeeming but) as you can see, i did manage to be pretty knit-productive this past week, with the lovely endless holiday and weekend. before i left for italy, i bought this pretty yarn ( i have this thing for dark reds and purples) with the idea of knitting the stitch n bitch kittyville hat. and that’s what you see here, as modeled by my real-life kitty, the ever sweet and patient trouble.

i’m not that crazy about how the hat looks on me (hence no photo) but it was fun to knit. plus, i finally got to try out those addi turbo needles (verdict: fast perfect stitches, but the joining of metal to nylon bothered my hands, and i like the way bamboo feels better) and, most exciting of all, i made pompoms! yippee! very fun and oh so satisfying to cut open. while making them, i remembered being a little kid and watching my mom, who is a craftster extraordinaire (she used to make all her own clothing when she was a teenager, and always made our halloween costumes when i was little, as well as my first communion dress, my prom dress, and more, gracias mami!) work her magic as she made these pompoms. now, i too am a magical craftster.

p.s. check out this cecile telle page ~ though a tad too modern and geometric (ikea-ish), overall i really like the style of these felted stuff.

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posted 7 September 04 & filed under kittyville, knitting

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