A Big Friday In!

What do you get when you add hot glue, crocheted circles and a plastic lamp shade together?  A very exciting Friday night?
Yep.  That's what you get at my house!

A few weeks ago my friend MT & I were at the thrift store and we spotted these...

Zippy bags full of crocheted circles!   I'm sure there is a name for these but since I only know Granny Square and these aren't square, circles it is!   I bought 2 bags just because my creative wheels were spinning!  Oh the things I could do with these.  

 Not all of the circles were the same, they were multi-colored, multi-sized but just screaming for something wonderful to be made out of them!   Who am I to ignore screaming yarn things?  Well... I did ignore them for a while!  Several weeks after I had to have   bought them,  I finally knew just what they were going to morph into!

A little trip to Ikea for this rather boring, plain Jane ol' plastic lampshade... shh.... It was Big's choice to go to Ikea on 'date day' so I grudgingly (ha!) went along...

It comes flat and all you do is snap the two ends together, plunk in the metal bar that holds it on the lamp - in this case suspends it from the light kit and then you have a lamp shade. How boring is that? That's where the crochet circles come in!!

I dumped the circles out on the floor, trying to be random but pretty soon I noticed that I had separated all the circles into their own little color piles. Sigh. No random anything here in OCD land!

A little (okay lot) hot glue action and one burn later...

Ta-Da!! 

 A very not so boring lampshade!  It looks a lot better in person (honest!) and even the boys' think it is well.... 'interesting'!

How's that for some thrift store finds and a big night out in at the Cupcake house?

I like it!

How does your Hubby spell Knitting?

My husband thinks that knitting is spelled like this... K n i t t i n g S t o r e.  Or maybe he thinks it is spelled like this... m o n e y.  Poor guy really does know how to spell but every time I start a new project it usually involves running off to some knitting store.
Today was no exception! I've been working on the sweater vest for Wild Thing the last few days and am so ready to start the finishing, but.... darnitall!  My stitch marker box has been AWOL (absent without leave) for about a week.  I can't use regular old yarn stitch markers, I have to have the locking kind! That meant it was off to the knitting store for Big & Schi-Schu today!!  Go me!!
 I really didn't want to spend our 'date' day at the yarn store and honestly, I didn't think I could talk him in to it either, so I casually suggested that we stop at Joann's as we were driving by.  It wasn't out of the way or anything!  Joke really was on Big though because I 'let' him talk me into stopping at Ikea! Which is really funny but that's what he chose to do!   I did try to play nice and do one of those "it's okay Honey. Really. You don't have to go in with me, I will just zip in, pick up what I need and be back out in like 5 minutes."  I don't think he believed me because he went in with me!  Probably just to make sure that none of the yarn grabbed me and made me stay more than those promised five minutes!  It was  one of the fastest trips in and out of Joann's in my recorded history, but.... I did manage to grab a skein of yarn (shh) as well as my stitch markers!  Gee... you gonna give me a hard time about one measly skein of yarn too?  It's not even for me!  It's for my friend G!  She wants to make a ruffly scarf and I've never seen this particular kind of yarn for less than $10 so of course I had to grab her some!
Anyway... back on track.....
Why do you need more locking stitch markers asks my hubby? To finish this vest for Wild Thing of course!  I thought you were almost done with that and besides his birthday isn't until October... yeah. I shut him down pretty fast on that one..... well... we did go to Ikea after all!  LOL  He doesn't really mind going to the knitting store, he just likes to give me a hard time!
In case you are wondering why I needed more stitch markers.....
I've decided to once again try something new! A little pre-planning for picking up stitches along the arm edges and the neck facing! Just to make sure that it all comes out even (AND I don't have to do it 12 times!)
I'm supposed to pick up 72 stitches along each arm edge, starting at the middle of the bottom. Thinking that this should all be sort of even (it may look better!) I'm taking the stitch markers and placing them at regular(ish) intervals all along where I'm supposed to pick up those 72 stitches.

See? Evenly spaced out (sorta)!  I'm hoping that this way I can evenly space the stitches out and not have big gaps.  I hate gaps.  I always rip them out and start over and I've been known to do it multiple times!  The plan this time is to just avoid it!  So keep your fingers crossed and stay tuned! I will let you know how my plan goes!~

Something New!

I learned something new today!!
I've been putting off working on Wild Thing's sweater vest because the thought of the Three Needle Bind Off was a little daunting.  Ha ha!  I didn't learn that I put stuff off... I learned that the three needle bind off is super simple!
Ha!  Once again it was me putting my knitting on a pedestal!  (Yes CS... insert whatever noun you like there!)  I do this kind of stuff all the time.  I think too much about it, I worry about it and think I can't.  Cables?  Um... yeah... did that with those as well!
Three needle bind off is just that.  A bind off using more needles than usual! That was the scary part!  You just use 3 needles instead of 2!  It's a way of grafting stuff together without Kitchener stitching and it's really pretty cool!  The seam is practically invisible. IF you make sure all of your stitches are going the same way when you bind them off! Sigh.... don't ask how I know this. Just don't.
It starts out a lot like grafting using the kitchener stitch. You have 2 sets of live stitches (the ends of WT's sweater vest!) and you put them onto needles. *I used DPN's because I didn't have to move from my chair to go get them!*  Face the needles and the stitches the same way and then bind off using a third needle.  See?  3 needles to bind off.  Duh.  What's so hard about that?!   Absolutely NOTHING!

The left side is bound off... the right side is waiting!  Just need to slip the front 7 stitches onto a needle, slip the back stitches onto another. Grab a third needle and...

knit one from the front needle and one from the back AT THE SAME TIME!

Now I have 2 stitches on the right needle....

Just do a regular ol' bind off stitch now!  Slip the first stitch over the second ..

AND DO IT AGAIN!!  All the way to the end!

This is what it looks like on the inside!

And this is what it looks like on the outside!

Doing the left side (as you are looking at my picture!) took less than 5 minutes! So... 5 minutes for the other side and then all I have to do is pick up stitches along the neck edge and each arm opening!  Then a few rows of ribbing and this little baby should be all ready for Wild Thing and his birthday in October!

A Vest for Wild Thing

My little buddy 'Wild Thing' turns 4 at the end of October. Why I felt I needed to start a birthday present for him now.... I'll never probably know, but start it I did!
I actually cast on the bottom edge last week (Wednesday at Royal Knitting!) and made it almost all the way up to the armpits. This is where I realized that I had not only made a size too large for this kid but somehow I had ended up with enough stitches that made it huge! I don't think it would have ever fit this kid!   Wow. I have no idea what I did, but seriously I think I was in the neighborhood of making a size 10 ~ for a much larger animal!  I was shooting for a  boy animal size 4! 
I love how I find out things when I knit. How to do stuff, how to make stuff work, how to NOT do something and well... just  loads of interesting things become apparent when I knit! Yeah, so most of the things I realize are from mistakes, but.... learning from mistakes is a good thing! Right?
This is what I've learned from this little sweater vest!   Frogging! Frogging is so much easier if I use my ball winder! It goes so much faster if I just pay attention to what the heck I'm doing, but sigh! The ball winder to frog the vest was really kind of fun!!

Starting over on this little vest was a really good idea so after ball winder/frogging I started over on Sunday and now that  today is Thursday,  I'm almost done!!  I just have to do a 3 needle bind off at the top of the shoulders (another new thing for me!) and then pick up stitches along the arm holes and neck edging and then complete a ribbed edge!  Woot!!  I even got a little adventerous and deviated from the pattern (who? Me? Never would have thought that now would ya?!) and added a little stripe on the front! The V neck with a ribbed edge will come from the top to the top white stripe. It's a little hard to see in the picture, but there are 2 top straps on each end of that gold stitch holder. They run in a v point down to the stripey section! I don't normally stray off the pattern path but in this case, the pattern is super simple and I wanted to have a little bit of Wild Thing's sister's dress in here! Just because I'm sure their Mom would totally smirk at the 'matchy matchy' thing!!
* Miss Butter's dress was made from the same yarn - Berroco Remix
Here are the pattern particulars:
www.knittingpureandsimple.com
#256 Simple Vest
#266 Little Girls Sundress
Berroco Remix - 100% recycled fibers and WASHABLE!!

Rippin' It

Don't you just hate it when you are happily knitting away and then all of a sudden... (insert ominous music) darn it all!  A mistake!  *Insert Pirate expletive*   Grrr.
 I hate when that happens.  Because it means that I either have to chuck it all and start over (shh sometimes I start with another ball of yarn) or just start ripping out my knitting.   Rip it, rip it, rip it!
Have I ever told you how much I hate rippin' it?  Yeah.  I do.  Almost as much as I hate socks.  LOL
IF it's just one or two stitches that I've dropped somewhere along the way, that's no big deal.  I'm a whiz at picking those babies up.  I just grab a crochet hook, stick it into the dropped stitches and wait until I get back around to where they are.  I then just 'hook' them back up all the way to the top.  Wa-la!  No big deal.  BUT if it's a bigger problem than that... I just have to rip it.  Grrr.
I've been working on a little vest for my 3 year old buddy 'Wild Thing'.  It's really cute (LINK) and 'WT' is really cute so I figured it was going to be one of those no brainer, easy peasy projects.  Um... yeah... that's what I get for thinkin'!  I'm making it for his birthday (not until October) so I planned on making a bigger size for him than what he is wearing right now.  *Insert sighing and eye rolling here please*
What I didn't plan on was that the size I was making would magically make itself 2 sizes bigger than what I had circled on the pattern.  I did count!  I DID!  I double checked myself all the way through until I got up to the point where I needed to divide and bind off for the arm pits........ what?!  That's where I discovered that I obviously either counted wrong, or just cast on way too many stitches in the first place.  I tried decreasing but.... still.... this vest might have fit 'WT' when he was much (much) older.  So... what's left?  What else can I try now?
Yippee.
Let's rip.
Whoop.   Not.
So I start ripping out my work, *yes you may insert pirate expletives here*.   I'm ripping away and Big comes up and says.... "Hey!  Why don't you use your ball winder to wind that up?"   What?!
A guy (and a non knitting guy at that!) suggests a really helpful and why this never occurred to me until right now... idea.   Okay, okay... it didn't occur to me UNTIL after he suggested it.   DUH!! USE YOUR BALL WINDER to rip stuff out.

So that's just what I'm doing.  Wow.  It really isn't bad, this ripping out stuff... with a ball winder!!
It makes perfect sense and it really does work.  Why it never occurred to me before I will never know, but from now on.... this is exactly what I'm going to do when I rip it!!
Now the only thing I have to do is NEVER (ever) let Big know that I hadn't thought to use the ball winder for this before.  Shh.

Sighing Socks

 I don't think I've picked up a ball of yarn except to move it for the last few days.  What?!  Really.
I'm having some serious yarn withdrawals and it ain't from lack of yarn!!  I have a ton!! 
Can you say distracted? Um yeah..  You try paying attention to anything when your hubs has been gone for several months and then sends you an email that says he's not in "Kansas" anymore. Seriously.  My lack of focus is totally his fault!
I did manage to clean, clean, clean!!  My way of handling stress I guess!  I cleaned out everything! Washed everything I could think of and then went and looked at my yarn!  Time to start a new project! Time to organize!  LOL.  That's what usually happens with any kind of stress around here!  Things get cleaned and organized!
The time I spent with my yarn was very productive..... mostly for my new alley buddy!  I went through my yarn, sorted it out by type (yeah.. can you say OCD?) and then sorted out some stuff I'm never going to use.  I did sell some (not much) and gave away some more (GASP!) but... still not much knitting happening here!
In the process of cleaning out....
I found some socks that I made for Big a couple of years ago (3?) and I actually felt a twinge of inspiration!  Aha~!  That's what I need to do!  Make him some new socks!  *I didn't throw the holey ones out though and now I'm really glad I didn't!!
I did try and make new socks for Big,  but... I used a pattern I found that said easy... I got almost done with the first sock and then thought.  What?!  Make another one?  I don't even like this one!!  The gauge is all off  (yep. One more reason to knit a gauge swatch grr) and it might have fit a much (MUCH) larger person.  I then tried the 2 at a time from the toe up process.   Really?  Wow.  Too confusing. 
There are a bunch of books out there for making socks, but I really think the two at a time idea might work for me!  I mean seriously, have you met me? The attention span of a gnat!  Why in the heck would I knit socks when they are so cheap to buy in the first place and if I did decide to make some... pretty sure my attention span wouldn't allow me to make the second sock!
I've been just muddling around about socks for a few weeks now.  BUT now that BIG IS HOME!!  Now that Big is home I really need to put in more of an effort!
Guess what he did first thing this morning (not THAT geez!!)  HE PUT ON HIS OLD RAGGEDY SOCKS!!  Seriously.  I can't believe he remembered where he put them for one thing, but to go for those old yucky things first thing on his first morning home?!  I guess I should feel all warm and fuzzy that my hubby obviously loves the socks I made for him!! I do!! It's just really funny!
While he was  be-bopping around making coffee he starts complaining that his toes and his heels are cold so I look down at his feet and Ha Ha!  He has on the socks I made for him that are now so worn thin that they are barely even socks!

He's making some serious noises about needing new socks... he's sitting on the couch and sighing (loudly) and then reaches down and pulls the - or trys to pull the fabric over the cold heel and then tucks it around the cold toe.... he's making me laugh! He then looks over and asks how the knitting is going. What have I made lately... those kinds of comments. See what I mean? Seriously? Since when does Big ask about what projects I've got going on?  AND with all the sighing going on and tucking in of sock fabric around cold toesies... Really? I'm thinking he's hinting that either his toes really are cold (lol) or he wants some new socks! 
So maybe that's my lightening bolt of inspiration! Sighing socks! Hmm... I wonder if I can figure out how to make him stop off at the yarn store today... obviously I will need him to pick out the sock yarn for his socks! Right?!  Obviously.

Fabric For Maddie

Okay guys! I'm spending way too much time on the computer and not enough time actually making stuff! My Pinterest boards are filling up, my idea bin is overflowing but I'm still not makin' nothin!
So... what do I do?
I start going through my fabric and trying to 'purge'! I can't possibly need all that I have and if we make a huge move next year... no way I can take it all!  Super sad I know..... BUT...  some of this stuff has to go. 
It's just that it is so hard to donate it to a charity organization around here, knowing that it will sit in a dusty store............. oh wait.................how about.............
I was online (yet again) and I found this
                                              http://blog.craftsy.com/2012/03/meet-maddie/

Quilted Hugs from Maddie
PO Box 2461
Cleveland, TN 37320-2461

http://blog.craftsy.com/2012/03/meet-maddie/

Meet Maddie. She’s a very exception eight year old little girl.  I love kids... that belong to other people.... and I don't even know this kid, but I'm in love!!  Most eight year old kids that I know can't even finish a project but Maddie is not only finishing her projects......... she's giving them away!!  She makes quilts for the sole project of donating them to people in need.  Wow huh? 

So... back to that fabric I was having a hard time sorting through.... now that I have a real purpose in mind for each and every piece in that box....

look out Maddie... here it comes sweetie!

I feel so much better about helping someone out when it truly will be of a benefit.  If an eight year old is making quilts for people just because... well... I can certainly send her some fabric!!
**Just click on the link to the Craftsy Blog for more info about Maddie. I've added her address above her picture too... hint hint!!
**