My friend DeLilah had an addition to her family about a week ago, a baby boy. In preparation for his arrival, she commissioned a baby blanket by me. So I went to Hobby Lobby and bought several skeins of “Lambie Pie”, a fluffy, ruffly eyelash-ish yarn. I was thinking about doing a bearghan, but the Lambie Pie is… what’s the right word? Challenging? Difficult? Sucktastic? I tried to swatch it, and wound up throwing things. Not gonna be a bearghan.

But I had some really cute baby-weight yarn that went reasonably well with the blue Lambie Pie, and I decided to make some little granny hexagons and join them with the fluffy stuff. The fluff is okay to edge and join the much more visible yarn, but working back into itself is nearly impossible. Here are some shots of the work in progress.

It’s almost done! Just three or four rows of motifs and some more fluff around the edges, and it’s ready to wash and dry and hand over to Granny Dee for distribution to the young’un.

It’s not huge, certainly not a full-on twin size bedspread, but just a wee little binkie.  Now the race is on to finish it before Christmas!

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Hello dear reader, I am quite sure you have been waiting for an update on the prodigious pursuits of my fingers! (I mean crocheting and knitting, of course…)

Last month, the mother of two of my co-workers (they are sisters) died in a sudden traffic accident. Let me tell you a little about these two sisters. One is tall and sort of reserved, the other is loudly cheerful. I wanted very badly to put a smile back on their faces, so I crocheted a pair of comfort shawls. The first one was an Irish rose pattern, but everyone said that Miss Dee (aka The Loud and proud Mouth of the South) loves sunflowers. So, the dimensional roses shown in the pattern book in mint, cream, and pink became sunflowers when worked in deep green, bright yellow, and coffee brown.

Then I worked up Miss Pam’s shawl. I was so unsure what she would like, so I took a filet motif I found online(which I will link to later) and tweaked it to go around the edge of a plain open mesh triangle. I worked that up in a pretty variegated yarn in autumn colors, then finished it off with a ruffle of the coffee brown left over from the other shawl. Both were done in worsted-weight acrylic (I Love This Yarn, from Hobby Lobby).

I can also add spinning to my list of craftiness. I made a drop spindle a few months ago, and finally got to order some fleece. It was a luscious hank of Blue-Faced Leicester, dyed varying shades of brilliant blue. It was wonderful, it just about spun itself, despite my noob status and my really unbalanced homemade spindle.

I am also still working on Becky’s armwarmers (arm scarves, she calls them.) They are being knit with Alpaca Fina from elann.com, in the same shade as that first ever pair of socks. The first one is done, and the second is about a third of the way finished. I got the pattern from Melissa Morgan-Oakes’s Two-at-a-Time Socks. It’s called Athena, and all i did was work the cuff and leg, increase a couple of times along the backside to accomodate Becky’s big ol’ Popeye arms, and do another cuff. Next up will be socks for Momma and Carrie, and Donnie expressed interest in fingerless gloves. But those are to be Yule gifts, and I’m not sure I want to spoil the surprise.

By the way, another co-worker is expecting another grandson and asked if I would do a baby afghan on commission! She wants it to be in different shades of blue, and she wants me to pick the pattern. I’m thinking something patchwork-inspired, like Log Cabin or something like that. The little one has four months left before he makes his entrance, but I need to get crackin’. I think that will be crocheted as well, because I just knit too slow. Expect more updates and work-in-progress pictures. I shall be attending to my crafty duties faithfully.

I have just finished my first pair of knitted socks, after 4 months of grueling labor.  They are for Becky, but these pics are of my feet modeling them.

The lighting is bad, since it is the middle of the night here, and it does no justice to the color, which is a heathered green with brown, teal, and black flecks.  No picture at all can do justice to the feel of them.  Because Becky is allergic to wool, I used alpaca (Elann Alpaca Fina), and they are softer than a newborn kitten.

They are a first attempt, and one is a bit bigger than the other because it took a whole first sock to get the tension just right.  However, I’m quite proud of them, and, more importantly, Becky likes them!

The next project to go on the needles will be a pair for me, but I think I’ll do something a little fancier and girly.

Greetings dear readers!  I know you have all been waiting with bated breath, desperate to know what nifty little crafts have issued forth from my hands.  Here they are: naalbinded mittens and a hat.  I am drying them as I type.  Here are some pics of me boiling them up on the woodstove. 

That is a hat.  The terrifying thing with felting up something is that when the wool gets wet, before it starts to shrink, it expands… a lot.

That is the blue mitten, also seen with its already shrinkydinked mate below:

Here is the hat, after a few minutes in the dryer:

And the ensemble:

They still are a bit floppy, so they will go back into the dryer for a few more minutes.  And hey, if you liked them, go to the Barnyard flea market this weekend and buy them!  They will be offered for sale on consignment by an acquaintance of mine who has a booth there.