Really, this is all I got to show...

It has been over a month since I linked up with Patchwork Times Friday feature On the Needles and this is all I have to show for my time... really... it is...

one solitary scrappy sock and the tiniest bit of a mate cast on... sad sad sad... I haven't been knitting as much lately (playing more with my cross stitch in the evenings) but even so I should have more to show... but I don't... because my routine lately has been cast on, knit, frog, repeat... over and and over and over and over. I think I've stated at least another 4 or 5 socks and each has been a bust... wrong colors... too small... changed my mind... got bored... or any of a million other excuses.  This one is a lot of Opal skeins... except I don't think that purple at the cuff is an Opal color... I'm not sure what that was.. I hope it turns up again in the next sock but I'm not sure as I have a bunch of little nameless balls of scrap yarn ...oh well.

I'd like to blame my lethargic behavior on the weather... and I will... too many gray rainy days... like today... which is wet, gray, cold and miserable.... what happened to those 80 degree days of April??? I was so proud of myself for getting so much potted up ... and we know pride goeth before a fall... and when I was hurrying to pot things up I was feeling smug that Mother Nature would water stuff  for me... oh and has she watered... now I'm afraid everything is drowning!!!  I've emptied the saucers out of every pot  I can on numerous occasions... I'm afraid that the roots are turning to mush... but it is too soon to know... they need a chance to dry out and then we'll see.

And then I heard on the radio today we could get some frost Sunday night....NOOOOOOOOOOO.... I have no one to blame but me if this happens as it has been drilled into me since I was a child helping my Grandma to plant that you shouldn't put anything in the ground till Mother's Day... but I was seduced by those 80 degree April days... big sigh.  I can haul the stuff I have in pots into the garage and the stuff in the window boxes on the house should be okay as they are close to the house and high off the ground. I checked a couple of other weather forecasts and they didn't have a frost warning in them so I'm hoping the radio station is being an alarmist.


And since I don't have much of anything to show knitting wise and my rants about the weather are getting depressing I will tell you about a great play I saw this week... Beautiful, The Carole King Musical...

OMG if you have a chance to see this one do it!!!  When I opened the  Playbill and looked at the musical numbers I knew it was going to be special... I knew all the words to every song listed...and if you are of a certain age (and we won't be specific here but if the 60's and 70's were your youth you know who I mean) this is the soundtrack of that time. I knew that Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote a lot of songs but I had no clue how many hits they had... unbelievable.

I saw this show at the Aronoff in Cincinnati and the cast was wonderful. Lots of great voices... you will leave the theater happy happy happy!!!

Here's hoping mine and your weekend will be less soggy and more sunny...

happy knitting-
carol fun

A tale of two cities...I mean socks...

So it has been a crazy busy week and not much has been accomplished on the crafty front... haven't touched my sewing machine... did a little cross stitch... and did a little knitting... which brings me to the tale of my two cities... socks...

I was knitting away on the Frankensock I showed last week and that got me thinking (always a dangerous thing) about other Blue Moon yarn I had in my house...

So I went looking for wayward Blue Moon yarn  and found this sock...

This one is a Blue Moon Rare Gems...  a yarn with no real name... I put it aside when I thought it was a bit too bright... prior to my cataract surgeries... and somehow now I don't think it is too bright at all... I LOVE it... it bits of neon orange and hot pink and green... so pretty.

Well looking at these socks side by side I noticed something...

I don't really think you can see it in the picture but the Frankensock on the left is noticeably thicker...heavier than the Rare Gems sock on the right. These socks have the exact same number of stitches ...58... but the Frankensock is knitting on a 2.75mm needle and the Rare Gems is knitted on a 2.50 needle.... and I like the feel of the "fabric" on the smaller diameter needle much much more. Who knew that a needle a mere .25mm smaller would make such a difference????

Sooo...... I'm going to unravel the Frankensock and start again... I can hear my friend Linda groaning right now as I type this... she can never understand how I can rip out and start over when I have so much knit already.... but if I'm not happy now, I won't be happy with the finished sock and I enjoy the process of knitting them as much as the product.... and Linda... how many of those teeny tiny, itsy bitsy little leaves/circles/flowers have you redone on that magnum opus quilt you've been working on??? I'm just teasing her and she knows it... admitting something isn't right and fixing it is all part of the whole crafty experience.

Well I've been having my handyman, Dan, do a bunch of projects around my house and my son's house this week... both of our bathrooms needed repainted... we both live in older small houses with tiny bathrooms and inadequate ventilation... I have an exhaust fan which does help a bit but there was still some paint that needed touch up... and he put in a new faucet in my bathroom sink... and a bunch of new overhead lights...I've found some cool fixtures at Costco that are LED... love the look and the light they put out...however as always seems to happen when you work on fixing one project another crops up. An inspection of my water heater lead the conclusion that it needs a look see by a professional plumber... the hard water/calcification/gunk built up on it in less than 5 years is pretty severe. It was suggest about a year ago that I should get a water softener installed but it was going to involve demolition on the ceiling of my basement which was remodeled just 3 years ago... I couldnt' bear to do that at the time... but I think we've come up with a new plan that wouldn't require that ... there will still be some demolition but not the ceiling... having a plumber come tomorrow and another on Tuesday to give me some direction and estimates.  There is always something isn't there???

I'm going to link up to Judy's Patchwork Times On the Needles... hope you have a great weekend ahead... I have more "house" projects to do...

happy knitting -
carol fun

Bad blogger... rant on DST... tale of the scale...

Today I offer a trifecta of tales...

Okay... first thing first...I'm a bad bad blogger... I didn't mean to be away so long (but then does anyone really mean to not post for 2 weeks?)... but life got in the way...nothing dramatic ...just life.
I had my second cataract surgery and it went well, except the first time I didn't remember a thing. This time they gave me a different anesthesia and I was "there" for the procedure... heard a boring conversation about the anesthesiologist's son's soccer team... I liked it better the first time... ignorance is bliss.

On the plus side, my vision has never been better in my life... on the minus side, my vision has never been better in my life and I can see stuff I NEVER noticed before!!! Like dust on the furniture... and woodwork that needs cleaning and painting ... and floors that could use to see a mop... and a shower that is no where as clean and white as I thought it was....yuck!!! So I've been spending time with a dust cloth/mop/rag/vacuum cleaner/paper towels/bleach/cleaning products... you get the picture... and it ain't a pretty one. Glad this isn't a big house...

And since I didn't post last week I missed my chance for my semi-annual rant against Daylight Saving Time... nothing has changed  my opinion from last year or the year before that or the year before that or the year before that... I STILL HATE IT!!!!  Just leave the time alone... it will stay lighter later all on its own... and I won't be nearly as crabby as I am from losing that hour... do you have any idea how much chocolate it takes to make me chill out over that hour??? A LOT of chocolate!! LOL

So lets move on to more enjoyable pursuits... like socks! Here is the last pair I did with the sock yarn from my Opal Advent Calendar...

This time I took 4 of the mini skeins and divided each of them in half. Then I knit each half until I ran out of that skein and I started another. I've finally figured out that to make a pair of socks with Opal yarn I need 28 grams  per sock... the little skeins weighed 15 grams... half of 15 is 7-ish grams ...hey you know math is not my forte... so 4 half skeins will make a sock. I glad I'm documenting this info on the blog so I can find it later... as, it has taken me numerous pairs of Opal socks to figure this out.

Now armed with the amazing discovery on my part I figured I could apply this information to making other scrappy socks. I thought about breaking out my bin of Opal sock yarn and making a mountain of mini skeins but then I thought that a change of pace from Opal sock yarn would be nice... I was thinking waaaay too much here.

Instead I liberated my Blue Moon Socks that Rock yarn from it's bin...

 and made little mini bobbins of colorful yarn....

 I was so proud of my math skills, as I determined that I wanted to use 5 different colors in each sock... so that meant I needed about 5  to 6 grams of each color, right??? 28 divided by 5 equals 5.6...so I'm in the ball park, right???  I was able to use my newest toy... a little bitty scale...

isn't it cute?? My older son, the prosecutor, pointed out that these scales are primarily used to measure drugs....ummm... not me...LOL!!   Yarn...only yarn.... so off I went winding, winding winding.... I cast on this new Frakensock and I barely got the cuff knitted...oh something is wrong here ... I should be able to get waaay farther than this on 5/6 grams of yarn... on an Opal sock I was able to do the cuff and another inch and a half or so...

At this point I reweighed the Opal sock... 28 grams... and then I went and got a Blue Moon sock... a whopping 55 grams!!!!  The Blue Moon yarn weighs almost twice what the Opal does... yikes!!! Need to wind more yarn bobbins right away... and I did!  Thank goodness for my little scale and the tale it told...

Here's the sock so far....

I love the colors of Blue Moon yarn and I ADORE the names they give them... starting with the cuff this sock includes Crabby McHappypants... Fire on the Mountain...Azure Malachite... and  I'm just starting Chickabiddy... this is definitely a Frankensock!!!

I'll be linking up with Patchwork Times today for "What's on your needles?"... this sock will be a great project for waiting in the car knitting... and I might just cast on another new project... this cowl...

my friend Cathy was wearing the one she knit last night and it is soooo PRETTY... it is called the Orchid Cowl and it is a free pattern on Ravelry that you can see here.  Need to go root through my stash for a nice skein of something with cashmere in it... that would feel so good around my neck...

Hope you have some nice weekend plans... today my son's friend is hanging out here... tomorrow we have a wedding to attend... and on Sunday I think my older son and his wife are coming for dinner...and I'll try to squeeze in some kniting/stitching/sewing... sounds like  a pretty nice weekend!

happy knitting-
carol fun

Socks, sight, Spring and Sister Ida....not in that order...

It is a glorious day outside... sunny, a little breezy and temperature of 65 degrees...in February ...in Ohio... what is going on???  This isn't the Ohio I grew up in... with temps like this (a forecast of almost 70 for Monday and a 60 day outlook of above normal temps) I'm going to have to  return the snowmen decor to their plastic bins and break out the Spring stuff...I've never put my snowmen away before March but it may happen this year. I'm not complaining... I LOVE the sunshine... makes me want to work in my flowers, but it is waaaay too soon for planting... around here I've always stuck with the date of don't put stuff in the ground till Mother's Day

The last  couple of weeks have given me lots of sitting around waiting time and that has translated into 2 finished pairs of socks. This is the first pair, basking in the sun...

wider stripes done with some of the mini skeins from my Opal Advent Calender and some tonal Drops Fabel from Nordic Mart which you can see here.

And this is the second pair I finished, also taking a nap in the sun...

these are even prettier in person... the blues and corals remind me a sunset in the desert...ohhhh I'm am waxing poetic here...LOL  I used 4 different mini-skeins from the Opal Advent Calender. I have had sooooo much fun with that calendar...can't wait to do it again...and I had a thought to take my Opal stash and make little mini balls myself to play with.... that could keep me occupied until next year's calendar arrives!

I've cast on one last pair of socks from the Opal Advent Calendar...the last 4 pretty skeins...there are 3 skeins that I think are butt ugly and they are being banished to the basement storage room.

As for my sight... WOW... it has been 3 days since I had the cataract surgery on my right eye and I am stunned how well I can see. My distance vision without glasses is unbelievable... I have NEVER seen this well in my entire life!!!  I've worn glasses....thick glasses... since the 5th grade. Conceptually I knew trees had leaves but I had never seen them...they were just big brown sticks with balls of green at the top.

I went to parochial schools and back in the olden days the nuns had the shorter kids sit up front (and I was ALWAYS a shorter kid...actually THE shortest kid in class)... in 5th grade the boys in the class were holy terrors and Sister Ida moved them to the front of the room and since I was a "good" kid I got moved to the back. That's when I realized I couldn't see the blackboard. Now I find it interesting that Sister Ida, who in retrospect had many psychopathic personality traits , did me a favor....who knows how long I would have gone on without seeing well?  Remember this was the late 50's ...no one did in-school eye exams and you don't know what you don't see.

As for Sister Ida...OMG... she was tiny but the meanest nun I ever came across...she would torture us with homework assignments that were impossible, even when parents tried to help us with them . Her favorite punishment was to diagram an enormously long sentence and you'd have to do it over and over and over  and over every night till she declared it 100 percent correct. My friend, Wanda's mother was a high school English teacher and she tried to help us out and Sister Ida would still mark the sentence incorrect.

To my dying day I will have this mental picture of Sister Ida..short, belligerent, in a full wimple (Benedictine order of nuns) with a bit of a 2 day shadow of beard...really... she obviously had some hormone issues which perhaps accounted for her classroom behavior...she was a screamer and always had a ruler in her hand... yikes.  Thank goodness I also had some sweet nuns too...to keep me from being totally scarred for life...

Anyway... back to my vision... I am totally surprised how well I can see. Now I'm going to have to use reading glasses for close work, but I can see to drive without glasses!!! I can't wait to get my left eye done...end of February. Right now my vision is kinda wonky as I need my glasses for my left eye but not for the right eye. I had Costco poke the right lens out of an old pair of glasses and I use them sometimes, but I find myself more and more walking around with no glasses on.... my face feels naked!!!

Well I hope you have a lovely 3 day weekend... I've got no big plans and that suits me just fine. Perhaps a little sewing and a little knitting and a little napping in the sun...

happy  knitting...

carol fun

I'm getting a little paranoid...

Well technology is conspiring against me again...this time my Wifi provider went on the fritz for about 12 hours...grrrr... I can live without TV...don't watch much besides the news but DON"T TAKE my Internet away!!!   I was just getting my butt in gear last night to post when it went poof!!! I'm beginning to think that maybe someone doesn't want me to post...arggh!!!

The absence o f Wifi made for a very quiet evening  which wasn't all bad... I did a bit of knitting...which was... you guessed it...MORE SOCKS!!!

I finished this pair... Zitron Trekking XXL 415... one of those skeins of yarn that I didn't know I owned till I saw it on someone else's blog and then I coveted it. Luckily I looked in my stash and found I had a ball of it ...yeah... the heels and toes are a dusty plum... I think a Fabel from my stash. Now these took a little while as these are "car socks"... socks I only knit when I'm in the car waiting and need to kill some time. Simple stockinette... I need to find another yarn for the car... maybe an Opal  or a Regia...something self striping.


And then there was another Frankensock...

bits and pieces of the little mini skeins from my Opal Advent Calendar and the cuffs, heels and toes are an older Opal . When I cast on this sock I thought I was going to find more greens in the little skeins but I didn't. But I think it is okay because the green plays nicely with the other colors adds a nice contrast...IMHO! Now normally I would cast on the mate right away... okay not normally, but well lately. I've been doing that... but this time something else shiny caught my eye.

this is another Frankensock but it is a lot less busy... almost calm... very quiet... OMG what has gotten into me???  Well this sock is done using only tonal yarns... some Opal and some Fabel and some I don't know where you came from since there isn't a ball band on you,  but you  sure are pretty!  I'm knitting larger swaths of the yarn which I think contributes to it being a quieter sock... I was influenced by these socks I found eons ago....

Now when I cast on my sock somehow I remembered the inspiration being darker... ah the tricks my memory plays on me!   They appeared on the blog Cozy Things which you can see here.   She has lots of lovely knitting. The socks were in this post in 2012...so now looking at my inspiration I can see that I need to got through my stash and look for some lighter tonal yarns... for yet ANOTHER pair of Frankensocks... this shows all the markers of an addiction doesn't it??? Don't answer that ... ignorance is bliss.... blah blah blah... I'm not listening to you... I'm happy in my little yarn-y world with  all its squishy goodness!

And the weather makes me happy to be wearing hand knit socks... it gray and windy and cold outside...but the roller coaster continues and I saw two 60 degree days forecast for next week...which is going to be on of those weeks that has me wondering what day of the week it is all week since Monday is a holiday...and the day we are celebrating my older son's 32th birthday...OMG how did that happen...  I haven't gotten any older (and yes I am delusional here)... anyway spaghetti and meatballs is the requested menu and I'm happy to oblige.

It has been a mildly productive week for seasonal decorating ... all of the Christmas, except for the gingerbread men garland in the kitchen...have been taken down and put away. The snowmen have made a triumphant return and their beady little eyes are following me all over the living room. And I added a new piece to the decor...

Several of my friends had cute wooden boxes filled with mason jars and candles on their tables this season...I loved the look but needed something with a smaller scale for my home.  I found the wooden tray at Target... it is a bread bowl... the hobnail mason jars I got on Amazon and I filled the tray and the jars with Epsom salts and popped in some of those battery operated candles... the little trees were a dollar spot find at Christmas time... my own miniature snowscape...no shovel needed! It has a nice twinkling glow in the evening...

Well winter seems to be having its way with lots of us... hope it gets better soon!

happy knitting-
carol fun

Merry Christmas Eve!!!

Are your stocking hung by the chimney with care?  Naahh, neither are mine...but I do have a lot of pretty sock yarn!  Here are 23 of the 24 little skeins from my Opal Advent Calendar. Aren't they cute???

The one I left out is the first one that I got... the ugly black brown one... now I did use the black/white sections but I don't think the other portions of this skein are gonna see the light of day in my socks.

And here is the first pair of socks I've made with these goodies...

I just have to do the toe and this pair is done!  Now I like these but for Frankensocks they seem quite subdued. I think it is because there is no yellow in them... yellow makes me happy ... and I think yellow makes for happy happy socks!

I'm planning on casting on a new pair of socks this evening and I'm definitely picking one of the brighter skeins.  I want to try knitting a pair of socks with a large swath of one skein, followed by another swath of another skein... like these...

I wish I had seen these socks before I started knitting the pair I'm finishing up. I LOVE that swath of yarn on the bottom of the sock on the right... and I used quite a bit of it on the sock I'm finishing up. Love the colors and those little dotted black and white stripes. Oh well... I shall survive ... there certainly are quite a few pretty skeins to play with.

I forgot to show my new Christmas knitting bag I got as a gift along with that fabulous shawl...

Isn't this a hoot??? Or should I say a cluck??  Polka dot chickens wearing hats and scarves and bearing gifts!!! Now I purchased several yards of this fabric last year with the intention of making Christmas curtains for my kitchen but I never got around to them... they will be top of my list for next year!!!

So are you ready for tomorrow??? I'm as ready as I'll ever be. The gifts are bought and stuffed into their Christmas bags...

years ago I made a ton of simple fabric bags out of Christmas yardage. Each year we stuff our presents in the bags and close them with either sparkly pipe cleaners or sparkly elastic cording.  Very "green"...but that's not the reason I did it... I did it because I really don't like to wrap and this method of gift presentation is easy peasy.  I store all of the bags in a plastic bin (you know how I LOVE plastic bins) and toss a dryer sheet in the  bin so everything stays fresh smelling.  This gift wrapping idea came from my friend Vicki who's been doing this even longer than I have. Very smart, dontcha think?  It makes me appear virtuous when in fact I'm really just lazy...LOL

We are doing brunch tomorrow at my son and daughter-in-law's  house... I'm bringing quiche and cinnamon rolls... the kind that come out of a can... told you I'm lazy!  I'm making the quiche tonight so I don't have to get up early to cook... I'm sooooo NOT a morning person. I can drag my sorry butt out of bed if I have to ...but I don't like it.  Brunch is good... doesn't start too early...and this arrangement allows my son and daughter-in-law to do Christmas dinner with her family. Then we will celebrate again next Sunday with a prime rib dinner at my house. It spreads out  all  those big holiday meals. My younger son and I are planning a shrimp and pasta meal for our Christmas dinner and that should be tasty too!

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas or Hanukkah celebration...lots of good food and family and fun!

Merry Christmas!!!
carol fun

Sockiness Shenanigans While Showing Superior Self-Control....

Another week blew right past me... but it has been a week of glorious weather. As I type this I have the windows open enjoying what is probably the last beautiful weather of 2016. Today it is 75 degrees ... tomorrow the high will barely reach 40 and there may be snow flurries... shorts today... a parka tomorrow... ahh... typical Ohio weather. Not much I can do about it ...other than complain... and I do that A LOT...LOL!!

I've made the most of the week... on Wednesday I planted 190 bulbs... 100 daffodils...60 Japanese irises... 15 allium... and 15 tulips which I put in a pot instead of the ground.  My plan is to let the pot sit outside this winter and when they start to bloom in the Spring I'll let them sit out during the day, but I'll drag the pot into the garage at night and hopefully avoid having them be a midnight snack for the deer. Hope springs eternal in every gardener's heart...

Today I cleaned out my window boxes of deceased mums and frosted sweet potato vine. I chucked the ferns on the front porch and put the porch furniture in the garage. Then I put out my Christmas lights....LOL... I'm not going to plug them in yet... I'll wait till next Friday for that. But I figured it would be a much more enjoyable task today than when it is 30 and sleeting.  I am very proud of myself ... I feel like I got the jump on Mother Nature... and somehow I'm sure she'll get me back!

There has been some activity on the knitting front... some sockiness shenanigans... first I finished  one of my Sunday Swing socks....you can find the free pattern here.

I'm happy with this sock... the Regia Colormania yarn is very pretty. I've already cast on its mate and it is sitting right next to me now waiting for some attention.

And the Zitron Trekking XXL 415 sock is just a toe away from being complete...

It is turning out BE-YOUUU-TI- FUL.... so happy happy happy I remembered I owned this yarn. I will finish the toe tonight and cast on its mate too. I added some dusty purple heels and toes so that I have a nice bit of this yarn leftover. I know I'm going to want to use it in other Frankensocks in the future.

And somehow this lovely skein of Madelinetosh appeared in my home...

the colorway is called Night Hawk and I love the bits of purple and teal and pops of lime green. My friend Cathy... who is also my personal yarn shopper... she works in a great LYS called Lambikins Hideaway in Hamilton Ohio... brought it with her to dinner last night. She said it had just arrived at the shop yesterday... well I was immediately smitten and asked if I could buy it... she graciously let me pay her for it, even though she had selected it for herself. She said the shop had 9 other skeins and she would get another for her... isn't she sweet?  I'm envisioning this as a shawl... or a scarf... need to peruse Ravelry and find some inspiration... and ask Cathy what plans she had for it... she always knits the most gorgeous stuff.

And drum roll please... this is the biggest sockiness shenanigans where I have shown SUPERIOR self control... an Opal Sock yarn Advent Box!!!!

this box is a 1 foot cube stuffed with 24 mini skeins of Opal sockiness goodness... each skein is 15 grams and I should be able make 4 pairs of Frankensocks from  it... I have had this box in my house for almost 2 weeks and I have not opened one single door... SUPERIOR self-control... something I am NOT known for... LOL!   I became aware of this delightful box last December when it was too late to obtain one. I was on the prowl for it starting this summer and found an Etsy shop in the UK that was selling them. I know I visited her Etsy shop at least a dozen times before I convinced myself that I was worth the box and the shipping... and I am glad I did!  I can't wait to open the first door on December 1 ... TWELVE more days... the suspense is killing me.

Last night I showed the box to my friends and they decided that they wanted to peek inside and see the yarn. I left the room and they opened the top of the box...the suspense was mounting... only to find out that the way this box is assembled you can't see a darn thing by just opening the top... each day is enclosed in a cardboard partition... we all laughed and laughed because we figure we weren't the first ones who thought we could sneak a peek.  If you have time check out this Instagram tag... #opaladventcalendar   and you can see all the ways people have used the yarn from the Advent Box.

The days are certainly speeding by... next week is Thanksgiving... and then in a blink of an eye it will be Christmas..aaaaayyyyy... I have a little shopping done and a couple of hand made gifts completed... or close to complete. Last year I got my tree up and all my decorations out early. I'm going to try and do that again.

Hope you have a great weekend... don't know what the plans are yet for dinner on Sunday... I'm thinking if my son and daughter in law come over I'll make beef stroganoff in the crock pot... some comfort food that sticks to your ribs... LOL... listen to me... I make it sound like it will be Artic cold... oh well ... I shall survive!

happy knitting -
carol fun

A few things on my needles....

I haven't linked up with Patchwork Times On the Needles for a couple of weeks but I do have something to show today. Like Judy I'm pretty obsessed with knitting socks. If  I could only knit one  thing it would be socks. It plays to my strength in that they are a short term project... they fit my  gnat-like attention span. They can be easy simple stockinette vanilla socks or more complicated pattern and designs. They are portable and sock yarn is plentiful....as is evidenced by my ever growing stash... it is hard to resist a pretty skein of sock yarn.

Now my current infatuation with scrappy Frankensocks falls somewhere between simple and complicated. Simple in that it is just knit knit knit... a bit of complicated in picking which yarn to use next and wondering how it is going to knit up because you have no memory of the sequence of the self striping yarn.... and it is about as much excitement as I want in my life ...LOL!

First another finished pair of Frankensocks...

These are made from Opal left overs and I love the little dotty bits. It reminds me of a soft worn old scrap quilt.

And with that pair complete of course I cast on another pair. Now I'm not sure if these are extremely ugly or exceedingly quirky... this is not a palette of colors I normally work in....

Lots of purple in this pair and a bit of every other color in the crayon box. And if you enlarge the pic you may see that some of the yarns are sparkly... not sure where I picked that one up.

Right now I'm going with the premise that these are exceedingly quirky and I cast on a second sock...

I figure go big or go home...although I really like being home...LOL!

Also I have a shawl on my needles, which at the moment in a big blob of blah...

but there is a lot of potential prettiness here just waiting to appear...trust me. The pattern is called One and Done and it is by Casapinka...love her patterns. You can see the pattern here.  Check it out and you'll see how pretty this will be. This blob will blossom when I drop the stitches and add the border and the picot bind off... I loves me some picot bind off! The yarn is  Malabrigo sock yarn called Diana... lots of pretty coral/rust/olive and a touch of tan...a nice Fall palette. I have one more pattern repeat to knit ...and it is an easy easy repeat...and then I can drop the stitches and move onto the border.

As always there is soooooo much I want to do....knit. cross stitch, sew, make cards... just aren't enough hours in a day, are there?

Well we are having a lovely spell of Fall weather... even a bit on the cool side which I love. I'm wearing long pants and hand knit socks...so comfy. The weather should hold through the weekend and the week is suppose to start with a return to the 80's...huh??? Glad I got my AC fixed this week although at $20 a skein I could have made another 39 pairs of socks for what it cost to fix it...such is life isn't it?

Hope you have a lovely weekend!
happy knitting-
carol fun

A week that perfectly illustrates why I knit...

It was a short week... it was a hectic week... it was a week that perfectly illustrates why I knit...SO I DON"T KILL PEOPLE!!!  Okay, taking a deep breath here...

Sunday night... discovered my enormous indoor cat, Big Dude, has fleas!! How does an indoor cat get fleas??? According to the vet we could have brought them in on our shoes... a likely scenario, as we take our shoes off right as we come into the house and the Dude does like to sit there on the cool tile. Sunday evening I did something really really stupid... I gave the Dude a bath.  Well, I'm not sure you could really call it a bath... we wrestled while the water ran and I tried to soap and rinse him. The whole process lasted less than 2 minutes.  I wasn't sure who was going to have the first heart attack, him or me. He still hasn't forgiven me for it. I washed every thing in the house that wasn't nailed down... I've sprayed all of the rest of the stuff.  I put Frontline on the Dude. The situation has improved but it isn't totally remedied. I still catch him scratching now and then and when I've wiped him down I've found a dead flea or two...ugh!!!! Oh, I forgot to mention.... I HATE HATE HATE bugs!!!  Just writing this paragraph has made me itchy...

Monday morning... I notice that even though the AC has been running all night the house is no cooler in the morning than when I went to bed.... it is Labor Day... a holiday... not willing to pay extra to get someone out to look at it. Called Tuesday morning and  the guy I've used before came and put 4 lbs. of coolant into the unit. Can't find any leaks. I had the same scenario 3 years ago when I moved in... low coolant, no leak to be found. He did clean out the AC coils and checked out the furnace so I'm good to go if it ever gets cold again.

Tuesday and Wednesday ... the normal running around.

Wednesday night... stomach feeling a little queasy.

Thursday ... didn't sleep all night because of stomach and other digestive problems... had to pass on going to a quilt show in Indiana... darn.

Which brings us to Friday... today is good ... but it is only noon.  It is a week like this that makes me thankful that I know how to knit... it calms the nerves and you have something to show for it...

Another pair of Frankensocks done... these have a nice Fall-ish feel to them. Lots of Opal and bits of Regia and Drops Fabel and other unidentified yarns.

Several of you have left comments regarding having so many ends to weave in... here is a picture of the inside of the last sock ....

My rough count is that I have 25 places where I joined yarns... that leaves 50 ends to weave in. I tried timing myself to see how long it takes to complete this process one time. I start by loosening the knot I had, tightening it up and re-knotting it twice. Then I weave the 2 ends in, in opposite directions. It took less than 50 seconds. So to weave in the ends on a whole sock it should take about 30 minutes. In reality, it will take longer because I will be simultaneously watching TV and looking at my lap top and checking to see if the Dude is scratching... but you get the idea.

By using yarns that are self striping I get a lot more stripey-ness with less ends to weave in. Opal yarns are known for their stripey-ness and their mock Fair Isle patterns. A lot pattern for very little work... I like that ... A LOT!!!

So my hope for today is to finally get my house decorated for Fall. The temps are suppose to come down this weekend as last night it rained cats and dogs. I know it isn't officially Fall but I am so ready for it.

Hope that your week went well and that a lovely weekend is coming your way!

happy knitting-
carol fun

Lots of knitty things started...

but not so much finished.... that is the state of my knitting at the moment. I've been seduced by several new patterns and yarns and I obviously own too many knitting needles, as the lack of them is no deterrent to me casting on one project after another. So here's where I stand with the projects I can see from my comfy chair...

A Pebble Beach shawl...

you can see the pattern here ... I like this pattern because it gives you the proper stitch count at the end of every row... however the OCD in me has me checking every row after I knit it so that slows me a down a bit. I've only been off count once but I feel compelled at the end of every row to go back and count.  On the plus side the pattern tells you how far along you are... I have this shawl 30% complete.

And then there is this little scarf...

it is a free pattern on Ravelry that you can see here called Jagged Triangular Scarf.  The yarn was in my stash a ball of Boboli Lace by Berroco... I know it is called lace but in my opinion it is more sock weight yarn.  It is a mix of wool, acrylic and vicose... very soft.

I really like knitting this scallop-y edge on as you go...

I wish I had thought to add beads to that little pointy part when I started... next shawl will have beads! This pattern has you weigh your yarn when you start and you knit the increase part till you reach half of the weight of the yarn and then you decrease the rest of the way... I am almost to the halfway point.

And there is always a sock on some set of needles...

another Frankensock this time with yarn from Havirland... you can see the Etsy shop here. I have seen Frankensocks done with her yarn on Instagram that I liked and thought I'd give a new palette of colors a try. The yarn is very nice to knit with and I like how it came wound on little plastic bobbins.

In fact I like the plastic bobbin idea so much that I decided to get some and then I can wind my yarn on then for other Frankensocks. I like how they don't come unwound so easily. So I went to Amazon so see what I could find and a pack of 25 bobbins was about 5 or 6 dollars ... 25 didn't seem like enough I figured I'd like about 50 to 75 which would make it approximately $15 purchase...or I could get 1000 for $16... what a deal! OH MY GOODNESS... I had no idea what a 1000 bobbins looks like...

damn you Amazon Prime!!! ... click click and on my front porch in 48 hours... what was I thinking??? Now my excuse is I ordered these very late at night...which isn't much of an excuse as I am more a night owl than a early bird... oh well, I will have to find out how many you can stuff in an envelope with one stamp on it and then I'll send them to fellow knitters... if you would like some let me know ... I'll go to the post office on Monday and figure it out.

The weather is unsettled and so am I today... it is suppose to be beastly hot but there is cloud cover and we've had a sprinkle of rain...not enough to forgo the nightly watering...I have some free time on my hands but don't know what I really want to work on... knitting...cross stitch...quilting... cleaning... oh I do know I don't want to clean... napping sounds good too ...  a little cat nap with Big Dude...

sounds perfect!

Hope you have a nice weekend coming up... I think my son and daughter-in-law are coming for dinner on Sunday and that is all I have on my calendar.  A trip to Krogers tomorrow will be in order and then I can stay put... I like staying put...

happy knitting -
carol fun

90 degrees in the shade...

perfect weather to finish my latest pair of wool socks, dontcha think???  Oh my goodness it is HOT and HUMID... I've got the AC cranked up and I'm staying inside. Glad to have another pair of socks done...

These are knit with Opal Hundertwasser 2104. I bought this ball off of ebay and when it arrived, it didn't look anything like what I'd seen on ebay... but I still like it... very Nordic looking... makes me think cool thoughts.

And as soon as this pair was off the needles I cast on another pair...this is Vesper Yarn, the colorway is Vintage Kitchen and this skein is a seconds.

Now it isn't quite as neon as it shows in this picture ... but it is pretty close. Again it isn't what I thought I was getting. First I mis-interpreted the blurb that went with this skein. The description said,

"This colorway is a 'Seconds' Yarn, because it due to an uneven blending from the mill, it dyed with a barborpole effect. It is more defined on some of the dark colors in the skein than the light. It actually looks really cool, but is not an accurate representation of Vesper Sock Yarn"

Soooo...what I zeroed in on was the "barberpole effect"... I took that to mean that the stripes barberpoled... when in fact they were talking about the color in the strands of the yarn... for example in the brown section one ply is darker than the other...ohhh... my bad... I cast them on and before I had the cuff done I realized my error...and I knew that I didn't want to knit just a straight pair of striping socks that would repeat and repeat... so I cruised the internet and found this pattern called Geek on Knitty.com ... you can see it here and it is free. However, as I approached the 3rd stripe I realize that I'm not following the pattern correctly and instead of getting a rick rack effect I'm getting more of a bubble... not sure that is what I want. I do think I've got it figured out how to fix it but it will require me to frog it back to the cuff... and if I do that I might as well start over as I wasn't paying attention when I cast on and for this kind of regularly repeating stripe yarn, I should have started at the beginning of a color sequence...not in the middle. I have a sneaky suspicion that this skein is going to be put in time out for a while... it isn't the yarn's fault... its me... I'm just not that into it.

And I got an urge to knit a shawl about  a week ago and saw some yarn on Instagram... the dyer is The Flying Kettle ... you can see her Etsy listing here and you can follow her on IG here.

The colorway is Lunar Moth and it has silk in it... the pattern is Pebble Beach which you can see here on Ravelry. The designer is Helen Stewart and I really like her patterns... she gives you the stitch count for every row and tells you how far along you are... so far I'm 5% of the way done... yeah for me!!

Well I thought I would get a lot done today...but it isn't turning out that way... oh well.. I think I'll go and make some pasta salad for dinner tomorrow night and get a jump on that. My son and dear DIL are coming for dinner which is always a treat. Perhaps there will be more knitting this evening... we shall see, we shall see.

happy knitting-
carol fun

Adventures in sock knitting...

Hello everyone... well another week is whizzing by and while I've gotten some things done other projects are languishing...oh well... as Scarlett said, "tomorrow is another day".   One of the projects I did work on was another Frankensock... this one only using Blue Moon Fibers Socks that Rock yarn...

This is one of those projects where first I LOVED it... then I was kinda hmmmm... and then I HATED it but I kept on knitting ...and then I came back to hmmm... and ended up at I LIKE it... I may even LOVE it.  The jury is out till the second sock is done.

I used about 15 different BMF STR in this sock... I wish I could remember all the names of the different yarns... I do remember Sunshine Superman, Count Cluckula, Farmhouse, Fire on the Mountain, Citrine, Sugar Pie, and one of my absolute favorites Crabby McHappypants!!!

In knitting these socks I usually join a new yarn by tying a knot with the old and the new yarn but about halfway down the foot I discovered another way to join yarn. I found it here on Jen Hagen's Instagram feed.  Go look at what she has done... she catches the tail of the new yarn into the back of the last 8 stitches of the old yarn, then she catches the tail of the old yarn in the first 8 stitches of the new yarn... no knot... no ends to weave in... pretty cool!  I did this joining method for the last 4 or 5 yarns I used in the BMF STR sock and I'm using it in my new sock.

These are all Opal leftovers... I LOVE Opal yarn too...(yes I am very fickle I LOVE LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of things...LOL) . The thing I LOVE most about Opal yarn is when it does that faux Fair Isle thing like that blue and white part of this sock.  I spent some time the other day winding 5 gram balls of some of my Opal leftovers... I now see that I need to somehow secure the ends of the little balls as what I now have is a big mess...ugh! (Update to say I've corralled all the loose ends with rubber bands and it make me happy!)

And as I was typing this post the mailman rang my doorbell and this lovely package appeared...

A gorgeous pouch to keep my yarn project in ... love those bright colors... this was a gift from Dar of Dar's Patchwork Garden and I do LOVE IT!!! Thank you so much Dar... it wasn't necessary... but I do appreciate it.  Blogging friends are so special!.

On the gardening front things are looking good... my rose bushes are just FULL of buds and some have opened...

These are a deep peach that fades to yellow... so pretty! I know I should clip off some of the buds so the resulting ones get bigger but I just HATE to do it... I want every rose!!! And I always dither as whether to leave them on the bush or cut them and bring them inside. Right now I'm leaving them as several neighbors commented on how they enjoy seeing them too... isn't that a nice thing to say? And on the petunia front four more petunias came home with me...

I put them into little pots and tucked them in here and there... oh this is getting addicting but SO MUCH FUN!! See those pink packs to the left side of the pic... those are Wave petunias... LOTS of Wave petunias. My handyman Dan is suppose to come on Sunday and hang my new window boxes and I am ready to plant!!!! I will show some before and after shots as I think it is going to be quite a nice addition to my house.

Well off to run some errands and maybe get some more crafty stuff done.. there is quilting and cross stitching calling my name... have a great weekend!

happy knitting -
carol fun

My latest pair of Frankensocks...

Hello...just a quick post today... should get out of my pajamas and take my car to the tire store to find out what wrong with the right rear tire...ugh!

Here are my latest pair of Frankensocks...

The heels and toes are Drops Fabel and the rest of the socks is bits and pieces of Opal and Regia and more Drops Fabel. I love the places where the faux Fair Isle pattern appear. These kind of socks are both fun and frightful to knit... since I'm using bits and pieces of yarn from socks I've already knit I know I like the colors but many times I don't know exactly how it will knit up as I can't identify the sequence of the colors.

What lurks inside those little balls of wonderfulness???

I cast on another pair of socks as soon as I finished this one. I'm back to playing with 2 self striping yarns. The last one of those I tried about 2 weeks ago is still in time out and will be scrapped. I thought I could get them to play nicely together but I was wrong. Irreconcilable differences... This time I'm using Drops Fabel 162, a deep turquoise and Wisdom Yarns Pix in Citrus Slide... you can see them here and here. I've only got the cuff done, so the jury is still out on whether they are compatible.

I'm linking up with Patchwork Times today ... check it out here and see what other people have are knitting this week.

Okay... off to shower and get dressed and then to get my tire hopefully fixed and not replaced.

happy knitting-
carol fun

Socks I like...and a sock I'm not so fond of...

I meant to post this yesterday but yesterday was a waste of a day. I was exhausted all day...not like me... and while I did shuttle my son and his friend back and forth that was the extent of what I accomplished. However, I did finish another pair of socks this week...ta dah!

In my continuing series of socks knitted with two different self striping yarns. This pair uses Drops Fabel 677 and 910 with green heels and toes which are Drops 112. You can see all the Drops yarn here.


With that pair off the needles I cast on a new combination of yarns. Regia Colorito 4456 Petunia and what I believe is Drops Fabel 903. You can see the Regia here.

Now I thought these would play well together...and I think they will...when I start this sock over. I didn't pay any attention when I was casting on this sock...and then I never do...but the pinky portion of each skein is landing right next to each other and the lighter portions are doing that too. You can see the first part is all mushy lights with no visible stripe pattern...and then I got a little striping... I LOVE the striping... then it went to mushy pink. I wasn't feeling good when I was knitting this and I wasn't thinking (ohhh... some would say that is a common occurrence in my life but we aren't listening to them). Today with a clearer head I realize I can probably fix this by unraveling this back to the cuff...(I AIN"T reknitting that cuff) and then breaking one of the yarns and pulling off some yardage till I get the pinks next to the lights. We shall see...

Right now I'm off to lunch and Krogering...gotta get stuff to make lasagna for dinner tomorrow.

happy knitting -
carol fun