Happy Easter!

Baskets ready? Ready!

Go get 'em, Snake and Dollface!, Mork and Mindy!, and darling Peanut!

Happy Easter, blog friends!

Of knitted cats and bunnies...

I am a fairly competent knitter. No, really. I am. But, when I decided to knit a blue kitty, I did run into a little trouble...see what I mean?

I mean, it was a very easy, fun-to-knit pattern, and it turned out pretty cute...but it doesn't look much like a kitty. Even Dollface, when she saw it the first time, said, "Ohhh! It's sooo cute!"

"It's a cat," I answered.

"Oh...," said she, deadpan. "Maybe you should just tell them it's a mouse or something."

o_0

Oh, well. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again," is what they say, so I did. But attempt number two looked more like a gremlin (from the 1984 movie) than a kitty...

...the tail helped. It helped a lot. Now it looks like a cat, Dare I say that it's even cuter than a gremlin? I do dare...

That tail turned a gremlin into a cat, and it redeemed my kitty-knitting self just enough that I thought I'd even try something new...tiny bunnies for Easter. (By the way, these were designed as catnip toys, but mine are for a toddler, so I left the "herbs" out completely...) Just like the cats, this pattern was really easy, and well-written, but flat-and-double-knitted just isn't my thing. So I decided to knit it in the round, diving right in, without thinking about it too much...but that first bunny turned out very tall.

In my head, I should have instinctively known that I only needed to knit half the rows listed in the pattern, since I was knitting in the round. Instead, I messaged the designer and accused her of penning a poor pattern (mind you, I did this as politely as possible)...and she answered quickly. I was apparently not the first accuser (I told myself over and over again, perhaps to ice down my bruised ego a bit), the fix was easy (only knit half as many rounds as rows), and her answer was gracious. Thank you!, and I'm sorry for doubting you, dear designer! Armed with my mental edits, I knit a second. And a third. And a fourth, fifth and sixth!

They flew off my needles, multiplying like, well...like rabbits! (If you include the first, tall rabbit, there have been seven.) And they all ran outside to play...

Laughing, and jumping in the ice-crystal diamonds, sparkly leftovers from an early spring snowstorm...rabbits can be CRAZY!

Note: I am a fan of the faceless toys...it's totally up to you how they feel when you play, and that encourages creativity and story-telling, two of my favorite things! (That, and I am a  little lazy sometimes.)

I hope that my darling Peanut will enjoy finding them in my bag on our next trip to her far-away home...they are so good for tossing and hopping and counting and practicing colors, I can't wait to share them! Patience is not something I am good at when it comes to seeing my granddaughter...so it's a good thing our visits are not too few and far between! Yay!

Another "Yay!" is that Easter is tomorrow. I guess I better get to the basket-making...and hiding! I hope that you have all your ducks in a row, and that you will have a nice celebration, if you celebrate. :)

I also hope that the holiday will afford you at least a little bit of knitting time! Knit in Good Health, friends!

Decluttering Distraction

Did you ever declutter?
Do you get distracted?

SQUIRREL!!!

The last time I started to declutter, I got distracted. I don't know why I suddenly felt the urge to clean out the attic, but a couple weekends ago, I put on my warm sweatshirt and headed up there. I didn't get very far before I ran across the file boxes of the kids' artwork and school papers. You know what I found in there? I found a happy family...

...Mom, Dad, Me and B (for "brother," I assume) were all lined up on the lawn in the artist's memory (this one was Dollface) and we have no necks, pets included. (By the way, the land of no necks exists in every artist's development, or so I have been told...) Here, a neck-less Dad and Mork play catch, for Father's Day (Mork's artwork, of course, not Dad's)...

...and here, a neck-less Mork and Mom (and some, random soccer player?) become stick puppets!

At some point, most of us did start to develop necks, and this was good...

Poor dog and cats are still neckless...lol! Mork was some artist!

But you know what I like even better than necks in a family drawing? Love, like in this one...

Awwww!, Dad and Mom are holding hands! Sister and Brother, you will notice, are standing a fair distance from one another. I mean, they have always loved each other (I choose to believe), but they do have their boundaries...

I guess we all have our boundaries! You know, even despite the distraction, I did manage to declutter three trash-bags full from that attic, and a full-grown person can once again get in there to take down the Christmas tree next year!

And I even learned a thing or two. Listen up, Moms and Dads:

If your kid makes something with macaroni, and you decide to keep it for posterity (or whatever), put it in a plastic baggie before you tuck it into that box. The pasta eventually disintegrates (after 20 years or so) and while the picture is still pretty cute...

The macaroni makes a mess (and it attracts bugs...ewwww)!

No knitting this post...I hope that you'll forgive me...but now that that job is done, off I go to grab some yarn! I hope that you'll be able to do the same at some point today!

Thanks for stopping by, and Knit in Good Health!

In the PINK!

When you think of pink, what do you think?

I think of cartoon panthers, and cotton candy and cutie-pie granddaughters. =D

Lately, I have had pink on the brain, and it has led to this:

Pink, crocheted scrubbies, for that darling Peanut...

My!, but these were fun to work up! I made the first one, and realized that it was almost too big for MY hand, so I downsized it to better fit into her hand. The variegated one is the smaller of the two, and there may be more coming...who knows? Sooo, sooo cute!

And beautiful, handspun yarn...wound onto the niddy noddy to be measured: 

I am just loving how the Navajo ply turned out...

...it is very fine! I came up with 27 WPI (wraps per inch) on my first measure! Since I could barely believe that it was that fine, I rechecked and came up with a mere 22 WPI on the second go-'round, which is still a fine lace-weight...jeepers! I think it will become a light, lace scarf...but I haven't chosen a pattern yet. For now, I am just enjoying the freshly washed and twisted skein of pink and white!

So, as you can see, I've been in the pink all week! I hope that the weekend will bear out more of the same, for both you and me. =D 

Thanks for stopping by, and Knit in Good Health!

Short Socks

When I started knitting, somewhere in the early 2000s, I didn't really like it very much. I know! Shocking! Right?!? Then, somewhere 5 years or so after that, I decided that I had to know how to knit socks. I didn't want to knit a sweater. I didn't want to knit a blanket. I wanted to knit socks, and thanks to a wonderful invention known as the Internet, learn to knit socks I did! 

(I am sorry to report here that I do not have photos or any other record of my first pairs of socks. This was before Ravelry, and I was not very good at keeping knitting records and/or notebooks. Thankfully, with the advent of my favorite social knitworking site, I have logged all of my knitting since October 2007...I love the Internet! You can find me on Ravelry as PKJewelry, and you can see my first pair of socks recorded there. I still wear those socks...I wore them just yesterday! Aren't you glad you asked?)

These days, I still love to knit socks, especially for feet that love them! One of my biggest dilemmas came when my daughter started dating (and eventually married) a boy with men's size 11 feet. I have women's size 9s, as does my daughter. My son and husband have men's 9.5s, and my daughter-in-law has smaller feet than mine. When Dollface brought this giant-footed young man around, I started to get a little worried. 

Over time, I've learned to embrace the large socks. I know that I will be casting on 80-88 sts, and knitting an 11" foot, but Snake loves hand-knit socks so much that I just can't help but love knitting socks for him. =D A few weeks ago, he noticed a pair of socks Dollface was wearing. They were ankle socks I had done as a test knit and given to her because I prefer a longer cuff. He stared in amazement, then said, "Your mom can make short socks?!?"

Hmmm, apparently he prefers the shorter cuff. You know what that means? It means I can knit his socks with just under 100g of sock yarn. It means they don't have to take a month to knit. It means that I can "crank out" (relatively speaking, of course) men's size 11 socks for my son-in-law - Hooray!!!

So, here's Snake's first pair of short socks finished...

And a pair for his wife...

Short socks for the happy couple, and (as my good friend Cozy likes to say) less carpal-ly carpals for the knitter. Yay! How long do you like your socks?

Thanks for stopping by, and knit in good health!