It’s been sitting on my kitchen table just mocking me for weeks now…. I tired to pin up a celtic pattern back a while ago, realized the one I was going to try was just too hard, and also the two six foot lengths of Icord weren’t nearly enough. ugh. But, I sucked it up and went back to knitting “string” as my husband likes to tease me about (he teases that I’m so obsessed with knitting that if I can’t think of anything else to do I just knit string) and finally got a pattern that I thought would work. It was a little crazy for a while there. Cords and pins everywhere, not easy to get that foam block in there to get it all needle felted on. If I’m going to continue to make these, I think I’ll probably invest in a foam base that I can just slip the bag on to. Would have been MUCH easier. This time around I had a little oblong sqoosh pillow wrapped in two towels and all inside a pillow case. Then I propped the whole thing up in a large mixing bowl so I could work with it standing up on my table. That worked ok. But, it wasn’t quite firm enough to be stable, and was not a good surface to punch in to with the felting needle. Luckily it was loose enough that I could wiggle the foam block in to there. Took two days to get that all attached correctly. What a tangle!

Today has actually been pretty productive. I’ve also been working on a design for wedding invitations for my friend Amy recently, today I’m finally liking the way it’s going. Which is good, because I’m starting to run out of time. All in all, it’s been a good day in my little creative world. Wish me continued good luck with the felting….

But, todays shirt combines some of my favorite things Yarn and knitting with Pirates and Halloween! What could possibly be better?!?!

This awesome shirt can be found at: Jinx.com

I’m trying a few new things since my hat is now a blank canvas…. today I knit a couple of leaves and also a rectangle in the same green so I could try felting them. I felted the two leaves by hand in the kitchen sink. I then decide to partially felt the rectangle, cut out the leaves and finish felting them. I was surprised at how quickly it went. But still, standing at the sink for any amount of time is tiring for me. I pulled up a chair and was happily proceeding with rubbing little leaves between my hands when I felt a little tickle on my forehead… Now, with my often unruly curly hair this is not an unusual occurance, especially when leaning over a sink working. So, I shook my head a little and PLOP! A big ol’ scary black spider landed on my arm! I HATE spiders!!! Here I am, wet soapy hands holding felt when I freaked out a little and spazed because there was a spider on me… it flew off somewhere, and of course I couldn’t find it after that…. The whole time I was sitting there trying to finish my felting I kept eyeing the floor… just sure that damn thing was going to crawl up my leg….

*sigh* ….. I hate spiders…..

In anycase, my counter is now littered with pretty little green leaves in various shapes that I can play around with. My next step is to try felting the edging I knit up over the last couple of days. This will be another experiment that may go horribly wrong… I knit up Oak Leaf Edging that I got from Knitting Daily – Trimmings. I made it twice as long as I would need to go around the hat, since I’m not sure how much it will shrink. It may not shrink width wise as much as I’d like, or it may shrink up all tiny and not have any of the pretty holes left… That remains to be seen. I was hoping to felt it tonight, but we went grocery shopping and I haven’t even put them away yet…

I ordered several delicious looking skeins from three different sellers on Etsy and was NOT disappointed. They’re all gorgeous! Colors varied a little from my monitor, but that’s to be expected. I’m still on the hunt for the perfect thing for my shrug project though. In the meantime, I’ve got plenty of other fun projects on my plate.

First up from See Jane Knit Yarns!

We have Green Tea, alpaca sportweight.

It’s soft and yummy! A little lighter weight than I was expecting, but I’m still learning about things that don’t come from Joann Fabrics… It’s a little more yellow/lime than I thought it would be, but love it anyway. Did a small swatch and even my husband says he likes it!

Next we have Trivimp featuring Black Rose, Merino wool sock yarn.

Soft, squishy totally beautiful! Swatched this one up too and love it!!! This may be destined to become my first pair of socks…

Lastly we have FearlessFibers. After several emails with her, and a lot of narrowing down I ordered three (and will probably order several others in the future.) I love the way she photographs her yarn, as though it were bowls heaped with delicious ice cream!

Lust superwash merino wool sock yarn.

More red than I was expecting, but gorgeous!!!

Marrakesh, Merino wool superwash sock.

More yellow and less olive than I thought, but again, lovely!!! Not sure what it is to be quite yet…

Majestic, merino wool laceweight.

More purple than I thought, I was expecting blues and grays. But, I love it!!! It’s very beautiful. I believe it will have life as a lacy scarf.

I haven’t had time to wind up and swatch these last three skeins yet. For now I just pet them because they deserve it…