It's Spring!

I think spring has sprung, or at least on my front porch it has. I found daffiodil bulbs on sale at WalMart in January, like 2 bucks a bag of 12 bulbs so we planted them in to a couple of pots. Once they bloomed, we moved them to the porch. I call Daffiodils smiles on a stem, how can you look at one and not want to smile...



I have a very small collection of garden bunnies, I'm always on the lookout for more, I love to nestle them in around my potted plants. I used to have a real bunny named Harvey, a lovely little mini lop. I now have this thing for bunnies and since I have too many sheepies, bunnies are out. So I now look for little garden variety bunnies found at your local Ross or Marshalls.




Here is a little tease! A sample of some yarns I'm using for a baby sweater that I'm currently working on publishing for you to all enjoy. It's a quick little knit for the baby in your family or that will be arriving soon. Be patient it will be done soon.

It's spring and time for the kids to get clipped. Here is my lovely little boy, this morning he followed me out to the living room while I sipped my coffee he stared at me. I'm guessing he wanted me to fix his breakfast... so sorry Taggart, but this is my quite time, the only time that I get on the weekends to just sip my coffee and work on my patterns or knitting or like this morning, I was finishing up my audio book. I must admit, he looks so damn cute.

Who Knew?

I was on line the other day, and looking thru online book stores... New World Books, and Alibris are two of my favorites, I love used books... but I digress. Anyway, I saw and bought a book, Knit One Below. The concept sounded interesting. It is, the book arrived a week ago and I have been playing with the concept, some with single yarns, and some with two yarns.... I was first using some inexpensive acrylic. While I was playing around, the idea struck me...

I have all this beautiful mohair, and it's like, what was I thinking? I can't wear fuzzy mohair sweaters for so many reasons, one is that I'm not a thin, tiny person, also, I hate to be over heated... but then there is the issue of my many, many mohair purchases over the years. I'm telling you, I have some mohair. You can probably imagine what it would be like for an adict when they see their drug of choice... then you can imagine what happens when I see mohair. As an artist, I think it is the color saturation that you get with mohair, even with light colors, the color is still saturated without being dark or muddy. So back to the concept with Knit One Below. I took the mohair in the photo above and then looked (yes at Stitches) for a complementary yarn to knit with it....

Is this merino just perfect or what? So I swatched to see if they would indeed come out and indeed they did or at least I think the combo is amazing. I'm not sure what I will do, a sweater or a what. Oh, look at the next photo and check out my swatch...




I think I'm in love... the swatch feels so good and I get to use my mohair and it's soft and has a minimal halo from the mohair, I think I can wear this.....

Crock full of love!

Crock Pot Love……mmmmmm

In my efforts to become more efficient and have more time to knit, I have enlisted the use of my crock pot. When I first hauled it out, I had no idea what to cook, how long to cook, how much liquid to add, what temperature to cook, essentially I had no idea of what to do with it, I only knew that I needed to use it to be more time efficient.

My first foray was pot roast, I had never much liked pot roast, but thought my husband and mom would enjoy it, so I tried it. With much success, even I liked the results. I made several of these and then I tried chicken stew, as I don’t much like beef stew but do like stewed poultry. Again, much success, so I tried my version of Mexican chicken. That one blew the socks off of everyone! So last night after several meals of poached salmon (it was on sale), I decided to make my Mexican Chicken except with beef…. So here goes.

1 2 to 3lb chuck roast
1 Jar Southwest Salsa (you pick the heat) I used mild
1 Lg. can diced tomatoes, all the liquid
1 can black beans, all the liquid
1 cup frozen corn
1 Pk. Burrito seasoning

Dump all the ingredients into the crock pot and put on high for 6 hours.

Serve with steamed flour tortillas, and taco fixings; shredded lettuce, sour cream, shredded cheese, onions, cilantro, diced avocado and tomatoes.

Came out really yummy and probably will make about 8 meals

The cost per meal came out to around $2.75 per.

Cute or what????

Sleeping Beauty

I ask you, is she cute or what? I woke the other morning and this is what I find sound asleep on the loveseat. I grabbed my camera and started shooting. She didn't wake up and only moved a little. This is my mom's Daisy, she is beyond sweet and way too funny for words.

A close up of that sweet little face. When my mom wanted a sheepdog like mine I looked all over and finally found her in Southern California at an animal care center. When I brought her home to mom, it was love at first site. We now all live together and all three dogs get along fine. Daisy remains the funny girl she was when we got her and she is still mom's dog.

This is Daisy wide awake, her bangs were so long, I had to give her little pony tails so we could see her eyes and so she could see too.

UFO's and the finish line

I have this goal, to finish a UFO! there I said it, I have a UFO, I actually have more than one, but this one I still really like and it has few or no mistakes.







The biggest mistake I made was not having enough yarn for the sweater. I started this sweater around 2001 and must have put it aside thinking I had misplaced the remainder of the yarn. When I pulled it out last year to finish it, I made the discovery that there was no more yarn, it had all been used in the progress.



Thankfully I had become a member of Ravelry, an online knitting community. I posted that I was looking for this really old yarn in apricot color. I didn't get just one, but two people who had the yarn and in the right color. I forgot to mention that I had purchased the yarn some 10 years earlier and bought it on sale, so it was probably no longer being made when I got it. Back to the story, I made a simple donation and the yarn was sent to me. While the yarn that was sent was a different dye lot it was pretty close and I had some of the original yarn to blend the knitting.

The button band with some buttons that I found at Britex in San Francisco, they are lucite from France... I thought it was perfect as the patten is one from the French yarn company (sadly no longer with us) Pinguoin. I have knit a couple of items that I found in their pattern books, I love the style and the patterns for the most part were well written and frankly if you knit classics, you can weare the garment for decades or until you wear them out...

Random Knitting

Kristin Nicholas Rocks!

I started this sweater on December 10 2008, It is a Kristin Nicholas design. As you can see it is very textural. I love cable knitting, more cables the more I enjoy the process. I finished the back on December 27th, and now the fronts are cast off and the sleeves have been cast on and an inch or so is knit.

I had in my extensive stash, some beautiful merino wool. This is in wine color and is really beautiful. I cast on and knit the fronts on one circular needle. This sweater has a wonderful knotted rib knit

Here are the fronts on one needle just before I did the decreases for the neck edge and sleeve edge. This pattern went fast. I love all the cables and interest.

Happy New Year!

Goodbye 2008! Anyone else happy to see 2008 behind them? I know I'm happy, it was a tough year.... I'm not one for new year resolutions, and this will not be a year for exceptions. However, I have decided to embrace this year differently, to start each day with expectations of a wonderful day, do what is needed to do in order to have a good day. I was reading the blog of Bonne Marie Burns, of ChicKnit fame, and she talks of looking up this year, I think I too will be looking up and in more ways than to just lift my chin...

I'm going to;

- take more random photos
- post once per week to my blog (at minimum)
- design more baby sweaters
- write the patterns for what I have designed
- look for the good in people
- be the person I would like to meet and know
- be nicer to my husband
- knit out of my stash
- continue my yarn diet
- look for something each morning to be grateful about to start my day with a smile
- bring my lunch to work more days than not
- take more classes, knitting, jewelry making, self improvement
- start my water aerobics class again
- be better to myself
- dress better regardless of my size... I'm not where I would like to be, but heck, I'm what I am and I should enjoy

I will continue to add to this as I see more that I want to do in 2009 or change for that matter...