Inspired

I have been eyeing this Stag Bag on Knitting Daily for a while now. I saw this post a few days ago and that was it, I had to do it.

But, I have no money, or, well I have money, but I have to pay people with it so Molly can be less crazy, so it has to be made from the stash. I dived in and came out with 6 skeins of undyed something like DK weight wool/mohair from who knows where (it's Spinnerin, and is old). It's a bag, who cares if the gauge isn't exactly right. So late last night I ended up doing this:
I think I am going to call it my Prongs bag. Fortunately my husband humors me when I go off like this. He helped me skein 4 balls of yarn and then I went to work mixing up whatever I had to get these colors. I wanted vaguely Gryffindor colors, but I wanted the red to be a dark, brownish red, since I didn't think I'd love a red stag and trees. I am so excited I can hardly stand waiting for the yarn to dry.













Oh, and I also got sucked in by the Yarn Harlot in to the Mystery Stole 3 group. Apparently I wasn't the only one because it went up about 2000 people on the day that the Harlot blogged about it.

It's too late to join now, though, so if you want to make the stole you'll have to wait for fall when it's for sale. Or you can make one of her previous mystery stoles now, the patterns are on her site, and they're beautiful.

You'll note, though, that I'm not making the stole until I know what it is. Sorry, but I can't make a lace stole when I have no clue what it is. Not when Harry Potter 7 is getting ready to come out and I'm trying to stock my store. Though I am laughing hysterically at some of the guesses that people are making on the group. Goats? Spiders? ALF?!?! Seriously, people... what are you thinking? And there's NO FACE in the first 2 clues, I don't care what anyone says.

Crazy...

Bad blogger

I have been really bad at keeping my blog up to date lately. What can I say, the pattern and store is keeping me busy, and I'm busy with other fiber things, and, well, having all 3 kids home for the summer is really kicking my ass. We only got 1 session of special needs camp for Molly. And she's had some food infractions. It's been fun (not.)

Here are some fibery pictures to entertain you in the mean time.

Yes, I caved and made a spindle too. I love it.
I borrowed my mom's wood burner to decorate it.
And I've been spinning with it....


A friend of mine is convinced that those ballband dishcloths are crack (you know, once you start, you just can't stop). Possibly because so many people in our group seem to be unable to stop making them.

But I'm going to have to disagree. The dishcloths are fun, even slightly addictive. You may not be able to make just one, but you can easily stop after 2 or 5...


Spinning is crack.




My first yarn. Plied and everything. There's more, too.

It's finished!

The Sheepy Pants pattern is finished! It's very comprehensive, has optional instructions for 3 waist bands, 12 cuffs, and 2 gussets, completely with a ton of pictures. It is 22 pages long, and it's 38 meg, yikes! I'm hoping making it a PDF will make it smaller. It is so big that right now it's too big for me to email to my DH to make it into one. But as soon as that's done, it'll be available on etsy. Yay!

Questions from the comments

Some people have recently asked what a soaker is and what a soaker sack is.

A soaker is a wool diaper cover. It replaces PUL or vinyl diaper covers. It is not water "proof", in the sense that if you get a pitcher of water and pour it in, the water will run through the knitting. But unlike other fabrics, wool will not wick liquids. So unless your cloth diaper is so wet that it's dripping (in which case, it's WAY too wet anyway) the wool will keep whatever is outside dry.

Wool also has lanolin in it, which has the wonderful chemical ability to neutralize urine. Which means that until the lanolin in the soaker is used up, it won't smell.

A soaker sack is like a little skirt. It works the same way, but it just goes around the waist and hangs down over little toes. These are generally just used for the first few months, often at night, because newborns have wiggly, and often uncooperative legs and it's just easier to pull up and pull down, without having to worry about putting legs into leg holes.

I've also been asked how to dip dye. You can see how I did it here.

As for how I do the embroidery... well, I don't know how to answer that. I learned how to embroider from my grandmother about 30 years ago. I've done it occasionally over the years to add decoration to things, denim jackets were fun. I've adapted to work over knitting. If it's a simple design I just do it free hand. If it's complex like the fairies I sketch what I want on knitting graph paper (they are little rectangles instead of squares). and use that as a guideline. Duplicate stitch is a good way to fill in large spaces. The Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework is a book I've had for decades and still refer to it regularly for stitch ideas.

Bugs...

Well I don't know what happened, but several of my posts were saved as drafts but not appearing on my blog. Which is odd, because I swore I checked and saw that they were posted earlier, but something weird happened.

*scratches head*

Anyway, they are back, now, hopefully, so go read those and that will keep you busy until I have time to take pictures of some new finished objects, and update my sidebar stuff. I will just say that the mis-crossed cable was fixed (32 rows back) as well as the matching one on the other side 3 rows lower. I really can't imagine how I got that far past it without noticing.