Enchanted Mama

Knitting and Reading::

Knitting--  

Currently this sweater is in my basket.  Mainly because I started it two years ago and I really want to make this and I'm not sure if I have enough yarn and the only way I'll know is if I finish the sweater and see what is left over.  So, I'm racing to finish because I really, really want to see the shawl done.  

I've a few other projects in the works, a few, but we can chat about that on another day.

Reading--

An old classic, Little Women.  The March gals are a joy to read about again and again. Sharing this with my girlie as well.  Love that.   

The Grimm Legacy a young adult book. Four chapters in and I'm intrigued.  Anything about Grimm's Fairytales. Reading it before I hand it over to my girlie.  When it came down to deciding who would read it first, she wasn't fast enough.     

 The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I'm reading less ardently than the others.  It's well written and I know I'll end up loving it.  I just seem to have a touch of Spring fever and my attention span is waning or I continue to try and read it at the end of the day when I'm exhausted. I'm sure it will catch my attention again soon.

*linking up with ginny to share love for knitting and reading with yarn along*

 

Also...

**I'm over at Dixon Hill today for a fabulous new series called Changing Places.  Go for a visit and see all the beauty Helen has to share.** 

 

 

 

First of Many::

That's my friend Heidi.  Isn't she cute? She makes me cooler just by knowing her.  

I met Heidi awhile back when I owned a children's store called The Bee's Knees.  It was quite an adventure.  Maybe even a story for another day.  Anyway, this lovely lady came in and help transform, in many ways, the store as my manager.  Along with some other lovelies that I had working for me.  One of which now lives in New Zealand with her honey and triplet girls.  

We have been friends since then.  Almost thirteen years.  Maybe fourteen?  Let's just say its close to that.  She's the kind of friend that I know will be a part of my life always just because.  Plus, like I mentioned, I'm alittle bit cooler having her as my friend.  We laugh and talk and talk some more.  I don't even recall all the things we talk about.  We just never seem to run out of things to say.  Which, in and of itself, is cool.  

We recently spent time together camping at the beach over spring break.  She with her sweet boys and our little brood.  We had such a great time. 

And this lovely had her birthday recently and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try out the Ribband bracelet by the festive Laura Nelkin.  She had gifted a kit for the bracelet to me when we hung out in New York last January.  I pulled it out again and got to work.  

I did chose some thicker yarn I had on hand and some beads left over from my other Ms. Laura project, which I love by the way, and started knitting.  

The best bit of fashion advice I received from Heidi... Where accessories are concerned the bigger the better.  

Okay, good.  

I like how the wrap bracelet turned out.  Funky, fun colors.  Not for everyone of course but she loved it.  Loved how it felt and loved that if she fell asleep cuddling one of her darling boys then she didn't have a hard bracelet poking her into her wrist at 2:00 a.m..  Kudos to Laura for that one.  I wonder if she even realized that cool factor of her bracelet.  

So there it is.  The first of many bracelets that I will knit.  And, they are fun.  Did I mention that?  I know Laura was up with her girlie stuffing bracelet kits a few days ago so you ought to go visit her shop and try one for yourself.  I know you will thank me later.  

 

Off to my day.  

Wish me luck because I think I might need to stretch time and use super human strength to clear my "to do" list.  I suppose, if I need a break, you will know what I'm knitting.  

Bye for now friends.  

 

 

The Color of Rain::

This simple, but glorious scarf, is made amazing by the yarn that's used.  

In this case, it's a skein of hand spun yarn that I purchased at the yarn guild last December.  The skein sat and sparkled at me for months until I figured out the perfect pattern for it. 

All through Ecuador I knit on this scarf.  Through the cloud forest all the way down to the rain forest and canoeing on the Amazon river.  On a bumpy bus and a small airplane.  Surrounded by fellow travelers and tucked into my room at night.  It has been a delight to watch it grow.  

I was sorry to see this project come to an end though.  There will be other skeins but this one, this one was special.  It may have cinched the deal that someday, in my spare time, I will be a spinner and make some of this yarn myself.  I believe that once you knit with hand spun yarn full of colors and sparkles well, there may be no way to go back.  

 

The only problem now is that Summer slid in while we weren't looking and the eighty degree weather brought out the swim suits and water play...and not the wool scarf that I just finished.  bummer.  

There's always September though, right?

What's inspiring you today?  

 

 

Her smile::

I can hardly resist her smile.  Or smiles I should say as there are so many different ones.  My goodness I do believe there is something magical about the eighteen to twenty-four month age.  Don't you think?  

There is just a certain level of cuteness and words and smiles and cuddles that are impossible not to be charmed by.  

 

I started this post to tell you about this dress.  It's out of the yarn I used for the leg warmers last week.  Fun yarn I tell you.  

Plus, there is something about it that seems to make it fly off the needles.  Which is good when you seem to be knitting and knitting with nothing but half sweaters to show for it.

Nice to have a sense of accomplishment once in awhile.  

 

So the Dress is actually modified from this top.  

I added some length and increased stitches to create an A-line dress.  What I love is.... I used one skein for the whole thing.  

It will be great for Spring as the mornings range from cool to snow on the ground.  It's just hard to know what the weather will do.  

The versatility of this dress will be just what we need for that.  

 

The best part of the photo shoot with this girl was that I kept telling her we were done taking photos and she kept saying, "No, one more." 

Hmm...ham anyone?

 

 

A Gift::

We have a teacher that my son is convinced is an angel.  

I'm tempted to believe him, with her blond hair and blue-blue eyes she exudes that.  Of course, I know she would deny it and I know that none of us really want to be angels, at least all the time, as we are all here to work on things, but we like to pretend sometimes.  

And, when your sweet boy looks up at you and says "No mommy really, she's an angel".   Well, I'm tempted to just agree.  

So, her birthday happened recently.  She had been speaking with some of the moms about how to keep her legs warm in rain boots as they were always cold.  

Secretly I smiled a tricky smile and saw a perfect excuse to knit something.  The color, according to my son had to be "blue-blue like her eyes, mommy".  So, even though these legwarmers would not cooperate while being photographed, they are actually the most beautiful color of blue-blue if I've ever seen it.  

 

Fabulous thick yarn and big needles, these bad boys were done in no time.  

The woman who spins this yarn I met at a winter faire this past year.  Her yarn is solar dyed in vats of seawater.  Yes, even though I need no other yarn, some of this needed to come home with me.  You will be seeing more projects from this yarn soon.  It's so luxurious to knit with.  

My son watercolored a tag and gifted them to her with a, "Happy Birthday. They are the color of your eyes."

Um yeah.  Her heart melted.  My heart melted.  She started crying.  

It was good.  

 

Really it's the best kind of knitting.  Simple.  Straight-forward.  Bringing a smile to someones face.  

Yup, good stuff.  

 

Ravelry notes here.  

 

Warning::

Warning::  

These little creatures are habit forming even for the most focused of knitters.  

They are fun, easy and thrive on lots of friends.  You'll be convinced, quite easily, that there should be collections of them--Big collections--that promote gatherings of all types of critters.   Cupcakes with eyes.  Gnomes. Reindeer and mini cheeseburgers.  They aren't about appearances as they all enjoy each others company and only require that you keep knitting more friends.  

If you decide you need to knit some, keep in mind that I warned you.  

Anna Hrachovec has a great site with everything you'll need to get started including the book that I used.  If you are on Ravelry here's another great place to find her patterns.  

Bet you can't make just one....

 

 

Shimmer::

I've started a new sweater with yarn I found in New York at the Vogue Knitting Live Marketplace.  It's luscious.  It's sparkly.  It's just what I want to wear.  Right now.  

I can't seem to knit it fast enough.  Granted, the yarn only arrived a few days ago, but I really would have liked to be wearing it yesterday.  Do you suppose my expectations are a wee bit high?

Also, what's hard to see is the slight, but not scratchy, shimmer in this yarn.  Yes, shimmer.  Not too much.  Not too little.  It's really rather fabulous.  

So now to the REAL problem... 

I spent some time with my knitting group, my two dear friends, yesterday attempting to knit while deflecting my bouncy four year old and knowing that any moment the baby would be up and ready to play.  

So, I'm telling them how I thought that the pattern might have some mistakes.  That I was knitting and when I would get to one side with the lace there was always something not quite right.  

Wrong in fact.  I looked back again and again unable to figure out where the issue was coming from.  

Yet, I'm getting better at a little imperfection in my knitting and decided to KNIT ON!  I did.  Yet, every time I came around there was some issue with either not enough stitches or too many or something.  

This is the conversation I'm having with my friends and they are nodding in all the appropriate places and letting me talk it out.  As I'm doing that I realize that one side of the lace doesn't look so bad.  In fact, it was pretty darn close to the pattern and what it was supposed to look like.  

The other side not so much.  

We decided that I would turn it around and put the "not so right part" on the back where in all honesty no one would even notice.  

Our time was up.  We all departed to gather children from school.  Snack.  Homework.  Dinner.  Baths.  Books.  Kisses.  Lights out.  Dinner dishes.  Locate the mittens, coats and hats for the morning.  Finally, I'm on the couch knitting again.  

The clock reads 10:00 p.m. and it's then and only then, that I realize the huge blunder that is mine.  One side of the sweater is fine.  The other not so fine.  Each knit from the same lace pattern.  The problem...not the pattern but the pompous knitter with the needles.  

Yes. 

So, I did the only thing I could think of....I kept knitting. Just faster as though somehow the mistake would disappear if I knit on further.  That somehow I would outrun that blunder by shear will of yarn.  

Today?  Well, I finished the first twenty five rows.  I felt as though if I squished and tucked here and there it would work.  Yup, that was my plan.  I began to straighten out the yarn on the needles preparing to remove the markers and head up the front with the next lace pattern when I saw it.  

The twist.  

The twist, that the whole time I'd been worrying about the lace pattern being incorrect, I never noticed.  The common mistake of ingenue knitters.  I twisted my cast-on.  I TWISTED MY CAST-ON!  

<insert gasp here>

So, for you non-knitters out there this is not something you want to do.  In fact, its frowned upon in knitting a sweater because you will have a big huge twist in the sweater.  Awkward.  Like someone who's tucked their sweater into their underwear kind of awkward.

 

So, the plea went out to my friends via email this morning and it read something like...

...Amateur knitter on the loose....Rookie mistake being made...Should I try and steek it (straws, I was grasping at straws here)...What should I do?  

And, in perfect form the response was unanimously "Rip it out, start over, yours in sympathy."  Cuz, that's how we roll.  There might have been a thank goodness you weren't fifty rows in which I nodded my head in agreement that it could have been even worse.  

So, that's what I did. I ripped it out.  The sweater that I wanted to be wearing two days ago is now a pile of crinkly yarn on the table in front of me.  hmm.  

So, I suppose you know where I'll be in my free time, on the couch knitting when everything else is done for the day.  

I won't make the same mistakes again.  Well, that's probably not accurate.  I will more than likely just make different mistakes.  But, I hope in the long run I will love this sweater even more because of it all.  

At least in an ideal world.   

 

***Notes on Ravelry*** 

The Light::

This began as a very different post.  

The plan was to talk about the stretching we do as "creatives" to learn new things.  Try new techniques.  Experience new processes.  

Then, it was about this sweater and how it started in a flurry last January after I had finished "the sweater that took forever".  To prove to myself that I could do it again.

Then, I planned to spend time talking to you about steeking and how it involves scissors and the knit project you lovingly knit on for months which normally would send any knitter huddling into a corner.  The process both terrifying and thrilling and after months of plotting "how to" steek it was over in about thirty seconds.  I'd planned on talking about that, shaky hands and all.  

Then, I thought of the long months of knitting away, secretly mind you, finalized the night before christmas.  The project then wrapped and tucked under the tree.  The fact that I somehow ended up drawing my honey's name in the family handmade venture well, pure luck I tell you.  I thought I'd talk about that.  

 

Instead I'm just loving that the light finally gave me what I wanted.  No, not the true color of this sweater, as that seems to be truly elusive but rather back-lighting and camera flare.  Two of my very favorite things in photography.  Yup.  That's really all I wanted to say after all.   

 

Oh, and even without the light, I'm pleased to see that this cardigan looks pretty good with some baby on it too!  

Happy Wednesday to you all.   

 

*For those of you interested...the full set of photos and knitting details will be on Ravelry next week.*  

 

 

 

All Week::

I've had a post in mind all week.  Things I wanted to talk about.  Pieces I thought were important to write down.  

Instead, I've had many opportunities to stay away.  Feeling a bit flung into the middle of November.  Do you know that most people are talking about the holidays, now?  Plans.  Projects.  Time Left. 

Normally, I might be one of those.  An early start on things allows for more time to enjoy.  For some reason though, the return from my inspirational week has left me a bit, well, completely and totally overwhelmed.  

I honestly can't believe that its the middle of November.  I can't believe that all the projects and ideas I've had are now on the clock.  Ticking down the days until the holidays.  I don't like this.  I usually have a check in this time of year to see what I can realistically finish and what will have to wait.  

Instead, I cast on for four new knitting projects on Wednesday.  I know.  

Still, I'm wondering how I will get all the things done that I would like to.  I'm wondering why it takes so long after traveling to settle back into a routine.  And, I'm not even talking about the laundry.  

I've been absorbing all that I gathered last week and instead of feeling inspired and in the moment I'm thinking WAY. TOO. MUCH.

So, this is where I've been...

 

I could go on, but instead, let me share a few projects in my knitting basket right now.  

All Inspired by beautiful yarn.  

The yarn above was found while visiting with my dear friend last week.  She picked my up from the airport and we enjoyed lunch in one of Julia Child's favorite restaurants and then hit the yarn shop.

I found this fabulous blue toned yarn and knew it needed to be one of my four pairs of socks for the year.  I'm currently looking for a great pattern.  Any suggestions?   

My friend and I hand rolled this skein while chatting, laughing, and dropping the ball at least twice.  The owner of the store was lovely and helpful but adamant about how to roll a ball by hand.  I wasn't listening and I got into trouble.  

People, one must roll the yarn over one's fingers to keep the yarn from stretching!  Did you know that?

When the owner told me this my petulant teenager came out and I didn't do it.  Just because.  From behind a bookcase she saw I wasn't winding it correctly and made sure to let me know what she thought about that.  Granted it was in a very nice way but still.  whoa.  

In the end...she was right.  Plus, it looks so lovely with hunks of yarn wound together don't you think?

 

The next project will be a ribbed Cape.  

The yarn is a hand-woven bulky from a little old lady in Oregon.  I met her and she is little and quite old so I feel comfortable calling her that.

Already, I'm loving the pattern even though I've decided to work it from the top down instead of the bottom up in case I run out of yarn.  Only three skeins of "delightfulness".   

The yarn was in the stash so I'm loving it even more.

 

A scarf in this pattern for the earthy colored yarn.  I haven't made anything with the linen stitch before yet, I'm enjoying it already.  A great way to use up the odds and ends of your sock yarn while creating a unique and comfortable scarf to wear.  This will be a holiday gift if I'm lucky!

 

The delightful purple is a knit along that I'm doing with my dear friend who helped wind that first ball. We found her yarn while visiting the yarn shop together.

My yarn was the result of some stash diving.  So far, it's great to work with.  

And, as my friend is also using purple we will be "Mitchy-Matchy".  Uh-humm, Isn't that cute?  I suppose for that reason alone it's good we don't live in the same town!  

So there you have it.  I'm headed into the weekend hoping for more clarity.  Recognizing that a week of half days at school probably meant not much would get done.  Realizing that as soon as I dump about twenty things off the to-be-knit list I'll be much happier.  

I'll do that next week.  This weekend I'll still pretend that I can finish them all.  

It will be more fun that way!

What are your plans for the weekend?  

 

 

Warm Cocoa::

Don't these remind you of a steaming cup of warm cocoa?  In all it's chocolaty goodness? 

yum. 

I started the first mitt back in September 2010.  A practice mitt, if you will, so that I could make these.  Then, the one lonely mitt sat and sat in a basket waiting for me to knit again.  I finally did.

The great part was that after knitting the first pair and then these and yet again this last mitt went fairly quickly.  Almost as though I remembered the pattern which was quite lovely I tell you.    

I have one more pair to make.  One more for the gal who happens to be my hand model.  Hopefully, for her birthday in May if not sooner.   

 

These will be a gift for a dear teacher in our midst.  A teacher whom I'm so grateful to for helping one of my little ones.  A teacher who deserves a pair of mitts for all her loveliness.  

The bonus part of all this was that I was able to photograph the mitts and my daughter practiced her cello at the same time.  A win win situation.

 

So...

Yesterday, I spent some time with a friend exploring the knitting/weaving/felting/spinning genius from the women of the local Weavers Guild.  

Today, I hope to apply that inspiration into my day somehow.  

What are you doing on this Fantastic Friday?