tow flowers of my garden

I have finally finished the jacket I made for our friends baby daughter to be. I have been posting photos of it all along and here it is finally all finished!

I love how it turned out. Here’s a close up of the buttons and the lace work.

I bought a few things to send to the big sister as well. I am now working on a scarf for the mom using this yarn

Yup, my very first skein of Malabrigo, or as commonly called MMMalabrigo. I can not believe how squishy the yarn is. It arrived at my doorstep I just had to wind it into a ball and cast on! I wasn’t even planning anything for the mom but hey it’s winter in Wisconsin, I am sure a soft warm scarf will be appreciated!
I have finished the Star Afghan. I was going to use up all the yarn but I realised that it was getting so big that the colour repeats were going to occur midway through. I finished it off with doing a round of single crochet all around.

Hermoine’s tocks there should give an idea of the size.
The other WIP is a lace scarf. The pattern is from Traditional Knitted Shawls, and it’s called “Children of Lir” I am only doing one repeat to make it into a scarf instead of a stole. You start with a provisonal cast on and work one end, then the other and. This way the pattern lays correctly when worn. It will look even nicer once it’s blocked! The yarn I am using for is lace weight merino yarn called “Buttercream” from the dyer Yarn Chef. It is a very, very light shade of grey with few bursts of pale lilac and darker grey throughout. The yarn also came with a stitch marker (yay!) and a recipe. I love it when the packages contain little extra details like that!
Two things my beloved grandma were very good at was knitting and gardening. It seems that my mom inherited her love of gardening and flowers, while I inherited the love of all things yarn-y. I can appreciate beauty of flowers but I am sad to say that gardening does not bring me joy. Our landlord lived in this house nine years before he rented it out. He is an avid gardener. I have told him that I will water the flowers but I can’t be expected to do much else. It is the survival of the fittest in our garden. This is what managed to grow this spring with very little help from me.
My favourite are the Calla Lillies that grow along the driveway.

This strange flower is ACA’s favourite. I’ve been told it’s called “Bird of Paradise” There is an azelea bush that is a bit diseased yet still flowers And a strange plant that I didn’t know flowered. My neighbor said it was a kind of cactus This was the tree that prompted me to go grab my camera. I call it the “upside down tree” because some of the branches grow towards the earth. It had no leaves yet yesterday I noticed little flowers all over it, strange!
And this one is for my dad here’s my “sumuklu kedi” Hermoine

kelebek

tow coughing

I don’t understand why I can’t get well! I have started coughing and my nose is akin to a fountain. I can function much better, just have to stop for coughing fits or to blow my nose every few minutes. I am working the morning shift in the library today, we’ll see how that one goes!
The sweater dress Helena, or as I named it “Pinky Pink Pink with Brown” is coming along nicely. Unfortunately I am close to running out of yarn. It’s a shame because I was so really very much enjoying knitting it. I got a nice rhythm going with the lace pattern. Another bummer is that I bought the yarn from a Raveler for a great price, and now I have to pay three times as much for retail. I hope I can find a colourway that matches. Here’s what it looks like

The bottom flares out a bit, the circular cable is not long enough for it to stretch out. I took out the tips of the interchangeable needles and put the little stopper things on. I will take it with me tomorrow when I got buy more yarn and some buttons to match.
The September shipment of the Yarn Collective Sock Club arrived. This shipment was from Monsoon Designs and it was inspired from the Orion Nebula. The base is an awesome blend of bamboo and wool. The colourway is gorgeous as well.

I couldn’t get all the shades in the yarn to photograph properly. I don’t know why my camera refuses to capture shades of red or orange! There were also two stitch markers that came with the shipment. They are supposed to help you keep track of increase rows but I haven’t figured it how it would work, yet.
Hermoine was sitting between me and ACA, like she does most evenings. But last night she was insistent on sitting at my spot as soon as I got up. Then she would act like she was sitting there all along.

Special note to mom: That’s not a mess. That’s my side of the couch after I organised it. Thank you.
And to end with, here’s a friendly warning from your noodle producers

kelebek

tow poem for Australia Post

I posted this today at Ravelry. Thought my blog should get it too.

Five minutes ago a knock at the door.
I open the door and see a delivery guy is getting back in his van.
He points to my doorstep and says “express package”
I pick up the package and look at it
It’s for “Ihmad” somebody or another, not me.
I look at the address it’s 36 Street Name
I live in 38 Street Name
I call out at him, “This is not for me!”
He looks confused, takes the package from me
“This is not 36?” He asks
“No it’s 38.”
He looks around, “Soo where is 36?”
I say “Not here.”
I close the door, roll my eyes and think about posting this to ravelry.
I sit down and another knock at the door
Same guy leaving my drive way
Points to the package at my door step and backs out
Well, he got it right this time.

kelebek

tow I am so sick of being so sick

I don’t ever remember being this sick for so long before. It started with a dry throat last Sunday which progressed to a sore throat. I couldn’t sleep for two nights in a row because it hurt to breathe. I ended up going to the doctor who said it was a viral thing and there wasn’t so much she could do about it. I have started coughing two days ago and yesterday I couldn’t keep anything down –including water. I woke up today around 3:30 PM delirous with joy for having slept so well in over a week. I still feel a bit broken down but I think that my body is finally in the recovery mode, Elhamdulillah. ACA has been incredible taking care of me. He took Thursday and Friday off to be home with me. Honestly if I was him I would go to work just to get away from my constant coughing and complaining that I was sick.
The upside of being sick was it gave me lots of time to knit and crochet. Though yesterday I had an incredible ache on my right shoulder which I took to be a signal of too much knitting and crocheting. I made most progress on my star afghan.
It started out like this

And now a week later it looks like this

I am almost done with it, just a couple more rows. I think I will donate it to the “kermes” a charity auction thing.
I have also started working on a cute sweater-dress for one of our friends baby to be. The pattern is Helena from the Summer ‘08 Knitty. I couldn’t get the pattern to lay down flat but I really wanted a photo of it with my new stitch markers.

It is raglan type construction so it’s not too hard to imagine it closed!
My my, what pretty stitch markers, where did you get them you ask? They were part of an incredible swap package I received from my World Yarn Swap group partner Zoe, aka woolbird. Would you look at all she sent me…

A closer look at all the yarn

Aaand the pretty stitch markers

Here’s me hugging the parcel

I am hugging the package because it was such a long time in coming here, it’s not even funny. She mailed the package to me from England back in July. Aaand after a month of anxious waiting, mailman stalking the package arrived back on her doorstep saying it was unclaimed. **insert a few well chosen swear words here about the Australian Postal Service** She mailed it to me again, this time with delivery confirmation thing and it finally made it over here! But it was so worth the wait!!
On the finished objects department we have the purpley swirly socks.

These were the socks that were mentioned in my previous post. The pattern is Swirling Master Coriolis from Cat Bordhi’s New Pathways for Sock Knitters, which is my favorite book at the moment! I also made two little learning socks from the book.
This one is Little Sky

And this one is Little Coriolis

27 August was my brother-in-law’s birthday and I have promised to make him an amigurumi penguin.
Meet Peggy the Penguin who likes to ballet, but isn’t very good at it!

I made the tutu out of ribbon and some invisible elastic. I am NOT good at sewing so I poked my fingers nearly as often as I managed to poke through the ribbon and elastic. I am rather pleased with the result!
Spring is starting arrive in my half of the world. It is nice to step outside and feel the sunshine. I am expecting a few packages in the mail so I have been going out quite often! Another way of telling spring is here are these,

Hermoine brings them inside. She only likes the light coloured moths. After we learnt that they were gifts for us non-hunting humans we find them kinda sweet. I do chuck them out when she’s not looking! Here she is with her most recent catches,

I am in two new swaps this month, and I recently found who my partners were. One of them is a secret swap partner so shhh! It is the 100 gr challenge swap on Australian Knitters group in Ravelry. The item we make needs to be under 100 gr. I read through my partners likes and dislikes and I have to say I am excited to get started!! The other one is a “magic yarn ball” swap. That partner is not secret, so hi partner *waves* I am so really very excited to start on this one as well. I already begin eyeing things I can put in the ball. My partner has a little boy so that will make the hunt for small objects even more fun!
It’s iftar (fast breaking) time so I better go get ready for that!
kelebek