Another FO!

I'm feeling pretty good over here, I finished the birthday present (it had a June 4 deadline). Here is the completed Sunflower Shell



The only other gifts of pressure, are the teacher gifts. Well, the teacher gifts and finishing the squares Bowen's class made into a baby blanket for one of their classmate's expected baby. That one is looking a little tricky and I keep looking at it and thinking, "The baby's not due until October, I have time." When really I should be bustin' ass on it, so they can present it to the mom-to-be on the last day of school (that would be June 9. Yea, I'm in some serious denial.) I'm making Chicky's teacher a booga bag. I did it out of a Lion brand that was half wool and half acrylic. I like it, except for the fact that I didn't felt the handle and the body of the booga together, and I think the handle should have been felted more. The drawback to that was that I was sick as shit of knitting i-cord. It's one of those things I knit and knit and measure every ten minutes and the measurement it EXACTLY THE SAME as it was ten minutes ago. I-cord hell.



I'm making Bowen's teacher felted boxes (out of the Mason-Dixon Knitting book). I want to make the flax hand towels, the swirly floor rug, the bath mat, the bubbly curtain, aw hell, I want to make all of it! My warshrag is comin' right along, too.

Our Memorial Day was spent planting seeds in all our empty flower pots, finding slugs (Chicky loves slugs, I don't know why. She names them and talks to them, and is probably the Best Friend of Slugs I know),



and weeding the gardens. Bowen weeded their entire garden (Morgan faded pretty quickly on it). The birdhouse gourd vines are growing, the scarlet runner beans are happily clinging to the tunnel trellis, and the giant pumpkin, and giant walking stick kales are all coming up. By August that garden will, hopefully, be huge.

The Kimono. Finished.

Well, I'm not so thrilled with the underarm seaming of the kimono. I ripped out the first seam three times before I got it to a state I can live with. I added a tie on the inside because I have a couple of these shirts, and if there's not a tie on the inside it doesn't look so tidy. This is so cute I'm using a larger picture.



I really hope Madison won't be too big for this (she may be a newborn of some heft and girth).

The Hardest Part

I am now at the hardest part of knitting. The baby kimono is blocked (and looking very cute), and I am waiting for it to dry so I can sew the seams and add the ties.



Sigh. The key to blocking is the waiting until it is BONE DRY. I saturated this little cotton/poly blend softie with a mister on a big thirsty towel. It has been in the drying stage for well over twelve hours...I'm ready for it to be done now.

Maybe later tonight there will be a post of the finished piece.

Knitting Progress

I'm not done with the Olympic Shawl yet. There's a friend's birthday and a baby on the way that have kind of sent me off course for a little while.

The Sunflower Shell is almost done. The back and front are supposed to be the same, but I decided to make the back plain. The glitch is in the finishing. I'm not sure how I'm going to make the edging as pretty on the back as it is on the front. Ah, a challenge...



A co-worker is expecting a rather large baby in a few weeks and I decided that baby needs a kimono. The pattern is by Christina Shiffman and is in Mason-Dixon Knitting. I think I will have to make another that is larger, so this is a trial run.



Happiness is a new sock, in a rockin' pattern. It never ceases to entertain me, self-patterning yarn. I am also a banana-head about trying to make both socks MATCH. This is very important to me. I don't know why, I consider myself something of a rebel in my regular life, but when it comes to socks the rebel leaves and becomes an anal-retentive, yarn-measuring knitter.



The other day, I received a gift of a wig for the dramatic play section of the childcare program where I teach. Bowen decided to try it on. He loved it so much, he now wants to let his hair grow out. He looks like a little skater dude. I don't care whether he has long hair or not, his father had long hair when I met him and was certainly part of the attration.

Bird update and knitting progress

I've been so negligent in the posting. My defense is it is that I have been spending lots of time gardening, and at soccer practice, and games. Lame excuses, they're all I have.

The baby birds are gone from the nest. Now my porch lamp is filled with an empty nest with bird poop all around the edges. I get keeping the inside of the nest clean, but seeing baby birds resting their little heads over the poop-laden edge bummed me out. Where are bird social services when you need them?



There seemed to be another nest on the ground for the finches after their practice flights. Morgan tracked this little wacky flyer down. There were birds skittering all over the front yard for a few days. I have no idea how many survived.



Well, it's May and I'm three quarters of the way done with my Olympic shawl. Think anyone cares? Me neither, but it's really cool. This is the Meg Swenson shawl out of the winter Vogue. I blocked the first end so I could decide if I wanted to rip it out and start over, and admire how cool it is. (If I liked it. It's not perfect, but I do.)



And finally, the Sunflower Shell I started last summer. I don't think it will fit me when it's done, but I know several women it might. It's done in Classic Elite's Pima cotton/Tencel blend. It has an amazingly soft hand. It sort of self-finishes and I was doubtful, but it seems to be working.



When these projects are finished, I'll finish the pair of socks I've started.