Until now, that is.  I started my first 12:01 Pumpkin.  Before I knew it, I’d started two more.

Today I finished all three!

I went overboard on this project because I was fascinated by the possibilities in knitting and felting colors in combination.  My first 12:01 (on the right above) used Wool of the Andes in two different colors (2 strands of Pumpkin and one of Persimmon).  The knitted fabric for that was gorgeous!  The second 12:01 (the one in the middle above) used three different colors of Cascade 220.  One strand was a heathered tangerine, the second was a flat tangerine, and the last was a lighter orange.  The third 12:01 used a darker combination of oranges.

I also played with the colors of the handles.  My favorite handle was on the third pumpkin and used an amazing Cascade 220 in a heathered orange, brown, and green.  I don’t think I’d want a whole sweater of it, but as a pumkin handle, it was pure perfection.

Of the three pumpkins, I think the last one is my favorite.   The colors are so rich!  I think the second one is the most realistic looking.  The first one is pretty and, had I not done the other two, I think I would have been genuinely thrilled to carry it around.  However, I think I’ll keep my favorite and give the other two away as gifts.

The problem with getting caught up in a project like this is that I now have to fight to move on to something else (rather than plying with yet more combinations of oranges).   Blast Cascade for having so many shades!  It’s way too tempting!  (And please… Don’t even begin to tell me of all of the other wonderful feltable yarns that come in lots of pretty shades!)

If you’re going to make one of these pumpkins, I made a couple modifications to the original pattern:

1. After the last (decrease) row of the main color, knit one row all the way around. Without that extra row, the purl stitches in between the “wedges” of the pumpkin cause the color change to look rough. The extra row makes it so that “rim” of the pumpkin is smooth all the way around.
2. When changing colors, knit the last stitch of the first row of the CC together with the stitch below the first stitch in the new color.  It creates a jog-less join, which makes the “rim” smooth at the color change.

My latest test knit is for sunnyspirit23, who I met via the Go Fast, Knit Left (NASCAR racing) group.  She posted an OT request for test knitters and was pretty much buried with enthusiastic offers to try out her first pattern.

Her Un-Purled Cables pattern called for Malabrigo Chunky, which I now have in my stash.  However, as I was searching for my size 13 dpns (to finish off pumpkin mania), I discovered some yarn in my stash that I’d purchased about three years ago.  At the time, I loved the look and feel of the GGH Savanna, but when I tried knitting with it, I found that it didn’t want to be mittens or a hat.  So I stuffed it in the bottom of my stash and forgot about it until today.  There I was, three years later, with it calling,  “I want to be pretty cables!”

Different people have different ideas about test knitting.  Some designers want you to use exactly the yarn that they suggest so that the resuls are predictable.  I think a little differently.  In my opinion, the quality of the pattern is only tested when people do unexpected things with it.  (Example: The clapotis is an awesome pattern because it can be used with tons of different yarns!)  Besides, Sara had so many offers for test knitting that I figured she could put up with one weirdo coloring outside the lines.

I’m really glad that I listened to the yarn rather than the pattern.  I’m sure the Malabrigo Chunky would have been spectacular, but I love the way the Savanna worked with the cables.  My result is a bit more airy and a bit less structured than the samples shown on the pattern.  However, my resulting cowl is soft and the cables seem to just flow…

I think the pattern also shows off the unique look of the yarn, which is what made me impulse buy it in the first place. It has a subtle texture that gives the resulting garment character. It almost makes me want an entire sweater out of it. (Almost… According to the tag on the label, I paid over $10 for an 80m ball! Imagine the cost of a sweater!)

I really enjoyed knitting the pattern. Unlike some test knits I’ve done, the pattern was fairly clean. I have a couple small suggestions, but there was nothing that made me stop and scratch my head.   The very best thing about the pattern is that it’s quick!  I’m the world’s slowest knitter, but I knocked it out in a few hours!  I’m interested in seeing how the pattern works with some other yarns in my stash!

In other test-knitting news, I heard from an old contact who has some critter patterns for me to try. I can’t wait! Stay tuned for the results!

This year I’m making some 12:01 pumpkin baskets.  The pattern was on MagKnits before the site closed down, but I found a cached version of it thanks to Google.

Last week, I looked into my (way too large) stash and saw that I had half the number of skeins of KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in the Pumpkin colorway for the project.  So I ordered the other half (along with some dyes and needles) and waited.  The order arrived yesterday afternoon, and I was excited to start.  Much to my surprise, when I pulled out the yarn from my stash, I discovered:

1) My new skeins of Pumpkin Wool of the Andes were the same dye lot as the old ones.

2) One of my old skeins was not “Pumpkin” at all.  It was Persimmon Heather.

Oops.

My husband looked at the skeins from across the room and said, “They’re the same!  Why do they have different names?”   I had a much better look at them and could see that the Persimmon Heather was clearly darker than the Pumpkin.  (Mr. Grump STILL insists that I’m out of my mind!)

Still, I was in a hurry to start, so I figured I’d use the darker color on the bottom and see how much of a difference it made.  The 12:01 pattern is worked triple-stranded, so there was a chance that it really wouldn’t be all that noticeable.

If you click on the picture and look at the “super-size” version of the picture, you may be able to see that the Persimmon Heather gives it a bit of dimension.  The knitted fabric has little bits of brighter orange and burnt orange that are absolutely gorgeous.

Problem is, I only had one skein of the Persimmon Heather.  Now that I’ve tried it, I like it so much that I don’t want to do half a pumpkin without it.  So I’ll be placing another KnitPicks order!

In the meantime, I think I’ll start Pumpkin #2.  My friend Wendy and I went to the Grand Re-Opening sale at the Knitting Nook this afternoon.  Much to my delight, they had Cascade 220 in a few different shades of orange.   Instead of having the same color of orange for all three strands, I’m going with three different colors of orange.  I can’t wait to see how this turns out!

So I finally finished a pair of my very own!

Fiber Trends Felted Clogs

Julia gave me lots of great advice for the project, and I’m thankful that she was so patient with my questions.  The best advice that she (and Jeri, who has knitted almost as many clogs as Julia) gave me is to mark the toe stitch.  It’s a simple thing, but it made all the difference!

The black is Garnstudio Eskimo that I bought from Nordic Mart.  I was surprised at how quickly Nordic Mart delivered the yarn.  I ordered on a Friday afternoon, and it was sitting on my doorstep by Tuesday afternoon.  As I was knitting the soles of the clogs, I was a bit worried because my gauge wasn’t that close to that spec’d by the pattern.  I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

The pink is Kramer Yarns Mauch Chunky that I’d received from curiouslykate on Ravelry in a swap months ago.  I can’t remember what I had that she wanted, but I saw the trade as an opportunity to try a yarn that I’d previously never considered.  I’m very pleased with the way this yarn felted.  It’s fuzzy (hairy), but it felted quickly and solid.  (I think I’m going to use the rest of the Mauch Chunky to make a Felted Hedgehog!)

Because I’d never used either of these yarns before, I suppose it was a bit risky to try them together in the same clog.  I didn’t even swatch.  (Bad grump! Bad grump!)  It worked out though.  The sole is so thick that I don’t think I’ll bother adding the leather bottoms that I’d purchased for the project.

The little grump loves them and claimed them even before they were dry.  My only hope of keeping them for myself is if she decides that they are a bit too big for her.  Since we’re almost the same shoe size, I don’t think that’s very likely.   Somehow I think that there will be another pair of felted clogs in my future!

• I failed to do a back-up before I started.
• I meant to delete an old blog that I’d played around with and inadvertently deleted my real blog.

Fortunately, my brain started working in time to remember that most of the data for WordPress is contained in the database.

I lost my pretty template and all of the images uploaded directly to my server, but most of it is still there.  Most precious of all, the comments, were in the database, so I can live with reconstructing everything else.

Not right now though… I’m off on a mission of mercy to a co-worker’s home computer.  Hopefully my brain wakes up by then.

When I first met her, I was impressed. Kitty is one of those “larger than life” types. She has been all over, seen and done quite a few things, grew up in a well-to-do home, and was still incredibly down-to-earth.  She’s a bit older than I am, but we still bonded and became good friends.  Her sense of humor was wicked, and we found that working together never really seemed like “work” at all.

She turned out to be one of the best bosses that I ever had. If I told her that something was beyond the powers of anyone lacking god-like abilities, she would take care of it, deflecting the negative energy from the management and allowing me breathing room to get the job done. She also stood behind me when I told the owner of the consulting company for which I worked that he was an imbecile for trying to sell customers products that they didn’t need and couldn’t use.

She has also turned out to be one of the best friends I’ve ever had.  When our respective consulting assignments ended, we went off in different directions professionally, but we stayed close. When I found out that I was moving to Texas, I was pretty sure that the relationship would fizzle out, but it hasn’t. She comes to visit as often as she can afford, using Texas as a welcome escape from her hectic life in Chicago.  She has more or less adopted the little grump as one of her own, and the little grump looks forward to her visits as much as she does Christmas.

Several months ago, when Kitty visited, she fell in love with my Crafty Alien Clam. There was something about it that made her laugh whenever she looked at it. She begged me then to make one for her. (She knits too, but her forte is beautiful cabled sweaters, not fiddly felted toys.)

A few weeks ago, she sent an email asking if I could have a visitor this weekend. From what she had said, she sounded tired and disgusted with her job, so I started making plans to give her a weekend full of laughs.

Step #1: Purchase wine.  LOTS of wine!  I’ve stopped into two of the WineStyles in the area.  In one of them, I found a bottle of wine that I knew that she would appreciate.  After all, one of the reasons her job sucks so much right now is that her manager can’t handle a woman who actually knows what she’s doing.

Step 2: Make her a clam of her very own. I finished this one right after she got here.

Crafty Alien Clam #2

The new one is the one on the left.  The other is the first one that I made.    (They both look a bit sloshed! Could it be because I was drinking wine when I finished it?)

Step 3: Yarn therapy!  Kitty loves to go to the Shabby Sheep when she comes to town, so of course, I had to take her there.  Thanks to the GPS on my Blackjack II, we were able to find the shop the first time, with no detours!  It was the first time ever!

If you’ve never been to the Shabby Sheep, it’s well worth the trip!  We poked around the shop for a bit, found more things that we wanted to buy than we can afford, and ended up leaving with large amounts of yarn.  (OK… INTENSE fiber therapy.)  She bought the pattern and yarn for my Christmas present, a beautiful cabled sweater from the Sublime “Exquisitely Soft Organic Merino Wool” book.  She let me pick the yarn and the color… a gorgeous wine color.  The yarn is, as advertised, exquisitely soft.  I can’t wait until Christmas!

Step #4: Mama Mia!   Because Kitty has been so busy, she hasn’t had a chance to see a movie in months.  I knew that she would love Mama Mia.  I was worried at first that it wouldn’t still be in theaters, but it turns out that the “Sing Along” version was just released.  Much to my surprise, the theater was packed!  I’m happy to report that the movie had its intended effect.  Kitty admitted that she hadn’t laughed so hard in years.  (The movie is humorous, but the singing and occasionally dancing audience made it even more fun!)

After that, we went to dinner at P. F. Changs.  Yum!  We had dinner and then brought home a Great Wall of Chocolate desert to share with the little grump.  Needless to say, there were no grumpy women in the house after that!

Step #5: Hubby becomes house boy!  My hubby can be an enabler at times.  This weekend, he dutifully dug out the corkscrew and has kept the wine glasses full in the evening.

Kitty’s visit isn’t done.  Today, we’re doing steps 5 (brunch at La Madeleine’s), 6 (knitting with the Sisters of the Wool), and 7 (house boy becomes grill boy).   Hopefully when I send her off to her plane tomorrow, she will be relaxed and ready to deal with the idiots in her life again!

Brainwash Bag

The Brainwash Bag was my first ever intarsia project.  It’s been on my queue forever, but the Ravelympics was just the kick in the pants that I needed to do it.

I’d give my intarsia efforts here a C.  I stranded the yarn in the back so that I didn’t have a huge mess on the back of the knitted panels.  Unfortunately, I think I pulled the yarn too tightly as I went along, because the gauge in the stranded section was different than the gauge in the part without stranding.

Felting covers a multitude of sins, so it’s not so obvious on the finished project. You can see the gauge issue is in the shape of the top.  It’s supposed to be straight, but it it’s kind of swoops instead.  You can also see that there are vertical ridges where the yarn in the back cinched up in the felting process.

Still, I declare the project a success.  I originally bought the materials and picked the pattern so that it would be a gift for one of my daughter’s friends.  However, my daughter is going to steal it.  She says that the swirl looks like a stylized “e”, which is her first initial, so it must be hers.  Plus, she dragged a top out of her closet that has the exact same colors as the bag.

I am considering lining the bag and adding a magnetic snap at the top.  (I bought this brilliant prismatic fabric for the lining back when I bought the yarn.)  I’m not going to do it now, though.  There’s no way that I can sew and watch the Olympics at the same time!

I’ve joined for two different teams.  (Unlike the real Olympics, Ravelry doesn’t force anyone to choose just one affiliation or event!)  I’m participating in the Felting Freestyle for TEAM TARDIS and in the WIP Wrestling for Team Sisters of the Wool.

My first event will be the Brainwash Bag for the Felting Freestyle.  I’ve had the Brainwash Bag in my queue for what seems like forever.  I bought the yarn over a year ago, but by then, the pattern had disappeared from the web.  A few months ago, I noticed that the designer had added the pattern to Ravelry.  Since then, I’ve been looking at it with trepidation and thinking that it would be a good idea to put it off even longer.

Learning a new knitting skill is sometimes like jumping off a cliff into deep water.  You know you’re going to survive, but at what cost?  Is it worth the risk?  Or is it better to be safe?

I’ve both desired and feared the Brainwash Bag for so long.  It’s simple intarsia.  I know that I should be able to do it, but previous attempts have been met with frustration and failure.  I decided that the Ravelympics was a good time to finally meet the challenge head on.  And, since I’ve announced my intentions on Ravelry, there’s no backing out!

Yarn for Brainwash Bag

Today, I studied the pattern and made my first move.  The pattern is worked using two strands throughout.  To simplify juggling of yarn, I wound the yarn double-stranded.  That way, I only have to worry about juggling two or three balls of yarn instead of four or six.  We’ll see how that goes.  I’m sure it will be one of those occasions when I’m glad that there is no camera around to show the world how incredibly uncoordinated I am!

In addition to the bag, I’m going to be making a pair of Fiber Trends Felted Clogs (for Felted Freestyle).  I’m hoping that Julia will help me with the clogs if I get stuck.  She’s knitted about thirteen pair so far, so she knows the pattern backwards and forwards by now, I’m sure!   And, if that isn’t enough, I plan on completing my Clementine Shawlette (for WIP Wrestling).   I’m about 60% done with that.  I’ll probably go for completing the Shawlette before I work on the clogs since the Shawlette requires less concentration.

I’m really excited about the challenge of finishing all of these projects in such a limited amount of time.  If I finish everything, I’ll have eliminated at least six skeins of wool that have been in my stash for the last year and another skein of sock yarn that has been in my stash for about six months.  That’s lots of yarn!  Plus, I’ll have two Christmas gifts and one retirement gift done months ahead of schedule.  It may be an impossible dream for me, but isn’t that what the Olympics are all about?

I decided to take the opportunity to finally knock a project off my knitting queue that had been there since the pattern was published almost a year ago, the Alan Dart Snowme. I rifled through my stash, pulled out some yarns that I liked together and set to work.

Imagine my surprise when my daughter returned from her trip with a bag that used almost exactly the same colors!

Alan Dart Snowme with the rocking Aerosmith bag

My daughter and I had to laugh at the way we channelled each other’s color choices from such a great distance.

Last night, I took the Snowme to knitting to show him off.  After he had been passed around from one person to the other, Angeluna commented that it was interesting that he was wearing pink but everyone was calling it a “him”.  I was thinking about that today when I was photographing the little guy.  Then the Aerosmith song “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” started running through my head.  It’s a song title that fits!

Meet Frog, Sheep, and Turtle

Lest you think that I spent the entire summer working on nothing (except a tiny horse), meet my latest critters! The patterns are all from Crafty Alien.  These patterns were better than the last ones that I used.  There were no mistakes at all!  Yippee!

BTW, my boss really LOVED the horse.  Several staff members have also commented on how wonderful it is.  The school secretary made the comment that I should make “bunches” of them and sell them.

The more that my co-workers see my knitting, the more I realize that most people have absolutely no clue what goes into it.  There are some people who just kind of shrug it off as no big deal (and who think that knitted gifts are a blatant effort to be cheap).  There are some people who think that knitting is cool and knitted gifts are valued but who also believe knitters can just crank out items without thought.

While I’m sure that there are some knitters who can, I don’t happen to be one of them. I don’t have lots of knitting time.  I also don’t have lots of motivation to knit things that I really don’t enjoy knitting.  So if I give a person a knitted gift, it means that I cared enough to take my time and energy to do it.

I’m sure that you can imagine the look that I gave the secretary.  I then told my boss, “There ya go!  I’ll quit my job and knit critters all day.  She said it was OK.” and flounced out of the room.

Yes, indeed… I do know how to make an exit!