FAF at the end of 2011

Hello! I hope you all had a great week. Thanks for coming by, it's so nice to see you. There are more crafty/creative peeps over on Andrea's blog, be sure to give them a visit too.

Mom loved her scarf and my sister liked the two dishcloths I crocheted for her. I totally spaced on taking pics of the dishcloths, or anything else over the weekend, but did take a pic of the scarf in the box before I finished wrapping it.

It was a low-key, family oriented weekend...and included meat cooked like this...

we'll just ignore the part where I blew my back out on Christmas Eve...ugh. It was one of those things where I felt the pain (similar to a 2 x 4 hitting me) and immediately wanted to take back the fact that I bent over to pick up that pile of sheets. Dang! I forgot how terrible back pain could be. Thanks to better living through chemistry I am moving relatively well and didn't miss a single thing over the weekend. I just don't dare let the tylenol/ibuprofen wear off, LOL

I've been steadily knitting on the Red Brambles the past few days. I love this hat! It's so simple and looks like it would take a genius to knit. My kind of project.

The weather man can't decide if it's December or March these days...weird weather in these parts. I'll be glad when everything finally freezes up and stays that way for awhile. There is too much mud in my yard that the dogs keep finding and tracking into the house. bleh

Happy New Year from the furry ones!

Have a great week!

2 Days before Christmas...

and Ishbel is blocked and drying. It's an amazing feat that I actually started a project for a specific gifty day and got it done without having to press all the way to a ridiculously last minute finish. It feels good.  I'm hoping my Mom likes this. I've been writing a card to go with it in my head the past few days. Hopefully she won't cry, although it's almost guaranteed...Mom's are like that you know.

I am so over knitting lace after this project though. Not sure what my problem was but I unknit as much as I knit once I got into the lace. I finally just gave up and bound off. I think it looks ok though, if you don't look too closely.  I love the yarn and the color of the yarn. It was dyed by my friend Rita at Yarn Hollow. My brain has been so tired from work that I had difficulty paying attention to my yarn-overs.

So I'm free from her and have cast on a new red Brambles hat. Red always makes me happy.

and something else that makes me happy is this little cutie...

Thanks so much to my bestie Paula. I love this little machine. I put a new plug on her and with some help from my buddy Rich at work got the 3 prong plug re-wired too.  The new bobbins came in the mail today from Cindy Peters at StitchesInTime. I can't wait to get this baby humming tomorrow. I already have a new quilt design swirling around in my head that might involve some sugar skulls.

I managed to get all my gift shopping done on the web this year. All but one gift arrived on time and the one that didn't...no biggie. I'm going to plan B.

All of us here at Chez B would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. May all your dreams come true. Have a safe weekend and remember to do something fibery!

As always you can find a treasury of other fiber artists participating in Fiber Arts Friday over on Andrea's blog. Go check em out!

This last one is for you Tamara Miller! Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas!!!

The Saint's Big Ass Sweater is finished!

 Yes folks, after 3 years and 11 months the sweater was finally ready to be worn. I think he wears it well pay no attention to the cowboys on his jammies

 and of course we had to get an action shot...

notice the concentration required to run that remote, LOL  3,000yds of Berrocco Ultra Alpaca...it is so soft and he says it's not too warm either (which I was a bit concerned about). Color me happy!

I also spent some time the past couple weeks spinning from a Phat Fiber Sampler for a special friend...each skein is about 10 yds or so

in return she made these fabulous buttons for me...she named them Snowflakes (click to biggie-size and get a really good look at their fabulousness)

you could buy some of these awesome buttons if you go to her website...The Delicion

It's so much fun to have friends that have different talents than I do. It means we get to share.

When I went to the Yarn Hollow open house a couple weekends ago I found this pretty little felted pin cushion made by Barb of Winding Wool Creek fame. Isn't it precious? I've spun lots of her fiber and it is luscious.

Hope you enjoyed your visit. It's been fun sharing with all of you. Visit with other folks that enjoy sharing their love of fiber over at Wisdom Begins In Wonder. Have a great weekend!

FAF 12-9-11

Another week has flown by during which I remember having several good ideas that I should post this week. Now, as I sit here in front of this machine, I cannot remember a single one of them.  And you know they were brilliant!  It's been a busy week, full of work with a little time and energy left for fibery stuff.  I have had the luxury of a couple 1/2 days this week, today being one of them. I spent most of Wednesday morning updating my projects and stash on Ravelry. It's been so great to sleep in an extra hour.

You'll find lots of interesting and fun things if you visit the other folks that participate in Fiber Arts Friday over on Andrea's blog.

Here you'll find the new yarn I spun to send to Andrea since she was the lucky winner a few weeks ago. please ignore the clutter  I wanted to be sure you saw my old, handmade skein winder, it was a gift from my friend Paula.  I just needed a bit of wood glue on the base and it works like a charm...no clamps, it stands on it's own wherever I want it to.

In the following pic you'll see a little piece of string, which is attached to a cotter pin.

and when you pull the pin out the end piece drops down so you can easily remove your newly wound skein.

pretty smart design, don't you think?

I've made a bit more progress on the Ishbel...must.knit.faster.

And especially for Tamara and the rest of LittleDog's fans, we had a little photo session the other night...I happened to have a turkey sandwich behind the camera...LittleDog loves turkey sandwich meat.

 

Have a great week everybody! Thanks for stopping by, be sure to leave a comment so we'll know you came.

Friday 2/2/11

Can you believe it's December?  Me neither.  It's been a super busy week at work so I have a few pics and not much else.

I know I mostly post fibery stuff here but I just want to pass along a couple of links to my favorite places...http://dailypuglet.blogspot.com/2011/12/lebowski.html  I love Daily PUglet and if you go there and look around you'll see why.

and my favorite button maker...http://thedelicion.com/index.php?p=info#thedelicion  and the following link will show you some beautiful photos of her buttons in collections. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nirbhao/sets/72157626803668257/  buttons would make really nice presents.

I've been doing lots of knitting, seriously, to the point of my right shoulder being painful and it makes it hard to pull off my shirt at the end of the day when it's jammy time.  I'm looking forward to the holidays passing so I can let my should rest a bit. It's all worth it though when I gaze upon the cuteness.

I added a business card to the pic for scale...Preemie hats...cast on 80, knit like crazy for about 4 inches then start decreasing (k8,k2tog one round then knit all next round...etc) til you have 6 or so stitches left and make a bit of icord.

Ishbel scarf for my Mom for Christmas...shhh

 and the start of another wee hat...these things are addictive

I've also been spinning a bit, it is slow going but I want it to be special for Andrea.  I had lots of stuff on the shelf but none of it really said her name so I'm spinning something new...just for her.  Here's a sneak of progress...

Start with one of Rita's Yarn Madness bags...

 sort...

 spin...

hoping to get it finished while I'm hanging with my friends at Yarn Hollow this weekend.  Rita's having an open house and the atmosphere should be just right for getting this done.

And so I'll leave you with this super cute pic of my snuggly buddies catching an afternoon nap...

I made this pic the background on my computer at work so every time I go back to the desktop I say "awwww"...I wonder when that will wear off, LOL

Have a safe and fun weekend.  Be sure to check out all the other creative peeps on Andrea's blog.