Diary of a Mad Fabri-Holic

Cowltastic Cavity

Today I dealt with one of my biggest fears.

I had a cavity filled at the dentist. 

May not sound like such a big deal to you, but it was for me.  Until this year, I've had perfect teeth.  No fillings, braces, poking, prodding, or anything.  Just some sealant back in high school.  But earlier this year the dentist found 2 itty bitty cavities.  I've always been terrified of the dentist, but after Annie's disastrous birth and my post-natal struggles with PTSD, any medical procedure (no matter how minor) sends me into a tailspin.  Allowing someone to stick a giant needle into my gums, then a drill into my teeth, well, not so good.  I made it through with a combination of willpower, nitrous, and Tina Fey's Bossypants on my iPod...

Then I went home and took to my bed, where I finished this knit:

It's the Honey Cowl by madelinetosh, a free download. I shook things up a bit by swapping out the Tosh DK for some Tosh Merino Light that I bought in DC last summer.  The tosh was in the most amazing colorway- a shimmer magenta/fuschia/purple- called Lepidoptera.  Seriously one of the most amazing shades of yarn I have ever seen.  BUT- and it's a big but (heh)- the 2 skeins varied more dramatically than almost any I have ever bought.

See what I mean? Oops!  But- again with the buts!- I handled this challenge cleverly.  To get gauge for the pattern, I held 2 strands together for the entire knit. Shear genius.  Gave me the right thickness AND blended the colors of the 2 skeins!  Whee!  I am totally thrilled with the outcome of this knit.  However (not but this time?), it did feel like it lasted a lot longer than 2 weeks.  It was excellent TV knitting, in that it required NO thought after the first repeat. (Also a good whiplash knit, as I didn't have to look down at the knit while I was working on it.)  Tedious, but stunning in the end.

Dontcha think?

A New Knit for Mother's Day

First, let me say Happy Mother's Day to anyone out there who has played an important role in a kid's life, mother or other...  I know firsthand how difficult this motherhood gig is, and my hat is off to all of us!

And now on to the knitting.  Many moons ago (February), I cast on the fabulous and lovely Coquille shawl from Knitty First Fall 2010.  It's one of those fabulous knits that uses a simple trick to dramatic effect- in this case, knitting the shawl from side to side and using short rows to create nifty ruffles.  It was a time consuming knit- and a bit dull after a while- but the perfect knit to take along to say, an Avs game.

(Even if, after I for the first time ever publicly professed my love of a team and a sport, they went on to break my heart with a mind bogglingly terrible season...The game pictured above?  I think we were down by 5 in the first 10 minutes.)

Simple pattern aside, this knit was not so fun.  Why?  My fisrt ball of Schoppel-Woole Zauberball was just fine.  But the second ball?  Pure misery.  The color striations were completely different (bad Sam, check your dye lots).  Not their fault.  Their fault?  The thick/thin transitions of this ball were ludicrous.  In more than one place, the "thin" section of the yarn simply disintegrated, leaving me with multiple ugly fixes throughout the last few inches of the shawl.  And the thick sections were chunky and ugly.  I have used this yarn in one other project and not had an issue, and the first ball was fine, so I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming I ended up with the yarn equivalent of a lemon...

Each and every time my mother happened to see this shawl on my needles, she raved about the colors.  As I became angrier and angrier at the yarn, a perfect solution materialized.  Give mom the shawl!  I couldn't forgive it, and she totally loved it.  Everyone ends up happy, right?

It was going to be a mother's day surprise, but a few weeks back, while it was blocking on the dining room table, Annie made a big point of showing it to my mom and letting her know it was for her.  D'oh.  After it dried, I hid it away and brought it out today- where she had either forgotten, or put on a good show.  Or, maybe she never really liked it and she had hoped it WOULDN'T show up on mother's day?  Hope not!  Because that's all she got from me (though my lovely husband did take us all out to brunch, but that's another story.  We survived...)

What do you think?

Wordless Wednesday: Comfort on a Spoon

Wordless Wednesday: Finished!

Has It Really Been a Decade Already?

Today Annie is 10.  If you've been around for a while, you know that she arrived in the world very dramatically, and that it wasn't much fun for either of us.  We've been working together to figure it out ever since...  The last 10 years have been quite an experience.  Motherhood is nothing like I imagined- cliched to say, but, totally true.   I'll leave it at that!

We celebrated last week, as we didn't want her party to compete with family Easter or Passover celebrations.  With the help of the amazing Miss Traci, who used to teach at Annie and Henry's preschool and who now has a crafty side business (with no website for me to link to), we helped the 6 little girls create their own one of a kind Ts.  I had visions of adorable stencils- we had a cupcake!- and fun applique- we had a bunch of yo yo makers!- but I let the girls lead the way.  And so we had an awful lot of fun with the fabric paint- at one point all 6 girls worked on one T shirt and squeezed all of the 20 colors of paint onto it at once...

While the finished products looked nothing like *my* vision, it was awesome to watch all the girls explore the materials.  I raided my stash for anything that might be fun, and found some beaded trims I bought years ago during my very very brief lived handbag sewing stint.  Annie and I went to JoAnn's and Michael's and made good use of their weekly 40% off coupons to buy paints and stencils. 

We also found a huge bin of ribbons on clearance at Michael's- so we picked out many spools, and the girls had a blast getting Miss Traci to sew it onto their shirts.

The girls had a total blast and were so proud of their creations... I'm not totally certain the paint will ever dry on a few of them, they laid it on so thick!

The birthday girl was pretty content, too!

Happy Birthday, Annie!  Here's to many more years of creative, crafty adventures!

And PS, I'm so proud of what you chose instead of gifts for yourself for your birthday!

Wordless Wednesday: Easing Back In

Double the Pleasure, Double the Fun!

Last week SUCKED.

I won't be elaborating, this isn't the place, but let's just say I've been in a bit of a funk since last Wednesday.

What better to perk me up than knitting two tiny hats that look like animals?

 

Remember the quilt I made for my new cousin Celia?  I decided that she and her older brother needed bunny hats for Easter.  Naturally.  What else would you make for a newborn and a toddler of mixed faith?  But I'm hoping bunnies can mean spring as much as they mean easter- and let's face it, they are part of the secular easter and not so much the church one...

The photo is lousy as I finished the hats at 10pm last night and dashed them off to the post office before the tax day rush...and in so doing nearly forgot to photograph them at all!  Hopefully I will get some adorable photos of the hats being worn, and I will share those.

Wordless Wednesday: The Random Things That Happen At Work

A Purple Letter Day

Yesterday my mailbox was chock full of delicious goodness.  It was almost too  much to take-- ALMOST.

Do you know the fabulous Pink Chalk Fabrics?  They're an amazing store, selling the choicest quilting fabrics, most adorable patterns (which ship for free if the only thing ordered), and an superlative collection of solids.  In fact, they have a monthly Solids Club.  Yum.  It's in its 3rd month now, and it is fantastic- I get the FQs and they are a great stash builder. They have a great weekely email newsletter- and if you read it and/or comment on the corresponding blog post, you get entered into a drawing for the prize of the week.

The universe knows me well- I have entered many times, but finally won last week.  And guess what I won?

That would be a bundle of 8 FQs from the newest Kaffe Fassett spring 2011 designs.

And they just happen to be in my favorite color family.

But wait, there's more.

The April shipment from the Cookie A sock club arrived as well!  I restrained myself for a few seconds...

And, boy, was I rewarded.

Purple! Not just purple- Lorna's Laces Purple!  And not just any Lorna's Laces- a brand new yarn not yet available to the public.  It's not even named yet.  It is a superwash wool/nylon/special trademarked nasa invented temperature regulating fiber blend...  There's one little snag- there was only supposed to be ONE skein in my shipment.  There is a club option where you can order 2 skeins per shipment- but I didn't pay for that one.  I decided to do the right thing and protect my karma, so I emailed Cookie and am waiting to hear what I should do with the extra skein.  It sounds like this happened to a few folks during some sort of shipping mix up...I am really hoping the extra skein gets to stay with me, as I am already very emotionally attached to it.

ETA- sadly, they want it back.  I am doing the right thing.  Karma, take note!

When Life Gives You Whiplash, Make Socks

It turns out that when you have whiplash, you should take it fairly easy.  Who knew?  I thought that I was taking it easy enough, but I ended up back at urgent care a week after the accident with unmanagable pain.  After x-rays (did you know that they x-ray the first cervical vertebrae through your mouth?  Say ahhh...), I got a very stern lecture from the trauma doctor, and I was sent home to bed, with orders to do as little as possible and to take the big strong painkillers.  So I did.

But man, that gets boring, fast.  Which led to me casting on the 2nd pattern from the first Cookie A club packet (rav link).  I very carefully never asked the doctor about knitting, so, to the best of my knowledge, it was totally fine for me to be doing that during my bedrest ;-)  During the 4 days in bed, I finished the first sock.

This may be my favorite sock, ever.  The allover ribbing makes for a perfect fit, and the pattern was easy without being boring- the instep decreases are worked in a fabulously unique way.  The yarn is Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Lightweight, in the True Blood colorway.  STR tends to run a bit heavier than comparable sock yarns, and I think it worked well for this pattern.

After 4 days of nothing, I returned to the real world slowly and cautiously.  The trauma doctor had given me a soft collar, and I have to say, it was a godsend. I'm fairly po'd at the original doctor for not giving me one the night of the accident and also not being clear about what I should and should not do.  Thankfully, I am done with the collar now, and also, with the second sock!

 

I mirrored the cables on the second sock. Tiny touch, but a nice one.

I'm off the major painkillers now, and rather than stabby awful pain, I'm just really really sore.  I am back to work, and today made it for an entire day, the first time in 2.5 weeks!  I start PT on Friday...wish me luck!