Welcome to My 100th Post

Have you ever had anything sort of insignificant that you anticipated in such a way that it got built up to be a big deal when it really wasn't? That's where we are with this post. This is my 100th post and I've been thinking all week about what would be a worthwhile topic. Turns out, I just don't have anything that interesting to talk about. So instead of a monumental post, we're stuck with our average everyday grab bag of a post that we here at Ok! What Next?? have come to hold so dear.

International Scarf Exchange, Go Figure

On Christmas Eve eve, I found a bulky brown package in my mailbox. It was my International Scarf Exchange knit by Kathy. (Who is blogless, as far as I know.)

God Rest Ye Merry Puppy Dogs

We spent Christmas Eve at my husband's aunts' house. They have big dogs and Sally played hard but she was finally persuaded to take a little rest by the fire while we opened presents.

She likes having her picture taken but had just woken up here because someone was clapping. Like me, she is not keen on clapping in the house.

A Beloved New Yarn Companion

I mentioned in my last post that my parents gave me a beautiful wooden swift for Christmas. I love it. It runs so smoothly and quietly and is everything I dreamed of when I asked for a swift.

(That's one of my nieces leaning across my picture to get to the ball winder. I'm doubtful that this one will ever be a knitter but we can hope.)

I Bought a Book

Tuesday night my twin sister and I went to dinner and then to Borders. I shopped for such a long time - my goodness, the options!! - and I came t-h-i-s c-l-o-s-e to buying 3 books to just read. You know, fiction. That would have been nice but then I wandered over to the knitting section and ended up buying this book instead.

I've contemplated buying this book online several times but when I saw it in person and was able to flip through it, I couldn't resist. There is a baby sweater in here that I think will be perfect for my friend Melanie's baby that's due in May. Has any ever knit with hemp?

Also, I think maybe I've crossed the line into the zone of thinking too much about my knitting, because one of the reading books that I nearly bought, I ended up buying as a book on CD instead so I could "read" it and knit, too. There should be some sort of books on CD exchange program for knitters because books on CD, while lovely and a fine idea, could seriously cut into the yarn budget.

And I Knit Something From My New Book. Sort of.

By my own estimation, I am generally a good daughter but for the last couple of days, I have been a delinquent daughter. The Weekend Knitting book led me astray down a path called Not Knitting the Hedgehogs My Mother Has Requested. (In my defense, I didn't even buy the hedgehog yarn until Thursday...)

When flipping through the book at Borders the other night, I saw these tiny sweater egg cozies.

I remembered that Ann mentioned them in a recent post over at Mason-Dixon Knitting. Aren't they cute? I felt the need for some instant-gratification knitting and these little babies seemed to fit the bill. We don't eat many - well, any - soft boiled eggs at my house and, of course, no good pattern goes unaltered. I hate turtlenecks on actual human-sized sweaters and therefore saw no reason to knit little miniature turtlenecks. I thought these little sweaters would make nice Christmas tree ornaments so I cast on and then, all willy-nilly-like, doctored the collars on the fly. (Yes, I know, wild and crazy.)

The orange (actually "papaya") is Misti Alpaca Pima Cotton Silk and the red is a little 3/4 sleeve number in Cascade 220 in shade 8895 (my favorite). Here's a close up of the Papaya.

Not exactly earth shatteringly thrilling knitting but it satisified my need for a finished object or two and now I can plunge into my marathon hedgehog knitting. Wish me luck.

Hedgehog on the Half Shell

(Please be patient with me. I recently upgraded to the new blogger and I'm still figuring out the spacing. At least I seem to be able to upload pictures with wild abandon now so that is a step up!)

I started this post sometime the first part of last week but wanted to share it with you anyway...

I've made some progress on the first hedgehog and I'm now confident that I'll get them both finished in time for Christmas.

Ok, so the picture isn't the greatest (those hedgehogs are fast) but at least you can see what I've been up to. Once you get going on these, they seem to go pretty fast.

Here are some more pictures of these boys, pre-felting and post-felting.

Before:

After:Before:

The only after shot I got of the black one was the group picture from yesterday.

A few notes: I used a much longer "fur" on the brown guy and he has a bit of a porcupine look to him. I think that might have something to do with the sparseness of the quills...I mean fur. I made a mistake with the yarn for the brown fella, too. I used a chunky weight tannish-grayish yarn for the belly and a sort of mocha brown worsted along with the fur for the back. It turned out to be a happy accident, as I was pleased with the results.

For the black hedgehog, I used chunky for both front and back. The black fur is shorter and very dense. He is MUCH fatter than the brown guy. They are so different and each has such personality. It was neat to see how unique they are considering they are made from the same pattern.

These pictures don't show it but I ended up needle felting the eyes and nose. It was my first attempt at needle felting and it really was as simple has everyone says it is and the finished product was exactly what I had hoped for. Thanks to Lois at Elegant Stitch for not only giving me a quick needle felting tutorial on Friday, but also for giving me a needle felting tool!

All of the animals were well received. Mama put in a request for some hedgehogs of her own so I will try to get busy on those in the next few weeks. I give all of these Fiber Trends patterns an enthusiastic endorsement. They are easy to read, interesting without being unnecessarily complicated and the results are everything they promise to be.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Mine was great, though too quick. My parents bought me a swift (HURRAY!!!) and a Knitter's Satchel from Jordana Paige. My sister got me the KnitPicks Options needles....I am exceptionally blessed to have a kind generous family, who may not understand my knitting but still support it. We had a great dinner and played games and just relaxed. It was a very Merry Christmas.

A Very Merry Christmas!

What a crazy, exciting, busy, wonderful

week it has been leading up to Christmas.

I hope you are all enjoying time with family and/or loved ones and that you are feeling loved and blessed this joyful season. When I count my Christmas blessings, please know that I count each of you among those blessings and I'm looking forward to the coming year with such anticipation.

I did get all of the felted animals completed - and it didn't include any knitting at all on Christmas Eve. (Though the hedgehogs did get seamed amidst the last of my Christmas Eve wrapping...) Now I'll just hope that the recipients love them as much as I do.

So from me and mine to you and yours,

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Show and Tell

Just another quickie to show you the finished Sophie-ish bag for my niece.

As it appears in this picture, it is 16" from the top of the handles to the base. The body of the back is 7.5" tall and slightly more than 10" across at the widest point. I think it is just right for her.

Also, my niece and I went to San Francisco on Saturday night to visit my mother. (She had back surgery on Thursday at UCSF Medical Center. She is doing very well and coming home today.) My niece (the future owner of the above bag) took this picture of the buildings in the city all decorated for Christmas.Try squinting.

The Return of Self-Portrait Sunday

Ahhh, how nice to have a little free time on a Sunday to get back to my Sunday feature. As you are well aware, I have plenty of knitting to do so I will get right down to the listing...

1. I am generally content with the status quo…to the point that I have occasionally been accused of being boring.
2. I can be very particular about things (like my food and my Christmas tree and how I want things done.) It might seem that this is a contradiction to #24 and maybe it is, but both are true.
3. It is usually better for me to just do things myself because if someone else does it for me, I will inevitably end up redoing it or reworking it the way I wanted it in the first place.
4. I can be terribly indecisive. (If I were someone else, I would not ever want to go shopping with me.)
5. I like to think of myself as a real go-with-the-flow, spontaneous girl but I am not. I don’t mind spontaneity when it is carefully planned out ahead of time.
6. I love to read but I read a lot less since I learned to knit.
7. I am a really great starter.
8. I am not nearly so good a finisher (though this is improving.)
9. It is very important to me that people like me.
10. I wish it wasn’t so important to me that people like me.
11. Sometimes I wonder if I’m maybe a little ADD or OCD or CRAZY. I am so easily distracted by, well, by pretty much everything. If anything shiny crosses my path, there’s no telling how long it will take me to get back to the task at hand. (Speaking of which, I got online to check on one little thing and here I am blogging when I should be knitting a hedgehog...well, two.)

Speaking of hedgehogs, I've finished one belly and as soon as I'm done here, I'm going to get back to work on him. Hopefully I will have a finished one to show you in the next couple of days. (Also, I will have post-felting pictures of the Kureyon Sorta-Sophie bag. It felted surprisingly small but I like it. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera in my niece's car this afternoon so the pictures will have to wait another day.)

By the way, I've finally got up with the comments over on the Grandmother Purl blog. I just don't have the right words to say how touched I am by everyone's kindness and encouragement and the talk of knitting something for me. Ya'll are so sweet. I wish I had something meaningful and profound to say but I don't, I simply wanted to say thank you. I've said it before and I'll say in 1000 times again, Knitters Rock.

Ok, that's it for now. I hope you are all well. I'll see you as soon as I've completed a hedgehog!

And What to My Wondering Eyes Did Appear

This is just a quick post to say "Hey! Look what I did!"

I stayed up until almost 1:00 this morning finishing it. I am pretty happy with the results. I have never felted Kureyon before but I have every faith that it will be just as lovely as all of the pictures I've seen.

Hedgehogs, here I come!