gaysknits

the next thing...

i managed to take photos of this weekend was lisa shobhana mason's poppy...from yarnplay. she is finished and finally.  this was an idea i had two years ago while i was reading knitting books at my dining room window in the evenings last light during a power outage that lasted several days as i recall.  i loved the sweater on the cover of yarnplay but never considered making it because i wouldn't wear a wool sweater unless hell was freezing over.

 

i had the idea that the arucania patagonia i had in my stash combined with some solid shades of nature cotton i planned to buy might work for this pattern along with a bit of fancy calculating and i think it did.

i love nature cotton. this is the second sweater i have knit from it and i have a third on the needles now.  it is soft and comfortable and wears well. it is intersting in it's texture and it's color. thick and thin, twisted and not and the colors are beautiful and are semi solid and i love that hand dyed look.

 

it's a hard yarn to match with a pattern i think because it is bulkier than worsted but not truely bulky.  it wasn't a piece of cake to adjust for this pattern but that's all in the past now.  i like this.  i'm not saying i liked all those ends that needed woven in but i like this.  she wasn't two years in the making because it was so difficult or because i was bored with it or unhappy with it i just kept finding other things to do and kept finding myself doing other things.

i found myself on a lovely adventure yesterday. the weater was perfect for a  motocycle ride on the national highway, where we had a stroll through a historic house and a walk in the woods where we came upon a huge turtle sunning himself on a log in a pond in sophias woods...no i did not bring him home with me, we ate some of the best wings i've ever tasted and as cousin dave said it doesn't get any better. more on that and some pics later...love   g

you know how that goes...

you buy your kid a pet that he or she has promised to clean up after,  take care of, feed, walk, bathe  yadda yadda yadda next thing you know it's really and truly your pet, your responsibility, your chore.  that's how the reptiles became mine.  there was once a mouse that the guy had bought for the youngladygrandaughter when she was 3 i think. he moved in with me and so did zippy.  zippy is now in the pet cemetary with miss emily...the cat i had for twenty years who's favorite activity became sitting on the shelf next to the mouse while i fed him and cleaned his cage.  hobo aka the toad moved in with us after we found him by the railroad tracks on a hike by the riverside. it was my brilliant idea to bring him home with us and he lived two years or more in captivity in a terrarium on a shelf in front of my kitchen window and grew to be about as fat a common american toad you could hope to see but he really did very little to amuse and entertain as he was nocturnal so in a weak moment i proclaimed we should get a monitor lizard but that was before i found out they grow to be 3 to 4 feet long and i'm no crocodile dundee so after doing some research i quickly changed my mind and decided against the whole reptile thing.  against my better opinion and judgment but i did in fact finally concede...the guy allowed that the youngladygrandaugter could purchase the bearded dragon herself...i call her the dragon lady or miss dragon or just lady.  her given name is bendigo but that was when we thought she was a he which the zoo vet informed me was incorrect. she is now living in a large terrarium that sits directly across from my desk and she is watching me as we speak. i am her sole entertainment other than hunting crickets which i always have another terrarium full of in the basement.  the crickets who remain nameless also need to be fed and given water or they will eat each other but they will do that anyway little cannibals that they are.  the dragon lady is not very fond of being held and is pretty insecure about going out side  but likes to run around the house which i cannot bring myself to let her do much of.  when we finish enclosing the front porch that will be her domain in summer and i will let her have the run of the joint.  the youngladygrandaughter no longer has much if any interest in her and does not choose to spend any of her hard earned cash on accoutrement's for her so i have been given custody of her by order of the department of bearded dragon protective services and i am a good mother to her but she is damaged goods let me tell you and she needs a bigger cage!!!  the next time i buy a reptile i will have it tested for adnovirus before i keep it very long and i will handle it more regularly so it is not so freaked out by human touching but this is just another story of things that can go terribly wrong. as is the bonfire.

 

we had the children here this weekend so their mother and father could have a day to themsleves after the daughters release from the hospital. the little guy has been yammering for three weeks about smores this and campfires that so we planned a campfire in the back yard and he and i bought fixins for smores.  the youngladygrandaugter was quite offended that he and i went shopping without her for a shirt and a clean pair of underwear for him since he came here as a last minute decision and has been wearing my sweatpants and tee shirts to sleep in for two days. so after i took him shopping then i took her shopping too.  she is in school shopping mode...that is where all her hard earned cash is being funneled but while shopping i found a really pretty linen cropped bolero sweater for myself which the guy cannot fathom why i need to buy a sweater at all but it was really cute and it was linen!  i didn't take a photograph of the linen bolero but...

  

i also found this cute cotton smock which i expected would look great with my newly dyed chocolate brown tulips and i was right.  i love this.

   

i promised to model this weeks ago after i dyed my tobacco colored  tulips a more chocolate brown to even out the color and this is the best i can offer in the way of a photograph but i love this combination and expect to find it very wearable for work in the cooler temperatures.  in the meantime the little guy ate a smore and some marshmellows and a few extra chocolate bars and then within minutes  became quickly bored with the campfire which continue to burn bright for a few more hours after he tired of it.  if it would've been a video game or a campfirefire on tv we'd have slept out there!   later...love   g

this will be...

over dyed...

either really dark brown or...

black because as it is...

the uneven coloring of this yarn sucks!  by the way tulips is finished...love it...you already know how i feel about the yarn!

the pattern is tulip kimono by kat coyle...the pattern can be found in knitscene fall 2006 if you happen to have a copy...copies are like hens teeth or it can now be purchased here.

 later...love   g

the second boy...

is not getting a baby blanket or a knitted bear...not yet anyway. i had time to finish this sweater and a couple of caps and that's it for now.  this is ez's surplice baby jacket. pattern from vogue knitting spring/summer 2008.

this was fun and easy to knit and i love the results. it is cute but not too baby it's a baby...it's more like boy oh boy it 's a boy!!!  the yarn is rowan calmer in two shades of blue and trimmed in tobacco. i used two entire skeins of each of the blues and almost one of the tobacco to make the jacket and both hats.  the hats are a pattern from last minute knitted gifts called children's cotton hats.

the blue one is the baby size and the tobacco one is the toddler size.  the jacket is very adjustable and can be made wider as the baby grows so i made two hats just in case the first one doesn't fit.  i left out the eyelet row in the hats and the tie...too girly and instead substituted a stripe in one and a fews rows of garter in the other.  much more boyish.  the buttons are cute but again they don't say i'm a little baby they say i'm a boy!  later...love   g

today signaled the end of the blues...

and the end of the chocolate mousse cheesecake too.  over the weekend the guy and the youngladygrandaughter and i saw the stupidest movie ever made. it was so stupid i made myself forget the name of it. sure i may have laughed once or even twice but making me laugh isn't that difficult and my laughing did not make this be any less than a really stupid movie. after watching this stupid movie we had a taste for desert, something sweet so we made our way to drew's where they have the largest selection of gourmet type deserts this side of the ardmore boulevard.  i had coconut creme pie, the guy had chocolate pie and the youngladygrandaughter had a one pound slice of chocolate mousse cheesecake.  one pound.  needless to say she did not eat it all and although she intended to eat it for breakfast the next day she did not because i made eggs, potatoes, toast and sausage and i did not make this breakfast to keep her from eating the choolate mousse cheesecake either...though that would have been a great and sneaky idea. the bottom line is she did not eat it so i did...just now! oh my...mmmm!  anyway back to the blues.  i bought this rowan calmer in tobacco for the purposes of making another wicked.  it will never happen. then i bought some dark blue,  some light blue and a skein of stone  to make a tubey...that also looks to be not happening.  i used the stone to add much needed length to the little guys red and black hoody. i used the tobacco to start tulips which is still in progress so when the only girl gave birth to the second boy...well what else would you use blue calmer for? it is so soft and stretchy and so perfect for a baby sweater.  especially for me since i have such a hard time making things fit other people.  the calmer has enough stretch in it to make it easier to fit. take this hat for instance. i saw the child and though i did not whip out my tape measure in the eat n park and measure his head it looked kind of like a little head to me so i knit the smallest size.

 this is the size hat you would knit for a softball. if a softball had the need for a hat. i don't know that this baby needs a hat for wearing in summer but lets face it is so cute, it goes with the so  cute seater and he's most likely going to go to the beach this summer and his little head will need some protection from the sun and or the wind.  so i knit him a hat.  a hat that will most likely not ever fit him but still...it is cute.  this pattern is childrens cotton hats from last minute knitted gifts.  so anyway the blues are used up.  all gone.  no more blues. maybe a nice tobacco brown hat in the bigger size is in order. so what size is a baby boy head anyway???  later...love   g