Gauge on....

My mother recently saw Shirley Paden on an episode of Knitting Daily and fell in love with a cabled cowl coat from her new book, Knitwear Design Workshop.  In the book there is a beautiful cabled coat that mom would love to have made.

http://eimages.interweave.com/knittingdaily/mail-by-date/2010/100119/KnitwearDesignWorkshop2.jpg

The coat calls for 3800 yards of aran weight yarn.  Yes, wow!!  3800 yards!  So today we picked up three different yarns to be knitted into gauge swatches to see which one we want to make the coat out of.  We chose Trendsetter Merino VIII, Berroco Pure Merino and Cascade 220 Superwash.  Tonight I started knitting the first gauge swatch in the Trendsetter Merino VIII and already I found an error in the pattern.  Just a minor thing in the chart legend and thankfully I figured it out before I started knitting the entire coat.  Stay tuned for postings of the swatches.

This will be the knitting projects of all knitting projects for me.  I hope I make it to the end.

"I want a balloon animal..." - Mom, 2010

Boy, was Mom surprised that the gentleman making the balloon animals actually heard her.

Today was a fabulous day spent with Mom and my best buddy on another yarn store crawl.  This was Mom's first trip to visit Miami's yarn shops.  We first went to The Knitting Garden in Coral Gables were she bought some beautiful worsted weight yarn by Punta Yarns - so soft, it reminds me of mmmmmMalabrigo.  Our next stop was Anneke's Needleworks.  At Anneke's we saw newly hatched baby ducklings, sooo cute.  Anneke said they just hatched yesterday.  Finally we stopped at Elegant Stitches where all three of us managed to find some yummy yarn to tempt our yarn budget.

So, how do balloon animals come in to play??? Well, we discovered that right across from Elegant Stitches is a mall.  I couldn't tell you how many times we've been to this store and didn't know it was there.  We decided to eat at Johnny Rockets (after we finally found it, courtesy of my best buddy confirming the location with two people in the know - aka employees of the mall).  We each had a delicious hamburger and yummy milkshake.  There was a balloon artist making balloon animals for the kids.  Well, the place was quite noisy with the music playing and Mom jokingly said "I want a balloon animal!".  The balloon artist actually heard her and promptly came to the table.We couldn't stop laughing and he kindly made her a red dog (to match her blushing face), my best buddy got an orange alligator for her husband and I chose a flower.

How can you beat this day??  Spent with family and friends, yarn fix, milkshakes and balloon animals!!

Life is good.

Tattoo'd monkey

I was able to make a little crocheted heart tattoo for Richard the sock monkey, unfortunately I couldn't fit "MOM" on it.  Oh well, it's still very cute!!!

Richard Cranium is alive and well....

Richard is the name that my fabulous husband gave to the sock monkey I just finished crocheting.  It was a very fun project to make and I will be gifting Mr. Cranium to a wonderful friend as a gift for her new nephew.  I'm going to attempt to crochet a heart "Mom" tattoo for it.

So, here you go ladies - I've finally updated my blog after no entries for over a year.  I vow to try my best to post regular updates.  It's a little hard because I see ya'll at least once a week, sometimes more...

Thought I'd share this picture of my hairy hairless dog.  He's overdue for his grooming session. Wham's looks so peaceful, boy will he be in for a surprise.  Stay tuned for a post-grooming photo!

Recovering from a car show hangover...

Last night we attended the 9th Annual Hi-Performance Car Show to benefit the Darrell Gwynn Foundation. (www.darrellgwynnfoundation.org) It was a long day. We started about 12pm preparing the dragster and loading the trailer. Finally at 5pm we were able to drive the dragster into the show site and get set up - what a beautiful night!!


Lots of classic cars (and dragster/race cars) showed up and a huge crowd. The foundation gave away a $30K wheelchair to a young boy from Puerto Rico and raised quite a bit of money. At one point they cranked up all the race cars and you couldn't hear yourself think. My husband finally got our dragster started on the second try (after realizing you need to turn on the gas lines to the engine) and a 1000hp engine roared to life - I still can't get over the fact that he straps himself into this thing and goes almost over 175mph in a 1/4 mile. I started knitting on my cushion but once the sun went down it was a little dark to work with the dark yarn.



Since working on the cushion wasn't going to happen, I decided to make the Cable Headband (pattern available on Ravelry). I had one skein of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Cashmere in Ivory (only 44 yards) and had been thinking of something to make with it - the headband was perfect. I finished it that night (I had enough time as we didn't even leave till after 10pm).


All in all it was a wonderful night. My husband and I have spent the day recovering from our car show hangover and resting up for the next one.