Cat, no hat

With fish!

This is my first completed crochet project. I'm already making another one, and I have plans for a third.

I stitched up her little fish too.

I'm very pleased with myself. My cousin Laura taught me the basics more than a year ago when we were in London. I started two scarf/shawl type patterns, but never completed them.

I saw this pattern in a book (Hello My Name is Amineko) at Borders. The book was on a super sale, and the cat looked basic enough that I could figure it all out. It was a great first project. It's all single crochet, but you learn how to increase, decrease, and change colors. There is one fancy decrease on the mouth that I may not have done 100% correctly, but it looks ok to me.

Feet

Also for Danilo, although he'll have to grow a bit.

Another awesome pattern from Knitty.com.

Updates

Because I've been lax.

I knit up these cute little garter stitch elephants for a coworker's new nephew.

And the edge of another shawl/wrap/scarf that I knit for myself. It's the Bitteroot pattern from Knitty out of some lovely alpaca yarn that Sandy and Derrick brought me from upstate NY.

The alpaca is all warm and soft, the beads aren't as noticeable in the finished product as they look here. They're subtle. It's a little sheddy, but I'm hoping it will stop at some point soon.

The First Elephant

The garter stitch elephant, a free Ravelry download. Pretty cute. I have another one in the works in green.

They're for a friend to give to a new baby. The sex is unknown and the nursery theme is Noah's Ark, so I went green and yellow with the elephants.

Quick Update

I've been super busy, here are a few shots of what I'm doing right now.

Plain sock, knit with colorful yarn and contrasting heels and toes.

These were my train knitting, brainless and entertaining.

Now I'll have to come up with something else simple to work on while traveling.

I just started a swirl scarf, from the Swirl Shawl pattern that Mom gave me.

Knitting these little hexagons is probably not the best train knitting. They're easy enough, but don't seem like they'd be good for frequent stopping and starting.

Peanut Gets a Bath

I've run out of clean Peanut, time to wash another batch.  I never took pictures of the process last time, so here goes.  

Very dirty wool, full of hay and poop.

I put on my "poop gloves," a pair of yellow dish washing gloves, now dedicated solely to wool cleaning.  Then I pulled hay and debris out of enough wool to fill a turkey roasting pan that is also dedicated to wool cleaning.

You can see the dirty wool in the pan, contrasted with the clean spun wool on the bobbin.    

This is the wool in it's second bath (already a whole lot cleaner) next to the gross water from the first bath.  

And the third bath, next to the second bath water.  

The fourth, and probably final, bath.  You can see my poop gloves as well.  Peanut is now much much cleaner.  I'll let her soak for a bit more, then I'll take her out and let her dry on a towel before starting to spin her up into more singles.  

    

Stripes

And he's done!  He turned out a little more potbellied than the others, probably just a function of where I attached the legs to the body.  I like it.  

Still Headless

Needs to be sewn together, and of course he needs a head. I'll get that knit up tonight.

Just a Peek

Another bear!
Two of three. Next I'll be knitting another green one like Francis.

Plied Yarn

Two of the tiny skinny yarns I spun with my low tech spindle.  I plied them on my first spindle (the heavy one).  It came out pretty well.  I soaked the yarn and hung it to set the twist and dry.  Now it's skeined up.