The Perfect Office Plant

• Does not require watering!
• Does not require sunlight!
• Can survive in any climate!

I present to you...





...the knitted cactus


(posed ever so elegantly in front of a stack of folders)

• Type: knit
• Stitch/Pattern: pattern found in "Funky Knits" by C. Meldrum & J. Marchington
• Needle: size 6
• Yarn: Lion Brand "Wool-Ease" (Seaspray)

Sure it doesn't add anything to the air quality in here, but at least I don't have to worry about it dying on me. (Yes, I have killed cacti before. Three to be exact.) And this was a very quick knit. It took all of, what, 2 hours to make? I had some green yarn I bought for a yet-to-be-made project (you'll hear that a lot from me) and was happy to discover that I already had the perfect beads waiting to be used in my little bead stash. It took me a while to hunt down the mini terra cotta pot though (to give it some authenticity, you know). If I get bored enough, I might make the other variety they have in the book. We shall see...

Pom-Pom Bears

Not knitting exactly, but the little guys wanted to make an appearance.



I bought this little pom-pom making set in Chinatown a couple of years ago for a dollar or two and decided to play around with it. There's a mommy bear, a baby bear, and an estranged brother who is not in the picture. There's also a felt Piglet I haven't gotten around to putting together. One of these days...

Evening Out

...or 'A Knitting Miracle'
...or 'The Wonders of Wool'


I was all set to write about my pink striped scarf and was planning to rant about the stripes being uneven--but they're not anymore! It's like magic. Basically, I finished the scarf last month and blocked it and everything. When I was working on the tassels, I realized that the stripes at one end of the scarf were noticeably wider than the other end. Apparently I'm a tighter knitter now than I was four years ago. It annoyed me very much, but my efforts to get the smaller side to stretch didn't do much good, and I decided there was nothing left to do but accept the imperfection and pretend it gave the scarf character.

So I grabbed the scarf today to take a picture of it in all its tassel-y glory. The tempurature suddenly dropped by 50 degerees so I've been wearing it the past couple of days. Of course I found myself critically eying the blocks of color, except now the two ends lined up perfectly! I guess I don't have enough knitting experience to be able to explain this phenomenon, but I can't complain. On to the pictures...



Rosy Striped Scarf
2002?/2003? - December 2006

• Type: circular knitting
• Stitch/Pattern: stockinette
• Needle: size 6
• Yarn: Lion Brand "Wool-Ease" (Blush Heather and Rose Heather)

As I mentioned, I did circular knitting to make this scarf, so in essence it's a big tube that's been flattened out. 420 rows of 64 knit sts. (it's much easier to count rows when you have blocks of color). One good thing about the double-layer is that I was able to hide the trail of yarn that formed from switching colors on the inside. And I added the tassels--using a crochet hook to pull the yarn through--to keep the two layers together. Aren't they cute?

The Unveiling

So it would appear that I'm about a month late with this post. I'm a bit embarrassed since I don't even have 5 posts here yet. But what can I say, I'm a sporadic blogger and a sporadic knitter. That doesn't bode well for future knitting epiphanies, does it... In any event, I now present to you my finished scarf.



Navy Blue Knit Scarf
December 2006

• Type: knit
• Stitch/Pattern: stockinette stitch w/eyelet rows for ribbon (garter stitch border)
• Needle: size 8
• Yarn: Lion Brand "Wool-Ease" (Navy)

This is a good cold-but-not-bitterly-cold winter scarf. It's keeps me quite warm, but it's surprisingly thin and light, thanks to some help from an iron. (Which reminds me, I will need to write about my first forays in blocking at some point.) The best part--NO MORE CURLING!! I'm also happy with my color choice. Navy blue is a little bit of a departure for me. I usually go for lighter colors when knitting, but I've had an idea in my head for lace-up navy blue arm/wristwarmers for a while, and this was the companion scarf to go with it. I haven't even figured out how I'm going to make the wrist-warmers or exactly what I want them to look like, so the companion item ended up coming first. Funny how things turn out. (Not really.)