Have a Happy Halloween (and Spock)

Well, this is the last picture of Spock for October. It was a lot of fun searching the web and deciding which ones to post here. Who knew there are so many of them? Today's pic is old Spock, and I feel most appropriately, new Spock (and Kirk).

Wishing you and yours a safe and happy Halloween.

Beam me up Scotty!


P.S It's gonna be quiet around here for a bit. Sweet Hubby and I are going out of town for a short relaxing vacation.

First Snow of the Season

Mobster Spock, and Kirk.

As I type this, there is snow falling outside my living room window. Yes, I said snow.


Winter has arrived. Morgan refuses to get out of bed. I don't blame him.


Snow before November. That is something--------cruel. Rumor has it that it will melt off later. Good news.

I've got a busy day today too. I've got my knitting class this morning. With snow I doubt any one will show up, but I have to be there just in case.

After class I'm taking a few things to the down town Coeur d'Alene Library. They are having a fiber/fabric exhibit in November and I am entering a few things for said exhibit. It was kind of hard to decide what to take down there because most of the really fantastic knitting I've done is no longer in my possession. I'm going to take my Pomatomus socks, a lace mohair scarf, a jacket I machine knit for my daughter several years ago (that hardly got worn but did win best of show at the fair that year), and I'm thinking about one of my bead knitted amulet bags. I'll let the exhibit organizers decide if they want any of them or not.

We had a bit of a chew fest in this house last night.


Mmmm, chews.

Have a good day.

FOs, and Spock

Older Spock.

Not many days left of the month to post Spock pics. Enjoy them while you can.

I have finally given satisfaction to the beaded Christmas ornament craving. I've made this cover in preparation for a class I'm scheduled to teach in November.


I used 2 colors of size 11 Japanese seed beads, dark rose and white, and some 6mm cloisonne beads with little pink flowers on them. Me likes.

I've finished the Opal 1292 bootees. For this pair I did 2x2 rib in the cuff.


Another view.


I've started another pair. The yarn is a vintage baby pompadour with a medium to dark blue thread running through it. Very pretty stuff. I'll take pics later.

A couple months ago I joined an internet thing, game, whatever you wanna call it called Pay It Forward. Basically the way it works is that you post on your blog that you're joining the Pay It Forward game, you post the rules which say you will make something and send it to the first 5 people who leave a comment on your post, and then you do it. Everyone who posts a comment then has to do the same thing. I posted a comment on the blog where I saw the PIF post, then posted on my blog.

Well, to make a long story short, last Thursday this arrived in my mailbox.


It's a bead knitted amulet necklace. It's even in my favorite color. It came from Julie Harper of the Jewelry Goddess blog. It's her PIF to me. I was so surprised!I love it. It's so pretty. Thank you Jewels! It was so much fun to find it in my mail box.

Now, to figure out what to make for my PIF commenters.

Have a great day.

Bootees, Blue Jay, and Spock

Spock playing futuristic chess.

I just keep cranking out those bootees. Here's the next pair all done.

The pattern is Free Seamless Baby Bootees by Megan Mills. The yarn is an unknown old acrylic baby pompador in white with a silver grey thread. I used size 3 needles. I like the results much better than the 2's.

I found these bootees while digging around in boxes.


I made them a few years ago, models for the shop. The pattern is in the book 50 Baby Bootees to Knit by Zoe Mellor. I think I used Patons Look at Me yarn, if I remember correctly.

And I've started another pair.


Still the Free Seamless Baby Bootees by Megan Mills with left over Opal sock yarn from the Petticoat colorway 1292. I'm having so much fun with this pattern I don't want to do anything else. Heh heh.

Had an unusual visitor to the Parkarosa Bird Buffet yesterday. This Stellar's Jay spent the whole day eating sunflower seeds.


He has a little bit of white on top his head.


That little feeder was full to the brim with seeds before he started.

Sweet Hubby's cough is almost gone. Hurray! But now I've started coughing. Boo! Hopefully it won't get as bad as his did. I'm taking steps to help it go away. Oddly, Morgan does not seem to be bothered by my coughing like he is Dougs. Very strange, but welcome. It would drive me crazy if he ran every time I coughed. It was bad enough having that happen to Doug. Anyway, things are getting much more peaceful amongst the fur kids. As I write this, all 4 of them are sprawled around the living room snoozing away.

This afternoon is the Rathdrum Knit Along meeting. I missed the last one because I had to take Morgan to see the eye doctor. I'm anxious to catch up on what everyone else is knitting.

I haven't done any beading the past few days. Instead, I've been buying beads-Sarah and I went to the Bead Stampede in Spokane last Sunday afternoon. I found all the things on my list, and then some. There weren't as many vendors as before, but who was there had some gorgeous stuff. I spent way too much money.

I've also been looking for beads. Somewhere in this house is a small green bag full of 90 bucks worth of beads I bought a few weeks ago to make a Christmas ornament cover. I've unpacked and put away all my beading stuff now and it's no where to be found. I must have put it somewhere safe where it won't get lost. Oh yeah! It's safe! I can't even find it it's so safe.

I hate it when that happens.

I've also updated my beading class schedule page. I will be teaching two bead ornament cover classes in November. I don't know yet what I'm doing for knitting classes yet. I'll find out later this week and update that page accordingly.

Have a great day.

I Made Key Rings and Spock

I have finished Ray's key rings. He is pleased. I'll be popping them in the mail to him next week.


I will wait patiently for the sock yarn.

It's been a busy week. I've been working on what I'm calling The Great Purge of 2009. I'm going to go through the whole house and get rid of stuff we don't need any more. I've started with the boxes yet to unpack that were packed for the floor remodel. Most people probably would have had all that unpacked and put away by now, but I've been dealing with the flu at the same time so I've been doing a couple of boxes a day. I've also started going through cupboards. My goodness we've got a lot of stuff we haven't used in years!

One of the things we are getting rid of is the desk that is in the sun room. We don't need it any more and really don't have a place for it now that the treadmill is in it's corner. Right now it is sitting in the middle of the room being annoyingly in the way. I found a new owner for it yesterday. Hurray! Daughter Sarah just happens to need a desk. How convenient! Now, to get it out of my house and into her apartment.

We've moved the piano from the sun room to the dining room, and moved my beading stash to where the piano used to be in the sun room. I am very excited about this. I'm finally getting my craft room. In 1992, when we bought this place, it was the sun room (and the open floor plan) that most attracted us. It would be perfect for my assortment of knitting machines and whatnot. It was going to be my craft room. However, on moving in day, when my brother in law brought the first machine in he said "Where do you want me to put this?" Sweet Hubby pointed to the small bedroom off the kitchen (I call it the 10 foot cube-10 foot wide, 10 foot long). I was pretty upset, as you can imagine. But there was no arguing with him on that particular day. I didn't get my wonderful craft room. Now I do. It's about time!

I did not go to the Yarnies meeting this week. I was sick. I'm not so rude as to pass my sick germs on to my friends.

On Thursday I put out my bird feeders full of fresh new seed. I don't feed them in the summer time because there's lots of wild stuff around for them to eat they usually just ignore the feeders. In October, though, it gets pretty cold at night and I put them out. I've already got a fairly large flock of chickadees that have returned, along with the little nuthatches.

We've been having a very difficult time with Morgan. Sweet Hubby got a cough with his sickies. It's slowly going away, but he's still got a few days of it left, I'm sure. Morgan has developed an extreme fear of the sound of the cough (he's losing his hearing, but he's not completely deaf yet). Every time Doug coughs Morgan runs off and hides. At first he was running out through the doggy door and refusing to come back in, freezing himself outside. I managed to stop him from doing that. Now he tries to hide in the kitchen, or the bedroom. Mostly the kitchen though. We're trying to help him overcome this sudden fear. For instance, giving him treats at the same time that Doug coughs, and whatnot. Trying our best to desensitize Morgan, but we're losing the battle. The cough needs to go away.

There is a Bead Stampede today in Spokane at the fair grounds. Sarah and I are going together and see what we can find that we can't live without. Should be fun.

Have a great day.

Bootee Mania and Spock

Musical Spock

I am still in bootee mode for Knitwits.


I've finished another pair.


These ones are made with leftover Kiwi green Opal Solid. I used a leftover bit of a ribbon novelty yarn chain stitched to make the ties. I had just enough of it to do that. If the ties had needed to be any longer I wouldn't have had enough.

I have another pair half done.

I'm modifying the pattern a little bit. I'm doing the cuff in a 4 x 2 garter rib. The yarn is some unknown ancient baby Pompadour that is white with a nylon silver grey strand in it that I brought home from our last meeting (As usual, Jean talked me into bringing more yarn home for bootees). It's actually very soft and pretty. I'm enjoying working with it.

Some time ago Dawn asked me a question in the comments. I want to answer that question.

"Dawn said... Oh my gosh! I love your kitty scratch post! I've been looking everywhere for one for my two cats. Can you possibly let me know where you ordered it from? "

I got the kitty tree from CSN Stores online. It's called the Sugar Cat Tree. It comes in several colors (I got brown), and I can say it's very well made. My cats love it. They have tons of really cool cat trees. It was hard to decide which one to get.

Sweet Hubby has been staying home from work way too much (5 days now). He got a flu bug of some sort to start with, which then brought on a bit of a cough. He's fine now, except just a bit of cough left, yet he won't go back to work. I went to the store today and loaded up on various assorted cough remedies which are helping immensely. I intend to kick him out tomorrow. As much as I love him, having him home when he isn't supposed to be is cramping my style.

I heard from Ajay, the winner, so the contest is officially completely over.

Have a great day.

The Winner - Contest Fall 09

Ajay!

Congratulations Ajay! You have 4 days to contact me by email with your snail mail address so I can send your prize to you. Please email me at:

thebeadknitterATyahooDOTcom

If I don't hear from Ajay, I will draw another winner.




Wow! I had a lot of entries in this contest. Thanks to all who participated. I enjoyed your comments immensely.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I got some more beading done.

The one on the left is made using 8mm round Yellow Turquoise. It's interesting how many different colors the beads on the strand I bought are. The blue bead is made with glass. I absolutely love the Yellow Turquoise one. Fortunately, I have enough beads to make a couple more of those.

These are my new drapes for the sun room sliding glass door.


I love them. They just make the room look so comfy. I'm glad to get rid of the old blue and pink ones. I've hated them since the day we moved in this house. I don't know why I kept them as long as I did.

This is a pic of my sweet hubby. I took it yesterday. He's so cute!

Have a great day.

Cool Pic and Spock

Don't have anything to say today. Just wanted to continue the month of Spock and share this very cool pic.


Have a great day.

Knitivity is Having a Contest Too

Back scratch Spock. LOL!


One of my favorite indy dyers is having a fun contest-which I intend to enter. I thought I'd pass the info on to you.

Knitivity's Blog Contest

Have a good day.

Baby Bootees, Beaded Beads, and Spock

I think I'll start every blog post this month with Spock. LOL!


Wow! I've had a lot of comments for the contest. More than ever before. I announced it on Ravelry and poof! I've always announced my contests on Ravelry before, but never got much of a response. Thank you for the interest!

The first pair of baby bootees for Knitwits is done.

Baby Booties for Knitwits

Pattern: Free Seamless Baby Bootees by Megan Mills

Yarn: Opal Petticoat color #1296
Content: 75% superwash Wool/ 25% Nylon

Needles: Addi Turbo Circular size 2.

Size: 0-3 months

Cast on: September 30, 2009

Bound off: October 3, 2009

Comments: This is a fun pattern. Well written, easy to understand. By the way, this is the third project I've made with this skein of yarn. It's all gone now.

There's a reason why I chose it. I own 50 Baby Bootees To Knit by Zoe Mellor. I was going to choose some of these patterns to make for Knitwits call for bootees. However, the patterns are knitted flat, then seamed. I want to do them circular so there's no seam. Rather than tax my brain figuring out how to adjust the patterns, I went in search of a pattern someone else came up with doing the brain work for me. It was an easy search in Ravelry's pattern library. Now I will apply what I learned from this project to the patterns in the book.

Here are easy instructions for grafting the sole stitches as they end up when the knitting is finished. I got this info from Rav member Hellahelen's notes (she knit these bootees too):

Insert yarn as if to purl in first stitch of front needle, drop it of the needle, insert yarn as if to knit in next stitch on front needle, leave it on the needle; insert yarn as if to purl on first stitch on back needle, drop it off the needle, insert yarn as if to knit in next stitch on back needle, leave it on the needle, repeat from.

I have also finished a couple beaded beads for my key chains/yarn swap.


I went shopping last week for key rings to put them on. I checked the local bead shops first-they had none. I ended up at Michaels. They had lots. I was going to get the traditional split ring type, but then I saw these and changed my mind. They are similar to the Tiffany key rings (made by the famous jewelers) but not made of solid silver. Mine are silver plate. My beaded beads deserve something better than a plain ol' split ring.

Now, this next bit of news is gonna sound horrible to some people, but it needs to be done. As much as I enjoy the moose we have around here, the simple fact is that there's way too many of them. They are seriously overpopulated. Typically, a moose needs at least 5 square miles of space to live properly. We've got way more than that in our area. Since the Fish and Game Dept. has refused to come out and move any of them, there is only one other solution to the problem. So, I found a couple guys who have won moose tags for this area for this years hunting season. Yesterday we 'hired' them to hunt on our property (in exchange for a roast and a few steaks). They both have cow tags. They promised to leave Big Mama alone since she has babies. The other cows are fair game.

We did not get the floor finished. Saturday was our annual Parktoberfest. This year it was extra fun, so we got home rather late. 3am is a bit more than our bodies seem to be able to handle, so we both opted to spend Sunday recovering from the party instead of laying floor.

Tomorrow is Morgan's follow-up appointment with the eye specialist to see if the meds I've been putting in his eyes every day is doing any good. I don't think it is. He's still bumping into things.

Have a good day.

Contest Fall '09

I had to start the day with Spock. I'm in a Star Trek kind of mood.

Well, today is Parktoberfest. Unfortunately, it's cold and rainy. That sucks for an outdoor party. However, it has been cold and rainy at most Parktoberfests. You'd think I'd get used to it.

In celebration of the new floor and drapes in my house, I am having a contest. Here is the prize.


It's heavy on the chocolate. We have Idaho Elk Droppings (chocolate covered peanuts), a Chocolate Moose Bar, and a locally made Wild Huckleberry Chocolate bar, along with a skein of sock yarn from Araucania. This yarn is hand dyed in Chile, fingering weight, 3.5 oz./100 gr., 376 yards, 75% wool/25% Nylon. Note: this is not superwash wool.

The rules:

Contest entries will be accepted from now until 5pm pacific time Saturday, October 10th. To enter, leave a comment in this post. ONE comment per person. No anonymous comments will be accepted. So if you don't have a Blogger screen name, please put your name in the comment.

I will have Sweet Hubby draw the winning name from a hat.

Edit 10/10/2009: My goodness! I didn't expect this many entries. I will be using a random number generator to pick the winner.

I'll announce the winner on Sunday, October 11th. That person will then need to email me, within 4 days, their mailing address so I can send them their prize. If I don't hear from them, I will draw another winner.

Have a great day!

Contest is now closed. Thanks to all who entered, and good luck!

Drapes

I have ordered new drapes for the house from Sunland Home Decor. I am very excited about it too. I haven't had real drapes in my house since we moved back to Idaho in 1992. Here is what I ordered for the living room and dining room windows. Those are pine cones on the valance.



They are made of chenille and faux suede in a deep chocolate brown. They will go very nice with the furniture and rug.

For the sun room I ordered this for the sliding glass door, also made of chenille and faux suede.

Yes, those are moose on there. Also some bears, mountains, trees and stuff. I've decided to just go with a moose theme for the 'open' area of the house. My living room, dining room, kitchen, and the sun room are actually one large open room. The kitchen is in the middle, with the others on either end. It's what attracted me to this house. I love the wide open floor plan.

I've also ordered matching valances.

I've decided to just do valances on the rest of the windows of the sun room. They all have nice blinds on them, and with what we use the room for, I think drapes would get in the way.

Speaking of the sun room, I've had this hanging on the wall for quite some time, but I made some changes to it this morning.

Where there are dark red peony's there used to be bright orange chrysanthemums. I think the deep red will go better with the new drapes.

I made this swag years ago. It was a decoration done for a room at a convention held by the cult I grew up in. The room was at the fair grounds, and rather ugly, but it had some gunny sack covered cork boards on the walls all around it (it was used for displays during the North Idaho Fair). I was given the generous budget of 100 bucks to do this project. So I acquired a team of ladies to help me and we made swags and wreaths, one for each of the boards. Since it was autumn at the time, I went with an autumn colored theme. We used mostly dried grasses, plants, branches, and whatnot picked from the area, with silk flowers to add a bit of color. It was a challenging project and it turned out very well. One of my proudest moments.

I made this particular one. The branch was laying in the back yard having freshly fallen from the tree with all those little pine cones on it. The grasses, of which there are 7 different types, were all in my back yard. The ribbon is raffia. It's about 4 feet wide and I still absolutely love it after all these years. It hangs over the piano.

A request has been made for knitted bootees from Knitwits. The local Birthrights organization needs 30 pairs of bootees by December. That's just one organization. Others have requested them too. So I'm going into bootee knitting mode for awhile. Here is the first one I've made so far (it still needs it's I-cord tie).

I'm using up leftover sock yarns, and patterns from both the internet and a book by Zoe Mellor called 50 Baby Bootees to Knit. Might as well have lots of fun while doing it.

I don't remember if I mentioned I'd ordered a new cat tree or not. I didn't want the old one in the house any more because it's covered in the old carpet. So I gave the tree to Grandkitty Lindy and ordered this one, which arrived yesterday. After assembling it, the cats-Silver and Chenille-checked it out.

Chenille is seeing how it does for scratching.

So, is it comfy inside?

Tommy has to make sure it smells okay.

We approve Mom.

I'm glad they're happy.

Have a great day.