Dishcloth addiction: an array of ball-bands

Knitting dishcloths one at a time, I didn't realize that I was accumulating quite a collection. This summer I have really been addicted to making soooo many. Now I keep looking and buying more yarn to make more...oh no not more! I've been looking for new patterns, too, especially unusual ones which interest me the most. If any one out there has a pattern or link to a pattern be sure and let me know. I love Dave's garterlac pattern. I finished my one and only garterlac dishcloth and I'm definitely making more. Now I have to stop blogging and knit more...

My Mason-Dixon ball band dishtowel is finished!

My ball band dishtowel is finally finished. I've been working on it for awhile now. You definitely do not get the instant gratification of knitting a dishcloth when knitting a towel, but it is definitely worth the extra effort. I can't wait to try it out. This will be great for doing all my hand washing of dishes and pots and pans. It's nice and big and I really think it will be very absorbant. I cast on 90 stitches and made 33 ball bands in total. That's twice the width of of a dishcloth and about 2 and 1/2 times the length, which equals about five dishcloths. The yarn I used was Peaches and Cream shaded pastels (pink, blue and mint green) and white. Now I can concentrate on bigger and better things.

Can "Garlic Lime Chicken" be knitted?

My boys saw me taking a picture of our chicken in the frying pan and they all said: "that's not knitting, why are you taking a picture of that for your knitting blog?" Guess I must have knitted dinner, if it's going in my blog???

Last night for supper I made(knitted) Garlic Lime Chicken, which is one of my family's favorite chicken recipes. This recipe is one of the easiest, fastest and tastiest chicken recipes I make. Spicy hot, but not burn your whole mouth and digestive tract spicy hot. The wonderful cooking aroma lingers in the house and I feel like I am enjoying more chicken with out actually eating more later on in the evening. If you are interested, the recipe comes from Leanne Ely's book Saving Dinner Leanne also has a web site savingdinner.com. Check out her free sample menu mailers. Click on menus and that will lead you to the free ones. It's great for people who have a hard time getting meals together because she also give you the shopping list!

As far as knitting goes it's been a slow week. I have nothing finished but I do have two projects on the needles. My ball-band dish towel is almost done. I'm anxious to finish it and try it out. My other project is going very slowly. There will be more about that later.

One of my goals this summer was to finish my counted cross stitch picture. I've got a lot done, but have not worked on it lately. School starts on Tuesday, but the summer isn't over yet right?

I'm so excited....

On a quick trip to AC Moore I found Paton's classic merino on sale. Besides their usual assortment of solid colors and marls they had an array of handpainted looking varigated colorways. I visit AC Moore on a fairly regular basis and check out the yarn very carefully and I might add that I never saw these yarns before today. Lately they have been getting new yarns in stock. I had been looking at the varigated Lion wool and the new Caron varigated felting yarn which is actually roving. My sophie bag turn out so nice using the Paton's classic, I knew I couldn't resist. I've been wanting to do another felting project. In addition the fact that it was on sale was a plus. My heart started thumping and I knew I just has to purchase some. I bought four skeins. Hope it will be enough.
Choosing a colorway was really difficult! I felt myself navigating towards the blue shades, then the pink/browns and then I said to myself, "go ahead pick some thing a little different". What's nice about what I picked is that I think it will go with just about anything with the blue, brown, salmon and green. Can't wait to start my new felted project!

P.S. Looks like another trip to AC Moore. The skein second from the right, I think has a dye defect. Too bad I didn't notice it in the store. Hopefully they will have more of the same lot when I go back, minus the white. Keeping my fingers crossed til then!

Garterlac

This is my first Garterlac dishcloth. It is also my first attempt at anything resembling enterlac ! I have been wanting to try the technique, but not get too involved in a big project incase it wasn't for me. For the most part I enjoyed making the cloth. Definitely a little tricky to master, but I am happy with the way the first one turned out. Perhaps the next will be even better. This is not knitting for my knitting bag that I take everywhere with me for waiting around times. I do have to concentrate on what I'm doing, but I hope it gets easier with more practice. This is definitely a good pre- enterlac practice drill. Maybe now I may try to make one of those entrelac felted bags that I have been drooling over!

My rag rug is finished!

Last night I finished my rag rug, which probably could have been a bit bigger. What you see here is what you can make with one queen sized flannel sheet. I just didn't have it in me to cut more strips from another sheet and knit some more. It will have to do! I'm not sure if I'll ever make another one. I'll have to use it a few times to see how it works out. Probably it would not make a good by the back door rug because the dirt would fall through all the open holes of the knitting. I think it will be good for in front of the kitchen sink for water splashes. One thing I found out from the experiment is that flannel strips are not my first choice of fiber to knit with. I'm glad I tried and it makes me appreciate other yarns. Now a bag of outgrown tee-shirts wait in my closet for me to try the calamari knitting, which is cutting the shirts up in thin rings, slip knotting them together and then kniting the loops into a rug or mat. I'm in no hurry to try, so it can just wait until I get the urge to make another rug.....and then by then I should have even more outgrown shirts of a greater color assortment, right?

Progress with my rag knitting experiment and a few other things

Slow, but steady I am progressing with cutting and knitting. I have been alternating between the two.

Today is my eldest son's twentieth birthday! I am having a hard time believing I have a twenty year old. On the day he was born my husband decided to go back to work because he was getting anxious waiting for me to be ready to go the hospital. The night before we were at the hospital, but they sent us back home because it was too early. I called my parents at the cape and they came to stay with me. By the afternoon the doctor's office called and asked how I was doing. Pretty much the same. They said I had better come into the office to get checked out. My mother drove me to Boston to the doctor's office. Well this time it was for real and they sent us over to the hospital. My mother was so nervous. She drove into the exit of the hospital and the security guard came over and said, sorry lady you can't come in this way! My mother responded...but my daughter is having a baby -- like I was the first person in the whole world to ever have done this. Later on that night I delivered a healthy 9 lb 6 1/2 oz. baby boy. This is one funny story I'll never forget!

Here is the picture of the birthday cake I made for him this year.
The cake is made with the wacky cake recipe (eggless and milk free) with a butter cream icing. This is the cake I always have to make for everyone's birthday except my husband who has to have a homemade apple pie for his.

Yesterday I also made a double batch of ginger snap cookies, another family favorite.
All in all ( I've been dying to use this phrase...my boys are always using in their school work!)I've been pretty busy the past couple of days.

Rag Knitting Experiment

I have been inspired by the Mason-Dixon Knitting Book method of Calamari Knitting with old tee-shirts. For a while now I have had two worn queen sized flannel sheets sitting in my closet waiting for me to do something to them. An idea came to me. How about cutting the sheet into half inch strips and knit? This is the result of my experiment with knitting with rags. The little bit I have done is still on the needles.You can see my bargain sized 17" circular needles from Joann's that I bought for $1.99. They are not the best, but I'd say good enough to knit rags with! This very well might make a nice rag rug. I cast on 44 stitches and I have just been knitting back and forth with garter stitch.

Here's a picture of the sheet that I'm cutting up. Starting along the edge of the fitted sheet with the elastic (cut that off and discarded) I started cutting all along the edge going around and around. So far the strip has been all in one piece with no joining required. I do have a spool of thread handy for joining when I encounter the holes in the sheet.
I'll post later on with my progress.
I love recycling :)

P.S. More Ball Bands

Here are two more sets of the ball band dish cloths that I finished. Not sure what I'm going to do with them. All I know is that I'm really addicted to buying the cotton yarn and knitting them. Ball Band Anonymous anyone?

Mission Accomplished

My mother's baby afghan is finished. I crocheted the strips together. I'm not sure if this is how she intended it to look, but I am very pleased and it will be a good size for a baby and hopefully well loved in the future. Feels good to finish it and I think she would be pleased with the finished item. I know I am. Now I need to put it away in a safe place and find it later when it will be needed!

12/27/2010 - Thanks to an anonymous commenter on my previous post about finishing this blanket....the mystery pattern is identified: "Envelope Afghan" :)  

Speaking of well-loved. My three boys(11, 14, 20) always loved the blankets Nana made for them. In fact we still have two that she made in the family room that they use all the time. They are pretty worn now, but still loved. Earlier this year I made a bigger blanket for them to use out of scrap yarn. Every row is a diferent color of knit 3, purl 3. What's nice about this pattern is you knit it the longway with a circular needle and it makes it's own fringe! This one is a good size now that they are turning into big teenagers.
Here's a picture of it:

Seal Tour

While we were vacationing on Cape Cod we went on a seal tour by boat. It was fun! The weather was a little dubious last Friday, but we went ahead and took a chance. There were many gray seals to be seen.
The boat took us along the coastline of Chatham, Massachusetts, near Monomoy Island and along the National Sea Shore.
They were watching us just as we were watching them. There are about 2000 seals in the water off Chatham according to our tour guide.
There were many beautiful homes along the water as well.

Here you can see some male seals. They are called "horseheads" because of their profile coming out of the water. The males are also darker in color. The females are lighter and have spots.
I'm not sure what kind of birds these are. It was fun to watch them swallow pretty good sized fish whole. It was disapointing not to get a picture of them fishing and eating.