Bears

Here are some pictures of Otto and Lotta, who are trying to get home for Christmas, but some postal strikes and airline strikes are messing up the smooth trip. I just hope they will get home

in time.

They have been traveling a little bit here, and they loved everything.

Knitted Leg Warmers for girls

These leg-warmers are for our granddaughter, for Christmas.

I just could not find a pattern that I wanted to make

.

I decided to use seed stitch for the leg part and here is what I did:

Yarn: Bernat Mosaic / Acrylic 44130 (Mosaic)

I skein is plenty, since there is a lot of yardage (209)

Needles: 5 - 4 mm double pointed

and 5 - 5 mm double pointed

Tapestry needle

Scissors

Gauge: 8 stitches seed stitch with 5 mm needles = 2" (5 cm)

Size: 8" (20 cm) leg circ. Bottom ribbing 1", Leg 9", top ribbing 4"

Stitches used: knit, purl and seed stitch

Seed Stitch:

row 1:*K1,p1 repeat from * to end

row 2: *p1, K1, repeat from *to end

Repeat these two rows.

Cast on 32 stitches. Divide evenly on four needles (8 stitches each needle), and join,

but do not twist, keep a straight face.

Knit 5 rows of k1,p1 ribbing with 4 mm needles

Change to 5 mm needles and then

purl on knit stitch, knit on purl stitch throughout all the stitches.

This is called seed stitch.

Do this until the leg part

measures 9" (23 cm)

change to 4 mm needles

k1, kfpb, *k2,p1, k2,p1, repeat this rib pattern from * until you have 4" (10 cm) done (24 rows).

For the top ribbing you will have 33 stitches, since you added one (kfpb = knit on the front loop of the stitch and purl on the back loop of the same stitch.

Cast off loosely, and hide the yarn ends with a tapestry needle that you have handy.

Afternoon in the park

After grocery shopping Otto and Lotta came with me to enjoy some coffee and donut holes in the park. It was a beautiful noon time. Our stay wasn't too long, because it started raining. At least we had time to do some knitting and reading.

Some colors in the park.

Otto and Lotta were excited, they were about to have coffee and donuts

Here is the young couple, having a gentle moment.

Weekend yapping

Nothing special happened between now and yesterday's post.

Other than I didn't knit one stitch, lying, one row of 69 stitches and a few on the next row.

Well, that should count to almost nothing done.

Trying to get Adobe Digital Edition to open its arms and let my library book into my Kobo. My

"Knit One - Kill Two" book is behind locked doors. I have it on the Edition but I want to read it in my handy e-reader.

During my lunch hour at work, on Friday, I was happily crocheting a nice scrumble, which probably will be forgotten somewhere, since for a scrumble, I don't like what I did. The good thing is, that it

doesn't matter, it's not from a pattern, it was done during a card game with co-workers and the boss. Now I understand why this scrumble looks so miserable. haha.

Plans for today:

1. Laundry (and related chores within)

2. Dishes from last night (too busy doing nothing)

3. Vacuuming (why doesn't the machine follow me easily?)

4. clearing my clutter from this dining table (this one has been on my list for months)

5. Cleaning (like dusting, right!, wash the floors, clear some .... oh, now I am getting a headache)

6. Grocery shopping (milk, coffee, bread - should not amount to 99 dollars? but it will)

7. knitting (three choices right now, maybe more)

8. searching for something in my stash room (I will do this, even I have no plans yet)

9. Bedroom stuff, sheets and things, plus fluff the pillows. (This is fun)

And the above isn't necessarily in the order that anything gets done. I am curious, no, I know,

which one is the first. Just by knowing it, or thinking of knowing, I will do something else.

I left bathroom out on purpose, because that would have been number 10, and that would cause

my listing to go off the nicely organized fashion. Besides, the bathroom is my hubby's job.

Plans for Tomorrow:

1. Wake up when ever

2. Get ready to go out

3. Knit a little bit

4. Read a little bit, perhaps The Ghost Pirates, or e-mail

5. Go to Purple Purl

6. Have fun with friends

7. Come home

8. Make Dinner

9. Eat

10. Knit (I am sure of this one)

11. watch telly and go to sleep. (what's on TV?)

I hope my list comes out in orderly fashion, since I have two digit numbers there.

Again, some items are not in order, or are missing, but I really don't care.

What a nice day.

I have to get started, or else. Is there a way to eliminate most of those Saturday Chores, and leave more lazy time for that day? I could grocery shop on Friday after work, but that one doesn't always feel desirable. I just want to come home and relax, it's been a long week anyway.

Reading stuff

The brown shawl pattern is from a British magazine, August 2010 issue of Yarn Forward, and the name of the shawl is Willow. I am using yarn that was given to me by a nice lady, who had spun it herself.





The lonely sock pattern is a combination of patterns, from basic sock to ribbed sock, using 64 stitches and 2.5 mm needles. The other pair is at the same point, but not with me when I took the picture. The yarn is Kroy Sock FX yarn, which I like very much for warm socks.










The Cable socks I started in Finland with Novita Wool yarn (discontinued - can't understand why, it's a nice yarn). I finished them a few weeks ago. The pattern was in one of Novita's booklets (from a few years ago).











Lastly in the knitting section:
I finished hubby's cardigan, one day before his birthday. The zipper is not on in this picture. I need to take another with the zipper on.












Now I will get to my present reality check.

I must admit, I might have flipped completely.
My impulse motor is very strong, and will not stop when started until at least one
of the plugs is out.

Short story long: I was summoned to sit in a jury pool for five days. There was a lady who had
a small device on her hand and she was staring at it immensely. I was getting curious, and asked her what the heck was that. She smiled and told me it's an e-reader. What is that I asked, and she explained that she has books in it, instead of the paper books. Then she went on and told
how it really worked. I was very interested and was staring at my blackberry and wondered if
I could use that for reading books. The screen is not larger than 2" x 2", that does not give too much reading area, IMHO.

Every time I saw this lady using her e-reader, I swore that I will not get one, since I don't read
that many books anyway. Mind you, I had two paper books with me at the court house.

First two days I spent knitting, but on the third day one of the clerks, sitting behind the desk, doing nothing, came to our little corner (three of us knitting) and told us that we have to be careful, because we are not supposed to bring any sharp objects with us. (I am thinking of the thin, size 1.75 mm needles and 1.75 steel crochet hooks and scissors in my bag, bag that was scanned by security, same kind of machine that they have at the airports, and nobody said anything).
The nice and very understanding clerk advised us that don't bring knitting tomorrow. OK, we continued knitting and about half an hour later another clerk came and told us sternly that we can't knit. Put them away. We tried to explain that we were told to be careful. She insisted that we put everything away. Well, after some exchange of useless arguments, in a polite manner from the three of us, the clerk just shrugged (many times) and could not explain to us why all of a sudden this was prohibited, when one of the security guards had seen one set of long knitting needles with one of the ladies and
told her to have a nice day. Nothing said about not bring them in.

I started crocheting and a little redhead clerk stared at me and then came to tell me to put it away. I said this is crocheting not knitting and showed her my size 5mm bamboo hook. Pencils are sharper than that. She insisted that I can't do that. I obeyed and felt sorry for her. She must be a sad woman. I did finish a pair of colorful socks for someone in my family. Who is the lucky girl, I don't know yet.








Oh, back to my reader thoughts. I was playing with my BB for the rest of the day, and the next day, too. Getting very itchy for this miraculous e-reader. I even checked the web sites. I was surprised on the low price, and that gave me more interest on the device.

A lady, in one of the yahoo groups I am in, was telling about Kindle e-reader, and that there is a free Kindle for PC. Guess what, when I got home that day and downloaded the free one in my PC. I even got my first free book "The Ghost Pirates" wow, I never thought that I would be interested in a book that was written eons ago, with strange "accent". However, I am reading a little bit every day, and have already done 60% of the book. That book is free in the web, even if you don't have any type of a reader, other than your eyes.

On my visit to Purple Purl on Sunday, I noticed a lady using yet another reader. This time it was not a text that she was following, it was a chart for a knitting pattern. I want one of those, I said, and I said it aloud too. One other lady started telling me about this one, and one that she had, Sony reader. But I was more interested in this jazzy little whitish device with a nice little blue blob in the corner.

Went home, checked Chapters Indigo on-line store and sure enough there was Kobo, and it was on sale. I clicked on the buy key and there, the impulse motor kept running and didn't stop until I finished the order. What have I done?

I started waiting and when my Kobo came, I was surprisingly less happy than I was when waiting for it. I knew that I made a mistake, at least a small mistake. Now I must start reading again. Just like I did when I was much younger.

The sad part now, is that i want Kindle reader. I was counting my money in my mind, when I was coming to work this morning. I could use this credit card or that one, or maybe I just see how this Kobo works. That would be the smart thing to do, and logical. But, you see, I lack talent in the logic department. It would be logical, in my humble opinion, to get Kindle now, but since I am smarted that logical, I will not get it, until I have become totally dissatisfied with Kobo.

While I wait for my impulse department to settle down, I will crochet a little pouch for my new friend Kobolita. (I hope that is not a real word somewhere and means something nasty). I had some nice leather pouches from Argentina, but both of them need a lining, since the leather inside leaves some little thingies on my toy and I don't want any of them get inside the reader and start messing up my pages.

Drawing? I made a zentangle drawing on the fourth day of my jury pool day. Unfortunately, the sketch book is not with me, so you just have to wait for the picture.

That is my story for today. I will return again one day, when the Saturn is bright.

Startitis, Knitting, Time Management

It's unbelievable how difficult it is for me to work on one project for a full day. Well, not the full day as in 24 hours, but a full day as in 3-5 hours per night, not including an occasional hour in the morning before getting ready for work.

I have a project, a big one, it's a cardigan (picture shows how it is supposed to look) that should be finished by Friday. I started on August 31st, thinking I had lots of time. Well, I happily started knitting the back first. Oh, before I did

that, I measured and measured what size I should make. I decided on the third size on the pattern, which doesn't tell me if it's small, medium, large, x-large, xx-large or what ever. I don't know the sizes in cm without spending oodles of minutes trying to find something suitable to measure. Then they have two measures, the actual size of the person, and the finished size of the garment. Well, this would have been easy to do, the measuring part, if the person knew that I was making the dang cardigan, but it's a surprise, so no measuring while the person is around.

My decision on the third size was not even close to the size I needed. I had about 15 cm excess in width. Arrrrgghhh. I measured the gauge, or tension, as the pattern calls it. The tension was the same, even though my needle size was smaller and the yarn was thinner. Go figure. I decided to

step down on the needle size as well as the pattern size. Smallest size it is. And the measures for the front pieces seem to work just fine. I am so baffled with this, since the person who is supposed to get this cardigan is usually size L or X-L. Maybe people in other parts of the

world measure differently.

Today was the day when I had promised myself to completely finish the front pieces, with my

pattern changes (very normal for me to change something). I also planned to get the back piece up to the armpit decreases. Well, at the moment I still need some 5 cm for the fronts, and the back is now only 10 cm. Not even close to the arm hole part. It's 10 pm and there is no hope in hell to get 30 some cms done by 12 tonight. That was my plan originally, in the morning, before

I went shopping.

First I stopped at the bank to pay some bills, then off to the grocery store. Sure, the grocery store was somewhere to the left on my route, and I just kept going northbound and ended up

in Michaels (arts and crafts). I decided to go in, instead of turning around and took a basket.

I put my handbag into the basket, thinking that if the dang basket was full, I would not buy too

much stuff.

Somehow I steered my feet towards the yarn section. I started checking the sock yarns. It's

amazing how easy it is to buy sock yarn when you really don't need to do it, since there are

two, at least, big plastic tubs, from WalMart, and other stores, full of sock yarns already. Not to mention all the sock yarn that I bought in Finland in July/August, when I was there for two weeks. That is another story.

This is one of the yarn stores I visited in Finland.

I had bought some Kroy sock yarn the other day, two of each color (three colors), and as I was looking at those yarns, I decided that hubby needs socks for Christmas, and the yarns I had bought earlier wasn't enough for nice long socks. I bought one more of two of the colors that I had only bought two. Then I bought three different color skeins for my hubby's socks. Oh, and

another color for myself (haha, I don't even like to wear socks too much, they make my feet warm)

Oh, and Chapters was on the other side of the parking area and I had to go and check the magazines. I think I bought two, have only glanced thru, and then set aside for later reading. I do buy these magazines for the articles, not the patterns. I know I will never make everything anyway, but I love looking at the pictures and reading about new "tools" and other new ideas.

How hard is it to go to a grocery store and buy bread, coffee and eggs? I chose to go to another

grocery store than the one I normally use. What, they had beautiful strawberries, blueberries and gorgeous nectarines. A kind man gave me to taste velvet plum, and that was so delicious that I had to get a few, 6. My total bill, for these few items was way over 100 bucks, I am not going to tell how much, but those were expensive fruits and breads etc. (I think I had other items there, too, but they were not on my list).

At home, it was time to do laundry and clean some floors and do the dishes. Finally I was able to sit down and start on my plan to get the cardigan going. Hah, dream on. I had to see how the new yarn would look on the needles. But hey, first to find a pattern. Not to mention that I have about four sock pattern books. It was much easier to open Ravelry site and start surfing socks made with Kroy yarn. This took several minutes (about 63), and the evil cardigan was staring at me with a shameless smirk. I decided on a basic pattern that I could knit without so much as trying to think what's in line on the next row. Let the yarn do the talking.

Fortunately then my brain started screaming at me and like a good girl I took the cardigan project and started working on that. It's going to be a hard and painful project to finish, because there are so many other projects that I would love to do right now.

Life is hard enough without knitting project dilemmas.

Back to my cardigan project now.

I must be off the wall, seriously

There are three items in my bag, to do today at lunch.
I have a pair of socks, working on the gussett decreases,
a start of a vest, pattern from Knit 'n Style, October magazine,
and an unstarted yarn skein, that is going to be socks from a
British magazine "The Knitter", issue 21.

Do you think I could do all that, while I eat my lunch, chat
with co-workers, and play cards? Not likely. Why do I do this?
I knew that I could not work on everything at the same time, but
yet I took all this, and almost the Ishbel shawl also.
A friend of mine had bought the pattern for me, for my birthday.

I must admit that I feel lost and missing something (other than brains) if I don't
have many projects with me.

Yesterday I went to a nearby yarn store to buy one circular needle,
size 4 mm. I have lots of them, but all are somewhere else, or I don't
like how the cable coils and doesn't stay put as in my older circular
needles. Well, I did not have any projects with me when I went to
that store, and I felt a big anxious. I might have a slight problem
with this "knitting/crocheting carrying with me" business.

I am also waiting for a sock kit to arrive from the States. It's a kit
to make socks and the money, most of it, or some of it, goes for
charity. Ovarian cancer society. The sock yarn color is teal, which is
supposed to be the color for this charity.

I am also waiting for my copy of Knit 'n Style, August magazine,
which I have ordered about two weeks ago, maybe less, but it feels
like hundred years ago. There is a pattern for a cardigan that I want
to make with my Novita Alpaca yarn that my SIL bought for me in Finland.

Oh, yeah, I went to Finland in July and came back in August. That was just about two weeks in there. My trip was a total success. It was relaxing and laid back
trip. I didn't have to go anywhere special, like tourist attractions. I visited the family and that was the main reason for my quick visit.

Continued later:

Would you believe this: The Knit 'n Style magazine arrived today, soon after I posted about it.
Here is the jacket I want to make:

Walk to the mall

On a beautiful Friday noon, I decided to walk to the mall, instead of driving. It's amazing what you can see on your walks, no traffic, no road rage, no honking horns, just sunshine and warm breeze caressing your being.

Look around you, and see what really is there. Flowers, fences, blue sky, trees and playgrounds.



This little lonely flower is light blue or light lavender, but it was so sunny that my poor camera got confused and made it white. Just as the yellow flowers, they are much more yellow than the picture shows.

These white pompoms are by my home building. Don't ask me to name them, because I am not very good with plant names.











These plants are in the playground park. I suspect they have not been there very long, since there is construction going on in this area. At least some planting has been done already, which is nice.

























The park has a playground area for the kids and why not for the adults, too. At least we have fun watching the kids, and help them to swing, or just sit on a bench and enjoy a nice summer day.











I could never stop and look at small wonders if I was driving and watching the road and other vehicles and whatnots that are on the road. Of course, there would be many wondrous things, like traffic lights, cross walk signs, and bus stops with leaning shelters. Those you could easily see from the car while driving. However, the small, lonely flowers, the amazing weeds, that look like garden beauties, are there hidden from the view in the heavy traffic areas. They are there, trust me. We just have to see things from a different view, admire nature, and appreciate the green that appears in the summer time.























Wow, Look at this beautiful litter box, have you seen those before?

And finally, my shopping trip is done, and I am going home.