Bridal Handkerchief

So I got this idea in my head-you know how that goes-that I could "whip up" a bridal hankie for a friend of mine who is to wed this Saturday as part of her wedding gift to her. I mean, how hard and time consuming could a lacy border be around a small cloth? Well, with a deadline of one week I knew I was cutting it close, but a small project like that should reap instant gratification, shouldn't it?

Oh, ho ho-how wrong I could be. Apparently, the main part of the whole operation, the women's handkerchief cloth is a rare breed. I searched many stores like Kohls (first time-consumption). Then I went to JoAnn Fabric's and Michaels (second time-consumption) in search of some semblance of a hankie (Michaels only has white bandannas, which I started to use until I did my practice hankie). Then I finally bit the bullet and went back to JoAnn's to find thin cotton cloth that is soo thin, you can see your hand through it. If I was gonna do this the hard way, I wanted it done right. Then, the next biggest time-consumer was finding a way to punch holes into the fabric like the old lace book with a hankie I got inspired from in the first place. No one, not even the stores could figure out how to get those holes in the fabric to crochet an edging into. And the darn book mentioned that you could buy hankie fabric at stores. Lies. After spending much time and asking around, my second visit to JoAnn's proved fruitful from an employee's suggestion to buy lace and sew it on...which I didn't want to do, since it would discard the whole reason to make the heirloom-type of hankie in the first place. HOWEVER, when she mentioned it, it brought up the idea of a thin helper-lace to sew on, which was just the ticket!

It was all downhill after that. I did some practice rounds on scrap hankies to practice the embroidery of her initials and embellishments around the edging. That was...fun..., not. I must have done dozens of letters, using a pen to mark the direction I started. The key is: if you wanted the letter to face you from the corner, you have to turn that corner to the left before sewing. Seems counter-intuitive, in my opinion. For some reason, when you try to embroider a letter, it doesn't face the direction that you sew and the size of the letter seems to be up for grabs to when you haven't mastered it. Thus being said, after I spent all the time on the "final hankie" (hankie two, might I add), I watched in horror as the "E" was higher than her other two initials I did. After hours of non-existent freetime...I was just gonna live with that imperfection. After sewing the hem with a lovely design from the machine, I sewed on the tinsie eyelet lace as my helper holes to knit the lace edging on, and off it went. I really love the silver beading on it as well. It really adds a nice fancy touch.

I hope my friend loves the hankie. It has that antique feel to it. Even if she doesn't use it to shed "tears of joy," she has a really beautiful hankie for her wedding day and memory box. I wrapped it up in silver tissue paper and tied together with a green ribbon containing a "congrats and care instruction" tag.

My friend Kristi is getting married in a year in a half, so hopefully next time I'll have plenty of time to "whip it up" and master the art of embroidery placement.

In retrospect, it would have been nice to have one for my own wedding almost two Octobers ago. Wow....two years.
All the best to you, Miss Elizabeth. Soon to be Mrs. Elizabeth.

Hello, Michigan!

Hey gang. I'm at Joe's annual week-long family reunion that's up in Stevensville, Michigan. We have our own cabin (albeit far away from the rest of the fam's cabin) that is like a townhouse in the way that ours is connected to his parents/grandparents cabin, but instead of being normal-shaped...it's in the shape of a triangle. lol. The roof almost reaches the ground.

Anyways, I've been knitting away at the shawl while I and other family members watch the "I can pull myself into a stand and get into LOTS of trouble" babies. I plan on taking actual photos of these experiences when I remember to put the darn camera in the diaper bag. We are walking distance to the beach. We walked to the beach the other day and Lake Michigan looked so massive and beautiful, although quite windy, that I almost got lost staring out to 'sea'. Lake Michigan is soo expansive that it really looks like an ocean.

Question thrown out to the great cosmos: why is it that when you finally pack only 1 skein of yarn for a project instead of lots of it (being realistic)...you DO get to knit a lot and might not have enough with you on your trip to finish the project when you would have??? I guess it's a good problem if you got a lot done.

Oh, and I spent all my free-time last night while the babies were in bed figuring out the edging to the shawl...and I think I have the charted pattern now. Pfeuf! It takes a lot of stress off my back while knitting this.

Amore Shawl update

Just reporting in on the Amore Shawl that I brought out of hibernation this month.


I've been clicking away row by row as I get a spare second. And I mean "second." I am about 2/3 done with the main panel, and I'm hoping to complete the body of the shawl this week (assuming that I can get some family "babysitters" during our annual reunion coming up this week). I still have to design the lacey edging, but I'm trying not to rush the idea...and to just visualize what would compliment lacey hearts as I come to the homestretch.


This bad boy needs to soak more desperately than the last shawl to really pull the heart back into shape in the places where the yarn ziggies (yup, made-up word. Meaning: where the yarn pulls funkily out of shape almost zig-zag like).

If your an longtime reader of this blog, you are probably noticing that I've used this lacey pattern before for my wedding shrug from '09. I was on some bobble kick. I have a sock pattern too that has a lacey heart and bobbles, called "candied love" socks. What can I say, I liked the texture of them, and since I hibernated the WIP, I have to continue what I started. Besides, this shawl has sentimental value, which I'll go more into length in the final post of the shawl. But for more, here's some more juicy red fruit for your eyes:

Toys, toys, toys

It's been another crazy week in the Mal' household. Can you believe that after the onset of another storm...we lost power yet again?!? We were 1 of 9 in our area to loose power (thanks to our neighbors across the street). We didn't have power for almost 2 days...which is better than the 5 days last time, but honestly we are sick of the whole thing.

Anywho, here are some of the toys as promised. I still haven't knit up the texture ball I had envisioned, but here's what the boys have already. These two blocks are crocheted. I was planning on doing a couple of knit ones too. I used 100% cotton that I had in my stash. They are soft and squishy, which is refreshing after seeing how much these two tikes constantly hurt themselves from falling on their plastic toys.





Here's some cute knit bunnies. The yarn in chenille. I hope in the future that they can make best buds with them at nap time. They haven't found a "lovey" except for their pacifiers so far.




The boys really have taken off, physically, in July. They started crawling one week and not 4 or 5 days after their first real crawl they learned how to pull themselves into a stand,...and boy are they getting into trouble now!




I forget whether or not I mentioned in the last post about the other shawl I dragged out of hibernation, but I'm working on my red heart shawl again (although the last several days without power has been a setback) and hope to finish it this month. More details and pictures on that in the coming post. Ta-ta for now. We are off to Mariano's grocery store right now...it's like a 5 star grocery store on Saturday. They even have a pianist playing jazz music by the checkout. :) That's how I like to shop!

Aestlight Shawl

It is finally finished! My two circular needles can breathe a heavy sigh of relief to be off the needles *finally* after nearly two full years of hibernation! I checked out my Ravelry page to only find in disbelief how long ago its been since I have casted on for this project. About one month before I got married, September '09.

Above, pre-block. The lace really, really needed the blocking to open up the bird's eye lace, as well as the eyelets were I picked up stitches. I used my little packet of Eucalan wool wash in grapefruit to give it a much needed soak. Makes me sad to use it up because I only have a few that I bought when I was still in college in a small yarnshop in Iowa. I've been reminiscing about the college days and how I wish I were back for a month or two.


The shawl being pinned. The soaking and blocking was done right before bedtime. (The only time to get stuff done.) I even convinced my husband to help me pin the edging because a blurry, tired eye is not the best eye for opening up and straightening out lace!

It's a beautiful shawl. I've been saving my "Anne" Schaefer Yarn for quite some time now for a worthy project, and I'm quite pleased with the results! I bought it at what used to be a yarnshop in Lake Forest, IL. It was relatively close to me, but it eventually went out of business...just like the yarnshop that was under 10 minutes away from me in Prairie Crossings. Sad.

I really was soo close to finishing the shawl way back before hibernation, but for some reason, I didn't have the heart to reach the end. I could place bets on the reason being a bad case of "startitis." I have three shawls that were on the needles at around the same time. Two are still in the closet.

I plan on wearing this shawl to a wedding shower and reception on Saturday that I have to "double dip" on. I was going to wear it with my Vera Wang dress that I USED to fit in, pre-pregnancy...but I found out in horror that it doesn't fit right around my ribcage anymore post-twins. *sob*. I had to buy another dress, a black one that is cute and has jewels on the straps and under the keyhole on the chest.


Victoria, ever the model.

PROJECT: Aestlight Shawl by Gudrun Johnston
YARN: "Anne" Schaefer Yarn, 1 skein of colorway 906
NEEDLES: US 7
PROJECT STARTED: September 7th, 2009
PROJECT FINISHED: July 20th, 2011


Feels really good to finish something of this size. The last BO stitch almost called for celebration because it took so many nights to finish the stinkin edging because I had to stop every two rows or so! Now on to finishing up the knitted toys and maybe keep tinkering away at the afghan? I know I've said this before, but I feel good. I feel almost back. almost.

Powerless

It started off as a weird day. The babies and I went for a short walk at 6:3AM because it had already been getting hot and plain old muggy. Not long after, I noticed that it started to get pretty dark out. That's when I noticed that the wind was picking up. And when I mean picking up, I mean 80 miles per hour. Within minutes, our backyard seemed to be hurricane-blown, the trees bending over, broken off branches and leaves blown everywhere. Garbage cans toppled over into the streets. We had to vacate the family room because it was in the line of 3 story tree fire. What did I save? Well, babies of course (saved first, for those who might ask). But after that...things we couldn't live without in the Mal house. Tv? No. (Can't live without it, but when you compare it to the things I DID save you'll see why.) Cameras or purses? No. Einstein jumper, activity chair, baby gym and basket of toys? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. What else? Laptop? No. The WIP Rippled Afghan that took dozens and dozens of hours and thousands of stitches? Heck YES. Boy do you see my priorities, huh?!? Besides the knitting, our life seems to be a "Ground Hogs Day" worth of bouncing the kids from activity jumper to swing to toys and the like every 15 minutes. They have a lot of toys and activities, but man do these boys get bored fast. Almost as quickly as Sam is going from non-mobile to rolling, crawling, help-standing to even trying to walk despite his near 9 month old body (adjusted, 7.5 mos).

We got lucky. Real lucky. While our neighbors got hit hard in the roof or had their mature trees split to the point of no return, ours held out and we only had to worry about raking up up loose branches and a yard full of leaves (didn't realize it's Fall already). Oh, and that tinsy tiny problem of NO POWER.

Not just one day, or two days or three days or four days...but FIVE full days of Amishhood.In the Summer heat. With two babies. and NO GENERATOR. The first day was miserable. We lost power by 9am. Even with the windows down and the blinds shut, it got pretty humid and gross. The second day was a little better. By the third day, it really cooled off...which we were soo thankful for. We ended up loosing nearly everything in our fridge and freezer. For the few things that were salvageable, we kept a cooler going.
Our routine of washing out the bottles and making 16 bottles for the next day turned into washing and making a couple on-the-fly.

It's kind of funny because it seemed like the "Survivor" show the way some people reacted to the power outage. No TV? OMG. Let's go out and buy a generator! My tv usually is always running in the background during the day. The silence was a little strange, sadly enough. However, it was nice to be released from the bondage a little bit. And not being able to run fans without the air was also greatly missed, but we some how survived. We usually use them as white noise for the boys as much as we use it to break up the stuffiness.

Anyways, to make this long story short, we finally got our power back late Friday, being in the last 200 houses to receive power in my hometown (large population). Probably didn't help that a truck picking up one of the trees on the side of the road knocked down a light pole holding electrical wires while I was going to a morning stroller ride.

We are glad to have power- light, electricity, air conditioning, etc. We love it all, even more so now.

Photos really doesn't show the entirety of the situation. Every house had a huge pile of tree limbs and branches for the trucks to take. I had more photos, but my other camera's USB cord is MIA, so these will have to do. I'm guessing our neighborhood was on the news since it got hit one of the hardest because of all of the mature trees that have become very brittle from drought-like weather these past few years.

I have some knitted toys to share with you all later on, and the shawl is waiting to be soaked and blocked. Interesting things to come this week. Visit back soon.

Pretty little things

Well, I am half was through the edging, which means that this shawl is on it's way to F.O-itude. The shawl really has forest green tones to it, but you know how lighting works. It'll look like a much different shawl after it's been blocked and shot at again during the next photo shoot. And boy does this shawl need to be blocked. I worked the larger size, yet it looks much smaller than the pattern's example. My sockyarn must have been much thinner. The edging looks like ca-ca right now, so I'm looking forward to blocking the socks off this shawl. tee hee.

Here's a cute pic of the boys around the fourth of July. They are sitting in their little Bumbo chairs in the baby pool. I have to say that they do love their water dosage. Splish-splashing is in their blood.

And I'll leave you off with some beautiful photos of my blossoming flowers in my garden. The last owner really picked out some great perennials. When I went to Walmart yesterday to get some fertilizer, I noticed that they had these lillies for 50 percent off, so I bought myself the pink and the red version to but in my backyard (these are in front of my house).

Not sure what these purple flowers are called, but they are pretty. They sure like to fan out though. The ones below look like sweet-peas...but not sure of the names Either. Any gardeners reading?

Forest Necklace

Dear Blog,
Here's another necklace, dubbed the "forest necklace" due to it's colors. Instead of using crocheter's yarn, the necklace is crocheted using gold wire. I watched a tutorial online from a website called "Auntie's Beads" and whipped myself up something similar.

Do you remember Victoria? She decided to model off another KUAS project even though she has a lack of a neck.

The only problem with crocheting these puppies up, besides putting a bigger dent in the wallet is that my little boys find them WAY too appealing and I can't really wear them! When they see them around my neck as I hold them, their eyes light up and their little pudgy fingers reach out and tug on them first thing. Oh well. I still will continue to craft away at these necklaces because I have more ideas storming around in my head. I even want to venture out to real beading without the hook.

But, dear blog, alas...I have not completely forsaken the needles. Do you remember my Rippled Reading Afghan? I have dragged it out from the dark depths of my closet and have continued to knit those long, long rounds. (It probably takes more than 10 minutes each round now.) The colorway is so vibrant, so beautiful, I can't help to do a round here or there. Since that picture it has grown maybe 6 or more inches. I am on my last skein, so I had to order up some more skeins or the afghan will be much too small for my liking.

I have also dragged out my "Aestlight Shawl" that I started over a year ago. I don't recall posting about it. Could be wrong. I dragged it out of hibernation as well, surprised to find it just about done. Story of my life, right? I got really scared when I couldn't find the pattern that I checked off where I left off. The middle of lace is not the time to guess. I think there's only a few more rounds of lace left besides the edging. More on that later.

The boys turned 8 months several days ago. They are eating solids, trying to scoot/crawl (Sam actually crawls backwards because he still hasn't figured out forwards) and are very vocal, arrr---baaaa---maaa and blows razz's. Can't believe they will be 1 years old in under 4 months!

Gotta run. Have a great Fourth of July to those in America! I'm thinking about knitting up the boys diaper soakers in the striped Red-White-Blue cotton colorway. If you're bored, this pattern was Fourth of July festive from '09: Let Freedom Ring.

-Yours truly.

Aztec Gold Necklace

I've been fiddeling around with jewelry making, but in a purely "needle" sense. I have these crochet jewelry ideas buzzing around my head and I've finally put it into motion yesterday. "Aztec Gold" is the preliminary version of other chained necklaces and versions.

I love how comfortable it feels. My skin is very sensitive to metals and it's refreshing to have something that doesn't scratch or irritate. (Plus it's nice to say "I made this" when people shell out compliments.)

This version is basically a very long loop that is circled around the neck three times for a layered look. My next version will be a large loop like this but the "jewels" will be different. My third one will be much different. I'll test out a new method for layering.


Not the most exciting hairday (always a "mommy" hairday) and the lighting pales the golds in the necklace, but here's an example of what it would look like with a complimentary tank.

It's fun and easy. The hardest part of the whole thing is stringing the beads on in the correct order and trying to get the yarn's layers from splitting; especially the tinsel. Tune back in for more jewelry. Necklace two is on the hook already.

...to brighten your day pt. 3

...to brighten your day pt. 2

...to brighten your day.

Still alive

Hey guys. Just popping in to say that I'm still alive. I've finished my first crocheted project, A basic hat, and was fudging around/working up fingerless mitts to match but I've been pretty busy with baby stuff to get too comitted. I'd like to post them together as completed but who knows when I'll finish them...I'm kind of bored with the mitts anyways. I'm considering frogging.

The mitts have the same backstitch single crochet border with single crochet along the main body with another bsc stitch along the way. I'll do the bsc on the top of the mitts too if I work on it more.

The hat/mitts are crocheted with two different colorway strands in fingering weight. The border is crocheted with the purple yarn as well as a lavender Malibrigo yarn in laceweight. It's more or less a stashbusting project for Spring.

My sanity has been on the fritz as much as my knitting. I've been experimenting with crocheting because there is that cute mini "Button Loafer" pattern I want to whip up for the boys. How cute is that pattern? I might be out of my zone though...since I'm a self-taught crocheter. Well, I'm a self-taught knitter too...but knitting patterns seem easier to read, somehow. Maybe that's why-as well as the reasoning that crocheting uses up more yarn- us knitters call the crocheting art the "Dark Arts" or the "Dark Side"...lol. Kidding.

The boys will be 6 months by the end of this month...I can't believe it!
Here's a video of Sam to brighten your day:




P.s- thank you for all of the sweet comments about the Kimono Jacket and the boys! :)

who's got the time?

It's been a while. The boys are now 4 months old, and showing signs of teething already! They are quite fussy (all day long), so who's got time to knit?

Little Sammie in his Kimono Jacket, like his brother from the last post.

Sorry to bore. Maybe one day I will have time to knit again.