a literal weight off my shoulders

Sorry for the blog silence but I've been busy planning (a baby shower) and knitting (baby items). The thing is... my sister found my blog and she thought the last post with the baby booties were for her. They weren't. Those were for Baby Raquel Sofia, who finally made an appearance on October 2nd. I hope you like the booties.

As for my sister, I was able to finish these things just in time for her shower...Pattern: Baby Shrug from Debbie Bliss' Simply Baby

Needles: US8
Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease - Pink

Pattern: Trellis from Knitty Spring 2005
Needles: US8
Yarn: Gedifra Korfu - Red
Buttons from G-Street

More baby booties from Simply Knitting, the UK knitting magazine
Needles: US5
Yarn: Patons Grace in Rose & Tangelo

Now that the shower is over, I have a chance to relax and knit without a deadline. I've got a half finished Anouk on the needles and I just started another baby sweater. I think I like baby knitting. Small, sweet and for some reason the FO's make me giggle.

My head feels a lot lighter, the stress of party planning is gone. Just the thought of 60+ guests squeezed into the house in unseasonably warm October weather made my stress levels rise uncontrollably. I also got my hair cut this past weekend...
TWELVE inches to Locks of Love...it's going to take a while getting used to this short hair. Although it's not as bad as my last donation, that was seventeen inches...

bunch of booties

It's been a while since I've blogged, but I have been knitting...
I love the simplicity of baby booties, small, quick, and adorably cute, and I'm filling my house with them. Here are a few...


The red booties were inspired by these. Utterly adorable!

Pattern: Simple Shoes from Uniform Studio
Needles: US 10.5
Yarn: Patons SWS

Ballet Baby Booties
Pattern: from Simply Knitting
Needles: US 5
Yarn: Patons Grace

unseasonably cool

It's August and I'm cold. It's kinda nice. I'm ready for September and some big wooly knitting.
But it the meantime, there's this...

wooly hibiscusa kind of smoky pink yarn from the hibiscus dye bath

Saturday morning I went grocery shopping at the Latino/Asian mart, an oddly ironic store because peanut butter and cheerios can be found in the international aisle...but they have dyestuffs in the spice aisle.

A bastard saffron, that I'm treating like safflower. The real stuff is $90 an ounce. I got this for $1.49 an ounce. Hence safflower. I'm hoping to extract a hot pink dye from it. I've also got chamomile, great for tea, butI had no idea it could be used for dyeing. And annatto seeds, which give that odd orange color commonly seen in Filipino and Latino foods, hopefully it'll do the same for yarn.
So far I like the ease of solar dyeing, stick it in a jar, put it in the sun, then forgetaboutit. It just takes a while to get results. So I built a solar oven (I applied aluminum foil to the inside of a cardboard box), that got rained on while I was at work today. Oh, well, I tried.

when its too hot to knit...

the sun does have it's uses...

Dried Hibiscus Flowers

Hibiscus Flower Sun Tea

Wool in Hibiscus Flower Tea/Dye bath

Wool is just too hot in my hands for knitting in this heat, so I used cotton for this...
Trellis (with my wonky cables) is just waiting for buttons.

occupied with everything but knitting...

There's something about July, I don't know if its the heat and humidity, the holiday and vacations, but I can't seem to knit anything...

I do admit to a problem though...I am a Harry Potter Fan. I didn't wear a costume or wave a wand at midnight on July 21, but I held my knitting and a Coke, while dressed in the comfiest of yoga wear. (I held my knitting, but I really didn't knit). And freakish fan that I am...I woke up and stood in this line for a hour at 9 am on Friday.

these are the people in front of me...

these are the people behind me...I got number 53 and this is my happy crew, who accompanied me at midnight so that we could have Book 7 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 53 isn't so bad, when we left at midnight the line was around the building and they were on 1013. (Yes, we could've gone on the 21st at 9 am, but it's hard to break a tradition...)

Mini flashback....my freaks in 2005 while waiting for Book 6

we started this in 2003 when we wanted Book 5... I finished reading it the next day. It made me cry. A lot.

Now if I could motivate myself to do something more and hold the knitting, I could have actual knitting content for this blog. (I received my Ravelry invite a couple of weeks ago, I haven't had much time for it, but If you see me there, I'm eyeleen)