To put off doing something

Procrastinate: To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.

I just saw how many days its been since I last posted. I've been doing things - knitting group, work, lots of TV watching, some knitting, very little house cleaning, obviously no posting.

I ended up in one of those time warp things the past couple weekends. I'd wake up, get breakfast, plop down in my chair and turn on the TV for a few minutes. Pick up the knitting and suddenly notice it was 2pm and I hadn't done anything. The worst weekend time warp device TV marathons. If there's an NCIS marathon or another show I like, I watch one episode then before there's a commercial they start the next episode so you get sucked into watching "just one more". Multiple that by the entire day and WHOOSH! it's 7pm and you've done nothing but knit and watch Mark Harmon. This past weekend was catching up on my Netflix DVDs. Some British TV shows so each DVD was 4 hours and I had 3 of them to watch.

So what did I knit? Some of my knitting is - sorry can't show you stuff. But I do have a few things I can show you.

Wednesday I bought the latest Knit Today Magazine. Issue 29- Jan 2009. Inside was a cute little teddy bear. I have a family member expecting a baby in July so the teddy spoke to me. It had to be knit. It turned out to be very quick and very cute. I made it out of Woolease so it will be washable- babies need things washable!

What's this? Another critter waiting to be born. Bert is gonna love playing with this one! - Chief

I decided to make the little "ruffle" down the front white and a little different from the original. Mine's more fluffy. Once this little guy is put together it will also have a white collar. Because I don't need it to be finished until summer I'm waiting to stuff it. It will be easier to store if it isn't stuffed. Plus - It will be less interesting to Bert. Must protect the little guy from Bert's fun and games!

I also have been playing with hairpin lace crochet. I was going to submit this scarf to a crochet magazine but the deadlines for next winter snuck up on me and went so- no submission. I'll probably finish it and write it up anyway. The picture below is 1 strip from being done. I ran out of yarn and got sucked into the TV Zone so didn't make it over to get more yarn.

As you can see, one edge has a green strip with a nice edge, the other lots of brown loops. If you've never worked hairpin lace- it's a fork (2 wire bars held apart by top and bottom spacers).

Making strips consists of working single crochets in between the wires and flipping the fork around to create loops around it. I'll write up a better description later.

Once you have several strips of the length you need, the strips are put together by crocheting or working the loops together. This scarf works 3 loops together at time. I thought the finished joined loops a bit like cables.

So- what do you think? Once its done you think this will be a nice scarf?

Oh- the best part? I made this scarf in a couple short evenings. Hairpin lace can be very fast and use up the stash very quickly!

Thanks for bringing this box home, Mom . I haven't had something good to squish into for a while. - Chief

Ah, Chief..... those boxes are for sorting paperwork. Sorry big boy. Mom needs them tomorrow. - Mom

You want me to knit WHAT?!?

This weekend was busy.

We got snow - I got to shovel.

The MN Knitter's Guild had a tea - I got to knit with friends and eat little fancy sandwiches.

The Oscars were Sunday - I got to knit with friends and eat little fancy appetizers.

I definitely enjoyed the after shoveling activities more.

Oscars & the Mallow Throw

My core group of friends have been together since elementary school. We still get together very frequently. For the past over 30 years two of them have hosted the Oscar party and formerly Mallow Throw. Back when we were young and foolish we would all bring a bag of marshmallows to the party. The hosts would prep their house with a lot of plastic tarps to protect the floor and furniture.

When the show started the main rule was - if you thought the speech went on too long, or the dance number was stupid, or the person was wearing ugly clothes, or you just happened to be a little bit bored - you threw marshmallows at the TV (and frequently at the person across the room from you). By the end of the night the apartment was coated in mallow dust and I'd usually come home with white goo in parts of my body that shouldn't have white goo.

We've aged and matured. The topic of discussion this year was - "Hey Jill, did you think you could knit some marshmallows for next year?" R, the friend I sort of taught to crochet, thought he could take up crochet again to make some mallows. Maybe we haven't matured THAT much.

MN Knitter's Guild

So I finally decided I wanted to go to the MKG. They had a Sunday afternoon tea and I figured that would be a great way to go the first time. I got one of the ladies from my NW Burb knit group to come with me and off we went. When I got there people couldn't have been nicer. I saw a few people I recognized and then saw a couple of ladies that belonged to the same machine knitting group I went to back about 10+ years ago.

Next month is aran knitting. Should be fun.

Hairpin Lace

A friend posted a picture on Ravelry of a shawl. She wondering how it was knit. When I looked at it I knew right away it was hairpin lace - crochet. I had done a little of it back in college (you know - before home computers were invented). I told her what it was and the next weekend I found my hairpin lace fork. That started me off on a new adventure. I figured out the shawl and posted a picture of my ugly little sample with Chief. That was just the beginning.

Make that a VERY ugly sample. Anyway - I've been playing around with hairpin lace this week and came up with a few new patterns. I'm debating sending one of the in for magazine submission (after all I have a whole week before its due). Because of this I can't post pictures. If I don't send them in, I'll let you see what I've been playing with. Time will tell....