Fiber Babble: Building an Ark and Playing With Yarn

Building an Ark and Playing With Yarn

November 06, 2006

These days we're taking a ride on the Pineapple Express in my neck of the woods. Since Friday, we've had lows of 52 and highs of 60 and rain, rain, rain! I went out this morning and emptied my little rain gauge - 7 1/2" inches of rain since Friday! No wonder our fountain is overflowing.

I don't mind the rain, overall, but I'm a bit concerned that the ground will be so saturated that when a big wind comes up, some huge trees we have could be uprooted. I do want to move, but not because a 200-year-old spruce tree is in my sewing room!

Edited to add: We just went and emptied about 75 gallons of water from our fountain. The Oregon/Washington DOT's just issued this - it looks like we haven't even officially gotten The Storm yet!
"* FLOOD WARNING FOR URBAN AREAS AND SMALL RIVERS AND STREAMS IN...
[multiple] COUNTY IN SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON... UNTIL 945 PM PST MONDAY.

* AT 945 AM HEAVY RAIN CONTINUES TO FALL. RAINFALL
AMOUNTS DURING THE PAST 12 HOURS RANGE FROM 1 TO 6 INCHES ...WITH ADDITIONAL AMOUNTS OF 3 TO 9 INCHES EXPECTED THROUGH TUESDAY MORNING..."

On to fiber-ish stuff. I've been working on two to-be-felted projects (because I just will NOT give up!).

One project is a light blue bag with our PETaL Patterns motif worked in off-white. I put it on the ISM when I just have miles of stockinette to do, did the motif by hand. I've finished the front section (plain SS), and have gotten past the motif on the back. I'll need to put it back on the machine to finish off the flap that goes up and over the top, all in SS. After that, it's just the gusset, probably all done on the machine, too.

The other is yet another hat - sticking with the FT pattern, but skipping the first 2 purl rows and all "extra" rows in the brim. I'm decreasing at the crown now, so should be able to felt this puppy tonight or tomorrow.

I got to wear my ONE successful crocheted hat last week, got lots of compliments:

There are a number of others I'd like to try from Dot's site, but I still haven't gotten the hang of making a circle lay flat: I do the sc into the ring, and increase as instructed, but every time I end up with a pointy-bit in the center.

This is what happened to my one successful hat, but while I was sick, I picked out the center (THAT wasn't fun) and re-crocheted it two or three times, until the pointy-bit was something I could live with. Any suggestions are welcome!

There are some things that are easier (for me) to do in crochet, but boy, does it take a long time! Add to that the fact that I can't crochet ambidextrously, and I'll just content myself with sticking in a crochet project just occasionally between the knit ones.

And, though I haven't been doing a lot of quilting (yes, shame on me), here's the latest PETaL Pattern we've published, the hands-down easiest baby quilt on earth!