I'm so excited!!

I finished my tivoli!! /me does happy dance ☺

I didn’t block it yet, but I did put on a crocheted edging in a contrasting color. I’m going to get to bring it on vacation! This is quite possibly the most excited I’ve been in months. Um, I realize that sounds lame, but, in yarn-o veritas, right?

OK, a couple of quick pics:

1. last night, before I put the edging on:


2. Today, with edging:



Now - what to do next???

proof of non-booga knitting

I did a little work on the tivoli today and am now DONE the waist decreases. I now have to knit 2 inches even and then do the increases. SIGH. I really want to get it done for vacation but it almost certainly won’t happen, as I have no babysitter next week. So, either I stealth-knit by night instead of sleep, or tivoli waits til NEXT summer more than likely ☹
But here is my progress (from my cellphone in bad light, oh well):

felting finished!

now, stop me before I felt again, ok? But I think Naomi will love this:

gifts for others and for myself

So... right now, Naomi’s booga junior is felting. It’s going to be so cute!


The bag I made the other day, which I bound off with a scrap of yarn? I’m keeping that one for myself.


I sewed one of my labels to the OUTSIDE, a la Kate Spade, because, well, my husband thought it was a cute idea and I thought what the heck. I think it is kind of cute, actually.


The Starbucks gardening teddy bears went on clearance last week, so now mom’s birthday present is ready to go. Don’t look at me that way. She LOVES this bag!!


Now that these bags are done, I am getting back to tivoli/picovoli. I REALLY want to get this project done by the end of next week, and take it down the shore!!! Here’s hoping.

today's knitting

it’s almost done felting, so I should have waited to post before and after pics, but by the time it’s done, the kids will be in my face, so this is it:

Lamb’s pride bulky on US 13 needles, following the Booga bag pattern which everyone already has:



I used up an entire skein of the limeade and had to use a scrap cut out of the inside (from a previous color change) to bind off the last 3 stitches!



So there is no green in the icord strap:



Oh well.

knitting math

So. The bag I just knit, I knit using parts of three skeins of lamb’s pride bulky (LPB), which are 113 grams per skein. I weighed my leftover yarn - 135 grams. So, 113 x 3 = 339, and 339 - 135 = 204 grams used to make the bag. 204 grams/bag / 113 grams/skein = 1.8 skeins/bag, I think. OK.

Now, Naomi wants me to knit HER a bag. The one I made is quite large. I obviously want to make it smaller. I want to knit it mostly using this one skein of orange LPB. The question is.... The bag which used 1.8 skeins was made by casting on 34 stitches, knitting 34 rows, picking up stitches around the edges to make 100 total stitches, and knitting 64 rounds. If I want to change it to a 1.0 skein bag....um. Hmm.

34 x 34 = 1156 stitches in the bottom square (can that be? 34 rows x 34 st/row == I guess....)
64 rounds x 100 st/round = 6400 st in body of bag
6 feet of icord at approx 4 rows/inch, 5 st/row, so that’s 20 st/inch x 72 inches = 1440 st
8996 stitches in the big bag.

That would mean 1.8X = 8996, where X is the number of stitches per skein. So, that’s 4998 stitches per skein.

Is this going ANYWHERE? I hate math. OK. So....

20 x 20 = 400
50 rounds x 60 st/round = 3000
icord as above = 1440

that should work. Unless I’m screwing this up. And it’s math, so I probably am. Because that’s probably gonna make a really weirdly shaped bag. Or not? HELP!

two finished objects

A moderately fugly booga bag with a fun fur trim. OK, I know, but my mother LOVES this bag ☺ I had to hand-felt the CRAP out of the fun-fur portion to get it to felt decently. I mean, I felted the bag three times and the top was still unfelted until I just took it and started pouring boiling water over it and beating it up vigorously. It’s still kinda loosely felted up there but whatever, it works, she loves it.



And a garterlac dishcloth. The pattern is from http://criminyjickets.blogspot.com/2006/07/garterlac-dishcloth.html and it’s fun to knit, although it is kind of hard to keep track of what you’re doing when the kids keep interrupting you in the middle of a triangle or something!

I know, I know

Tivoli, picovoli, tomato, tomahto... still sitting there mostly done the waist decreases. Perhaps it is a fear that it will not fit that is keeping me from working on it. I would LOVE to have it done by vacation (8/19) but that is sooooo unlikely - not least because in between trying to keep up with the massive tomato crop I have started knitting these addictive garterlac dishcloths.

Here’s a WIP, with tomatoes:



Heh. I can just BARELY make out the snippet of text on the bottom of my scratch paper post-it note - something about zoonotic parasites and heartworm prevention. Those are my Heartgard (tm) promotional post-it notes! No heartworms were harmed in the making of this dishcloth.