7 quick takes - unravelled

1. It all started out quite innocent. I was perfectly happy crocheting my lopsided dishcloths. I was even getting to where they weren't completely lopsided.

And then we went into H*bby L*bby and found they had their pretty, soft, snuggly yarn clearanced out at 1.99 a skein. So I picked up a few that I really liked, and came home.

Well, you can't make dishcloths out of them so I decided socks. I like fuzzy socks in the winter, or when I am sick cold at other times. And now this . . . illness hobby is growing.


2 Last week I mentioned my hairy spider project (number 5 here and again on this post). Well, I have made a little more progress on them.

Here it is before I switched out needles to the double-point.

Those things hanging down are the circular knitting needles.

And here is where I am now.

I put an Easter egg in the toe so you could see the hole. I am not working on that one right now, I need to see how far I get with my other one which you can see with the 3 double-point needles. The double-point needles (dpn) look much more intimidating than they really are, you just knit on one and then move to the next.

As for the cool stripe effect, I don't know quite how that got there, I am hopping it will happen on the other sock, but I am not holding my breath.

3. So I was happily working on my sock when all of a sudden I realized that the next steps of the pattern were in Chinese.

Ok may not Chinese. Would you believe Greek?

So I emailed a wonderful cyber-friend (can you imagine having to wait for the stage-coach to bring your mail with something like this?) and she explained it so that it made more sense.

Because of her guilt in another matter though, she shall remain nameless (She is right here). She had a link to one of those sites.

You know, one of those black hole sites where you can spend days. This particular one is crocheting and knitting and other stuff and it has patterns, and projects, and tips.

They even have some tatting patterns. So now I have been perusing the site and coming up with too many projects I want to do. If you do knitting or crocheting you might want to peek at www.ravelry.com. You sign up for an invitation and you get one pretty quickly. It is really pretty cool.

4. complete change of subject We had our last homeschool skate day today and it was fantabulous. We had a great turn out and it was a used curriculum sale too. Last year at this time, we had to bribe Junior to leave the game room - 1 quarter for one lap around the rink and the most he earned was 50 cents. Today he spent almost the whole time on the rink doing a running skate thing.

Not that I am making fun. Since I have never been able to skate, I would be the last one to make fun of someone else.

5. This talk of re-usable shopping bags got me thinking about the ultimate shopping bag.

The bilum bag. This bag is used by the nationals in Papua New Guinea for carrying around everything, including children. They put their small children in the bag and hang the bag in a tree when the child needs a nap, and I am not talking just newborns.

The bilum (bee-lum) bag stretches amazingly this is what I decided I wanted for a shopping bag. Until I thought about how heavy it would be full of cans.

So I went for a much, much smaller version.


The purple bag is my bilum bag, with string made from steel wool grasses. The lighter multi-colored one is made from cotton yarn, much softer.

And here it is with 2 1/2 lbs peanut butter, a bottle of wine, a box of chicken broth, a can of pineapple and a can of olives (just random stuff out of the pantry, no really meaning to them).



And just so you know, I can fit 3 king-size pillows in my bilum bag with a bit of room to spare.

6. And here is another mini bilum bag, this one made with regular ol' acrylic yarn. These take about 4-5 hours to whip out and are pretty brainless work, so I can watch TV with Hubby while making one.


And again with stuff in it.



Daisy wants a shirt that looks like this for the 4th of July which is something I think I can handle.

7. I was reading about the most fantabulous idea at Down to Earth . . . ok she has lots of great ideas but
I love, love, love this one since Junior is now getting into legos.

You take a large circle of fabric - think play mat size for the legos - and put a drawstring on it. So your child can sit there and play with the legos, and when he is done, just pull the drawstring and it is all in a bag.

This could also be done for Barbie and her bazillion shoes.

How clever is that! She does say she didn't come up with it, but that her son had one bought from Lego but they no longer sell them. Of course now I can't find the post. GRRR