My Knit Picks KIPer (knitting in public) Bags arrived Saturday and I love 'em. In fact, I love them so much I have had them outside for a photo-op so I could show the world the complete spiffiness of these bags.

This is the set of five bags.

The large, medium, and small bags, and the purse have their own shoulder strap.
The three bags have grommets and two other hickies on one side so the purse, which has matching holes for the hickies and grommets, can be attached to them.

The purse with its hickies and grommets.

This is the largest bag with the purse attached.

The next pictures are bag innards. The largest bag will hold all the yarn for a sweater for a goodish sized individual.

It is not even close to being full and there are twenty-one skeins of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in it--I added some fabric in the pockets on each side of the yarn so they would show to better advantage--one long pocket with zipper on one side and three smaller, no zips, on the other. The smaller ones will hold many pairs of DPN's, a large pair of scissors and an extra pair of glasses.

The inside of the medium bag with twelve skeins of KP WoTA's, again with fabric in the pockets--long zippered and two zipless--and, again, not filled completely.

The small bag, yeah, I know, no yarn, but it will hold eight skeins of WoTA's and still zip easily. It has one zipper and one zipperless pocket.

The purse is large enough for a small pack of tissues, a wallet, a lipstick, $4.62 worth of change, my car keys, and has pockets for my cell phone, two pens, a thin trashy novel, and eight credit cards...eight credit cards, Yarner? Hah! I wish.

The KIPer zipper bag measures 5 1/2 X 7 1/2 inches and can hold all manner of stitchmarkers, a row counter, three crochet hooks, and a bag of Gummi Bears.

These bags would make great carry-on luggage or **shudder** diaper-and-WIP bags

The best part of getting them is stuffing them with my WIP's. The hardest part is not hurting my back because, technically, the larger bags fall into my no-no category of tote-able things but...I do lurve my KIPers.

Once upon a time I could stay up late at night. I mean, back in the day there were times I would think to myself, "If I can get two hours sleep after the party/clubbing/card game I'll be good to go." Now, however, my good-to-go is you've-GOT-to-be kidding.

Monday through Thursday I have to check on Mr. Patient twice each night. Monday night is not bad and I'm pretty perky Tuesday morning. From Tuesday night on it's all downhill. Last night I just barely remember being up at 1:00 and I waked to the 5:00 alarm in a dream-like state of, "Whaaaa?". In the bathroom mirror I discovered I have a set of tire tread marks on my face and bags under my eyes I can put clothes in.

The brain is SO not firing on all cylinders--I filled the coffee maker, turned it on, and forgot to put the coffee pot under it, I brushed my teeth with the 1% cortisone cream which was waaaay too close to the toothpaste--it worked pretty well, btw: clean teeth and my mouth doesn't itch; 'course it made the coffee I finally got cooked taste like crap.

So let this be a lesson for all of you who can stay up late and still percolate. Savor this time cuz it won't last.

And keep the cortisone cream far away from the toothpaste.

If you know who Ish Kabibble is you are showing your age, unless you're an old movie buff. There are many pretenders but only one that counts and I can well imagine Ish making ballon critters but being totally inept at magic if he were still with us.

From the Jazzprofessional:

People not in on the secret could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that this is merely yet another Hare Krishna type wail. I must agree that it certainly looks like one. In fact, Ish Kabibble was the much celebrated trumpet player in Kay Kyser's Band, of The College of Musical Knowledge fame. Real name was Merwyn Bogue, but we all knew him as Ish. At one time the band seemed to be in almost every film that came out of Hollywood. I can't remember whether Ish, or, indeed, Kyser's Band, were any good at all. It was a sort of Sid Millward and his Nitwits kind of band, and Ish was famous for one thing only, and that was his hair style. This was such that it was extremely difficult to make out whether you were looking at the front or the back of his head. It was like a brutal army haircut, put on the wrong way around. The result was that Ish looked somewhat like an Old English Sheep dog but not half as pretty. We all loved him. Johnny Hawkesworth was so taken by Ish that he even bought an Ish Kabibble wig, don't ask me where from. He used to put it on at odd times and scare the wits out of innocent passersby. This was when we were in the Tommy Sampson band together. John was a very funny guy. He often exchanged messages with Cliff Dunn, another funny guy, who'd previously played guitar in the band. I remember him once getting a telegram from Cliff containing only the two words: Neckface. Neckface.

It's a header, a banner, a whatsit made by Tacky Banners R Us. Whatcha think? Too much? Tacky? Nouveau riche? (Pretend the rest of the bloggage will match.)
Don't hurt me. ;=)

I'm STILL fiddling with the template...

I'm making template changes today and tomorrow and tomorrow and...*sigh* it might take a while.

The youngest of his, mine,(no ours) Carla, age 22, nickname Chica Spoilica--not a real word but you can figure it out, eh--driving the father's pickup: no A/C, no cd player, no power windows, and a general embarrassing lack of coolness.

Yarny stuff

I received my last package from my CheapBleep Pal, Adriennec. I love the doggie notebook and fridge list and little post-it notes and the card totally rocks; my photography doesn't do it justice.

Adrienne also made this lovely lace scarf and, as usual, the picture does not do it justice. She made lace for me. *sniff*

Thank you for the goodies and thanks again, Adrienne, for the sawks that rawk web page you made for me. All the patterns call for needles larger than size two if any of youse are interested. I'm not going to be in the SP7 or CASP rounds this time. I have been in the midst of Strife of Life and decided to take a break--a very mentally healthy decision but, damn, I miss it.

WARNING: Grab your dribble bibs, serious yarn prOn ahead.

While I was recovering from some TMJ troubles and feeling very pitiful I cheered myself up by having a LOT of etail SEX. I got to go home this past Tuesday evening and came back Thursday to find all (I think) of my yarnage had arrived. FromLittle Knits, (takes PayPal) three skeins of Trekking XXL in Purple Dreams and five of Cascade 220 Quatro in 5014--it's coral, not pink.

The Trekking will be socks or possibe swappage and the Quatro will probably be turned into a felted thing and with some possible pre-knitted dying.

From the Yarn Market, Lorna's Laces Solids in #12 Lilac and Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Potluck in Eath Tones.

Also from the Yarn Market, six skeins of South West Trading Company Karaoke Multi in Purpleplexed.

I have never had any of the Yarn Market yarns but I have read a lot about them and wanted to give them a shot. I think, maybe, perhaps I'll try making a lace something from the Lorna's Laces. Pray for me and the yarn, poor fiber, I would hate to have to frog it and ruin it's lusciousness.

I bought three 200 yard skeins of Kathmandu Bathed recycled silk from The Wool Peddler (also takes PayPal). All three skeins are very soft and one is very hairy and all are bee-you-tee-full. When I ordered them I had thought of making Unbiased but I think, since the yarn is so soft, I will be making a wearable for one of the darling daughters.

The skein on the left wasn't twisted into a knot and I can't get the hang of making a nice twisted braidy-ooking knot, but it's not a tangled mess.

I also bought two pounds of roving, some felting needles, and a felting tool from WinderWood Farm, an eBay store. The roving colors are awesome. But the felting tool is not a success. (The felting tool photo is Winderwood's.)

Needle felting is my current Thing. Thanks (or blame) to Karen/Cooknknit who sent me a needle felting starter kit though, to be honest, I would have picked it up anyway. I Googled needle felting so I would know a little something about it but the first thing I did was stab myself with a needle dispite reading numerous times "needles are very sharp", duh. This is my first needle felted thing--it is NOT Hello Kitty it just looks like a little like her and it's not quite finished; I need to sharpen the edges a little.

She is 6 1/2' x 4 1/2" and I just free-formed her as I want a long. I didn't use any roving at all, just bits of feltable wool scraps, because the roving did not arrive with the needles and I was in a hurry to get started. The roving is nice for making balls or flowers but for felting a design I think I am going to like yarn--I'll know more as I felt more. By the way, the colors are off in the photo, they're much brighter in real life.

I'm off to finish or start soemthing or mayhaps I'll just pet yarn and flip through patterns.

Family pictures

I have been forced, under threat of violence, mind you, to edit this post. One makes one or two hypographical errors and one gets bad reviews from one's dearly beloved family. So, again, and still, my beautiful daughter, Dani, age twenty-eight. In real life she has a tattoo on her left shoulder. (I don't know what happened to it in the picture.) ;=)

Dani's beautiful children, Neesha and Quentez.

An extra one of Quentez, my youngest grandchild. He's so angelic he has a halo--gets that from his grandma, no doubt.

The Yarn of the Whipped Lion

(Some of this is from a previous post.)

I love patterns with jungle animals--just the heads though--does that make them jungle-animal busts? My daughter wanted a wall hangy thing for her dorm/suite. I wanted to make a tiger--think of the colors!--but my daughter attended a university that has been a long time rival of a school with a tiger mascot--I had to go with a lion.

I couldn't find a knitting pattern I liked so I tracked down a lion pattern to crochet. I found the pattern in a library book and it was real bear trying to scan the chart so I could enlarge it. (Some Library People are so touchy about tearing a page out of a book, sheesh!) The pattern was a basic single-crochet rectangular "canvas" with the lion cross-stitched on afterward. Cool, eh?

I made a few miscalculations.

First, the "canvas" was supposed to be made in a simple afghan stitch. Since I had never mastered the afghan crap, I just single crocheted the thing and, big surprise, cross-stitching over single crochet sucks. Then too, I didn't check my gauge and what should have been a twenty-four by thirty-six inch rectangle became a thirty-six by forty-four inch monstrosity. I altered the lion pattern graph to adjust to the change in size and the altered stitch. The "canvas" was made with good ole Red Heart--it was just a wall hanging for goodness sake--but I decided to substitute the plain ole worsted weight for a thicker yarn to do the cross-stitching--Lion Brand Hairy Yarn, I think it was. I thought it would make the lion stand out, be more solid looking, and give it more texture.

Threading a yarn needle with the hairy yarn was hell, then it would unwind or unbulk after just a few stitches, and the finished stitches fuzzed from handling. The cross-stitching took forever! I started and stopped and hid it for a while and restarted and, finally, after six months, I finished.

I blocked it, and blocked it, and blocked some more. It was baggy and saggy so I ran a needle with yarn through a lot of rows to even it up a bit but I never did get it to be a rectangle. I pruned the yarn where it had fuzzed, sewed on the eyes--I was really proud of those eyes, I designed them myself--and made his little whisker moles and used black wire for his actual whiskers. I attached the whole business to some luan and attached that to a frame and my daughter hung it so it was the first thing her visitors saw when they entered her suite. He was a cutie.

My daughter arrived with the lion remains during Spring Break. Evidently her friends and visitors felt the need to pet it. This is the poor dear after I removed him from the frame and unstuck him from the luan.

Sad, isn't he? His whiskers are gone and the verdamt cross-stitching has come loose in a few places, he is even more so-not-a-rectangle since I pried him from the luan, and his nose looks like it has boogers hanging out of it. *sigh*I am not up to refurbishing him right now. I didn't have a camera when he became an official FO so I can't show anyone his pre-petted beautiful self. If I do get him fixed up I will definitely have a picture of him to hang on my own wall. Meanwhile, I think he needs a vet.

I returned to my patient's home today after a very ugly and tiring week. I was bummed. Lower than a snake's naval. Depressed, dejected, and heart-sick. Oh, and, by the way, it was not a good week.

But, hallelujah Hannah! I had a box of goodies from my Secret Pal--a guaranteed perker upper.

She sent a box with all identifying numbers and whatnot cleverly crossed through with black marker.

She is obviously a busy person who sends out a lot of goodies and RAK's (random acts of kindnesses) as she wrote my name on the inside flap of the box--very organized which tells me a lot about who my pal isn't.

It's innards were in a TAPS: Teachers and Parents Store bag. A clue? (Remember, all help gladly accepted.)

In the bag were TWO boxes of my all-time-favorite-can't-get-it-here security food, Coco Wheats. (I'm dripping, er, eating some now between bursts of typing. Trés yum.)

A Green & Black's chocolate bar. Also trés yum and can't get them here.

Some very nice Clover Soft Jumbo stitchmarkers--altogether now..."Also can't get them here." (I know I've said it before, but all of you who have access to a local Yarn Junkie Store are very luck. I so hope you're not taking it for granted. Yours truly, Mom.)

A skein of Lion Wool Prints, same colorway as the first she sent, and a skein of Patons Classic Wool in a color that will contrast nicely with the Prints.

A nifty Mini Sharpie...

...and a beautiful card, which is a clue--says so on the back. I am, however, clueless.

The Delete Monster at the Knitty Coffeeshop (<---- that's a trademark, by the way.) has made it very difficult for me to track down my pal. My usual tactic, which is to read all the blogs of everyone participating and search previous posts, has been altered due to my lack time compounded by the aforementioned Delete Monster, who is really doing A Good Thing by saving are server some gigabibbles (just barely possible that's not the correct term) thus allowing us a more trouble-free forum.

Just in case you can't tell, the CoCo Wheats, a hot cereal from my childhood, is my favorite thing. It's so nice that Karma, The Ways of the World, Himself, God, or whatever you choose to call it/him/her, made it possible for me to have that cereal today. I needed my mom in a big way but she is in North Carolina and I am not. It may sound daft but the cereal is taking her place. It's hot with a little brown sugar and milk and is comforting me nicely.

Many thanks, most dear pal of mine, for taking the time to read my questionnairere.

SP goodies

I received some goodies from my Secret Pal today. I have doggie bones, M&M's in a to-be-a-stitchmarker-holder, a lovely card, stickers, Green Mountain Columbian coffee, Lion Wool Prints in ocean blue, which felts and is going to be added to some Alagash from the stash to make a bag, and a Cadbury Flake Bar. Well, I had a Cadbury Flake Bar but somethin' happened to it.

I also received this pin, which she made for me.

My photography doesn't do it justice but it's delightful and I will wear it and do my best not to lose the knitting needles.

Now that I have caught up with my life I may be able to post on a semi-regular basis.

My newest thing

I have joined the ABC Along. This is my first photograph of the series.

Accidental Applesauce. (Don't look if you are squeamish.)