dillydallyknitter: May 2009

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

You've Seen a Million of These...

so I hope you can stand one more!

I finished my FLS on May 1st (May Day! May Day!) but she didn't have buttons until this past weekend when Josie, LeftCoastKnits, Knitpsycho and I went to Stone Mountain and Daughter in search of buttons.

I suck at self portraits. (psst..Make a note of the basket of make-up on the bathroom--it comes up later in the story).

Stone Mountain has a fantastic collection of buttons-don't believe me? Click HERE

After sorting through a gazillion buttons, I picked this one. I love the vintage-y feel.

Since I couldn't get a decent self portrait, here she is lying on the bed:

Pattern: February Lady Sweater by Pamela Wynne
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Heavyweight, Jasper colorway
Needles: Size 7, Knitpicks options
Notes: I knit the yoke a size smaller than the body (and had to so some fancy math to figure it out) but its still came out a little too big.

It's warm here out west but our office AC has been on mega overdrive for the past week so I actually wore it to work today over a t-shirt and was quite comfortable. (Office AC is often on the cold side but it's been so cold we were showing up in our winter boots and sweaters and still freezing) Figures that this afternoon they finally adjusted it and I had to take it off so it goes in the drawer until Fall.

Now, remember the basket of make up on the counter in the first photo?

In case you wonder if the Gangsta Kitties have been behaving themselves, take a look what I found when I came home from work today:

WHO DID THIS?

"I'll never tell"

Labels: FLS, FO's 2009, kitties

Monday, May 11, 2009

"A-tisket A-tasket...

I Learned to Weave a Basket....

On Saturday, LeftCoastKnitter and I went to a basket weaving workshop at Knit One One Studio in Berkeley. (no, it wasn't underwater)

As you can see, we were the first to arrive. Our teacher had to run out and pick up the instructor, who was lost.

Knit One One Studio is filled with light and beautiful hand crafted items and friendly people. The owner, Sile, is a delightful woman and, if you're lucky, she'll have some delicious home made shortbread on hand.

In this workshop, we wove "Celtic hoop and rib" baskets, also known as "Appalachian Egg Baskets" (aka "buttocks" basket because it has a butt shaped bottom). I failed to get a photo of the teacher but her name is Carol Grant Hart and she lives in New England and has family in the Marin area. She was informative and interesting and quickly got us started shaping our "hoops". We all got to put our own stamp of individuality on our baskets by playing with the placement of the intersecting hoops, thus changing the handle length and shape of our baskets.

Next we worked on securing our hoops

The weaving created pockets in which we added more ribs.

The lengths of the ribs give the basket its bottom shape. The blue ribbon we tied on top to help us remember which half was the handle and which half was the bottom!

Time flew by and a few hours later we all had a good start!

Each basket had a slightly different shape.

(photo shamelessly stolen from LCK's blog)

And, after a few more hours of weaving at home, I had my own basket!

Basket weaving is so much fun and, like knitting, has a meditative quality as you weave the reed in and out. It's also a bit hard on the hands and you have to be careful with those long pieces of reed whipping around.