the slow progress of habu, fo show, and wine tote party

Greetings all,

Well, after my last post, the sun decided to come back out after all! (Ok maybe I shouldn't take credit for that…)

I'm in many-project mode these days. My main projects, the Kusha Kusha Jacket (kit #75 from habu) and the Swallowtail Shawl are really long and involved (read: they're taking forever), so I keep starting other little projects to entertain my very brief-attention-span brain.

OH and by the way, I KNOW you want to know where I got that little project bag. Well! Tammy George (aka pUnK rAwK PuRl) works at this cool downtown Oakland store called Entrez! Open House. This is one on the lines they carry. The coolest thing about this little bag is that the inside lining is oilcloth, so it's waterproof! Nifty.

So here is a little FO show. Actually, to be totally honest, some of these are from quite a little while ago, but never made it to the blog, so here they get their brief time in the sun!

This is the Snood pattern (what a great word! snood...SNOOD) from the DomiKnitrix book which I so love, by Jennifer Stafford. I was a bit short on this great sparkly black yarn, which was discontinued to my dismay, so I shortened the hat a bit.

I think it's meant to be roomy enough to stuff a big fat Renaissance bun into, or a head full of dreads, or something. Anyway making it smaller seemed to work fine.







And this puppy is rather old really – it's one of a set of two Noro hats, one for me, one for my husband. I love Noro Kureyon's springyness and big fat self-striping love. The pattern is by Saartje Bruijn from the Netherlands, and it can be found here.

I also ended up making this hat shorter by decreasing faster than the pattern calls for at the end – the mildly conical shape of the original seemed.....well, too gnome-like for a gal like me.







This cute little number was a knit-along held back in February by Síle Convery of knit-one-one. We had it a the Pub, which is one of my all time favorite East Bay spots. I think I've seen the pattern as a "bow tie" scarf, but we called it the Heart Scarf and did it for Valentines Day.

The yarn is something from DiVe called Autumno – sort of variegated, self-striping, and tweedy all at the same time. And really soft. I have one more ball of the stuff – don't know what I'll make of it. Probably, knowing me, another scarf.









Speaking of knit-one-one, I attended a fine party there on Friday night. It was a Felted Wine Tote party, and the totes came out adorable! It was really my first time felting anything more than a swatch. I know I shouldn't have been surprised that it worked, but I was! How does a floppy, big bag come out so petite and structural and with this cool bucle-like texture? Wow. The magic of wet wool.













And I'm sorry, but you all simply must look at this picture:


If that is not the funniest picture of Kate Freeman (who is wearing a post-felting felted bag knit by Peggy Vincent of Baby Catcher fame) I will eat my hat. Either one of them.

You'll have to swing by Síle Convery's blog to see the pre-felted version – I took the picture with her camera, so hopefully she'll upload it! – which Kate wears like a big banjo-pluckin'-type overalls. Really, it was that big.