Pumpkinspun’s Musings

One would think, after going to the NY Sheep and Wool Festival last weekend, that I’d have posted about that next,   but I’ve been lax in my photo taking, and still processing last weekend and my expenditures and not quite ready to post about it.   Soon.

But today was an unusally eventful day totally worthy of posting about.   Today I learned just a little bit more about my 8 yr old seal point Siamese,  Stretch..

Now let me first explain that Stretch is a complete hug hog,  he needs to be the center of attention and always in someone’s arms. He’s been known to often paw at my sweater until I let him climb underneath to snuggle inside (making me look pregnant with cat). He also likes to sleep in the crook of my arm, and under the covers.

So this morning, I got out of bed and let him snuggle under the covers for an hour, before removing him from the bedroom before going to work. At 8, I lifted him from under the covers, listened to him complain, and gently set him in the computer room in a sunny chair. He sat there looking sleepily at me and just slightly cold….

I turned around and spied a cut piece of knitted wool from a recycled sweater on the table, and draped it over him, noticing it made a nice little kitty shawl. And he sat there with it on looking at me. Which is when I grabbed a small safety pin, and pinned the little makeshift knitted shawl around him.. grabbed my coat, and left for work.

This afternoon at 4 I get a call from Ann, who says to me.. “so.. we need to talk about the cat cozy”. It turns out that Stretch wore the kitty shawl ALL DAY, and Ann found it still on him when she arrived home!

Which now brings me to wonder… time to make a sweater for the cat?   I wonder if this has been done successfully before?   Are there other cats that wear knitted items and LIKE it?  Or do I just have a very strange kitty?

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Ok.. so I’ve been a bad bad blogger. But, in the interest of my preparations for Rhinebeck, thought I’d best mention that I’ll be a roaming Square for Rhinebeck Blogger Bingo

So how to find me? I’m still working on that. Likely I’ll be running around the festival, occasionally checking in at Susan’s Fiber Shop (Building 30, C&D at Rhinebeck), as she’ll be the official vendor of my Spindle Jewels earrings (yes, they’re back!)

I’m short.. dark greying long hair, glasses, and I’ll likely be wearing a laminated I’m a Square tag pinned to my coat. I’ll be at Rhinebeck both days.

Added 10/18: Oh.. and I’ll be wearing a long sleeved black 01.20.09 Tshirt on Saturday, and black pants. And likely a 01.20.09 lavendar hat as well.

I also finally finished a Viking Cable scarf for my neighbor (a trade for computer services), and he seemed pleased with the finished product. The scarf was knit with Cascade’s Ecological Wool, in a nice brown. I used Elsebeth Lavold’s Viking Patterns for Knitting book as inspiration and used the ‘angular S-hitch from Ardre’ cable pattern for the repeating cables.

Lastly, I’m on Ravelry as of July… I’m fyddlestyx

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Amazingly these took me 3 months to make… with all the frogging and restarting…
I started these originally as the Pomatomus Socks… from Knitty.com. I then converted what them into mitts, after I found that the cuff I’d knit using KnitPicks Memories fit better and looked more elegant on my arm than on my calf. I consulted both Steph’s mermaid gloves as well as Rineke’s shorter Pomatomus mitts with modification pattern

I made the arm sections on mine about 4 repeats long, and then started the thumb increases over the length of another repeat, knitted one more pattern repeat, and then continued k1 p1 into the fingers. Additionally, my mitts were knit using the Magic Loop method, which was fairly easy to adapt the pomatomus stitches to. I also chose to do the Pomatomus repeats on both sides, even through the palm, like the Mermaid mitts.

They came out lovely, and feel wonderful.

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…made the front page of the paper Wed……
playing Julius Caesar in our local high school’s Shakespeare production.

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Well.. I’ve been late in posting my finished projects from this summer. I spent a good portion of the summer working on the Shapely Tank Top from White Lies Designs, which I knit up in a lovely cotton-linen yarn I recycled from a Goodwill men’s sweater. It’s soft and shiny, and was ever so comfortable. I actually ended up liking the fit and feel of this sweater over the Soleil I knit earlier this spring.

I also spent the summer working on 3 handtowels destined for my sister-in-law, Sue: the first, knit in Noho cotton flake from Webshttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif, in a variegated blues that I had left over, in a pattern of my own design, with dispersed diamonds (the diamonds show up very subtly with the variegated yarn, but it gave the towel a nice hand:

The other 2 handtowels…. one was from Mason Dixon Knitting and the other was a pattern I pulled from one of my Barbara Walker books. Both of these were done using another lovely recycled cotton-linen yarn (another Goodwill sweater find).

I’ve gotten hooked on finding thrift cotton and linen sweaters to recycle, I like the hand the yarn has, as it’s been worn and washed already. Plus it saves a bundle. Caveat is you really have to enjoy taking sweaters apart, as it can be beastly sometimes, but makes a good evening’s project.

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