The First Hedgie

Going through my pictures a bit and came across this movie poster I made a few years ago celebrating my first felted Hedgehog. Just had to share the Hedgie Love.

R2-KT is HERE!!!

What excitement! The R2-KT action figures arrived in the mail today from StarWars.com! The Star Wars Fan Girl in me is so excited.

I've had the honor of chatting with Katie's Dad via email and her Mom (trooperchick) via Ravelry. Both are lovely, this is a kind and loving family who have experienced a great loss, but have journeyed forward while remembering their sweet daughter.

OMG. Go check out the Fun and Games section on r2kt.com Albin included two pictures and a blub about my R2-KT hat. He said he would post them and this is the first time I went back to check and they are there. My hats are listed on the same page as the MIT R2-D2 Hack among other very cool Droid inspired art.

Our loved ones live on, in our hearts and minds, and sometimes in little Pink droids!

The FO Report

Howdy! Yes I've read HP7, twice! Oh boy what a ride. I'm letting it just sink in, I'm percolating in HP goodness. Oh yes indeed.

Here is a post I've been putting off for ages, one where I post some long finished FO's and share some of my knitting struggles. I'm still waiting to post the UBER CUTE Henry The Bear. Plans are in motion for his big photo shoot. Patience.

Check out my first foray back to the land of the knit bloggers after my blogging hiatus. It's a Mason Dixon Buttonhole Bag in Knit Picks Ambrosia and some Lions Brand Fun Fur in Melon that I received from a friend. The Comfest flyer is for scale. I knitted this little bag up for E. It's small and soft and is currently holding a little family of light up frogs and a pink light up duck. I knitted this sometime in June.

I was feeling adventurous. So I attempted the Flower Basket Shawl with my fabulous yarn from Holly.

I am still so not ready for the Flower Basket Shawl. So I tried Traveling Vines. That did not work out either. Things were not going well with this yarn. It was me, not the yarn.

Then I started the knit a bag from grocery bags project. It's making slow but steady progress. I'm slowly collecting interesting bags for the recycled Unbiased. I'm gearing up to buy the recycled silk for the swanky silk Unbiased.

Back to the cool yarn. I tried the Candleflame scarf from Knit Picks. Oh goodness that did not work either. Can we all say Crash and Burn together now? The colors are fabulous, the yarn is fab, I just can't seem to knit with an airy weight yarn. So Sir Gawain went back to the stash. He will wait there until the right project comes along.

In the meantime Two previous FO's got to go see HP5 with my HP CRAZED sister Allison. HP Kitty and HP Hedgie got to go to the movies. I held HP Hedgie the entire movie. Hedgies are great for hugging during the big fight scenes.

In the meantime I knitted up a super fluffy little Kitty in leftover KnitPicks Wool of the Andes and Butterfly Kisses. It's a crazy fluffy little thing. I gifted it to my Aunt who broke her collar bone. She likes cats and I thought this little kitty would make her smile.

So that's pretty much June and July. I also knitted and felted another little bowl. It's lavender and brown, love the color combination. Not much progress but progress regardless.

So I'm currently working on the Plastic Bag Bag. I need to order the Princess Leia wig pattern and yarn, and yarn for the R2D2 hat and yarn for Unbiased. Henry's R2D2 costume arrived in the mail this week. Oh it's cute, super cute. Time to get knitting for Halloween.

Otherwise I'm hanging in there. Thanks for all of the kind comments.

When A Chair And A Throw Feel Like Old Friends

We received a few pieces of furniture, including the fuzzy blue chair shown above, from Grandma Janette over the weekend. Yes the knitting Grandma Janette, the one with the fabulous needle and yarn stash. I have fond childhood memories of this chair.

It was part of a delightful reading nook in Grandma and Papa's living room. There was the chair, a side table with a funky silver lamp, a Madonna and child like picture on the wall and dried pussy willows in a glass vase behind the chair on a large, built in register cover.

Come to think of it the little table also boasted a little mouse made of fabric and brambles of some sort, oh she was cute. She had a stuffed skirt/base, bramble head, chest and arms, little wire glasses, and a little shawl. The best part was that she was knitting. She held two little wooden knitting needles with about an inch square of stockinette in cream wool.

The cream colored wool throw over the back of the chair was in amongst some bed linens. I'm certain it's a Grandma Janette FO. If it's the throw I think it is the last time I saw it was 7 or 8 years ago while visiting Papa. I'd brought two hats I'd knitted to show him. One in wool, one acrylic. He favored the wool hat, it was quite fabulous. The throw in question was on the foot of his bed. He patted the throw with his hand commenting on how it made him think of Janette. You could hear the love he held for her in his words.

That's one of the cool things about knitting. The love that can transfer from the knitter to others through knitted items.

For now the chair and the throw are in my living room. They make an excellent reading spot. They remind me of happy times from my childhood.

I hope that one day one of my FO's may hold such memories.

Knitting Humor

E, H and I were in the Post Office yesterday. E and I were playing 'This or That' a kids game I found over at The Happiness Project.

E asks me if I would rather eat a box or a hat.

I look down at my hand knitted hat resting on top of Henry's stroller canopy and reply...

'A hat because it has more fiber.'

To her credit E laughed. I'm not sure if she really got the pun but she did laugh.


Here is the hat I was wearing that inspired my great attempt at humor. I knit this hat back in 1995 during my great return to knitting after many years not knitting phase. I knew very little beyond basic knit, purl, increases, decreases, and basic color work. I pretty much only knitted hats, none from a pattern. It was sort of a free form, zen like knitting time for me.

It was a good ten years of just doing hats and not really improving my technique before I discovered the amazing online world of knit blogging and online knitting tutorials. I've had an email address of some sort since 1991 but the web was not back then what it is today.


The hat continues to be a favorite of mine. It was knitted with stash wool and alpaca. The design was inspired by the idea of a sports stadium. The Cleveland Indians were doing really well in 95 while I was knitting this hat so I had stadiums on my mind. The pink and cream swirl on the crown was supposed to be like one of the big domed stadium roofs.