mary makes merry

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Mary, Clark (crook-maker extraordinaire) and
Bo Peep.

There's something else I didn't tell you

I can embroider. Not well, of course, but I get by. Four years ago, my parish wanted to honor some older volunteers who had been helping out for about 40 years apiece. No lie. At a meeting discussing our plans, I said it would be nice to embroider a certain mosaic that we had in the church and frame them and give them to these folks. Everyone said that sounded like a good idea and looked expectantly at me. I realized I had just volunteered to create these items.

I pulled it off and each of the 6 ended up looking pretty good. This is not one of them; it was the trial run, but I didn't take photos of the real ones.

You can see a photo of the tile mosaic in the top right hand corner of the parish website, if you like.

At the first Renegade Craft Fair, I bought the Chinese packet from Sublime Stitching (and met Jenny Hart in the process!). So I don't intend to stitch saints' initials all my life. Bring on the pirates with knives between their teeth, I say! Or at least the crazy little hotdog dog and hedgehogs by Clover.

I've been holding out on you

This is old news at this point, but I love superbuzzy! Some weeks ago I ordered a yard each of the world-renowned hedgehog fabric, and the cutecutecute frogs+alphabet fabric. The goods came right away and I love them. I couldn't get a really good photo of either, but here's the general idea:

Now, what to do with them?

Or maybe I don't want to know

OK, I know about some of the things that bring back luck to knitters, but what about beginning a sweater for one person, then giving it to another? And does it matter if the people in question are babies? I began a very cute sweater from Kim Hargreaves' Pipsqueaks a long time ago for a certain someone who was still in utero.

I realized quickly that it was going to be way too big. Yes, they always grow into them, but I wanted to see the kid in the thing before I (forget the kid) got old. So I knit a different very nice sweater in a very nice yarn from the same book and gave it to the child in a timely fashion. This dear little one wore the sweater in good health and is now too big to fit into the original sweater.

May I now finish the sweater and give it to Ellie? Knitters, astrologers, soothsayers, what say ye?

Irish Scotty

Returning to the football theme, here's a little Scotty I made for my niece-the-daughter-of-two-Notre Dame-alums:

This excellent free pattern from the Allsorts blog can be found here -- then go to her current page and see the great downloadable letters (Oct. 16) she's contributed to the cause of worldwide crafting. Thank you, thank you, Jenny B. Harris!

KIPping for trees & serendipities

Thanks, Bonne Marie, for the heads up on the Graknitti event tomorrow! I can't wait and have already done my don't-rain dance.  Several days ago, when I thought it might be cold that day rather than rainy, I realized the time had come for convergence, h.t.-style.

Many moons ago, this selfsame Bonne Marie threw a beautiful baby shower for me. All the wonderful gifts I received from my KIP friends are still with us, in view and/or frequent use, and all are still so deeply appreciated a year and a half later. I received a few skeins of yarn, one -- an amazing skein of Noro Korchoran, which I had never seen before -- from Bonne Marie. It was a decorative fixture on my bookshelf, and against my cheek, for a long time. Eventually I realized I would like some fingerless gloves, and as the idea marinated in the last week I remembered...Bonne Marie's Voodoo Wrist Warmers! (And is that not a blast from the past?) But DO YOU SEE WHAT'S HAPPENED HERE?

Yarn = Bonne Marie

Pattern = Bonne Marie

Knowledge of event that prompted initiation/completion of project in a reasonable amount of time = Bonne Marie.

The yarn is so beautiful, the pattern so quick and fun (yes, slight accommodations for bigger gauge were made), and I'm so eager to get out and spend an afternoon knitting in the heart of my necessary but sad absence from KIP. What could be better than that? How 'bout a photo?

The other is on the hand holding the camera. Speaking of the camera: Santa, baby, I'd love one that could take better (or heck, decent) close-ups.

Specs: see above for yarn and pattern

Needles: US 8 dpns

Start/finish: Oct. 17/Oct. 19, 2006

(Used approximately half the skein, give or take.)

First in a series

I am getting back into the posting habit if I have to bribe myself with Diet Coke to do it. Here's a quick shot one of our friends took at the Northwestern football game Saturday. Both sweaters are in the same yarn by Brown Sheep (their huge stuff). Clark's is "Jay's Golf Vest" from a book full of patterns for men published by Interweave Press some time back, and Ellie's is the second or third sweater in "The Yarn Girls' Guide to Kids' Knits."

They had a great time at the game...or so I heard tell, since I gave up my ticket so that Ellie could go. Yes, kids that young must have a ticket at Ryan Stadium, and no, I wasn't even remotely sorry to do it.

Sorry for the lack of specifics on the sweaters, though! Updates will be much more frequent from here on out (till the next wave of supercraziness hits), so leave a comment if you just have to know more about either of these.

I'm getting back into the blog-reading habit, too, so expect to see me in my usual local haunts soon! Hope you're all well!

And down along O'Connell Street...

...she cast (on) a knitting eye. Here's a photo of a sleeve holding up the Pearse Monument at the top of O'Connell Street in Dublin. We stayed at Cassidy's Hotel, which receives a rave review from all of us here at healthy tension. O'Connell Street is Dublin's main boulevard.

Title and first few words of this post borrowed and modified from a very catchy Tommy Makem song about the destruction-by-bombing of a statue of the British admiral Lord Nelson that used to stand in O'Connell Street. I tell you, there's something about the Irish.

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig

And I thought I might be able to sneak in a post from the cybercafe in Killarney, Ireland. HAHAHAHA. ha. But we're back now from an amazing 10-day trip to the southwest of Ireland and Dublin. Ellie did fairly well, all in all...that is to say, who needs sleep when you're a year and a half? Or 36 1/2, now that I mention it. And French fries (or do you say chips) truly are the staff of life.

I have lots of great-aunts and -uncles and second cousins there, all of whom are always so kind to us and who seemed to enjoy meeting Ellie. I also saw a couple of friends I met while researching my dissertation; having Ellie with me at least suggested that I've accomplished something worthwhile in the past few years. (In related news, I sent a partial draft of the Troublesome Chapter to my advisor before we flew out. Incidentally, should you ever need it, there is an outgoing mailbox in the International Terminal at O'Hare.)

And, of course, there was Guinness. Ummmmmmm. Not much knitting, though I do have some pix for the WIP KIP.

We spent more than a year planning this trip, so it's strange that it's over. But I haven't had much time to dwell on all that -- my unexpected teaching gig at DePaul has kept me hopping. It also is keeping me from my beloved KIPpers, which is so sad for me! Hello, all! I'll be back around Thanksgiving or so.

Some photos, though not that many, to follow. By the way, the little cardigan I made Ellie is exactly the color of the lawn in front of the entrance to the Book of Kells at Trinity College, Dublin, on a sunny day. Now, that's what I'm talking about.