Shawn was making dinner and I was knitting my way through a difficult cable row at the kitchen table. Luke runs in, demanding my attention.
“Mommy, come see this!”
“I’ll be there in a little bit, honey,” I said with a cable needle clenched between my teeth. “When I’m finished knitting. I’m almost finished.”
Shawn laughs. “What?! You’re dying?!?”
“Very funny.”
As previously stated I’m a pod person. When I’m not chugging through audiobooks, I’ve got my podcasts to keep me company.
Halloween has come and gone. We set the clocks back and it’s time now to shovel the remains of shattered pumpkins into garbage cans and clean up spider webs, bake some pumpkin bread and hide the candy from the kid. But before I start in on all that, I thought I’d give you a recap on our holiday.
It’s getting to be that time of year again, so I’m back at the sewing machine. This year I’m going for sort of a wood sprite kind of thing, with the main piece being a corset/cincher made in tunisian crochet. The pattern calls for rigilene boning, which always sends a quiver down my spine, and I decided I was overdue for a rant on why people should never ever use that stuff to make a corset.
An online crafting zine that I’m fond of always provides suggested entertainment to go along with its projects. These take the form of songs or movies or books that will get you into the right mind frame for your crafting experience.
Good morning, world. Is it raining where you are? It’s been raining here, and every ant in the tri-county area is taking refuge in my house, little six-legged bastards. And while they’re here, they’re helping themselves to anything they want in the kitchen. They launched a stunning siege last night for the remains left on one plate in the sink and I countered. They returned three hours later for the batter drippings on the underside on a mixing bowl left from the baking of Luke’s birthday cupcakes. We beat them back.
So a porpoise and a wallaby walk into a bar...
Just kidding. They actually walk into a ball of yarn. Or thirty.
Allow me to introduce the concept of a knit-along. A group of people come together over a particular pattern (or a yarn or a concept) and make sacred vows in the bonds of skeinly sisterhood to see it through together. Your comrade knitters can help you along with tricky bits of the pattern and spur your industrious knitting habits to keep your WIP (work in progress) from becoming the only UFO (unfinished object) in the group.
I just returned from Lambtown USA, a festival in nearby Dixon, CA celebrating sheep and sheep-related business. It’s a small fair – it costs all of a dollar to get in – and I went solo, which means I went with my iPhone and took pictures.
I like these little festivals. This is a small deal. A couple of buildings, a handful of food booths, a smattering of other miscellaneous vendors spread out on the grass, a lot of kids walking around sporting their 4H greens. This is a neighborhood thing.
I’m working on a fairy costume for Halloween. Sort of Renaissance-ish. White chemise, strapless crocheted corset (yes, really, and it’s a whole story in itself), flowered circlet, that sort of thing. I was describing the costume to a friend of mine who said, “I know exactly what you’re going for. Sounds like an Arthur Rackham fairy.”
“Who?”
“Oh, he was an illustrator. Drew a lot of fairies. Midsummer Night’s Dream, that sort of thing.”
Well, god bless google.
I made this little basket in a hurry before I went to Kirkwood for the weekend, with a vessel in mind to hold my knitting that had a handle like a bag and firm bottom.
I looked at it last night and realized that someone out there might have found it an interesting project too, so here it is, with complimentary instructions. Or you can download it as a pdf.
Crocheted Acorn Basket
Materials:
