the everyday adventures of sabrina

three somethings, actually:

first off, the easy one: the two-tasselled hat, from hip to knit. this is actually my second try at this hat — the first time, i had this gorgeous, gorgeous, amazingly soft, fabulous yarn, an alpaca/mohair blend, deep maroon, so nice … and so soft that the design virtually disappeared. (that is, incidentally, the project i spent my most recent day at the mechanic’s working on. — cast on to ready to bind off, except i wasn’t sure i wanted to finished it, in four hours!) so, this time i made it in some lamb’s pride bulky in a blood red i’d had left over from making my jayne cobb hat, together with a ball of beautiful loft merino bulky-weight yarn, to achieve the super-chunky weight the pattern called for.

flat, so you can see my sexxxy cables!

and as modeled by my lovely candleholder, so you can see how it might look actually on my head.

but one project was not enough for me, so i finished off another item, which i cannot post because i’m hoping that it might be something knitty would be interested in posting. so i shall simply say that i made it out of some yarn my friend kim and i kool-aid dyed, and it has potential to be cute once it’s blocked but at the moment it looks a bit like an easter-colored cloche for a 12-year old.

and the last FO, or “finished object” to you non-knitters out there (and non-soapers as well — i must say that “FO” in a context where it blatantly did not mean “fragrance oil” confused me pretty well for a bit there), is this messenger-style bag, also felted.

flipped up the flap there so you can appreciate my mad kool-aid dyeing skillz, although photoshop appears to have eaten some of the color intensity.

as felting (washing knit wool items in hot water to make them shrink and get fuzzy) allegedly results, i am told, in 15-25% shrinkage, i made the strap extra long for this bag. before felting, you can see in this photo, the bag actually comes to my knee:

(dig my fuzzy flannel pjs? they’re, much like my tasselled hat, sexxxy!)

after felting, the bag portion of the bag was marvellous and perfect in its shrunken size and fuzziness, but the strap remained… generous, we shall say:

it’s above the knee now… but not by a whole lot.
(the cats saw the camera out and naturally assumed that their respective presences were required for assistance.)

so i’m going to have to, i think, cut the strap and sew it down to make it shorter, as i don’t really like the tie-a-knot-in-it look. alas. it’s particularly perturbing because i had actually run out of the kool-aid yarn and ended up ripping much of the flap in order to retrieve enough yarn to make the strap — and you thought that maroon color block was just me being fashionable and clever, didn’t you? — and i could have had at least another row in color on the flap if i’d shortened the strap. though i do think it turned out pretty cute, all things considered.

so that was my weekend. and now i’ve got no WIPs to work on, just new things to start out working on. er, well, choose to start working on … i have so many things to do and i don’t know which is next. but, Stitch ‘n Pitch is at sox park tuesday and i’ve got to have something to knit on while My Guys are showing cleveland that sorry, this is not their Major League year. so many things to knit, so little attention span to choose which ones!