The secret is out!

While surfing through some of my favorite blogs while I was recuperating from "the fall," I was grabbed by these cuties.                        

Not only did they look like quick gifts; but also they would use up more stash acrylic and a stash assortment of wiggly eyes! That's a winner in my book! I did have to purchase the ribbon, candy canes, and a small glue gun. I do not like guns of any kind. Even a glue gun. I can do almost anything (legal) with needles, but somehow I develop 7 thumbs,3 pinkies, and an extra toe when I use a glue gun...

This tree full of ponies went to my department at the library:

This hitching post full of ponies went to some friends and the grandchildren of some friends:

These traditional surprise balls for my grandchildren were guarded by some ponies:

This was a really quick, easy project that did not take away much time from my major project of the year, which has now been completed! I am planning for 2012, and have a project in mind that will keep me knitting as well as keep me decluttering!

The Year of the Hat

The Year of the Hat has ended!!

The final 2:

Of course, another helix hat!

For the final hat, I used the k3p3 pattern for prayer shawls.

I though it was appropriate to take time to remember all the hats as well as pray for those who would be receiving the hats. I will take them to church tomorrow, and let the staff determine the recipients.

Here they are, all together, for one last time:

And how did the rest of my goals fare? (Here's the link to the original post.)
The 10 pounds? Still there, but no worse.
The house? Still here, still a mess. I did pack up a few more boxes and took several trips to Goodwill.
The knitting? I made a dent in the acrylic and successfully finished the 52 hats. The overall amount is down considerably, but, like clothes hangers, unsharpened pencils, and dried up pens, more show up in the strangest places!
The genealogy challenge? I have moved most of the boxes to a new location. A few more have been weeded, but the ancestors are still waiting to be re-discovered.
Health? I had too many unhealthy meals, not enough sleep, and I gave away the treadmill (to make room for the genealogy boxes...) I did walk around the block for several months until it got too hot, then spent my break time at work walking with co-workers, either inside or out, depending on the weather. Unfortunately, that has been on hiatus since the fall.
Newbery books? Completed!!
Keeping hopeful? It's a daily challenge. I have learned about mercy in the down times. I've never thought too much about mercy, but it sure helps keep me hopeful!

I will have new goals and challenges for 2012 (as well as re-addressing the old ones from 2011!) More later.
One thing I know for sure is worth repeating: 
I hope to keep hopeful, to know more and more that "the God of hope will fill (me) with all joy and peace as (I) trust in him, so that (I) may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." Romans 15:13

The bad, the good, and the future

Fall #1:

Bad.

Fall #2:

Good.

Siblings:

Homespun left over from prayer shawls, plain stockinette.

(finished in October)

Twins (fraternal):

Ballband pattern. You can tell the spirit of Christmas colors is upon me!

(also finished in October)

This brings the total number of hats to 50! Had it not been for Fall #1, my 2011 goal of knitting 52 hats from acrylic stash would have been complete during Fall #2. I hardly did any knitting the past few weeks- just popped pain pills, slept, and hugged the heating pad! I have awesome family and friends who kept me fed and cheered.


I  read 2 more "antique" books: one traced the adventures of 3 young girls on a summer outing in the New York mountains; the other traced a teenager getting her first job so she could help her family during a difficult time.

The Christmas project has been chosen. I saw it on one of the blogs I read and was smitten. The icing on the cake is that I can use more of my acrylic stash! Of course, I will not reveal the details until later...

 Monday, it is back to work at the library, back to knitting 2 more hats, ahead to starting the Christmas project...I'm just thankful to be in motion again!

A baggle, a duo, and a trio

 A baggle:
Good knitters have lots of yarn, lots of needles, lots of patterns, lots of books, lots of stitch markers, lots of darning needles, a couple of crochet hooks, a cable needle or two, lots of tape measures and scissors (that disappear as soon as they are needed)...and lots of bags. In my quest to simplify, I have decided that it is time to pare down the bags. Some have many personal memories for me, but I learned from a friend after my Mom died that one way to visualize the memory of things is to take photos. It makes it a bit easier to give away the items. I  know I have tons of UFO's, but I do not need a separate bag for each one. Here are a few, as well as their stories. I'm operating on a 10% rule: 10% goes. Away. Of course, however, there are exceptions and corollaries and whatevers to this rule: after all, I am a woman and entitled to change my mind! Here is a gathering, called a "baggle" (don't you just love news words?) of most of the bags I have used. Notice I have included only a few of the wonderful sacks received with purchases at yarn shops. I usually take a used bag with me, in hopes to save a few leaves and a penny or two for my LYS.

Note: this does not include the baskets and bins that store my yarn and notions. That would be asking a little too much cleansing at this point in time. Hopefully, as my stash (especially the acrylic challenge project) decreases, the storage containers will decrease. Or will there just be room for more new yarn....?

Anyway, these are the lucky bags that get to go on a trip and hopefully find a new home:

My most favorite Junior League placement spanned several years with the puppet show "Kids on the Block." I kept my lines( for Mark and Renaldo) and my black shirt in the bag.       

My family spent a delightful Thanksgiving at The Cloisters in Sea Island, GA, with my parents and my brother and his family. We rode bikes, learned to shoot skeet (sorta,) danced, and ate like pigs. I bought a bag.

My parents took several organized tour vacations (Alaska, Mexico, etc) with another wonderful couple. In addition to little souvenirs, I received the tour-issued "carry-on flight bag" when they were no longer able to travel.

I bought yarn a number of years ago at a shop in NC and received a larger than normal fabric bag. It is coming out of the closet and into my car, to use when I have only a few things to purchase at the grocery store.

So, three bags are leaving, one is getting repurposed. I have used my Rule of 10 in other areas (sweaters, socks, pocketbooks, hotel/motel sample bottles, etc) and plan to use it in other areas, and plan to repeat it each year or so as needed. 

A duo
Here are #45 and #46:

Yet another helix hat

And yet another ballband hat.

(I'm sticking with tried and true patterns so I can get this 52 hats project finished!)

And finally,
The trio:

Reading these books, I learned that college freshmen in my mom's era were just as unsure about friends and studies and activities as I was...and as they probably are today; that a New England girl's voyage to China in the 1840s provided excitement and new knowledge, as well as uncoverd the mystery of a pendant she wore; and that a young Egyptian boy could learn how to balance his Muslim upbringing and his love of art.

This was inside one of the books:

Mom was 10 years old at the time. On the opposite page, in pencil too light to photograph, was "Christmas 1929. Written January 28. I have grip." Little did she know that on that same date 19 years after she had the flu, her son would be born!

Earth and Fire and Water

Is there some sort of weird fungus growing in my yard?

Nope. It's just a fun fur hat. I was going to call it a mink hat, or a porcupine hat, or a hedgehog hat...but I could not think of an appropriate photo setting. With pearls? With one of the dogs? Nope. It's a fungus hat.

It has been a gorgeous weekend, but certainly not as fall-like as it should be in October. It was very warm- in the high 80's. That sun was working overtime!

The pattern for this hat is a double seed stitch. It looks happy.

Hardly any leaves have started to change, so that made it perfect to make a picture of yet another swirl hat, this time combining the green tree/earth and the blue sky/water. (Can I claim sky and water together?) I do plan to include "air" in a later post, but the sky was so blue that it looked like water!!

I think this makes about 43 hats so far...

Oops- I almost forgot about the child's cap! A bit more sunshine/water/sky...and #44 in the countdown!

Peace.

Fireballs and almost antique books

FIREBALLS

Water tones, earth tones, and now fire tones (with a bit of artistic license for the purple and pink!) Of course, the first one in the series is a helix hat!

 

This next one is another attempt at stranded knitting. I hope to take a class at KKQ in January 2012. On my left hand, my fingers are all thumbs!

ALMOST ANTIQUES

 

There is a bit of my new reading challenge to report. I have read 3 old books so far...2 were old-fashioned fluffy. The other one, at 512 pages, was ponderous at first, but then kept me loving the language and the metaphors and descriptions even though the plot was somewhat predictable.

I can just imagine my mother's delight as a child to find stacks of books under the tree each Christmas- she told me they were usually all read by New Year's Day. One of the ones that had been saved dealt with a teenage girl's trip to Paris for a year of "intensive learning," of language and customs coupled with the fun of shopping and side trips. The other was probably special to Mom, since she shared the same name as one of the 2 protagonists. That book dealt with two dissimilar girls who discover that their strengths and weaknesses complemented each other and that each in her own way was growing into maturity.

Apparently this final book came from my Dad's side of the family. It was given to my Great Uncle John by his sister, Great Aunt "E" (Elisabeth Emily) in 1907. The book was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, of Secret Garden fame.

This book used the metaphor of a shuttle: not the bus/train/plane, but the shuttle that weaves and interlocks a story using multiple yarns, from simple to elegant. The decorative pattern may change over time, but the completed piece, flaws and all, tells an intricate story and is a work of art. I have never been a fan of English literature (gasp and apologies to all the Jane Austenites) but I did find this book to be a compelling read. The thoughts and actions of the characters were full of expressive detail and the descriptions of the landscape painted the English countryside like a Constable.

This book will NOT be donated to the Friends of the Library yet. It's a keeper.

It's easy being green!

Hats off (or on) to Kermit!

These caps take me up to the mid-30's or so in my quest to knit 52 hats in 2011. These were made 2 months ago and I did not do a good job of documenting the particulars. Suffice it to say that the yarn is acrylic and the patterns are from various sources...

This first one is another one using the waffle stitch. It is wonderful TV or work/break knitting.

This next one is the pattern "Almost Argyle. " I like the crown, too.

 

"Welting Fantastic" is the name of this pattern. Again, I like the crown.

This one is some sort of openwork rib. I guess the crown did not turn out too well!

 Finally, here is a generic hat blending the earth and sky. Long live Fun Fur!

Next: the third element.

What and Who

WHAT is my new literary challenge? First, a little background. When my Mom was a young girl, one of her favorite Christmas gifts was the pile of books Santa would leave under the tree. When I was a young girl, I read all of her Honey Bunch, Bobbsey Twins, Mary Jane, and Six Little Bunkers series, plus many others I cannot remember. I knew she had many more, but somewhere along the line I lost interest in her books. They lived in her attic for years (books are our friends- we never throw them away.) After she died, they lived in boxes in my living room. I saved one or two books from each series and sold the rest at a yard sale. Books are our friends, so they have happy new homes. However, there was an extra box that was unpacked recently. My new challenge is to read the books, then donate them to the Friends of the Library Bookstore. Books are our friends, so I have been sharing them with unknown friends.

WHO am I talking about?
These guys:

These guys are, as the punsters say, a hoot! Not only am I using up acrylic and finishing more hats, I am also using up bits and pieces of old craft projects!

I found the buttons first- this guy looks so wise. It was a pain, though, to sew on 20 eyes.

Further digging revealed these small beads- the holes were barely large enough to fit over my smallest crochet hook.

Finally, I found a pack of larger beads that seem to be just right.

I have more beads in that pack, so there may be more owls in my future. Hedwig?

Ends and beginnings...and middles

 The final eight:

A young girl and her friends take the complicated strands of life and weave them into something beautiful.
Nobody Owens, who is raised  in a graveyard after his parents were murdered, searches for a true light.
Escaping from an oppressive juvenile correction facility, a boy (who had been accused of a crime he did not commit) digs through the holes of the past and fills the holes of the present.
The young runt of the litter rat learns about having to choose and choosing to chose between light and darkness, love and anger, sin and forgiveness.

The people (high, low, and in-between) of a medieval village are presented is a series of 17 monologues.
A summer visitor to a small post-Depression/recession town in 1936 uncovers treasures, mysteries, secrets, revelations, scams, and hopes through the stories told about the same town in 1918.
Through several storylines, photos, illustrations, and drawings, the paths of several young people cross and recross as they wait for things to happen.
A young girl learns life lessons when she is sent from Chicago to live with her eccentric but devoted grandmother in a small "hick" town.

Hooray! I have read all the Newbery Award winners from 1922-2011. The basic joys and pains of growing up- fears, mistakes, thrills, sorrows, discoveries, separations, laughter, tears, journeys- have not changed...they are manifested in a myriad of ways. And writers still love to personify animals and delve into science fiction and fantasy to help us understand reality and the inevitable changes in life.

The Newbery challenge has ended, but I am still in the middle of the hat challenge.

I have decided to move on from the blues. Earth, air, fire, water... the four elements are my organizational pattern for using up acrylic and knitting 52 hats in 2011. There is still some water left, but I am ready to move on to earth.

 Here is my transitional hat: another helix, with blue and green.










These are some of my earth skeins...

And some of the earth hats... The first two patterns are from Socks a la Carte 2 by Jonelle Raffino and Katherine Cade.

58 Chevy

Whosit

This brown one is another "double-bump/waffle/stitch.

The beginning? I have decided on a new reading program, which will be presented in my next blog. Stay tuned...