Itty Bitty Fruit Hats

I thought I had figured out blogging on the iPad, and Google was backing up all my photos...but I just took some and then tried to blog and the new pictures didn't show up, and I don't know how to get them.  So, I moved to the desktop to write a different post with pictures already downloading on the computer.  Suddenly, every time we use Internet Explorer, we are getting a ton of pop up ads (that mostly say Jump Flip Ads at the side) as well as side bars...I moved the pop up blocker to block all pop ups, but that's not doing anything.  So, I'm trying Google Chrome, but the ads are still there.  Anyone else have this issue?

Anyway.  On to the fun stuff.

My husband, Rob, had a co-worker that he liked, who's wife was having their second baby.  I offered to give them a newborn pumpkin hat.  I'm trying to expand my client list and get my name out there a bit more.  I do more than newborn photography props!

They loved the pumpkin hat, and asked for four more, in NB and 3 month sizes!

 First up is a red apple, in newborn size.  This weighed in at 32gr.  I used a nice, brownish red, instead of a bright red you often see for apple hats.

 A newborn blueberry hat.  I played with the top quite a bit.  I wanted a bit more of a flappy look--if you look closely at the top of a blueberry, it's not flat.  In the end, I went with a round of stitches picked up and then casted off.  Weighed 58gr, in Shetland Chunky or Beehive Chunky...

 A 3 month plum hat.  I had the perfect plum colour, and Rob had the idea of a ridge down the side like you see on plums.  Subtle, but effective.  A seed stitch brim on this one, used up every inch of the yarn I had, 32gr.

A last, a green grape.  I loved the green I had, and I added a grape leaf and curly cue vine!  Total, 36gr.  This is the same green I used for one of the Christmas tree hats!

All total, 158gr.

Yarn In:  16 153gr
Yarn Out:  158gr + 15 076gr = 15 234gr
Balance:  919 gr more brought IN than out
Costs:  $378.91/365 days = $1.04/day

Okay, using Google Chrome was interesting.  I don't like the way the blog looks; the font is way too small.  However, when I went to load pictures, I could crtl + select and get more than one picture at a time.  Mmmm.

Felting Fun

For her birthday, my middle girl, Lucy, got a book on different felting projects (from her grandmother!).  Some were needle felted, some knitted and felted, some recycled sweater type projects.  Lucy saw a striped pillow and realized she could do it on my knitting machine.  She didn't like the colours in the book, but chose her own from my Patons Classic Wool collection.  She kept the same repeating pattern (ie:  brown in the book became lime, orange was now black...).  The back of the pillow is solid lime, and was the first part.  She made it with no problems.  The pattern had you make front and back separately, but I suggested to keep on going.  The stripes caused a few dropped stitches at edges, and panic, but it all worked out.  The sizing in the pattern was interesting--the width before and after felting was about the same.  Normally there is some widthwise shrinkage.  She went out with her dad to buy some stuffing, and I sewed the sides (before felting). 

You can see that the white didn't felt much.  This is a common issue with white, as it's usually bleached.  It added a nice texture to the pillow, but probably not what you want for other items.  It's not a very big pillow, but it's cute on her bed!

I've got a few more felting projects of my own to show soon!

Yarn In:  16 153gr
Yarn Out:  128gr + 14 948gr = 15 076gr
Balance:  1077gr more brought IN, than out
Costs:  $378.91/365 days = $1.04/day

Whosh!

Did anyone hear that?  It's the sound of the year flying by!

I am done my custom orders for the year. What I do have on the go: some half done baby items I don't feel like finishing.  A sweater I stopped a year ago cause I needed to measure it and plan the next stage.  A pair of socks, two at a time, toe up, from one ball.  The other ball has disappeared.  I just ripped out two pairs of mohair baby pants that just weren't right.  A multi coloured pinwheel blanket that needs an edging.

Of course, I want to start something new, and have so many things I want to do, that I can't actually decide what to do!

Things to post about:
Two Santa Hats for Heather
Striped Hat and Purple Epic Hat for Heather
Brown Soaker
Blue Clogs
Red Turban
Neopolitan Dress/Hat
Four fruit hats

Wow, I've been busy!  So much I want to do though...

A Red Head Walks into Value Village.....

.....don't tell me you've heard this one already?  LOL.

I'm still trying to get mobile blogging happening.  Got the pictures to work, by I can't change the order they appear.  Can't seem to add a label either....the labels box is there, but when I try to click on one, it just jumps around on the screen and I can't actually select it.  Onwards though.

Last week my husband and I were Christmas shopping in Value Village.  Yes, we're that kind of people.  We were looking for something specific, can't afford it new, don't need it for long, but want decent quality (I'll fill you in after Christmas!)....anyway, back in the furniture section, I noticed a couple bags of skeined yarn!  I looked and found a tag, it says Condon'sYarns, 100% wool, Charlottetown, PEI, and also 2pky Fine, 4oz/113.4gr.  I went over to the yarn section, and found some more.  I ended up with five bags, 10 skeins, 1134gr for $16.89.

This is NOT a soft merino!  It's the coarse wool people who don't know merino or BFL think of when they think of wool.  I will knit up a swatch at some point, and I hope it softens up, but I don't think it'll ever become merino.  I was picturing a fair isle sweater, but I don't know yet.

Yesterday, I mentioned going to pick up this iPad Mini.  Right next door is a yarn store, Soper Creek Yarn.  I couldn't turn that down.  I just picked up a few balls, mainly from clearance.  Left to right--Diamond Luxery Collection, "Footloose", Sirdar "Freya", more Footloose, and Regia "Snowflake".  We are loving petting the Footloose.  I am so in love with the turquoise/purpley one!  I'm going to email them and see if there's another hank.  And yes, I will drive all the way back to Bowmanville for one hank of this yarn!  What to make if there's no more?  All of this weighs in at 250gr for $29.32.

I had just delivered Christmas hats to a client, and she wanted another striped Christmas stocking hat, but when I got home, I found a message.  I had given her business cards and told her to take a look on my Facebook page.  She fell in love with the pink "Epic" hat that I just recently posted here.  Her granddaughter's favourite colour is purple, and she wanted one done in lilac/purple.  Yay!  Finally, I get to do one in those colours.  I immediately went to my stash...

 

...where I was sorely disappointed by my lack of interesting purple yarns.  I had actually just given away some lilac Astra DK, but really, I had very little in purples.  Even the white...I wanted to start the brim with white-white....and remember how I had trouble finding white-white for the snowman hat?  I had just finished what was left of that yarn on the brim of the hat I had delivered to her.  I have a cone of bright white with a bit of texture, and some bright white eyelash, but still needed a bit more white.

I did have that skein of purple mohair next to the white at the 1:00 position, and the grey fur at 3:00, and a light purple fake mohair...I actually went to Value Village first, and there were two mixed bags that had lilac yarns; those aren't in these pictures.  The two bags were $4.50 and weighed 241gr.

Uh, is that picture above sort of glistening/sparkling?  I don't know all the different settings on the iPad camera and I think I might have done something, LOL!!
At Michaels', I had a lot of fun picking out yarns.  The purples were actually fairly easy, although there were some I loved that had other colours in them too. Right now, it is REALLY difficult to find single colour, multi-textured/interesting yarns.  They blend so many colours into one skein now.  Even fun fur is challenging, Bernat Boa has a great dark plum/black eyelash, but it wasn't quite right.
All totalled, including the white and red for the new stocking hat, I spent $64.27.  Obviously, this is way more yarn than I need for the two hats (and I did have a 20% off entire order coupon, so I saved $13 with that!), but they will all be great additions to the stash.  All  11 116gr.  No way.  Got to double check that!  Okay, now I get 1216gr.  That seems more reasonable!  LOL!!

I do have some items to show soon!  My older daughter got a book for her birthday about felting and knitting/sewing....I set her up at the LK150 and she made a striped pillow that we felted.  Looks great!  I was really pleased when I weighed it and found it weighed exactly the same as the yarn I had just bought back then, but then I went and got all this yarn, LOL.  Also have the two Santa hats...what else?  Right now, I must get to work on the new order!!

Yarn In:  2841gr  + 13 312gr = 16 153gr
Yarn Out:  14 945gr
Balance:  1208gr more brought IN than out
Costs:  $114.98 + $263.93 = $378.91/351 days = $1.08/day

Hopefully I'll be back into the more OUT than in column when I post the recent finished items!  Though...at about 100gr for a stocking hat....no...not quite...

Congratulations!

I entered a photo competition earlier this fall, and won an iPad Mini!  I picked it up today and we're all having fun with it.  The kids are already Apple-smart, but it's all new to me.  There are somethings I much prefer on my tablet already, but I'll learn to like this.  Especially the outward facing camera.  My tablet doesn't have one.  The one on my cellphone is crap.  This should be good to posting to my Facebook business page quickly.  Or even for blogging.  Let's test it....tried once and it didn't work...don't know if it's blogger or iPad that'/s the issue....
Well....took several tries to get the picture window to open, then, there was the option to get pictures from picasa, my cellphone, or an URL.  Tried the phone option, but it says I need the google app.  Anyone blog using thei IPad?

Santa's Coming

One of Jennifer's clients was a 4 year old who was a little big for the Santa hat I made last year, but had an adorable photo anyway.  The grandmother thought it'd be great if she had one that would fit the girl for upcoming Breakfast with Santa photos.  She asked for dark red, so I picked up a ball of Impeccable "Claret".  I think it's a dark red, without being burgundy.  Don't know if you can see that Ravelry link.

Of course, I can't find the receipt, but it's usually about $4.99 ($5.64)on sale or with a coupon.  So I'll go with that, LOL.

I started knitting it by hand, but I took it to my daughter's skating lesson, and forgot that I wanted to do a waste yarn cast on so I can go back and knit the white cuff after.  Got started, basing gauge solely on the suggested gauge on the wrapper.  Got busy trying to finish 4 little fruit hats that were a custom order and taking too long.  Decided I should rip out the Santa hat and do it on the machine since it's needed by Friday!  The main part is almost done, I was just waiting to hear how long she wanted it.

Yarn In: 13 184gr + 128gr =13 312gr
Yarn Out: 520gr + 14 425gr =14 945gr
Balance:  1633gr more used up than brought in
Costs: $258.29+ $5.64= $263.93/342 days = $0.77/day

Halloween!

A couple years ago, my son came up with the idea of being a jar of peanut butter for his Halloween costume.  At first, we were like, "Uh, no.  Pick something normal".  Then realized we could figure it out, and it would be a great costume for him--he would live on peanut butter if he could!

This year, my daughter thought she'd like to use the costume (they're at a different school now, though most of the kids moved to the new school when they closed their old one, but there's also 300 kids they didn't know LOL).  Great!  Re-use a costume!  I was so excited. 

Then, she thought, "Wouldn't it be awesome if my BFF could be a jar of jam?".  Well....I wasn't too keen on going through the whole thing again.  We figured the second time would be easier, but there was the first hurdle of finding hoops.  We told her that if her BFF could find two hula hoops (or other suitable hoops), we'd go ahead.  I didn't have time to search them out.  Wouldn't you know...she had two matching hoops in her garage!  Surprise!  They were quite a bit larger than the peanut butter hoops, but oh well.  We had some debating about the hat.  We hadn't like the original hat too much, and this time, I had a cheap plastic table cloth for the lid material.  It turned out to be such a windy, rainy Halloween, that the had just didn't stay on her.  It needed a chin strap LOL.

 The arm holes were cut a little more to the front because the hoop was so large, she wouldn't have been able to bend her elbows and hold her bag, LOL.  This meant that the label had to go below the holes.  If we had known this before, we would have made the label smaller.

 And what did the original peanut butter jar guy go out as this year?  He hadn't been able to come up with an idea, wasn't even sure he wanted to go out.  We couldn't find the spirit gum to affix the wearwolf fur to his face.  But then we just started pulling out stuff, and we put together a rich dude look.  That's fake money he's pointing to in his pocket (click on it to see a bigger image!).  As he was getting ready to go out, the girls thought he looked like Macklemore (a singer).  Then, I heard him say he was a pimp!  OMG.  That hat and coat had been used as a pimp costume before, but I didn't want to say it! 

They went to the neighbour's, and then the neighbours came here.  Katie asked if that had been our kids just at their house, and what was our son?  I said "a rock star" and she said she wondered if he was Macklemore, or if he was a pimp, but she hadn't wanted to ask him that, LOL.  So, either way, I guess his costume was effective!