whackadoodle coconut

Our little family had a rough one this year.  I am pleased to say that despite all of the heartaches and trouble, we are in the Christmas spirit and enjoying the holidays.  We are looking forward to what the God has planned for us in the year to come.  I am thankful for what he has already done for us and how he has changed our lives and how all things glorify Him. So what have I been up to lately?  Coming out of the forest has made a big difference to what I have "felt" up to doing.  I've taken up a "hobby" if you can call it that helping out a friend restore his WC35 ( I think).  It's been a learning experience as to what goes into restoring a historic military vehicle.  I also have learned a lot of its engine parts and how to clean and paint them for installation. I've knitted a partial mitten and then discovered it would be too big to wear and realized the yarn was most of the problem.  I also knitted a purple monkey for a friend who asked...

yesterday I blogged ever so briefly about a pair of mittens I was working on with my kool aid dyed yarns and I had to rip them out because I would have to be a tiny tiny person to wear them comfortably.  I restarted them afterwards and spent a few hours delightfully knitting and listening to my podcasts for the morning before costco opened. here's what transpired - the underside of the mitten, you can see where the thumb goes it's knitted afterwards by picking up stitches that are on hold the outer portion of the glove, I love the pattern and the varying dyed yarn that you can see as darker and lighter color here's the oh so sad part, my mitten is so big, well long I guess is a better way to describe it I don't know why the photos do this - so annoying, but if you turn your head you can see that the marker is only halfway down the chart and I still have more to knit (refer to previous picture so see the sizing snafu!) So basically, I've ...

over the long weekend, I took some well deserved relaxing time to spin some fluff (a whole 2 ounces in one weekend!), knit a mitten and then rip it out, because only a small child could wear it (and I am not a small child nor have the hands of a small child), dye some yarn with kool aid. The easiest of them all much to my surprise, as I write this was dyeing yarn with kool aid. 1.  buy kool aid ($3.00 worth, okay I got a little out of control picking colors) 2.  wrap 100% wool yarn into skeins (I did 4-1 ounce batches) raw wool wound into skeins   3.  soak in water and vinegar, you don't really need the vinegar, but I wanted really deep clear colors 4.  I did the coloring in two ways and found this way to be easier and I could forget about it and come back later.  Also, the fiber absorbed all the color and didn't have any rinse out. - place skein into a 4 cup measure cup - measure 1 cup of water and add kool aid packets in desired colors, ...

I don't recall posting these little pink mittens I designed over summer.  They're called thumbalina, made from Patons bamboo yarn in magenta.  I also made a pair of socks for a friend from the same yarn and with the left over, I did the mittens.  Now I love inventing things and usually they don't turn out so well as these did.     What you should be looking at is the narrow slit in the thumb in picture 2.  I had been contemplating the idea of designing mittens, because over the last couple years I always thought that mittens were really just the toes of socks with a little tube on the side where you put your thumb...oh yeah and no pesky heel gusset.   Here's the good part.  I was listening to the WEBS broadcast that I subscribe to on my iPod and they were interviewing Kristin Nichols who will be teaching a glove class in the near future.  About halfway through, WEBS asks her about using a smart phone with gloves on and that yo...