Roll Or Bowl A Ball, A Penny A Pitch

My beau spent a week and a half at Pennsic, arguably the biggest living history encampment in the Northeast. I couldn't afford to go this year, so he sent me pictures as the event progressed, and he brought home a present for me.



It's a yarn bowl! It keeps one's balls of yarn from running rampant while in use. I love it!



Pretty, huh? I love functional things that also have an element of beauty to them.

Speaking of beauty, I've been knitting and finishing! The alpaca neckwarmer I knit up a while back finally has buttons:



There's also a project that I've had up on Ravelry for a while but haven't mentioned here, the Merry Little Bag. Last year at Birka I bought some yarn from The Merry Little Lamb, and it finally decided that it wanted to be a felted colorwork bag. The pieces are made but not assembled yet, as I'm still trying to decide how to assemble them.



Then there's some more colorwork that I think will be a pillow (the bit on the left):



I've started another panel that reverses the colors, and that will be the other side of the pillow. The yarn is rejects from work -- some Mountain Mohair that's too thin, and some custom yarn that became impregnated with rubber bits from the carding aprons. They both work just fine for this particular project.

I picked up some more free waste roving at work today, which has me itching to spin, but I've promised myself that I'll finish the curtains I promised a friend months ago before I start anything new. I've also been informed that, after over four months of working at the Spinnery, I'm finally due for my three-month review. I would tell y'all what I'm hoping for from that meeting, but I don't want to jinx it, so you'll just have to stay tuned and see what happens.

Happy knitting!

Feed Me, Seymour!!!

Either I work in the Little Shop of Horrors, or... well, it's just another day at Green Mountain Spinnery. Something got stuck or clogged, and Laurie crawled in to pull it out. As he keeps saying, you'll never get rich at the Spinnery, but you'll have a lot of fun.

Speaking of fun, I wanted to make something romantic but quirky for my beau, and I settled on giving him my heart... my vaguely anatomically-correct heart, that is!



The pattern is from Knitty Winter 2008, the yarn is Ella Rae Classic, and the veins and valve-ends are needle felted.



I brought it to him in a cooler packed with ice. He loved it!

Also, as promised, the handspun FO. Here's the Northumbria Cowl from the Fall 2010 issue of Knitscene. I discovered once it was blocked that the dye in the silk bled onto the white in places, but I think I'm okay with it. When the weather isn't 90°F and humid, maybe I'll model it.



I have the sudden craving to knit up a model of Audrey II, for some reason. Hmm...