Penguin Sweaters

I was on Cute Overload this morning, showing TL some photos of dog costumes. He hadn't seen the site before (not surprisingly). While there, I saw this photo of a penguin wearing a little sweater. At first, I thought "How cute! How weird is that?" "Why would anyone do that?"

When I clicked over to The Yarn Kitchen blog, to look at the pattern, I realized it's a charitable work. These poor little penguins have been effected by the oil spill in New Zealand; and the sweaters are to help them stay warm and prevent them from eating oil, too. You can read all about it on the blog post.

According to Cute Overload, they have enough sweaters for now. I went back and read the CL article after seeing the Yarn Kitchen post. The image above is from the Cute Ovcrload site

New phone New Blogger app

Well, we decided that since M's schedule had changed so much that he couldn't pick up TurtleLad every day that TL would have to start riding the bus and then walk 2 miles from the bus stop to home. It was a hard thing for me to be Okay with, but he is in middle school. So, because he'd worked hard all summer to earn his 1st mp3 player, we decided to 'upgrade' his reward to a phone (which does play music). Naturally, this decision caused TL's parents to research the best phones and balance it with the budget, etc. This caused us to gauge these new phones against our Really Old phones -- I mean our plans had expired over a year ago -- and we found our phones wanting. The result? Not surprisingly, we have 3 new (refurbished) smart phones at our house. YAY! I just downloaded a Bloogger app, so I should be able to post more knitting stuff. At least there's a chance I will be able to post on-the-fly from the phone.

Bamboo Dishcloth

So Rick and I went to some garage sales last month, and I got a fabulous knitting guide from the 1960s with 900 stitch patterns. I have been experimenting with using them to make dishcloths. This one turned out well, so I will post the pattern here.

I used Sugar and Cream Cotton yarn, color? I never save the ball bands!
Size 8 needles--use 1 size larger than you usually use

Cast on 36

Rows 1-3 Knit all

Row 4 Knit 3, *yo, K2, pass YO over the K2* repeat ** until 3 stitches left, end Knit 3

Row 5 Knit 3, purl all to last 3, end Knit 3

Repeat Rows 4 & 5 until the cloth is your desired length.

End with 3 rows Knit, then cast off loosely.

The picture is right off the needles, so you can see that blocking some will help. This is a pretty thick cloth with some texture for scrubbing.

3rd Annual Carolina FiberFest

I went to the FiberFest on Sunday morning with my mother-in-law. Our men-folk were also at the NC State Fairgrounds, but they wandered about the rest of the "Got to be NC Festival" of which the FiberFest was a part. This year's Carolina FiberFest was quite a bit bigger than last year's, and just as fun. I didn't take any classes, but I did have a great time wandering through the demos and vendor booths. So much alpaca (and angoras and buffalo and cotton and wool), so little time!

Since my workshop is now nearly complete (blog post and photos coming soon), I took the precaution of going through all of my yarn before going to the FiberFest. I had to organize it anyhow, so I thought checking to see what I owned before going to buy more was essential. MM was very happy with me for at least trying to put the brakes on. I only bought one ball of lace weight yarn, Schoppel Wolle Zauberball (lace ball), in shades of blue. I couldn't resist it, but found out that the free pattern it came with really won't work with the yarn. Oh well, I'll find another.

My mother-in-law, however, found more that she couldn't resist. She bought some lovely pure Angora yarn from the Cozy Rabbit Farm that she'll use to knit a headband/ear warmers with. She travels a lot and needs something she can take along. She also found that she needs to have a lace shawl for her travels, but when she said she didn't think she's up to knitting lace, I volunteered to help her out. I'm so generous! lol She found the pattern and yard she wanted at The Unique Sheep.
The ladies there were very helpful, and helped her to find just the right colorway for her. She had to order the yarn I'll use to knit the shawl because they were out of the colorway she liked in the fiber that doesn't irritate her skin. Since she sensitive to wool, she tested a merino superwash/Tencel mix and it turns out she's fine with this fiber. Unfortunately, they were out of the colorway she liked best (Carribbean) in this fiber, so we'll have to wait a couple of weeks for it to come in.

I also finished up a sweater this weekend for my friend's daughter who turned 4 over the weekend. I will get it back and take some photos to post here. Yes, I should have remembered to take photos before wrapping.