xmas gift 7

xmas gift 7

once again this photo has been altered to protect the innocent.

ok... this one isn't technically finished yet. but! it will be finished soon, possibly at the airport or on a plane today. and let me just say jessica is one lucky, lucky girl. ;)

i'm off to hurricane tonight. see some of ya'll real soon.

knit happens

so before ya'll get too confident in my crafting abilities i thought i would post my latest miserable failure in land of craft.

this weekend, with only a small amount of knitting to finish before christmas, i decided to add more to my plate, just to make things more interesting.

must.knit.gnomes.

see! aren't they so cute? must.knit.gnomes.now. so of course it was sunday, and the yarn store was closed, and i didn't have the right yarn or the right needles.... you know where this is going, right? oh well i can make it work with some yarn from my stash.

I set off with passion and knat up all the peices. i did run out to joann and get some fun fur for the beard... see it looks like a furry thong.

"wow these pieces are a lot bigger than i thought they would be" *

*(when using yarn & needles bigger than the pattern calls for, you will get bigger peices. duh beth)

so i sewed up the body and head & stuffed 'em. see how the head in the first pic is white? yeah i didn't have any flesh colored yarn so i used white. after stitching it up i thought that it looked dumb so i used so face powder to tint it to skin tone. that work pretty good! i'm feeling pretty confident. (please note that it will be all downhill from here) - so i'm happy about the head but less than happy about the body. i used those hacky sack type beads to make the butt heavy so it sat up straight but the polyfil was showing thru the black knit. this of course goes back to the fact that i didn't have the right yarn and used needles that were too big. the stitch wasn't tight enough. oh well move on. maybe it will work out.

next step the legs.

ok that looks fucking ridiculous. that foot is huge. kids, i can recognize creative failure when i see it and this, my friends, is failure. this is where i leave this project and continue on with the xmas gift knitting - hoping to put all this unpleasantness behind me.

any body want a faceless one-legged gnome for xmas?

xmas gift 6

socks for dad

opal superwash on size 0 pony pearl dpns. lichen ribbed socks from knitting vintage socks. they are a 3:1 rib that doesn't really show up in this pic.

finally i have finished these socks. remeber this yarn jess? i knit and ripped 3 socks before i got one that was the right size. after i figured it all out i knat up the second sock in under 24 hours - a new personal best. i hated this yarn by the time i finished these socks. so plain! so ruff! so i-have-knit-5-socks-with-only-2-to-show-from-this-yarn! but then a miracle happened! i put these in the washer when i finished and all the scratchy treatment on the yarn came off and they are soooooooo soft now. so nice, and the size? perfect

parrrty.... christmas parrrty

ah yes the office christmas party

you know every year at the office christmas party there is that one person who maybe drinks a little more than they probably should and ends up doing or saying something that they probably shouldn't have. i think that this was my year. i'm not sure, it's kind of fuzzy but i think that at one point in the evening i was on stage and my boss announced that i wasn't wearing any underwear... yeah. i don't know what it is with me and embarrassing underwear situations but this really isn't the first time... ya'll, i am a nice girl! a good girl! seriously.
anyway for those who i drunk dialed and sent text messages to - including some random person in wv because i got a number wrong - my appologies, but seriously how often does beth let loose these days? exactly.

me and pam

xmas gift 5

my shit's coming together now kids!

so the pics aren't very discriptive and the the photos may have been altered to protect the recipient who may or may not read this blog. someone's getting some nice knitterly goodness for xmas! more pics after the gift giving.

xmas gift 4

a felted handbag for pam.

fulled lopi tote from hello yarn. 2 1/2 skeins of brown patons upcounty and size 13 circs.

how to make this: first you knit a huge ass sack (see figure 1) and then you throw it in the washing machine in hot water with a little palmolive. pull it out before the spin cycle, rinse it out real good and sit it up to dry. i like to shove something square in there and then it holds the mitered shape. (see figure 2) it will shrink up to about 2/3 of its original size. the sparkley pin shows scale. pretty nifty, huh?

I made a blue one of these for pam for her birthday and she requested a brown one for christmas.

the blue bag

yin muffin in a basket

i apologized for the blatanly cute cat pic... but seriously, that's fucking cute.

my new home

this will be my new home come january

this is the kitchen and one of the living room areas - ooo marble floors and stainless appliances....

this is the only downside of the house - one bathroom. but look at this fucking bathroom! marble shower and a huge vanity and also a jacuzzi tub. :)

so i'm pretty excited about this house. it has a 2 car garage and a big fenced in backyard with a hot tub, the bedrooms are huge and it has 2 living rooms.
oh yeah one other funny thing - one of the bedrooms has this huge mirror on the ceiling with crown molding all around it - i gave that one to marie! ha ha.

Self Portrait Tuesday

spt 6

i used to live in southpark - in morgantown

xmas gift 3

scarf/shawl for my mama.

clapotis from knitty. i used like 6 skeins each of lang opal and berraco electro. size 8's.

i had to search everywhere to get enough yarn to do this thing. this is my second clapotis and i am not kntting another one.

workin'

sometimes being a landscape architect really stretches my creativity and design skills...

sometimes it sucks.

i hate reading building code. Try searching thousands of pages of text for that tiny section about handrails....

Florida Building Code Section 1009.11.2....just in case ya'll need to know about egress width on a spa in Florida some day. you know, just in case.