we´re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

how about you, you, you?

of course that was AFTER another trip to milana on scalabrini. I bought much more roving.... 3 colors and white and 3 skeins of manos for Christmas gifts.
Doing the happy dance now.

Then MIL and I met the rest of the animals at the zoo. It was the perfect day. Sunny, no wind, not too many people and a bit cool... really nice!

Time to put the kids to bed. I have no idea what is on the docket for tomorrow.....

and here they are

Women's S Hugo Bescati butter yellow 100% cashmere wrap lace…4.99









Women's L Heidi tan 35 silk/25 nylon/20 ramie/12 angora rabbit/3 acrylic/5 wool short sleeve sweater DK… $3








Men's XL Old Navy rust lambswool worsted…. $6 *










Women's M The Limited blue-periwinkle tweed wool/viscose/nylon/silk/cashmere/cotton blend sockweight …$6
(i have another in this colorway in my stash already and one in another color… it’s so soft)






Women's L Express beige merino aran knit … $4











Men's Belmondi brown/black/white tweed 55 merino/20 rayon/10 cashmere/10 nylon/5 angora rabbit crew neck sockweight or heavier…. $4






Women's L SO orange/red tweed 40 silk/30 nylon/15 ramie/11 wool/4 other turtleneck light worsted ….$6








Women's M Gap mustard yellow cardigan 100% worsted cotton (hope the button band is picked up stitches) $2








Women's M Express blue white tweed merino turtleneck heavy worsted/aran… $3







* from the pricey thrift store in town

Sorry about the sideways shots... I forgot to turn them before uploading

And these to felt and make bags, mittens etc


I picked up a few sweaters at Old Navy as well.. 3 cashmere ones for me and a cotton cardigan for mom in a beautiful blue to match her eyes!

thrift motherlode

first:
NEW 100% cashmere sweaters (short sleeve) at old navy for $10.... that's right
NEW 100% cashmere sweater (long sleeve) at old navy for $24

and at the thrift stores... oh my!


Pictures and details to come in the morning after I get it all sorted, just let me say it was a GOOD day!

thrifting again

yesterday in the morning I ran out to the thrift store and hit a motherlode :-)

These are for felting projects. Some valentine teachery things, some mittens and some Christmas.







JCrew This may be felted for a Christmas project or frogged for yarn, still deciding!








These are to frog:


100% cashmere























this one may need to stay in the felted state if I can't frog it.... will think of something nice to do with it as I have 2 other cashmere sweaters given to me that were felted.










GAP silk/wool blend












silk/cashmere blend









JCrew wool/angora rabbit blend already frogged the sleeves and back. The front was serged to the button band:-( so I'll felt that for mittens







I also got this beautiful mahogany serving dish made in haiti. It will be great for parties with crudité and dip in the center :-)






and 7 of these cute little silverplated knives which I'll use on cheese trays.

I came home smiling :-)

thrift hit

I hit American Family Services at their Easton store today while in the area doing some errands and came home with 4 sweaters :-)


Christopher Hayes XL men's 100% wool sweater made in Ireland. I love the colors of this sweater although this picture doesn't do them justice. This one cost $1.91!







A brand new men's XL Gap 100% wool in red 4x2 ribbing. It was only $4.94. I offered it to DH but he doesn't do sweaters. So to the frog pond it goes!









Another new sweater, this one is an Eddie Bauer Men's XXL 55 lambswool/45 acrylic. I had to give $2.92 for this one. I'll probably overdye it, although I'm not too sure.










A Woolrich mens XL 100% wool pullover. I'm wondering if this could make great hunting socks. This was the best bargain as I only paid $1.91 for it.





I also got DD a potholder loom kit for less than $4. She's busy making one right now!


Last weekend I stopped at Good will and picked up a couple gems as well. This is a Simpson & Reed men's M 100% virgin wool. It really feels silky. I had to pay $2.92 for this one.









This one is 100% silk and is a men's M manufactured by Tullo. It has a mock turtleneck. I'll need to be very careful frogging this one. It was a bit expensive at $4.99. If it's too thin I may use it to ply with something else.









I also bought this Alfani XXL men's extra fine merino placket sweater. This was expensive at $3.99


I was making real headway on Wild Stripes until I left it at school on Friday.. argh I hate stupid moves like that. So this weekend I'm working on a baby kimono for someone elses baby. Will make a hat and booties to go along with that.

well off to put my baby to bed. He's feeling a bit under the weather and needs some extra loving.

thought I'd put in a picture

from olympia (the new camera)

this is of the wool from the tour de fleece.... purty, no?

recycled yarn

I've been recycling yarn lately. Remember the cashmere sweater I wrote about a few weeks ago? Well I took it apart but had some troubles unraveling, so I let it sit. In the mean time, I unraveled a 100% merino XL ladies long sleeve sweater that is 2 ply laceweight yarn. I've learned that I need to be really careful when undoing the seams. It's even harder to see the threads that you can cut on these fine weight yarn sweaters. Well this cake is from the 2 sleeves and the front of the sweater. I have another smaller cake from the sweater back. The ends are spit spliced so there'll be no knots in the skein. I'll wind it on my skein winder, wash it and probably overdye it.

I also frogged merino longies that I had made for DS2 quite some time ago from a JCrew merino sweater. I had frogged the rest of the sweater and have about 1000 yards from that. Now, there's an additional 400 yards (give or take) from the longies (both arms) so I'll add that to the other and have quite the mother lode of very soft 2 (very loosely) ply merino in hunter green.

So tonight, after spinning for the tour de fleece, I decided to try my hand at one of the sleeves of the cashmere sweater and lo and behold... it started to unravel :-)
It's super fine weight cashmere and the places that I've cut wrong I just spit splice and it turns out fine. I'm so psyched now. My first cashmere.

I've been spinning up a storm and DD has decided to get rid of her polly pockets, so we've been organizing to take photos of them to list on ebay. She should get a haul since the collection is immense. We counted 100 pairs of shoes (just shoes, not including the 20ish pairs of boots) I'm making her do most of the work, after all she'll get the cash, but a little supervision is always a good thing.

We went miniature golfing today with the kids. On the way home DS2 asked where are apo and aba? We told him that they went home yesterday. He wants them to come back. LOL Guess 6 weeks wasn't enough.

I've cast on for the 3rd time for the yoga bag... this time I used circulars with a bigger circumference AND a stitch marker forthe beginning of the round. The pattern is written for flat, but I'm knitting it in the round :-]

I also started Tina's cloth for the love2knit dishcloth exchange. I hope she'll like it. I think I found a perfect cloth for her!

OK... it's soon time to wake up and I've yet to go to bed. I heard someone stirring upstairs at about 4 AM... lately one of the 3 kids has been up at that time for the past week.

color me

blue and purple. Ice blue raspberry lemonade and blue berry kool aid with medium and dark blue Wilton gels from the Blues Clues set and grape kool aid and purple Wilton gel from the same set make all this yummy colored wool.

After the second batch of purple, you can see that the 2 purples don't match. What's a girl to do? Card them together and make a mesh of the two....



But there was still uncarded roving left that had blue earmarks on it. I thought... hmmm let's try dying before carding. The results were great colors, but once carded, too light for my tastes so back in the kettle those rolags went.











At last, the final combination. I thought about carding the two colors together and just spinning single ply, but I want to see how it looks with the 2 different colors plyed together.. just hope I don't hate it!

I had thought I lost one of my size 2 bamboo DPNs that I need to work on DH's tie but I found it this morning. I was home with the kiddos... DS2 with his 2 ear infections and sporadic fevers, DD with a sporadic earache, low grade fever and general malaise and DS1 with his sweet infectious good humor... At least I got to take a nap!


it really smells great!!!!!!!!!!

Personal day

I took one today... DH was soloing with the Bach Choir of Bethlehem for their noonday concert at Central Moravian Church. The program consisted of Bach's 3rd unaccompanied suite for cello and a cantata that was written for New Year's Day.The suite sent me soaring!

Afterwards DH, the ILs and I went to Tortilla Flat for lunch, then stopped at Wired for a latte (at least in ˆmyˆ case). After which I trotted off yet again in the car to pick up DS1 and 2 from daycare. That was kind of the bummer of the day... it was a 40 minute drive each way... times 4, just to have the day free to go to the concert. So that's about 3 hours when you count the time spent loading in and out of the car.

Therefore, I figured I deserved a treat! (yes I know my ears and taste buds both had been already treated, but what about my yarn habit???) Oh did I mention Fuzzy's fleece arrived on Monday in the mail? So I needed some lingerie bags to wash her up. On the way home we stopped at Wally world cuz P had told me they had them for 94¢... alas they didn't, but I bought one Woolite one for almost $4... it's really too nice to do wool in though! But I digress... We stopped at ACMoore because this week all their yarn is 25% off...
I only bought 7 skeins of Lily's Sugar and Cream. I'm looking for a kelly green and really can't find it But I did buy- from top left to bottom right- taupe, yello, bright navy (I know it looks black in the picture), rose pink, over the rainbow ombre, sage green and wine. I also treated the kids to some Thomas engines (they were also on sale) and came home with a surprise for DD - a HUGE princess coloring book. I picked up some items for our Valentine craft for the teachers too, although they didn't have enough magnets. I'll have to stop by again or try Michaels..... what a shame!

So back to Fuzzy... here's her fleece (well some of it at least!)


I washed a bit when I got home cuz I knew I'd be going to P's house to show it off and I wanted to take some that was clean.. plus I was itching to see how she washed up. And voila…

P's friend was there spinning so she spun a bit and it's gonna be great!!!!!!



Speaking of spinning.... I have a picture of the Cotswold that I spun before Thanksgiving. That's some cotswold fleece behind it.. not from the same sheep though. It's better than the peace fleece I did first.. hopefully I'll keep improving.. I think I may swatch up a bit of this to see how it looks!

I sat on a dpn last night and of course broke it.. I have NO idea who put it on my chair... bummer... one of my #7 long bamboo ones that I use for dishcloths. I'll take it to work in the morning and sharpen the two borken pieces... the longer of the 2 will be a bit shorter than my short dpns but still usable for in the round and the shorter end I'll use as a cable needle... live and learn!

OK... nuff of this stuff. I can't wait til Friday when I can get my hands on my birthday present... My fingers are really itching... hope I can get it set up so I can spin that night.

Happy crafting