Getting Stuff Done

Rob and I had a nice day Saturday just running around doing a few errands and having lunch.  I needed to go to a fabric store in Southern Pines to see if they had something appropriate to make a table runner for the baby shower my mother & I are throwing for my sister, and I wanted to go to WalMart to look for a couple of picture frames to put some stuff up in my craft room.  So Rob went with me and we had lunch at Mellow Mushroom and also stopped a couple of places he wanted to go.  He bought a new circular saw at Lowe's and I found the frames I wanted at Michael's finally.

I bought a print at Carolina Fiber Fest a couple of weekends ago of a painting by Ken McNeill.  He's a local artist, and his artwork was chosen to be the cover for this year's Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. He was extremely nice and was more than happy to take a picture with me and my two friends Michiele and Peggy, who also bought the same print (no wonder we get along so well).

One of the frames I bought Saturday was for that print, so it's finally up on the wall above my desk.

It's called "B-ewe-tiful Family".

Yeah, I know it's not perfectly centered, but I can live with it.

I love to do swaps on Ravelry, and one of my favorite every year is the birthday swap. One of the requirements of the swap is that you include something handmade in your partner's birthday package.  A couple of years ago my partner was from Estonia, which is well known for its knitted lace, so I asked her to knit me a small piece of traditional Estonian lace in the "traditional" yarn and she did.  I can knit Estonian lace, and I have, but it's just cool to me to have some knit by an actual Estonian.  I'm geeking that way.

Anyway, I had it stored away because I couldn't figure out how to actually display it, when it dawned on me I could just frame it.  So that's the second frame I bought Saturday, and I really like the result.  I also needed a place for Swatch, Rosie, and Bobbin to sit, so I put up a little shelf that had been just sitting in a corner of our bedroom and put the framed lace on that as well instead of actually hanging it.

I like it, although if I end up with more sock monkeys at some point, I will probably actually hang the lace piece a little higher so it can still be seen.

Sunday was a day of finishing.  I finished my niece's first communion veil late last week, so it needed to be blocked so I can drop it by their house this week because the first communion is this coming Saturday.  (No, I didn't cut it close, whatever do you mean?)  You'll have to wait until after the event for pictures though.

I sewed buttons on the little tunic/dress I just finished for my granddaughter.  It was supposed to for Easter, but I just got around to buying the buttons last week, so she'll be getting her Easter basket a little late.  Hopefully I'll get it and the other Easter items I have shipped to Texas sometime this week.

Cute little button

I killed a pair of socks today.  I'm wash my hand knit socks in the washing machine with other clothes and then hang them to dry.  That's the whole purpose of superwash in my mind, and I'm just lazy that way.  For some reason I decided today that if I washed my lovely stranded elephant socks inside out, then the outside part wouldn't get as fuzzy.

Aren't they lovely?  This is what they looked like going into the wash.

What I didn't think about was how turning them inside out would expose all those lovely yarn floats to snag onto anything and everything else in the wash with them.  I'm guessing that's what happened, as there were a couple of items with small zippers in the same load.  This was the result.....

Insert sobbing here

I am so sad.  It's all my fault, and I can't even face fixing them.  This is the worst part, but I found a similar smaller place on the other sock.  I'm thinking at this point that I'm not going to try to fix them, but just knit a new pair.  I actually have more of these exact yarns in enough yardage to make an identical pair, so that's what I'll do....when I can face it.  Looking on the good side, when I wore them the other day I was thinking that I'd made the cuff a little too lose, so now I can make it better right?

In an effort to end this post on a happy note...I finished the pair of socks I've been knitting recently tonight.  I made these a lot taller than I usually wear my socks because I wanted to get to all the colors on this yarn.  We'll see if they actually stay up when I wear them, but at least I have a new pair to add to the drawer.