Naming achieved!

We decided upon Boris Blackwell for the new fella! we took a trip to the vet today to get him checked and poked and prodded. He hated nearly every minute of it - but all the folks there fawned over him, so he had to like that a little! plus he got a clean bill of health (ugh, but a big bill at the desk! sheesh!) so all it well. he's downstairs napping on his daddy's shoulder right now!

The new squirt

Isn't he just the cutest? We're killing ourselves trying to think of the perfect name! He hasn't even been with us for 24 hours, so I guess we just need time to get his personality.

Now I know for sure

For some reason I always wondered if my dad really wore the socks I knit for him - I thought maybe he was just being nice and saying he liked them. I'd even ask my mom who will always give me an honest answer and she swore that he really did, but for some reason I still had this doubt in the back of my mind and feared that I'd find a drawer full of unworn socks in their bedroom 30 years from now after he died! BUT - when i was visiting for mother's day he showed me proof - a pair of socks that he blew the heels out of! Yeah! that means he really did wear them. So I'm making him a replacement pair for Father's Day. I'm using the same pattern, Manly Socks, with a slipped stitch rib pattern that I really like the first time I did it. Last time I used some Rowan wool that claimed to be fingering weight, but seemed a little heavier to me. This time I'm using Knitpicks stroll in a heathered green, because I had it and it seemed like a manly color! I'm also doing a longer ribbed cuff than I did last time because I realized that my favorite pair of socks has a long cuff - not just an inch and a half or something like what most patterns call for, but more like 2.5 inches, I'd say.

Soho thrifty

Do you ever look at the Purl Bee blog? it's the blog for the Purl Soho shop - aka, the place I could totally drop a grand in like 30 minutes. Someday i WILL go there. It's amazing. Anyway, they always have projects on the blog that I drool over - lots of them involving Liberty of London fabrics. that's some pretty fab stuff. and expensive - like $30/yard. There was a project recently for a scarf with a torn Kona cotton edge and two different Liberty of London prints - it's one of those projects where I think "oooh, you only need two 1/2 yard pieces - that's not much!" and I suppose it isn't relative to, say, a dress, but it's still $30 worth of fabric. I decidedto make one with stuff I already had and see how I liked it. I like it!

I didn't use two different fabrics. duh. I actually forgot that part of the project until I just typed it above, but I do love these polka dots and the red with the turquois Kona is fab!

I'm still not sure I can justify $3o for Liberty of London fabrics to make another, but I'll probably make another out of something!

I made this runner/wall hanging for my mom for Mother's day. I took a bunch of pictures before wrapping it, but didn't realize how crappy and blurry the vast majority of them were! This one is the best, but it still doesn't show much of the stitching or beading or trims or neato textury fabrics. and the flash blew the color all weird. Oh well. She loved it!