Next Up...

Dreams are funny things, really. And I tend to have several that are a bit out-there - the hubby can attest to this! I had a particularly vivid dream the other night that I thought I might share. It was one of those cool dreams where your senses are really alive and you can smell things, feel things... Anyhoo, I was sitting in "my kitchen" even though it was nothing like my actual kitchen and in saunters a huge red furry tarantula spider thing. I know it was huge because it was the same size as the pro-football sitting on the dining room floor. No idea why the football was there, it just was. Now if I'm outside and see a spider or other creepy crawlie I will usually let them go about their business unless they are huge and/or freak me out. If I happen to find something in my house though, it's another matter entirely. They must go! There is no gray area on this issue!!!! So, there stands the red furry beast with its beady little eyes and I vault up onto the kitchen counter and demand that someone go and kill it -- if it's too big, someone else gets to do the dirty work and I supervise. It starts scurrying around the floor and then all of a sudden the thing runs up the cupboard, onto me and starts trying to dive into the back of my sweatshirt. Now I am in a panic trying to rip the sweatshirt off but I can't because my head is stuck against the thing and neither one of us is able to go anywhere all the while I'm really freaking out. I manage to shake myself awake and wait for that lovely moment where you realize that it's all just a dream and you can breathe that sigh of relief. That feeling never came. Why? Because I can still feel it pressing against and moving around the back of my neck. Now I go beyond panic into a terror-induced frenzy - what the hell is in bed with me right now??? Is it an actual spider or something akin to the beast in that one Dr Who episode? A little side note, I'm a big Dr Who fan and even enjoy the episodes with creepy creatures but that one... shudder! I kept wanting to look away because it really gave me the heebie-jeebies (and is giving me goosebumps even as I type this, I kid you not!) but at the same time it was like watching Jaws for the first time where you keep flipping the channel to avoid seeing what you know has to be coming yet you keep finding yourself going back to the movie... Okay, back to the dream. So now I flip around in bed ready to bludgeon whatever it is to death with my ever-so-pointy elbow and what do I find? Little miss having what looks like a dog dream. Her little hand was evidently right up against the back of my neck and when she started in on whatever her dream was about her hand started jerking around thus creating this nasty beast in my dream. Yes, little miss does sometimes co-sleep with the hubby and I and after many failed attempts at getting her to sleep in her own bed, we're going to try again, tonight. Wish us luck!

Now I return you to back to the regularly scheduled content.

I mentioned last post that I had knit/crocheted my way through 11 miles of yarn last year. Shortly thereafter I found myself wondering just what does 11 miles of yarn look like? In this instance it looks like:

4 cowls
2 and a half pairs of fingerless mitts
2 pairs of mittens
13 pairs of socks
5 single socks
3 blankets
5 bags
31 crocheted coasters
11 hats
4 scarves
1 baby jacket
1 baby vest
a pair of baby booties
several dishcloths/scrubbies
a baby rattle
and a handful of other WiP's.

Not too bad of a haul. But I can do better than that! Originally I wanted to knit a marathon but quickly found out that that might be a bit overly ambitious for a Mother of 2 minions, so I just want to see how many years it takes to knit a marathon. Hopefully just 2, but I'll have to step things up a notch this year. I'm off to a decent start - I'm working on finishing up some of those WiP's and I have a whole slew of other projects that I want to get going on.

This was one of those pairs of mittens. I finally made a pair of EZ's Mitered Mittens and I will definitely be making more, including a pair for me out of handspun :)
I got around to finishing this sock for Della, too. I decided it might be safer to throw in a safety line since I was pretty much guessing on length. Della's feet are more than a few sizes larger than mine...


Over New Year's Weekend I got my crochet on and worked up a dishtowel out of some cotton scraps. I don't know why I've been thinking about knitted and/or crocheted dish towels a lot lately but this one is rather nice and I can see more of these in the future, too.

Along with dishcloths of course!

The Knit In is coming up this month and I thought it might be good to have some knitted items on hand out of my hand dyed yarns to show how things knit up. I gifted my first pair of Hermione socks so here is the first sock in the pair for me :)

I've been working out some new patterns in my spare time (ha ha), and can't show you any of those, but I can show you a new one of mine that will be released once I get better photos taken and fix the pdf thing on my computer. This will enable me to make pdf's out of all my patterns which will be nice! These are my Neville Socks, inspired by Neville Longbottom from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.


Originally I had envisioned various browns and grays for Neville but I needed to knit up this pattern and I needed to knit up this yarn so I paired the two together and will probably end up making a brown/gray pair later. These are his dancing socks that he can wear while waltzing the night away during Hogwarts' formal functions.

In the meantime, I have also been busy dyeing. Dyeing up skeins for an event later this month, and dyeing up skeins and fiber to stock my own Dreams in Fiber inventory for both said event and for the Etsy shop. I have some ideas for some colorway themes and/or possibly clubs to do this year and some more patterns... At any rate, BIG THINGS are planned so stay tuned for those happenings :)

What else has been going on? Lot of snow and ice, but it is Winter in Iowa so that's to be expected.


The minions don't mind though...


I have more projects to talk about once pictures are taken and such but I didn't want to stay away from the blog for too long....