I feel so accomplished! I've actually managed to complete not just one, but two projects! No, neither of them are the projects I should complete (think socks, bear, purse) but they are both green, making them perfect Project Spectrum projects.
The first is a cute green, felted bowl. The pattern is from One Skein by Leigh Radford (thanks to Sara, aka Fletchersmama, for loaning me this book). This pattern is SO quick. Friday night
Sara came over to my house for a stitch'n'bitch session during which we dropped the stitch part of that phrase and did nothing but bitch. No, we talked, laughed and bitched--it was a lot of fun. The most closest thing to knitting that we did was looking through my stash and some pattern books Sara brought over. She left at almost eleven and I immediately cast-on for this bowl. I used Araucania Nature Wool Chunky from my stash and #15 needles from my Denise set. I had completed maybe one round before my husband came home and then got about ten minutes of knitting in while waiting in the airport to pick-up my mom at 1:15 AM. I picked it up first thing in the morning, and despite the fact that I had not nearly consumed my requiste amount of coffee before knitting, it only took me about another half-hour to complete. Seriously, I've never had such a quick knit before! And it's so cute.

My second weekend knitting project is not just for Project Spectrum, it's also for the Pincushion Challenge. May is fruit-themed pincushion month so I decided to make a lime pincushion. I've been wanting a pincushion small enough to fit in my "catch-all" knitting bag (a makeup case with snippers, measuring tape, yada-yada that I can take with me anywhere) so I made a very small one. The fruit itself is made from Patons Classic Wool Merino in Leaf Green and stuffed with various wool-yarn ends (I really can't throw anything away). The leaf is made from Cascade 220 left over from my husband's funky toe slippers. I actually made two leaves (one knit, one crochet) but decided after felting to only use the smaller crocheted one.
I have an old zip-up pillow protector that I use whenever I felt anything. The only problem is that I forgot to clean all of the fuzz from felting the bowl out of the pillow protector before I felted the lime and leaves. Both the lime and the leaves ended up a slightly blue gray color. The lime was almost no longer green--it certainly wasn't lime green (I forgot to take a picture at this stage). I was about ready to scrap the whole thing when I remembered the kool-aid I bought a while back when I ordered un-dyed yarn from Knit Picks. I filled a large pyrex measuring cup with water, dumped in a packet of lemon-lime kool-aid, dropped in my lime and stuck it in the microwave for several minutes. I got a very dark lime-green lime. I'm much happier with this color, though.

I did manage to work a little bit on the aforementioned sock and purse and the bear is almost done. But I'll save those for later posts as I want at least this one post to be dedicated to completed projects! Merry month of May!
found you from flickr...love your pincoushin!
Posted by: kristin | June 01, 2006 at 10:03 PM