deceptively packaged

New digs

Howdy all, I'm moving this here blog to a new location. I'm tired of managing the extra identity and trying to keep it completely separate from the rest of my online goings ons, so come on over to ellie <3s crafts. I may or may not migrate some or all of the posts here over there depending oh how private I felt they were. So update your bookmarks and feed readers because this URL will be broken fairly soon. xoxo - Ellie

The tubular cast on is so pretty!

Two Craftypods worth

And now I'm off to read some Cryptonomicon and have some ice cream.

Ribbit, ribbit

Going down a needle size...

Very large swatch

Yeah, it said to swatch. But it said to swatch on the pattern! Pft. So I dove in. I don't love the look of the ribbing at this gauge. You can see the ribbing of the shirt I'm frogging looks much nicer. But it does appear to be Ellie sized. So I'm proceeding for now...

Guild Color Challenge

My weaving guild is doing a color challenge. Here's our picture off to the left. I've had some of the yarns picked out for a while, but I finally got around to picking a pattern (waffle weave dish towels), finalizing the yarns, and figuring out all the details like sett, number of ends, etc. The variegated yarn will be my weft. The yellow should wind up peeking out of the middle of each waffle. I had something peachier in place of the orange, but I was worried there wasn't enough of it and then a friend also pointed out that it might end up acting different than my other yarns due to its structure. So I swapped it out for this orange that is more similar both in size and texture. It is darker than my tan though, so I'm interested to see how it turns out. I may swap their order. Now I'm waiting to see if anyone in my guild has a different reed for me to borrow. I've got a 6 dent reed in there now and my sett is 20, so I'm hoping to borrow a 10 or a 20.

Next up

I finished the red scarf I was working on at weaving guild meetings (I still need to weave in all the ends), so I needed another easy project.

I'm also on a frogging kick of stuff I wasn't wearing. So my next challenging project:

Clapotis Scarf

Is done!

Yarn: Esther Bitran Hand-Dyes Antuco. 126yards/100 grams per skein. 3 skeins.

Needles: Size 5 (? I forget...) circular from my Denise kit.

Pattern: Clapotis

Finished: January 2009

Notes: I only did one repeat of the growing part to get this width.

Giving up on Something Green

I was so convinced this was a pattern for me. It seems so very much like something I would wear. But this is my second fail, so the pattern went in the recycling bin and this yarn will eventually be reborn into another licorice whip. (Now there's a sweater with a nice fit!) It just turned out frumpy and wonky. It's too short everywhere and too big in the arms. It wraps up funny in the front instead of laying straight (apparently from a too tight cast off and/or not picking up enough stitches in the collar). Looking at the other Something Red's on Ravelry makes me feel a little better though. I wasn't really loving too many of them. So off to the frog pond with this loser!

Soup soup soup

Cold weather makes me make soup. I took an evening last weekend and made 3 different ones and froze them for lunches.

An Italian garlic potato soup:

A lentil and chard soup:

A black bean, coconut milk and lime soup: