The black hole of pink lace

As the spree continues, I have unearthed yet another project that has been taunting me for a while: the pink baby blanket of DOOM!!! (dramatic reverb)

I started it last June (or July?) for a friend's baby girl- I decided I was done with the cheap-o acrylic bulky baby yarn and that this blanket was going to be special. I did buy bulky baby yarn, but that was only to ensure that the baby got it as a "welcome to earth" gift instead of a gradation from high school gift- and after about two weeks of fan and feather and only a foot or so of blanket to show for it, I went to Walmart (of DOOM!!!) and bought some cheap-o acrylic baby yarn that squeaks when you knit it, sat down and made the blanket in one night, promising myself I'd finish the original blanket and post it on etsy when I finished it hoping to get back the money I dropped on the yarn. And now it's May. I have 5 balls of yarn and had hoped to use all of them, but at my Sunday knitting group we decided that finishing the current yarn ball (which happens to be #4) would be enough, and that sounds pretty good to me. I'll try to use the last ball on squares for a friend's charity so I never have to see this pepto-pink bulky yarn again. Okay, it's really not that bad, but I'm really tired of seeing it. I have so much I want to knit, I just can't cast on without feeling guilty for not finishing a thousand projects first, ya know? Moving on...

...to the Dolly Mama cross stitching kit. I dug this out the other day and sat down to work on it for a few minutes (all that's left is border, backstitching, and a string of french knots on the apron) and found a stain that I hadn't seen in the dark. I googled how to remove a stain from cross stitching that's not finished yet and didn't have much luck, so I ended up wetting the spot that was dirty, using my Victoria's Secret "delicates" wash, scrubbing the crap out of it (I highly doubt the stain was actual crap, this is only an expression) and then rinsing again with cold water. It's not 100% dry yet and I haven't seen it in good light, but until further notice I'm calling it healed. Border shall begin once it is dryer than dry to avoid more stains on white cloth. I'm sure I won't be so lucky next time. (In case you were wondering, this is why I NEVER knit with white yarn- I'm terrified of the stains that seem to follow me. Same rule applies for white clothing and white furniture) And moving on again...

To spinning! Here is some very pale yellow (not white!) suri alpaca/merino/bamboo, percentages of each unknown at the moment as I think the cat ate the piece of paper with the percentages on it. It's roughly 4 ounces but I'm not sure how much the cats have eaten. I'd really like to finish this tonight during my HBO time and let it sit on the bobbin for a few days to set before I ply it, but we'll see how that works. I'm not sure what it wants to be when it's graduated to actual yarn, as I always have grand plans (like socks) for handspun before I realize that weeks and weeks of spinning has only left me with a very dense 94 yards of fingering weight yarn. C'est la vie d'une tricoteuse.

And lastly for today, the sheep pillow (also filed under DOOM!!!). This pillow has been in progress for more than a year. I bought all of the rug hooking necessities at Greencastle last year and began that night. I didn't dish out the money on a frame, thinking I'd just save money and use a cross-stitching hoop. That worked well for about 3 days when the project outgrew the loop and I had to borrow Laurie's frame. That worked really really well until I ran out of fabric. There was a month-long period of sending fabric snips back and forth to the dyer before we settled on a blue that was close enough. Yay- finished the rug and decided to make it a pillow. Bought a pillow and some lovely red fabric that complemented the rug and sat down at my sewing machine to discover that the fabric and my sewing machine would just not work well together. Put it away for a while in disgust. Cleaned out my stash room last week and found pillow and it taunted me while I cleaned. Threw the pillow, the red fabric, and the sheep rug in the car and drove around town looking for someone to make the pillow out of the red fabric so I could hand sew the rug onto the front of the pillow. After 4 alteration shops, I finally found one that would do it and while I was appalled at how much it would cost to sew a 12" circle into red fabric, I agreed so I could stop searching for someone to make the pillow. Picked it up Thursday and am slowly making my way around with a needle and thread, pulling the rug on to the pillow and trying to make it look nice. This one might be good for my next birthday.