Devvy from Knit Wits holding Talia Grace in her new "Ice Cream" hat.

Saturday our LYS was having a 15% off on all of the yarns. So, I was in there and I had just told Heatherly (our knitting teacher, the one that just had the baby girl, and the baby shower is at my house tonight) that many of the ladies had said maybe we could make something for the baby, but then the next comment was that Heatherly was such an expert knitter and we weren't sure we could make something that would be nice enough. Heatherly emailed me and said thank you for the compliment but she was kind of sad that we felt that way. So, upon thinking about this I saw this yarn called "Ice Cream" and thought I could at least knit a hat and some booties for the baby and this is what I ended up with. The booties have a pattern in two sizes and I made the larger one which looked pretty big to me, but since Talia ia already a month old I figured she could always grow into them. We are all looking forward to the baby shower and I am trying to get my house cleaned up! Devvy at Knit Wits (LYS) invited me down because the Trend Setter Rep was there and she wanted me to come look at the yarns that he had. I told her that "we live in our house and I am trying to make it look like it
isn't lived in". Anyway, I pretty much got things in order. I still have to go pick up the cake. Jen is picking up a gift at Target and so we will have fun especially since we are all knitters. The cake says "Will Someone Please Teach Me How To Knit!" I will take some pictures and post them later.
I have also been working on a scarf from Baby Alpaca Brush in a brown color. I think I should have used a larger needle in order to see the pattern, but maybe next time. I don't think I will frog this as it is close to being finished and since it really turned cold here today I want to wrap it around my neck. It looks like I was successful at transfering a picture of this project. The color of this yarn is so pretty. The other thing I did this weekend was to work on another hat. I bought some Baby Alpaca Bulky yarn for some hats. One was started in green and finished in pink, the second one was started in pink and finished in green, (Jen made both of these on our last trip) and there was some yarn left over so I made the green, pink, green, pink one. I love this yarn. It would be so nice to have something to wear in this yarn because it feels so wonderful next to your skin.
Winter has certainly set in effective this Thanksgiving weekend. I would say as of Saturday the temperatures dropped down to 32 degrees at night and today it is really cold and I am running around the house like a chicken with my head cut off. I also worked some more on the felted hat and Buffy's cat bed this weekend. My husband left on Saturday to go to our friends and help with their computer so I was home alone with the three cats and two dogs. I knitted and knitted until my hands hurt and then read "Knitting" a novel. So, it was a great weekend. I'll try and post some pictures of the baby shower tomorrow and hopefully a picture of Heatherly and Talia.

The baby booties and the hat were completed and are now in Costa Rica. I really enjoyed making the blanket and the hat and the booties so much that I want to make more baby things. I know of another baby due in March and I will begin working on that gift after the Christmas season has passed.
I am currently working on a simple scarf with a pretty pattern. I am using a beautiful brown and deep orange alpaca yarn. Because of the thickness of the yarn it is a little difficult to see the pattern, but it will be very soft around the neck. My friend Heather said that I have "startitis" because I am always wanting to start new projects. I am going to get some of them finished over this four day Thanksgiving break from work. I am cooking a turkey and a few other things tomorrow. It will be just my husband and my parents. My brother is entertaining his entire wife's family so we won't see them this time around. I am thinking that I am going to enjoy the smallness of our get together. Our office is closed until Monday so that's fantastic. There are three knitting projects I am going to work on this weekend. I will work on Yirley's sweater, my slippers and the felted hat. There are other projects that need to be completed, but if I can finish those three I will really be happy. Monday we will have a baby shower for our knitting queen Heather and her baby girl.

"Little Boy Blue" is finally complete! I am really pleased with the way this baby blanket turned out. I might even consider making another baby blanket in the future. I really enjoyed the baby brushed alpaca to work this blanket with. So, I immediately started the hat and booties after completing this. I wish that I could say that I completed the hat and booties but I can not quite say that. I finished the hat and one bootie. The second bootie is completely knitted and just has to be seamed together. That will be done in the early morning hours when I can focuse a little better. I will try to post a photo of the progress here. Actually, when I took this photo I had not finished the first bootie. Since then I have completed it. So, after the second one has been finished I will take pictures of the two of them together.

I did a few more rows or inches on "Little Boy Blue", but for some reason I just didn't like the way it was looking. So, I went back to the LYS and started looking at other options. I did purchase a different yarn. It is baby alpaca and it is so soft. I think that my only concern is that it may be a little warm for Costa Rica, but then when you use natural fibers they have a tendancy to breath so I am thinking it will be just fine. I like the color of this yarn much better. Now, the real question is will I be able to finish it in time to give to Victoria on Sunday. Today is Tuesday night and I am done for today but will start again early in the morning. I haven't worked on any other projects. I didn't even go to my weekly knitting get together because I thought that I would make mistakes if I started talking, so I just stayed home and worked on it. I think I made pretty good progress.
Well, today is Thursday 11-17-05 and I am getting down to the wire on "Little Boy Blue" I have worked on this blanket several hours of every day way into the late hours. When my eyes get a bit tired, I put it down because I don't want to make mistakes. Overall, I am very happy with the way this yarn is working out. I love the feel of it and it has totally been a pleasure to make it. My thoughts when knitting this blanket are really focused on Dani, her baby, Patri, Lucy, Victoria and Luis. I can't think of a family that is so special and I am happy to have them in my thoughts so much. Enough time off, back to knitting. Hopefully I will be able to finish this today, wash it and block it so it will be ready on Sunday to give to Victoria. If I can get moving I might have time to make some booties and a little hat. But if not, I can mail them later. This picture on the left snuck on this blog and I don't know how to remove it. Heather if you are reading this and know how to make it go away, that would really be nice. Just kidding, you don't need to do that. I have made it small enough.
chris- what did you do? i am trying to figure out how to get ot off. new skill to learn!~heatherly
update- i think it maybe gone now. gonna post this and check. btw-you were right. it is beautiful in the alpaca...worth the switch. and you kicked butt on it! awesome job!
~heatherly~

Good Morning. I thought that I would talk a little about this baby blanket that I am attempting to make. It is called "Little Boy Blue" and the picture in the book is very pretty. However, this it the first time I have knitted with acrylic (100%) and it handles so much differently that a yarn with some wool in it. I wish that I would have chosen a different yarn. One that I saw in the LYS yesterday was Baby Alpaca. Now, the price is quite a bit higher. Then I saw some beautiful yarn that would have made a simply stunning baby blanket, soft and loveable but $13.00 for 100 yards and I will need about 1,300 yards total for the blanket. There was a different yarn that I saw that I could have used that had a small percentage of wool in it and for some reason I didn't even see it when I bought this other yarn. I debated ripping it out and starting over, but at this time I am about half way done. I am making this for my lovely niece in Costa Rica. She will be having her baby in January but her mother and sister and aunt will be here next week and I so wanted to have it completed so that Victoria can take it back to Dani. Based upon all of this I made the decision to continue. But here is a picture of where I was yesterday morning when I was ripping out a few rows because of a mistake. :-) This picture is just before I take out about 6 rows to get back to where the mistake was. Now I have to get the needle back on. This is always fun. I don't think the color of the blanket looks like the color that it really is with the picture taken on this table. I will try another place next time I update my progress.

This is the moebius that I originally wanted to make for Linda. The problem that I have discovered when making these moebius creatures is that you really do not know what they are going to look like until you cast off the last stitch. In this case, the smallest 47" needle I had was a size 9 and I think that this would have turned out really nicely if I had used and 8 or possibly a size 7. It is all good practice though. I will wrap this one around my neck. I will have occasions to wear the red, white and blue.

Okay, looks like I got all four of them together. Each one was made by doing the moebius cast on of 150 stitches. This automatically turns into 300 stitches. The basic pattern that I used was to knit 8 rows, purl 8 rows and knit 4 rows. I then did the cast off in the applied I-cord which I totally love. It does take some time because you have to handle each stitch three times so these 300 stitches now turn into 900 repititions to do the cast off. This cast off gives the scarf some extra strength on the edges because you cannot stretch it out of shape. Later today I will post some pictures of the Moebius Cat bed that will stand a chance of being completed now that these are done, and the baby blanket for Dani's baby.

I think that I am running out of things to say. This is the pastel mohair that I was talking about. Lucky for me this yarn came into the LYS just when I needed it. I really like the way the mohair drapes and I also enjoy knitting with it even though it leaves a few fibers all over what you are wearing. As you may have guessed by now, this moebius was made for Linda.

Just in case you couldn't figure it out, this is the red soy silk moebius that I made for Linda. I tried to transfer all of them at the same time but I have to do each one by itself. However, at least I am able to get pictures up here. Now that is a big accomplishment.

This is the Moebius scarf for Linda. She is the only one that I only made one for. The other three gals I wasn't happy with the first one I made them so created another. I have all of the rejects but don't think I will post pictures of them. We have to have some projects that we can keep to ourselves. :-)

This is the beginning of the mohair moebius that I made for Winnie. I felt a little pressured to get this one done as the first one that I made for her I wasn't totally happy with so had to crank out another in a hurry. Fortunately knitting is relaxing even if you are under pressure to finish the project. I will post some other pictures of the ones that I made for Linda, Linda and Linda. Now at least it isn't hard to remember their names.

What happened to the month of October? That went by fast. We only had about 60 kids come to our house on Halloween. That is so great. When we first moved here almost 9 years ago we had over 400 the first year! We ran out of candy, then I got creative and gave out packets of hot chocolate and finally we just had to turn off all of the lights. My tenure as president of a local club will come to an end next Thursday. That will be my last meeting as President. Oh yessssssss!!!! I cannot wait. But that being the case, I have to give my officers gifts for all of their support and help this last year. I could not have done it without them. Great group of ladies let me tell you. I decided that I wanted to knit something for each of them. That can be kind of interesting because you have to kind of know their personalities and then go from there. And, certain colors for certain people. I decided to make the Moebius scarves. I had made one with King Cole Mohair and it hung so nicely that I decided I wanted to use that yarn again. My LYS sold the last of their King Cole to my sister in law and so I got to help them pick out colors to order. That was great because I was able to get four that I really wanted to make. One of my ladies wears a great deal of pink, so I was thinking I should make something pink for her. Well....I couldn't find what I really wanted so tried a yarn out that just about drove me over the deep end. Just kidding but it was extremely difficult to knit with. I will tell you later the name, as I am in my house and the yarn is in my office. At any rate I finished this scarf and it just didn't look like Linda. So, back to the drawing board. Lucky for me the LYS had ordered a beautiful pastel King Cole and so I completed one in that. I love the way it hangs. When you make them out of Mohair, they are not heavy and you can do so much with them. Another Linda is going to get one made from some soft black yarn with some glitter in it. She is tiny and petite and hopefully I didn't make this scarf to large for her. If it is I will go back to the drawing board with it as well. Then the other Linda (yes, there are three of them) wears so much red and blue so I am making her a red one. The fourth one is for Winnie and I decided to make her one in some beautiful fall colors. I will take pictures of all of them when I have finished and I am going to hire someone to come and get the volumne fixed on my computer, install my new printer and install my Kodak docking station. Yes, I have done all of the above before, but the frustration level when I do these things reaches an all time high so I am going to pay my friend Heather's father to do this work for me. What a joy it will be to be able to post pictures of my completed work. Another cool thing that is going to happen is that I am going to go to a yarn trade show in January with the owners of my LYS. Excited,,,,,to say the least.
I don't know if I ever told you how I came about getting the name lacyzigzag? When I decided to do the secret pal thing I had to set up the blog. You all know about that. The cool names that I was thinking about were already taken. So, I was looking through a pattern book of various stitches and found a pretty one called lacy zigzag. That is how my blog was born. When I get my camera and docking station hooked up I will post a picture of the stitch.
I have been spending my Saturdays and Sunday afternoons down at the LYS, but today I think I am going to stay home and try to clean up a corner in my bedroom so that I can put a bookcase there. You see, I have so many knitting books and no where to put them. I have the corner behind the door cluttered with clutter. Time to go through and throw things away. I am motivated because I want easy access to all of my knitting patterns and until I have my own room....not in the forecast...I better make good use of the spaces that I have. Besides that, I hate clutter.
Last weekend I got an email from the SP hostesses and they asked me if I would be an angel for a lady that had not received anything from her SP. So, I said sure I would do this. This SP has a yarn stash that makes me want to go out and buy buy buy. So, on Monday I put together a good size package and took it to the post office on Tuesday. I was feeling sad for her because she had not gotten anything. Now after all of that, her SP came through. Imagine that. It is a little irritating that a SP would wait so long. I mean....what's up with that. My SP has been very gracious and she has sent me lovely things. I haven't been able to post pictures because of well you know the story the camera and docking station.
By the way SP if you happen to read this I just want you to know that I use that little project bag all of the time and I love it. I was able to find something similar and ordered some more because they are so much nicer than a zip lock bag!
Enough for now.