today I attended a workshop for the Mother Bear Project. If you haven’t heard of Mother Bear yet, they collect hand knit bears and send them to children in need in developing countries. I managed to get about 1 1/2 of his legs done during the workshop. He’s going to have green pants and a shirt in orange, yellow and brown. Haven’t decided on his face yet. I’ll post a pic when it’s finished.

bit of an update post…
- last week, Michael’s had LB Wool-Ease on sale. but not in the colors I wanted. grr… I ended up getting a few balls of it anyway. I plan on making the cat bed from SnB with it one of these days.
- went down to Milwaukee to visit some friends for the Thanksgiving weekend. no turkey, actually not much in the way of a traditional turkey day. it was weird. grabbed a newspaper to check out the ads.
- Friday shopping… in addition to buying some cheap-after-rebates computer stuff, I went to Michael’s and picked up a Knit Snowflakes pattern booklet. also went to Half Price books, where I picked up Knitting in Plain English and The Joy of Knitting Companion. haven’t looked at KIPE yet, but so far I like the Joy book. also picked up some of the Fun Fur on sale at Joann’s for the above mentioned cat bed. later in the day I went back to Joann’s to pick up some of the crochet thread for the snowflakes. also checked out Accents - they have a huge selection of yarns, at least compared to most general craft stores I’ve been to.
- I started working on the first snowflake in the booklet. screwed up a few times, so I think I ripped and restarted at least three times. Made it through four points, thought I had a mistake, left it for a bit, came back and forgot about the mistake and continued knitting. on point six, I realized I had a mutant snowflake (point five was the wrong direction, and point six was growing out of point five oddly). so I ripped back to four and now I have to figure out which line of the pattern I’m at to get it to go right.
- also made a bit of progress on the Voodoo’s. I’m almost to the thumb-hole on number one - just need to decide how long I want to make it.
- started a scarf for my aunt. I’m using an off-white acrylic that I got on ebay. It’s in a broken rib pattern (I think).

Well, I finally decided that if I wasn’t going to work on the scarf, then I should redo it. So I started from the other end of the two balls of yarn, and am working 12 stitches wide on size 11s (the previous attempt was 20 stitches on size 10s). Turns out I have a nice habit of casting on too tight, so it’s a nice size the first two rows or so, and then it becomes its true size. So yeah, I cast on at least 3 times due to it still being too wide or making a mistake (miscatching one strand of the two yarns, and not being able to figure out where it was supposed to be). We’re making progress. =) I’ve decided to be creative and occasionally knit a small section with just one of the yarns. Kinda fun.

In other news, the Voodoo’s are making some nice progress without me fully realizing it. lol! I’ve got about 3 1/2″ already.

oh, and non-knitting news. over the weekend, I made some votive candles and tarts scented like Polo cologne for my sister. the downside is that the color dye plotted against me, and so they turned out a really nasty brownish green color. maybe I can find a colored holder so she won’t have to look at their ugliness and can just enjoy the scent!

oh, and in other non-knitting news, today I made bread. from a box, with yeast. what a fun sticky mess that was! but it turned out good and tastes yummy. I want to make more!

so after about the third try of casting on, I am now making some nice progress on the Voodoo’s. first time I forgot to rib it, 2nd time I was short two stitches, and the current time, I somehow managed to add two stitches to one needle, but it was within the first few rows, so I fake-fixed it. thankfully it’s not noticable unless you’re looking for it.

I also finished the ‘caterpillar’ scarf for my sister. I love it, it’s so soft and fuzzy! I think I’ll need to find some colors I like of that yarn and make one for myself. =) [for photo & details, see Dec 13 post]

last night I went to JoAnn’s to exchange the dpns I bought. for some bizarre reason I had it in my head that I needed sizes 5 & 7, so for some reason I picked the 7s. I can’t figure out why, since both projects I want to make at the moment need size 5. so back they went for the right size. then I went to Michael’s (it was right up the road and en route to the budget theatre - I saw Wimbledon. cute movie.) anywho, I bought some more dowels - so I’ll soon have size 7, 11, 13, and something between a 15/16. and I used my coupon on some Moda Dea Sassy Stripes yarn in color 6997 (the skein looks nothing like the little pic to me, so we’ll wait and see how it turns out).

So I’ve just cast on for the Voodoo Wrist Warmers. I learned a new cast-on - the long tail method. So far I like it better than the other way I’ve been doing, but we’ll see once we start knitting.

So yay! My first time using that cast-on and my first time using double points. Fun stuff!