Slippers

French Press Knits is having a giveaway on their adorable slippers, visit FPK for more information!!!!

Hill Country Yarn Crawl 2009

Even though I am very new to knitting, I decided to take part in the yarn crawl to see and learn more about what is out there, plus just have some fun with new friends and do some christmas shopping.
SO far if its the first day and I went to three shops so far, before work. My mom and I drove out to Yarnorama in Paige, Tx. There we met the Angora Bunnies and I found some pretty blue and green local tx wool and my mom found a sweater type thing that she wanted, so I bought the pattern, and that will end up as her xmas gift. As part of the crawl, each shop has a little give away project which I picked some green yarn and received 3 patterns for hats to make with it.
Next stop was Bluebonnet Yarn Shoppe in Cedar Park, TX

Another neat store with a lot of crazy yarns, I almost bought some yarn that was kinda like fluffy party paper, but not like rafia more like crepe paper. I only didnt buy it because of price and I wasn't sure what to practically do with it. I did find some very soft white and black yarn. Their give away was a scarf pattern and some multicolored yarn.

Then my mom dropped me off and I went to south Austin early for work so that I could stop at the stores down there. I only ended up seeing Hill Country Weavers on South Congress. That was really almost an overload of yarn. It is a neat little old house that has a lot of little rooms stacked to the ceiling with yarn. I think they pretty much had everything there and what was really special was their Alpaca room with super soft bulky alpaca. I decided to get some mohair and their giveaway was a whole booklet of patterns that the employees each made a pattern for, and then a skein of Happy Feet in the color of your choice.
I wish I had more time to spend at all of these stores but the day started out super rainy and alas, I have to work to buy this stuff. I think I will try to stop by these stores again over the long weekend. Tomorrow I am heading south of austin to several of the out of town shops with some of my knitting group ladies.

Darn

I have been telling myself for about 6 months that I want to learn to knit and I finally bought some yarn and needles and taught myself. I started off casting off for ages one night because that is what I could decipher on youtube videos and knittinghelp.com.
The next day there happened to be a MeetUp.com group meeting close to home so I went there and got help to really get going beyond the first row. Now I have been to several of the Austin Knitting and Crochet MeetUp . Everyone has been so nice and helpful. I don't think an actually class would be good for my learning style right now, since I just need practice so i enjoy that informal meetups where I can still get guidance on problems. Maybe I will take some more advanced or project oriented classes later on.
For now, I am working on a papoose type blanket that will be a blanket with a hood, no sleeves though. I have fallen inlove with all the yarns. There is a store named Gauge just a block away from me and I stopped in last week, let me say, wonderful! They had yarn that was just beautiful in every color, color combo, texture and material. I didn't buy anything yet because I have plenty of cheaper stuff to play with for now.
I bought a huge spool of white cotton from Sugar'n Cream. Several nice colors of organic cotton and a plain cotton that is a green and white ombre.

Some Artist Trading Cards

These are just a new project I have been doing. Mainly it is good for being a little creative and taking my mind off of all the serious things going on. You basically can sign up with groups of people to do swaps, a hostess picks themes/assignments and lays out the rules, then you complete a certain number of these cards that are the size of baseball cards and mail them to the hostess. She then swaps them all out and mails you one each of everyone else's cards.
Ask me if you are interested in joining in on the fun.
Unfortunately, I mailed off some of my favorites without getting a picture...:(

Retro Wallpaper

I was inspired by some color combos and patterns that inspired me to make these sort of 1950s wallpaper cards.

Diorama Cards

Just played around with some Diorama Cards