Skip to main content

Jackpot!

The Advent Calendar continues to take up my knitting time and other times as well.  One of the most important acquisitions to complete this project is the white background and green tree and pockets to hold the ornaments.

This is the Yarn Harlot´s version so you have a clue what I am talking about.

Yarn Harlot´s Advent Calendar; photo credit Stephanie Pearle-McPhee
The downtown Vancouver store called Dressew has always been my go to shop for making these types of purchases in the past, but I am in the Twin Cities.  After asking around I found a store called SR Harris, another discount fabric store.  Where Dressew is a department store, SR Harris is a warehouse.  That means it was huge with bolts and bolts of all types of fabric.  It also carries buttons, ribbons, thread and decals, but boy finding just exactly what one needs without help is a challenge.  But within an hour I located the green and white felt I needed, plus all the other accessories.

Photo credit:  SR Harris FB page
Here´s the jackpot I came home with.
The green and white felt, the red buttons to hold the ornaments and the red ribbon to make the loops for the ornaments
This went to the farm with me so I could show the haul to Mom.  While there she offered up the following two ornaments to add to my growing collection.




So not only was I able to get the fabric needed, the girls will also get a couple of ornaments actually created by their great grandmother!

The surroundings at Mom´s place

Production Update:  The cats have decided my tiny ornaments are actually cat toys.  This makes photo taking a challenge if they are awake and they were both awake.   Here is a series of photos taken of the tiny stocking.  The shadow in Mike moving it as I take a picture and the now you see it, now you don´t second shot.

A gray paw moving the stocking

And it is gone
Mara found the felt a warm bed and I had to physically pick her up and move her to another bed to get the photos I wanted.  No cat hair on it though, the plastic bag saved it from that curse.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ode to the Cat

It has been six months since Mike, the cat's, passing.  I think of him every day and miss him especially when Paul is away.  Mike was a being in the house with me and we were close.  Grieving his death has been muddled with my Dad's passing and sometimes I feel guilty about that happening.  As time passes the ache becomes less hurtful for both and I am starting to get mostly good memories in its place. Recently I helped celebrate Pablo Neruda's birthday with Jami, my poet and overall very creative friend.  Guests were asked to select one poem written by Neruda to read to the small group who gathered for the celebration.  I picked this one: Ode To The Cat -- Pablo Neruda There was something wrong with the animals: their tails were too long, and they had unfortunate heads. Then they started coming together, little by little fitting together to make a landscape, developing birthmarks, grace, flight. But the cat, only the cat turned out finished, and

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms.  (BTW

Yarn Barf

It's back to quirkiness and time to step away again from the cuteness for a while.  But as you see I'm someone who slips from one to the other without much effort so anticipate this back and forth to be my new normal. A dramatization of me in the midst of my startitist frenzy Yarn barf .  I'm willing to bet you hadn't thought of putting those two words together, had you?  It just so happens yarn barf can be a reoccurring pain for those of us who use yarns that come in a skein instead of a hank.  (No pun intended regarding the current Noro virus, well maybe a little pun.) Skeins of yarn wound by the manufacturer These are hanks which need to be wound into balls  If you look closely at the picture on the right you'll see the start on the millet yellow skein at the centre right of the photo.  Its start can easily be seen coming from the centre of the skein onto the violet skein to the left.  Easy to find, right!  Sure but what about the remaining 4