Well, the Doc says no knitting till the new year. This is killing me. I can't finish any of the projects (ok, start the projects) that I wanted to give for Christmas! I'm a knitter who isn't allowed to knit!

Kill me.

But Kitten and I did find a way to get me through.

This is the Sew Easy knitting machine. Yeah, I know, a machine for knitting sucks the soul right out of it. You're right. It does. But... Even souless knitting is better than no knitting, and I can turn the crank on this baby in my wrist brace, with no pain.

So, what have I done with it? Four scarves in two days. I'm using up yarn faster than I'm buying it, which my mate thinks is amazing. The first two are silly acrylic, one with the rest of the skein of Bleeding Aorta that I used to make the Brain Condom Hat:

And one is in charcoal and white random yarn, with random stripes, and random fringe. It's a bit odd. No picture of that.

The last two were created in less than a hour. TWO scarves in an hour. unbelievable. Why did it go so fast? Because one was in Trendsetter Viola, which is so slinky that the machine ran like it was empty, and the other one was in a yarn I lost the ball band for, but was equally slinky.

Two scarves in an hour. Can't believe it. But I have friends who will love it, and so I'm happy.

The machine isn't foolproof (ok, with slinky yarn, it's pretty close, but for everything else, it's not). You have to watch it closely, and sometimes rescue dropped stitches, or, more horribly, sometimes a stitch will be streched all out, and you'll have to do some surgery to get it back to normal. But that just kind of makes me like it more. And it doesn't like splitty yarn, and you can't change needle size, tension, or number of stitches.

In short, it's a poor substitute for the real thing. But for 20$, it's good enough for me.

When you're jonesing for a hit, who cares what the quality of your drug of choice is?

Bah, Bah, black sheep...

What did I do this weekend? I went to the Southern California Handweavers' Guild show and sale with Kitten and her mother. We had lots and lots of fun. Did I buy anything?

You becha!

Three bags full!

First off, I got four more skeins of rug yarn. This is the stuff that's about 5$ a skein, and a skein weighs about a pound. I made my Not Sophie bag out of this, and it softens wonderfuly in the wash. This year I got some jewel tones to round out my 'pallet' of colors, and one lilac color I tried to put back, but it followed me home anyway. Note that the yardage on these is incredable.

At that same booth I got two watermellon sized cones of felted lopi-type yarn.

Kitten won a raffle prize, and the three of us split the two bags of Cotswold roving(from Seamus the sheep) that she got. I don't know what they washed this stuff in, but it's strongly scented of ... something. Lavender? Maybe... I can't decide.

Here's a picture of Kittens 1/3 of the wool:

At another booth I picked up two skeins of Lima, a slick linen/wool yarn. I think I'm going to try a multidirectional scarf in two colors, a kind of motley thing. We'll see. Here's the skeins rolled together so you can see the colors.

And the most exciting thing? I finaly got some felting needles, care of the Village Spinning and Weaving shop. They always have a thousand things I want, but I was good.

I've wanted to try needle felting for a while, and I can say it's all that I wanted it to be... and more. I couldn't resist trying it out last night, after Kitten's kidlets were asleep. A hour (or two) later, and a puff of Seamus the sheep's wool became a little old man head, complete with locks of white lincon as hair that you cannot see in this picture.

My god... I forsee a lot of needle felting in the future.

Which is good, because I'm on Enforced Knitting Leave.

I was digagnosed with the begining stages of Carpel tunnel. Sucks to be me. But we're taking care of it, and while I can't knit very well in my wrist brace, I can felt.

Updates in a few days, after I see if the pain slows down.

Note: I'm having problems with Blogger eating my paragraph breaks. Sorry if it's caused any confusion.

Welcome to anyone here from Blog Explosion! Leave me a comment if you are so inclined.

One more day till the U.S. election. I'm scared. I'm not going to rant one way or the other, but I am frightened for myself and my family if one of the hopefuls take the election. That's all I'm going to say about that.

I finished one multi-directional scarf, and started another. Here's what I've got after about an hour of knitting:

Fuzzy stash yarn. Acrylic, I think, but not so bad. The eventual recepiant of this scarf may end up throwing it in the wash, so I'm hedging my bets.

Here's the squirrel that I did on the emboriodery machine:

And a picture I snapped last week:

Well, that's good. Children have very small alowences. I'm glad that they don't have to pay the extravagant prices we adults do for air!