How could we forget our cat quilt?

It did get finished. It really did. And, it's already been put to use. This morning, I finally remembered to drag it out onto the back lawn in the full, bright sun to take its picture.

This is the quilt that was done quilt-as-you-go. Scrappy to the extreme. Colour is such a tonic for me. Here's the back, which is much more controlled than the front. The joining strips on the front are pieced from the scraps cut from the blocks when I trimmed them to size for assembly. The strips on the back are the same fabric as the binding. I think I'll be using this quilt with either side up. I like them both.

And here's a closer look at it hanging over the rail. See the dog? That's the portrait I did YEARS ago in memory of our old dog, Daisy. I thought she'd like to be among all those cats.

And guess which block interests Inspector Cassie?

One more pompom

I've always liked this little cap design which I saw first in the book, Knitting for Peace. Now, the pattern is a freebie on Ravelry. You can find it here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/swirled-ski-cap  

It's an interesting approach to knitting what is essentially a toque. This one's in 100% wool, worsted weight. It knits up quickly.

We've got our pompoms on!

Pompoms! Up until today, I've been total rubbish at making pompoms. They're a complete mystery. My mother used to make them with a piece of cardboard. They turned out fine. Apparently, I didn't inherit the pompom-making gene. :(  I offer the floppy old pompom on the large hat below as proof.

When I was a child (maybe around 1960) I received a pompom-making thing-a-ma-jig for Christmas. Hard plastic. Lime green. Different sizes, maybe? You wound the yarn and made pompoms and then you made things from the pompoms. I've been wishing I still had that toy, quite apart from the fact that it's probably very valuable as an antique by now. But, this morning, in the mail, I got a Clover Pom-pom maker. The large size kit, with 2 plastic makers for pompoms makes 2-1/2 inch and 3-3/8 inch pompoms. And, boy does it ever work!!

I found that you can vary the size of the pompom by filling it less (or more). My first one's a little big. That's the orange/red one in the middle. For the second one, I just wound fewer wraps of wool. There was very little trimming required to get a nice round pom. I'm sold on this gadget. Cassie gives it 2 paws up, too!

These 3 hats are going to the kids way up north via the Warm Hands Network. BTW See the elephants? I guess next time I ought to put in polar bears.

Owls

We've been on a bit of a mitten jag lately. These were fun. One of the standard Scandinavian mitten styles involves a pointed tip. That pointy part just seemed perfect to us for folding over to make an owl. Two close shades of yarn make a pretty boring fair isle, but perfect for allowing the over-all 'owl-ness' of the eye details to shine through.

And then, of course, we wondered what they'd look like in miniature. Owl egg cosies. Also fun.

We didn't keep very good notes on these. We did them during our hiatus.....March, maybe? We did note that we cast on 38 stitches for both sizes. Curious, right? Worsted weight for the mittens and fingering for the egg cosies.