Crochet Garment Bag

Some years ago (less than 8; wish I could remember), I crocheted a garment bag for laundry purposes. I made it out of 100% cotton. Well, it finally died.

I thought, this time, I will make it out of a yarn and hope that lasts longer. I chose Baycrest 100% acrylic (manufactured for the Bay) because it’s synthetic, I’m not using it for anything else, and I have way too much of it. If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard of this, it’s because my Mom bought a lot of it many, many, many years ago to make an afghan and abandoned the idea. So, as with a lot of things she no longer has any use for, it makes its way to me.

I picked up my 4.5 mm hook and my wonderful The Harmony Guide to Crocheting: Techniques and Stitches, and began searching for a motif for my garment bag. Whilst I was doing this, my daughter spotted a lovely orange star in the book which she asked me to make for her; I’m such a push-over. The motif I chose to begin my garment bag is the Cranesbill Lace Square.

My son liked the motif I made for my daughter, so naturally, he has to have a motif all his own. I promised him I would make him the motif of his choice, too, once I had my own square done. I guess that will have to wait till another blog.

Canada Day

First, an apology for not posting on the week-end, but it was our first opportunity at a vacation since Christmas! We took an extra day off for the Canada Day week-end and went to visit my mother-in-law in Quebec; she just finished moving into a new house that could accommodate our family visits.

It was also the end of the school year. My hubby has a buddy who is a school teacher and had to throw a party to celebrate the end of the school year. Fine food (he’s quite a chef), fine wine (not getting drunk but pleasantly “happy”), and getting my ass kicked at a card game called Kung Fu Fighting (hilarious).

The kids were so good on the trip that I got to do some reading in the van. The co-op student working for me right now suggested two books by the author Khaled Hosseini; The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I finished reading the latter before the trip and got two thirds of the former read since. He is a fabulously talented author both for his moving stories as well as his ability to tell it beautifully.

In between relaxing, shopping with my mother-in-law, assembling furniture, and playing board games, I didn’t get much knitting done. I didn’t even get to paint the tea bag/spoon rest I made last week-end. Oh well, here’s a picture of the unpainted object on my son’s now broken clay canons.

Knit Purse Progress

I’m happy to say that I have completed the front half of the purse.

Here’s a close-up detailing the brick stitch I used to give dimension to the pyramid.

This was a bit of a crafty week-end; I love those types of week-ends. The kids and I were playing with modelling clay and water paints. My son is becoming quite the artist. He made an impressive pirate ship, canons, and pirate hats. The tea obsessed person that I am made tea bag/spoon rest. I can’t do just decorative; everything always has to have some utilitarian purpose. I don’t think I’ll have time to paint it today so I think I’ll post pictures on that next week.

Pyramid Purse Continued

This was nothing short of a miracle. It was the week-end in I don’t know how long that my hubby and I didn’t have to work, we didn’t have to go anywhere, and we didn’t have anyone coming over. Translation: we had a week-end to ourselves where we could actually relax and do what we wanted.

Saturday, we went to Medieval Times for the first time. They’re having a special promotion on now. It’s one kid free per every full priced adult. What a blast! My son and I had our own fun putting on a pre-dinner sword fighting show with strobe lighting swords while my daughter, the princess, did her interpretive dance in between. My hubby very kindly held our drinks and other paraphernalia.

On the knitting side, I received good news from the proprietor of Ruti’s Needlebed. Not only do I not have to keep to a Streetsville history theme, I don’t even have to keep to a history theme. She said that was really more for the quilters. Yeah!!!! So it’s full steam ahead for my pyramid purse. Here’s where I am now.

Knit Purse Competition

Last week, I was distracted by bunnies. Not much knitting. Before I get into the knitting, I have to say that we saw Kung Fu Panda at the SilverCity Mississauga yesterday and it was AWESOME! We’re definitely buying it when it comes out on DVD.

I have started swatching for the purse. I have done a few different things because I’m using various different yarns with various different gauges so I plan to change needles when I change colours. I have mentioned before that the theme for the purse competition at Ruti’s Needlebed is “History Lives”. The one thing I’m not sure about is, does it have to be Streetsville’s history? Right now, my purse wouldn’t be. If it does have to be that, that certainly constrains the design a lot and I don’t think I could meet that design criteria. Oh well, we’ll see. Here’s the swatch.

Bunny Love

With the weather being as lousy as it has been in the month of May, I hadn’t gone out to do yard work for quite a while. About two weeks ago, I went out to inspect the yard. I noticed a clump of animal fur in our back yard under the platform area of the children’s slide.

The fur looked like rabbit to me. I thought to myself, there could only be one reason a rabbit would deposit that amount of fur in one area; a warren. Last Sunday, I decided to take a peek under the fluff covering. I saw a tiny head with tiny ears surrounded by other fur bodies. I covered it back up because I didn’t want to disturb them. The next day, I saw some of the fluff covering had been removed. I went to look. There were at least five bunnies that I could count; still huddled cosily together in their warren.

The following day, they were out of the warren. There were seven of the cutest baby bunnies you have ever seen.

They only stayed with us for one day after they came out of the warren. I was so sad to see them go. I had come to think of myself as their surrogate mother. Kids grow up so fast.

The New Seven Wonders of the World

In trying to come up with a title for this blog, I solicited my husband’s opinion. He suggested something related to the Seven Wonders of the World. So I did a little digging to make sure the title would be justified. I came across this article dated July 9, 2007 at the National Geographic website. Apparently, a phone and internet vote was conducted to pick the new human-made Seven Wonders of the World. The results of the vote were released on July 7, 2007 (07-07-07; coincidence, I think not).

The winners are (in no particular order):

1. The 105-foot-tall (38-meter-tall) "Christ the Redeemer" statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2. The Colosseum in Rome
3. India's Taj Mahal
4. The Great Wall of China
5. Jordan's ancient city of Petra
6. The Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru
7. The ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá in Mexico

To my chagrin, The Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, was not in this list. There was some kafuffle with the Egyptians who were insulted that there was even a contest over this. So, competition organizers withdrew the Pyramids and granted them "honorary wonder" status. As far as I’m concerned, it is still a wonder of the world; seven is too small a number. What about Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The list goes on and is too lengthy to discuss here.

Believe it or not, this is all related to my current knitting project. A while ago, I mentioned that Ruti’s Needlebed is having a knit or crochet purse contest where the theme is “History Lives” in honour of Streetsville’s 150th anniversary. It is interesting to note that of all the items on the original list of ancient wonders, The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only remaining survivor. I would call that “History Lives”. And hence the idea for my purse; pictures to follow next week.