Way out in the Middle of Nowhere

MINOU14 selected by a random number generator (an almost awake 17 year old) "Quick, give me a number between 1 and 21" "One and 21" "Ha ha, try again. " so the bag will be sent off to Minou - I've added a selection of gourmet hot chocolate mixes I bought at Fibergarden last weekend. Deb has a very beautiful shop/home and runs a great Holiday retreat Thanksgiving weekend. Congratulations!!

KIP Bags by Ruddawg has gotten their 1000th feedback! In honor of this momentous occasion, I am giving away a One of a Kind KIP Bag filled with goodies. The stuff? A sampling based on the idea "A Few of my Favorite Things." What are a few of my favorite things? Well, KIP bags, of course. This one is red velvet, 10" high by 7 1/2" wide. A red velvet wrist strap allows for knitting and walking at the same time. It has a decorator fabric bottom and fancy stitching at the top to give it a more festive look. What is in the bag? The top fuzzy item is a pair of socks. Not just socks, but a pair of those fuzzy and oh so soft socks. I am a fiend for socks! I ask for a new set of socks every year for my birthday. Next is a skein of Alpaca yarn - Caramel in color. I love, love LOVE alpaca! This skein is from Blue Sky Alpacas, 120 yards of Sport Weight Yarn. The red item is my most useful tool for knitting, sewing and everything else. It's a small swiss army knife that ...

My Sister and Brother-In-Law live about 3 miles away from here. On some days, they bring out their puppy dog, Mattie to run the back two fields. Mattie gets so excited about it that sometimes she just does not want to go back home. One time in September, she got out there and didn't want to come back when called. My Brother-In-Law was hunting and finally just gave up. It was cold and rainy. I told him that when Mattie came back in, I'd take her into town and drop her off. She came ambling back about 5 minutes after he left. I put her in my car and drove through to town and she stood on my passenger seat looking out the window the whole way. I had to take a picture!

"Isn't it strange that Princes and Kings And clowns that caper in sawdust rings, And just plain folks like you and me, Are builders for Eternity? To each is given a bag of tools, A shapeless mass and a book of rules, And each must make ere life is flown, A stumbling block, or a stepping stone." - So............what'cha making?

First of all, let's give props to the mail lady for braving my front porch: Those are Asian Ladybugs, MILLIONS of them! Once a week during the soybean harvest, we get inundated by them. We end up having to use the back door to keep them from invading the house too much. Anyone want a free Lazyboy? Bugs are yours to take care of though. OK onto the package: Oh Fiber-y goodness is just ooozing out of the box! I laid all the stuff out on my stove. Close up of the upper part And Close up of the lower part: I then put it all carefully back in the box so that I can take it to open knitting at the Dragonfly tomorrow so the ladies can see all the cool stuff. Gotta go. I think there's an Asian ladybug crawling up my leg!

Is this the best pairing of fiber and bag ever seen?!?! Photo is courtesy of Into the Whirled which is giving this away to some lucky person. Just in case you missed that: CLICK ON THIS LINK TO GET INTO THE GIVEAWAY The fiber is from Into the Whirled: Click here for Etsy Shop and the bag is from Jessalu: click here for her site

Three of my good friends have decided to enjoy the thrills of parenthood. I'm excited to see them reproduce! You see, these friends have seen Alex grow from a little kid to a tall, lanky, deep-speaking teenager. I do not envy them dealing with toddlers in their 40's, but hey, better them than me! But their education into parenthood gave me some funny memories. I was explaining the need for nursing pads my friend Ang, and she looked as though I slapped her across the face. As the little offspring have made their entrance into the world, I've made some nursing shawls so that child can eat in privacy. That's a swallowtail shawl knitted from Misti Alpaca for the infant I called Survivorbaby. This one was given last weekend while we were in Milwaukee. Mom was curious at why I gave her a shawl until I explained what it's used for. Then she promptly tried it out. This one was given to the babe we'll call "Sweet Pea" Sweet Pea was the first baby born a...

I made the Kitty Pi for out largest cat, Tigger. It was a great way to use up some more handspun that my sweetie found in the back of the pantry. Looking at the pattern, I made some revisions due to the huge girth of the intended feline, and to stabilize it against the intended feline. Sorry for the blurriness of the photo. It was taken in low-light and I guess I flinched. But there lays Tigger, over-running the kitty Pi with his ...furriness. Darn, I will have to start again, with a larger bed. OH, and I got a new laptop. It's very nice and comes with a number pad! This one was about 32" across before felting. The sides were strengthend by doing the following: row 1: sl 1, k1, -repeat row 2: knit all around row 3: k1, sl 1 - repeat row 4: knit all around I repeated these rows 3 times. I think my next Kitty Pi will be larger around. I'll extend the sides by a few more repeats of the 4 rows so that it can cover Tigger better.

Sometimes things just don't go the way you've planned. The other night, a power surge took out my laptop's screen. Well, darn. It just won't light up! Ok, it does for a second, then you get butkiss. So, bring in the spare monitor. That's my setup for now. A monitor, placed on the kitchen chair right next to the laptop. Kinda makes that thing less portable too.

I am not the best blogger in the world, since I haven't posted anything new since May. Certainly things have happened in the ruddawg household. We spent two weeks traveling around Utah and Colorado. Dave, Alex and I saw Great Sand Dunes National Park, Mesa Verde, Arches National park and Dinosaur National Monument. We learned that camping one night on one spot then another in a totally different spot just is not our cup of tea. Next vacation we will plan less destinations and more relaxation time. My Nephew was given the task of watching the cats here, but was called to AIT for the National Guard 3 days after we left. He'll be back in two weeks. My sister cared for the furballs. This summer has proven to be a very slowed-down summer when it comes to work. I did not realize how much actual 'babysitting' a 16 year old needs. I liken teenagers to two-year-olds with better verbal skills. You need to be agonizingly detailed when telling them to do something. School will...

I'll admit to it; I'm a Rennie.  I like dressing up and going to Renaissance fairs.  My son usually goes with me.    Janesville, WI has a weekend Renaissance Fair and it was this weekend.  I took Alex to see the sights and learn some new swordfighting techniques.  I'm also trying out the photo section on my video camera.  I've never used it, and I do think it makes good snapshots....just don't expect great quality shots. 

Fridays here at the Ruddawg compound mean vegging-----hard core vegging.  This is what I see from my vantage point here on the couch.  The Santa dude is Dave and the long-haired dude in the back is Alex.  I sit here on the couch with my laptop on it's Tablemate. Dave and Alex are at their respective computers.  We're a family of geeks. I like to search Ravelry or play Runescape on Friday afternoons.  Dave usually is listening to an audio book and messing with Photoshop.  Alex is playing some sort of game or another.  It's an odd kind of family that is comfortable being in the same room as each other without having to actually talk. 

These are some of the things listed as my favorites from Etsy. Notice a lot of roving? I like spinning...and colors! Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade ruddawg.etsy.com

This month is the "Celtic" theme. Well, that is just down my alley! So I went out to the fabric store and tried to find a good fabric for these sample KIPs. This is what I found.   The spirals end with what looks like little clovers.  There are 48 of these sent off to be stashed in the sample boxes offered this month.   I was a bit late in getting them there as at the last minute I had an inspiration.  The inspiration was to add 2  small-sized KIP Bags into the group to be given away at random to a couple of lucky people.  Call it the Luck of the Irish! So if you get a PhatFiber box, look to see if there's a bag with balloons on it.   Here, the lucky balloon bag is shown next to a sample KIP.  

This bag was a comission from a customer who requested a bag large enough to fit her 25" square needlepoint. Her requests were that it was big, and had lots of pockets. My design was a divided bag, with sets of patch pockets that were divided into sections. The outer fabrics are a wide-wale cordouroy and a quilter's cotton in an oriental design. Inside, the quilter's cotton is the patch pockets sewn to a dark navy quilted fabric. There are 6 sets of patch pockets, each being about 20" wide and 10" high. I sewed channels for things like patterns, scissors, pens, pencils and stuff. There are 3 outside pockets that are sewn of the oriental fabric also. They are all large enough to carry full-sized magazines. There is 2 carrying options: Large handles on the top and one strap on the side. The side strap has a buckle and a ring to make the strap longer or shorter. Since there is that side strap, I had to put a zippered cover over the top of the bag to make sur...

I was contacted a few months ago about providing some samples for a sample sale.  Kinda hard to explain but I will try.  Sellers of fiber, yarn and anything knitty-handy can provide samples to Phatfiber  and all the samples will be boxed with each other and sent to people who buy them.   I ripped off her store sign , thanks Jessie!  This month, I have sent the sample KIPs with a valentine motif on them.  My sample box from January looks like this:   I've been using the samples of sock yarn, which come from bunkybobos and Actual Size Creations and oh lots more but I tore off the labels (WAHHH).  I'm knitting a mitered square blanket (shawl? , table topper?, oh I don't know yet) from the samples.  Pictures after a bit of work. 

Susan has mad skills.  She dyes these sock blanks  in beautiful colors.  I've had this sock blank for 4 months.  I casted on a pair of socks on my birthday (November 9) on size 0 needles.  This what they look like this morning.  Since my last post, I think I've knitted an inch on them.  They were taken off their circular needle so that I could use the circ on a shawl. Actually, I find it easier without the circular needle to knit them.  I just need a few more size 0 needles.   If you look at what is in my hands in this picture, you will see I am knitting on these socks.   That sleeping dude on my lap? That is my son.  He was all tuckered out from bailing the 4" of water that flooded our basement.  The pressure tank sprung a leak and we spent hours bailing water out in 5 gallon bucket increments.  It's an old basement, with no drain.  

I found out that a friend of mine is going to be a parent, so I thought I'd knit the baby something celtic as a gift.  My friend is as much Irish as I am Norwegian.  And since my Great-Grandmother emigrated from Gundbraldsen Norway in the 1960's...yeah, I'm Norweigian. I found a free pattern called "A Cardigan for Merry" which can be found here .  Which suprise, suprise is a modification of Cardigen for Arwen from Kate Gilbert.  My cabling practice is very old, so I pulled out some red yarn and cast on what it said for the baby sweater.  After knitting a few rows, I stretched it out to check my gauge.   Well, it's big enough to fit me.  That's where gauge comes in.   I'm working on worsted weight on size 10 needles.  The baby pattern says fingering weight on size 2 needles.  THATS where I went horribly wrong.  So here's what I knitted yesterday watching Hellboy for the 80th time.  I'm keeping it and making the cardigan for me.   It's just ...