Shield My Eyes - Oh, the Pain! The Pain! OK, the Scarf is Done

Well, fellow knitters, I managed to finish - almost - that scarf that I was making for my sister-in-law. It turned out very scarflike. I hope she'll approve. So, now that the knitting part is done, I want to add an embellishment. A felted flower. I found a way cool set of instructions at:

http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter06/FEATwin06FK.html

Here's a picture that I stole from the instructions:

Now I just need to troll through the Salvation Army and United Way stores to see if I can find an off-white angora sweater that can be the basis of my felted flower.

I've piqued your interest, haven't I? You want to know what the scarf looks like. Well, let me just say that when I started it, I tried using a circular needle that I had floating around, and quickly realized that I was in over my head. So my cleaning lady and I set out on a mission to find all the circular needles that were floating around the house.

The fact that I don't knit, or at least that I shouldn't knit, has not stopped me from acquiring knitting needles. I found a batch of circular knitting needles at a garage sale, and then they sort of got misplaced. So we found all the knitting needles, including one that I bought after I sat on one of my Mom's knitting needles. And then I handed them all over to Mom, because I think they're safer that way. I've broken two of her knitting needles (so far) and bent one so badly that it almost looks like a circular needle. But that's between us, ok, don't go telling Mom. She'll figure it out someday when I have to have a needle surgically removed from my butt.

Here's the scarf so far. I haven't blocked it, because, quite frankly, I don't know what blocking means. I hope it's kosher to give it a little stretch. My sister-in-law is a graceful gazelle of a girl, at least a foot taller than me, so I don't want it looking like she's wearing a muff around her neck. Oh, and I have some ends hanging off of it. I figure I'll ask Mom to help me finish it off once I've found my angora sweater soon-to-be  shibori felted flower:

For my next project... hmmm... well, my sister is visiting until Sunday, and I'd like her not to realize that I've become addicted to dyeing fiber, so I hid all the stuff I've worked on over the last two weeks in my bedroom. There are six laundry baskets filled with drying fiber. "The rest of the fiber?", you ask. Ummm... well, all the dry stuff is tucked away in bins in my son's man-cave. She'll never go in there.

There's a big plop of the very last of the bunny fiber in the laundry room sink. I'll wash that out after she goes to bed and then set it to dry in my bedroom. Boy, did it turn out nice - it's a definite forest green.

I think this means that I should start preparing all that alpaca that my friend Edie brought over. I've done Step 1 already (Step 1, as you'll recall, is puttng it in the dryer with no heat and shaking out the dust bunnies, and then vacuuming up all the dirt that lingers in the dryer afterward). Step 2 is picking the junk out of the fiber, my least favorite job. Step 3, wash it. Ack. No, I don't think I want to do that. I think I'll finish carding my caramel alpaca fiber, and then I'll move on to carding up some of the dyed fiber. That sounds infinitely more soothing.

PS - good news, I found a nice article about blocking, so now I know what that is. Mom had me handwash the cowls, wring them out a tad in the washing machine's spin cycle (I put it on delicate, hoping that would help), and then I laid the cowls out on towels to finish drying.