Wow, am I easily distracted. Someone mentions rice pads to me, my neck hurts, and the next thing you know I’m digging through the kitchen cabinets and my scrap drawer.

I am working on the tea cozy – this is the first part of the base. I absolutely love Kureyon #40, did we know that? Yeah, we did. It has already been an education experience, as I found out that M1 means something entirely different from what I had been doing. Now I am doing it correctly at least.

Now except for the blanket I’m making my daughter tomorrow, I am concentrating on getting this cozy done. I am.

Took a break from driving my web guru insane this weekend and made a pattern for a dishcloth, this one is supposed to look like a jigsaw puzzle piece. Yes? No? Close enough.

Watch for the Purple Duckie Store to open tomorrow! Right now it will feature the jigsaw quilt, and if my children allow me to get anything done today, some stitch markers.

Can you belive the only WIPs I have right now are the kureyon cozy and that pink baby hat? I’ve been too scattered with ‘real life’ to scatter myself over too many knitting projects. I’m sure that will change soon. It is a sickness. Trying to get organized to move has created a bigger scene of chaos than normal here in the Craft Pit as well.

Another finished object! Actually I finished this and sewed a sling yesterday, but I was so excited to get the sling in the mail to my friend that I forgot to take a picture of it. Dur. Here is the all cotton star blankie, done in white on white and pastel variegated. It is much prettier in person, and my photography skills are bad enough without trying this pre-caffeine. Never again.

My Kureyon (colorway #40, yum) arrived yesterday, so next up is the tea cozy. I did try to start it last night, but it was way too late at night to be doing one of these projects that start with eight stitches on four needles. Today is a new day and a fresh start.

Finally, at the very last possible moment, I finished the puzzle quilt. Overall am pleased with how it turned out, and definitely learned quite a few things while making it.

I also re-dyed that yucky looking yarn, so now it is really deeply hued yucky yarn.

Not too much else accomplished. The sewing machine bit me and removed a chunk of finger yesterday, making knitting and, well, anything quite painful. Mostly I am sitting here staring at the craft room not even knowing where to start packing it up to move next month. This is the one area in my life where I am a total packrat. Bleh.

Wow, I finished something! That giant tote bag is done, done, done. By giant I mean this thing almost covered my dining room table before felting:

After felting, it did in fact turn into a nice bookbag sized…thing. It could probably use a shave, but that’s not a top priority right now.

Top priority is getting this puzzle quilt together by the end of the week. Nothing like procrastination to fuel the creative fires. It is too embarassing to admit how long it took me to figure this thing out, really. Right now I just have the top pieced together, tonight I will cut out some roundy bits to applique in appropriate spots tomorrow and this will (yes it will, or else) look like a jigsaw puzzle by tomorrow afternoon.

Then, it was evening, I can’t sew at night until we move into the new house, because the machine would wake up the children with our current setup. Absolutely nothing must be done that can wake up the children. It’s important to my sanity.

I didn’t really feel like knitting or crocheting, but my hands needed to be playing with fiber. Perhaps Lisa is right about me needing to learn to spin. She’s always right, isn’t she? Bah.

Anyway, I decided to attack this poor innocent 1/2 skein of fisherman’s wool with some food coloring. Why I thought this would work out for me after so many previous failures, I cannot say. It looked just fine, and using the wide bowl and the mug in the center I felt rather confident about keeping the colors from mixing too much.

Added the boiling vinegar water stuff, and started with the dyes. I had all of the colors lined up in exactly the order I had thought and rethought so that they would all blend nicely without any hideous blue/gray/green happening. So first, blue.

Didn’t take long for me to grab the wrong color at the wrong time, and everything went horribly awry.

Here is the poor abused yarn hanging to dry today. Kind of looks like a hairball yakked up by a mutant alien, doesn’t it? I will never attempt this again. Must be accepting of my craft limitations and let go of the dyeing dream. Really.

So I finally have become obsessed with finishing something and not starting another freaking WIP. The giant random tote is now getting a handle, and hopefully will be felted this weekend. I am using size 15 needles on this part, my first venture beyond size 10.5. They feel really weird. Fortunately my next project is a tea cozy on size 7 needles, my most favorite size. A size I may even be needing a twelve step program to stop from acquiring. But that’s another story. Here’s the bag.

I have had no time for playing with my new sewing machine since I got it, and that is starting to make me angry. Let’s set a goal of making at least some hats this weekend, ok? Sure. Something to do while the giant tote dries.