CupTeaLuv?

Saturday I signed up for a Moebius bowl class (from the Cat Bordhi book A Second Treasury of Magical Knitting)…. what’s one of them you ask???

Here is the picture of my (drying) moebius bowl… Beth (my favorite sock teacher) was the teacher for the class — there were 3 of us (a 4th had the cheek to join after the class was more than 2/3rds of the way finished!!) — myself and two grumpy old ladies… poor Beth!! It was great fun for me — I love learning new things and this class taught me several new things!! I learned a new casting on technique (casting on is when you add the stitches for the first time to your needles) and also how to do a moebius (the twisted strip) and how to do the handle for the bowl (you actually knit a scrap yarn into the moebius strip and then later pick up stitches either side of that yarn, then you cut the yarn out and that gap creates the mouth opening for the bowl!! So clever!!) and I learned how to do an I-cord bindoff (binding off is when you are taking the stitches off the needle — finishing the project!) which I really like the look of but flippin’ eck it took forrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrevvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and it was my first time knitting with huge bulky yarn on huge needles (10.5s) and I got to use my new KnitPicks circular needles and my new KnitPicks 10.5 double pointed needles — big stuff!! Which is fun because big yarn + big needles = fast completion!! And it was too — during the class I was able to finish the handle and get two rows of the actual bowl done… then later that evening while Andy and I watched a (pretty rubbish) film called Resident Evil: Extinction (I love how when I’m knitting during a movie it doesn’t matter how BAD the movie is!!!)… I finished the bowl part except for the last task.
Then last night I took it over to Mom & Dad’s to show Mom what it looked like pre-felting… I cut the thread and wove it through the remaining loops and then pulled it tight and wove it in, and wove in all the other loose ends… and then Mom & I took to the task of felting it in her washing machine — it only took two times to felt it up, then I put the balloon (!) inside of the bowl, blew it up (so that the bowl comes out nice and rounded) and we put it through a cold rinse. Then I brought it home, Andy took some photos of it (it was his photo-of-the-day) and then I left it aside to dry… when it’s sufficiently dry, I will pop the balloon and take it out and we go back in 2 weeks to learn how to do needle-felting to do some sort of design on the outside of the bowl!! Since this one is for Andy’s Mum’s bday, I will probably either do a flower or an “H” or something… maybe a “S” for Serena — her name….?

All I wanted for Christmas was a comfy overstuffed chair and a nice floor lamp (halogen) for working on my knitting and cross stitch — in my craft room.
Because it took us longer than we thought to find what I wanted, the chair wasn’t ordered until this past Wednesday. It will be delivered next Wednesday at some point — they’ll call on Tuesday to let me know what time slot I have.
I thought it was funny that Andy got me a Hallmark ornament — so that I would have a chair to open on Christmas morning…
He took a pic of it for his daily challenge… here it is… although my chair doesn’t look much like it — it made me laugh — it actually reclines and everything!! I will post a pic of the actual chair when it is in place!

this is from my favorite webcomic XKCD — check out reason number 8…