Toting along

Well, Mom has arrived -- despite last minute ariport shennanigans thanks to me losing my one and only car key on Thursday -- and we are settling in to a fairly knit-intensive visit. Thursday night we kicked it off with jazz band rehearsal and a visit from Wendy, who is almost finished with her Einstein Coat.

This weekend, my brother & knuknitter have been down to visit twice. Of course knuknitter brings her knitting. (I guess I will still use the name knuknitter until she resolves her naming dilema. It's either that or "the artist formerly known as knuknitter".) Friday we had family dinner and Saturday we had some friends over for pumpkin carving. Both events featured all three of us knitters clicking away and looking over the Fall Rebecca, the new Sally Melville Color book and the latest issue of Cast On.

So what did we knit? Mom is using some extra Cascade 220 that didn't make it into the mosaic tote to knit a stripey lunch-bag style purse for our felting event next Friday. Knuknitter is working on a dreamy light blue baby-sized onesie. (My brother is advocating the addition of the number 4 in a black circle to turn this very conservative item into a Fanastic Four jumpsuit. So far, no takers.) And I am working like crazy on my Mosaic Tote. This picture from Friday morning shows 6 tiers of mosaic units, as they are called in the pattern.

What a lovely lampshade! If only I'd made it with a hole at the top. After this photo, I ripped out all of Tier 6 -- the droopy green points -- and replaced it with slightly smaller mosaic units, since I thought the upper circumfernce of my bag was getting out of hand. Now I am nearly finished with on Tier 7, the last purple row. Just one mosaic unit and 26" of I-cord, and this tote will totally be ready to felt on Friday.

With the tote under control, I took a little detour tonight. After pumpkin carving, we watched Standing in the Shadow of Motown tonight, which gave me enough time to knit 4 of 5 petals in a Tina Whitmore knitwits flower kit. This kit uses Cascade Indulgence, which might be the first Angora yarn I've ever liked. Mmm. Buttery.

The flower kit is supposed to be felted by hand, so I figure that is *perfect* for a felting party. Everyone gets to experience the difference of before & after by mooshing the flower around in water until it is felty. Fun!

Tomorrow we have a fairly intensive day planned. Out the door at 8:30 for church choir, lunch in San Mateo with the fam, and then we're off to see Bat Boy in San Francisco and maybe even eat some crepes at Ti Couz. Sadly, we won't be able to come to SnB in Campbell, but I think we'll be happy with our consolation prize of campy new musical and delicious crepes!