A Giant Squid to Knit...

It started when I saw a giant knit squid on Ravelry. Then I followed the links to the book and saw the pinata.... and I knew I was going to have to get my hands on a copy of  Huge & Huggable Mochimochi: 20 Supersized Patterns for Big Knitted Friends. 

Because how can you not need to knit a giant squid and a loopy pinata?! 

I also might need to knit Roland the pill bug.

There are a ton of other patterns that I have no urge to knit, like the giant tube of toothpaste and enormous pencil. But the squid and the pinata are more than enough for me to justify buying the book. (The  copy I've got in my hands right now is from the library.)

{Yarn Along} Which Project?

I pulled out the Mock Croc Socks, which I'd set aside halfway through the heel flap. That shouldn't be a problem, but after twenty minutes I was feeling tortured. So I pulled out the squid and spent a couple of hours knitting plain stockinette rounds. Not sure why, but wrestling the squid was a lot more fun. And I've got the latest pair of socks for when Hubby is home because I just can't bring myself to explain why I'm knitting a giant squid. 

The next two pairs of socks are chosen. This yarn's been in my stash for years, but I couldn't lay my hands on it until this week because it was hiding in forgotten knitting bags. I'm really loving my yarn stash these days. Sooner or later, a pretty new colorway will catch my eye -- and I'll totally be able to justify it because this year I'm making a much needed dent! 

Kicked to the Curb has been out for a a while now, but I just got the chance to buy a copy and read it.(Mostly because the author, Joanna Campbell Slan is guest posting for me tomorrow and I wanted to be able to say something about the book!)  I've been wanting to read this one ever since she started posting pictures of her dollhouse miniatures on her facebook page and motivated me to pull my own dollhouse furniture out of the attic.  A new character in the series makes miniatures, but they aren't a major element in the plot. The mystery deals with the theft of some historic photographs that Cara Mia is displaying at The Treasure Chest and a body found in the trunk of a car abandoned behind the Gas E. Bait across the street. It's a fun series, and I can't wait for the next book.

For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times.

Christmas Yarn

It's way too tempting to ignore the after-Christmas mess and just sit here petting my new yarn. This stuff is gorgeous! And it feels just as nice as it looks.

Weekly Stash Report 

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 52 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 102 3/4 yards
Net Added for 2014: 50 3/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week:  0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 7475 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 8919 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 11885 yards
Net Added for 2014: 4410 yards

There'll be another 1300+ yards of yarn used when I get the squid done. At this point, most of what's left is seams, so even if the project carries over into next year, I won't count the yarn used then.

Remember the list I posted last week? I'm down to the squid and Alex's low volume postage stamps. I'm expecting to get the squid done, but the quilt will probably wait til after the first of the year. If I wanted to pin-baste it right now, I'd have to invoke Eminent Domain and condemn a huge K'Nex structure that's taking over my usual spot.

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

{Yarn Along} The Squid is Growing

I'm used to lying things next to a quarter or rotary cutter to show how small the pieces are, but for the squid I had to drag out a yard stick. The legs are all joined and I'm about a quarter of the way through the head. This thing is heavy! But the end is in sight.



Embellished to Death by Christina Freeburn is a fast paced mystery that starts with the death of a scrapbooker in the parking lot of a retreat and doesn't slow down a bit after that. Knowing that there's an identity thief lurking among the croppers, Faith isn't going to stop searching for the bad guys until she's sure that they won't be able to use her customers' memories and personal information against them. I've been enjoying this series and happily read through this book in one sitting, but I don't think I'd recommend jumping in with this one. There's not a lot of backstory to explain who's who and what the relationships are.  You'll have more fun if you start with the first or second book.



Revelation Dyer and her husband Jeremy both come from families with long histories of magic. His ancestors built their wealth and fame by creating elaborate stage illusions. Her side of the family is more complicated than that. After Rev fatally shoots her husband while they're performing the bullet catch trick on a Las Vegas stage, she fears that whoever altered her pistol will come for her and her daughters next and she flees to Hawley Five Corners. The home of her ancestors, the town was mysteriously abandoned in the 1920s and has been sitting all this time, waiting for her and her girls.

I loved The Hawley Book of the Dead. It's full of atmosphere and magic and mysteries.

For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis.


Disclosure -- the publishers provided me with review copies. 

It's cold in here. I'm bundled up in flannel pajama pants and an old sweat shirt I bought at a thrift shop while I was pregnant with Alex ten years ago, fantasizing about this and that.

I found great-grandma's hairpin lace loom while Bill was tearing off the roof and I was moving boxes from one end of the attic to the other, trying to get the whole thing done before I ran out of daylight or it started to rain. And I printed out the tutorial from the Stitch Diva Studios site. Now I apparently need to find a crochet hook.

Assuming I can figure out how to actually do hairpin lace, I'll order the pattern and some yarn. Drapy dk weight, according to the pattern description. Sounds like Callista to me!

The Driftwood Victorian Shoulder Shawl is even more tempting. I already know how to knit lace, I've got the perfect yarn, and the pattern isn't too expensive (assuming I can find a place that won't charge $4.95 to ship it.

I'm resisting that temptation because I have plenty of other shawl patterns I'm not knitting and I know darn well I wouldn't cast on for this one as soon as the pattern got here. It could happen, like it did with the Callista shawl, but it's not very likely.

Ravelry and my dial up connection are playing nicely today, so I stumbled across this. I've been meaning to knit a squid hat since I stumbled across the pattern on Knitttingpatterncentral. But the felted squid is much cuter. And then I found this one. The big kids are just a tiny bit fixated on giant squids. And any stuffed animal that will eat someone's head is guaranteed to be a huge hit around our house.

Wrestling the Squid

The bobbles are getting easier, and I've almost figured out how to wrestle four skeins of yarn at once. Double stranding on a project with two colors isn't something I'd recommend, but I'm not sure how else to make this project work.

There's just SO much yarn involved. I'm hoping it'll get easier once I move on to the body...but first I've got to join the live stitches from all six arms. Twice, because there's one color for the bottom and one for the top.


I just finished That Night, Chevy Stevens's newest book.  Here's the description from Amazon:

As a teenager, Toni Murphy had a life full of typical adolescent complications: a boyfriend she adored, a younger sister she couldn’t relate to, a strained relationship with her parents, and classmates who seemed hell-bent on making her life miserable. Things weren’t easy, but Toni could never have predicted how horrific they would become until her younger sister was brutally murdered one summer night.

Toni and her boyfriend, Ryan, were convicted of the murder and sent to prison.

Now thirty-four, Toni, is out on parole and back in her hometown, struggling to adjust to a new life on the outside. Prison changed her, hardened her, and she’s doing everything in her power to avoid violating her parole and going back. This means having absolutely no contact with Ryan, avoiding fellow parolees looking to pick fights, and steering clear of trouble in all its forms. But nothing is making that easy—not Ryan, who is convinced he can figure out the truth; not her mother, who doubts Toni's innocence; and certainly not the group of women who made Toni's life hell in high school and may have darker secrets than anyone realizes. No matter how hard she tries, ignoring her old life to start a new one is impossible. 


There's a sad, hopeless feeling that runs through the entire book. A couple of days later, it's still hanging with me. My mood probably isn't helping -- I don't know if I'd have had a different reaction if I'd read it under other circumstances.

For more fun projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis.

{Yarn Along} The Socks and the Squid

Same two projects as last week, and not a whole lot of progress on either. Nothing that would show in a picture, at least.

I grew up in a family of tole painters, so of course I was going to read Fatal Brushstroke, the first book in the Aurora Anderson mystery series by Sybil Johnson. It opens with the discovery of a body in Aurora's garden, one that she recognizes by the ring and paint spatters on its exposed hand. There are a few people who might have wished tole painting instructor Hester Bouquet dead, but Aurora wasn't one of them.  She is a suspect, though, and she's anxious to clear her own name.

I love cozy crafting mysteries and this one has me wanting to buy some paint and wood and try out tole painting myself. (It doesn't hurt that we saw a booth of gorgeous traditionally painted furniture and boxes at the local Scandinavian Festival this summer.)  Even if you aren't sure quite what tole painting is, that won't stop you from enjoying the book. The main focus is on the mystery and who had reasons to do what.

Author Sybil Johnson will be guest posting here tomorrow as part of her promotional blog hop.

For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times.

Disclosure -- the publisher provided me with an ARC.

I can felt in the new washing machine! Did you hear my huge sigh of relief at about midnight last night when I was standing barefoot on the front porch and untying a pillowcase to see if the firefighter hat looked any different than it did before I put it in?



I should have taken before and after pictures, but the unfelted hat was so awful looking, I didn't want pictures of it on my blog. It was impossibly huge and it was a nasty shade of baby blue. But two wash cycles and two packs of cherry Kool Aid took care of those problems.

I've been thinking of making this hat since I first saw the pattern, but kept getting hung up over the red wool. Didn't want to use the skein I'd bought for a pair of color work mittens, didn't really want to order new stuff for a project I might never get around to....at least not as much as I wanted to spend the same money on other yarn for projects I might not get around to...

But I've had this pile of old wool that Grandma picked up at one of the auctions. It's in decent enough condition to use, but it's ugly. Especially the dingy blue skeins. I'd been planning to someday dye it and make socks or mittens for the kids, so it sat and sat until the day before yesterday I had the sudden compulsion to cast on for a fire hat.

Wonder if there's enough left for a giant squid?

Happy Holidays!

Bonnie at Quiltville is hosting a Happy Holiday linky party and invited the rest of us to share what we've been working on.  Over the past few weeks, I've been spending a little more time at my sewing machine and getting a LOT done....

Cheddar Bowties 

Chocolate Covered Cherries

Drab Postage Stamps

I've got a few more things I'm hoping to get done before the year is up. That giant squid only needs one more tentacle....and more seams than I want to think about right now...He probably won't be done by tomorrow. Not a bad thing, because I wouldn't want to wrap him.

{Yarn Along} Wrestling the Squid -- I think I'm winning!

The arms are joined and the underside is done. Now I'm working on the head.

Do you figure out in advance how much a project is going to cost? This one has crept up on me. I bought yarn...then more yarn....then the big bag of stuffing.... I didn't keep  track of the actual numbers, but I'm thinking that if I'd realized how much this project was going to cost, I might've thought twice before buying those first skeins of yarn.

If I'd read the pattern in advance, I definitely would have been scared off! But it's been kind of fun, and it's been keeping my mind occupied and if I ever had the right time to tackle a project like this one, it was now.


In Mean Streak by Sandra Brown a pediatrician training for a marathon disappears from an isolated mountain trail. Her husband waits a little longer than he should before calling the authorities, which makes him a suspect. When she awakens with a concussion, she's being held in the cabin of a man who will tell her nothing about himself, not even his name, and refuses to drive her down off of the mountain.  This sounds a lot like some of the other suspense novels I've been reading lately, but it's romantic suspense and playing by a different set of rules. There were some bits that just bugged me -- the heroine takes "analgesic tablets" instead of anything specific, and there are some awkward twists to avoid brand names, but I had a hard time putting the book down because I really wanted to know where the  characters would all end up.

For more fun projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and

Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis. 

Disclosure - the publisher provided me with an ARC.

The Siren Call of Books and Transfers

This may never, ever happen again. I have used all of the yarn that I purchased in 2014. Christmas yarn doesn't count, because it's Christmas yarn, I didn't buy it, and it was less than two months ago. But the stuff I bought myself? All used up, except for partial skeins left over from sock knitting. The squid still needs seams and half a tentacle, but the yarn is in the project.

I'm kind of proud of myself. I used up a lot of  old stash yarn and, sooner or later, I'm going to find something I really want and do some shopping and I'm not going to feel one bit guilty. Because building up my yarn stash meant that I could spend most of last year knitting from it.

What's really getting to me is the siren call of the books. Especially the ones with pretty socks and shawls. I did, just barely, resist the 40% off sale at Knit Picks.

And then I glanced at the Aunt Martha's patterns at Walmart, convinced myself that I had the one I loved at home, didn't have it at home, and made the rounds of five different stores trying to find it again. In the process, I found seven more patterns that I hadn't come across in my year of stalking the hot iron transfers at Walmart.  But I still haven't found the mermaids, so I'll keep checking every time I buy groceries.

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 2 1/2 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 2 1/2 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 34 yards
Net Added for 2014: 31 1/2 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 1600 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 0 yards
Net Used for 2014: 1600 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

This Week's Plan -- Catch my Breath!

Now that the wedding is over, the only thing on my to do list for this coming week is to catch my breath. And maybe piece a few more triangles for this black and red quilt and do some more knitting on those blue lace socks....  

I've got a whole long list of stitchy and quilty things I want to get started on, but this probably isn't going to be the week for any of that.

The Dainty Squid's recent post on dump digging has me wondering about old dumps and how far from a house they would have been and during what time period. I've got a hundred year old farmhouse and several acres of land and a kid who wants to play around with a metal detector (not to mention the metal detector itself)

Glass Beach, Kauai

I'd read that there's a glass beach on Kauai and, inspired by the posts Dainty Squid and The Only Living Girl in New York have written about a different glass beach that I know I'll never see, I was determined to find it. My husband was less enthused, but we were already close (and Kauai isn't that big to begin with) so we followed the directions in my travel guide. 

We got to what was supposed to be the right spot and I was immediately distracted by the cemetery on the other side of the narrow gravel road. The stones were shaped differently than I've seen before and I almost forgot what I'd talked my husband into looking for in the first place. 

It was hard to make out much from the right side of the barbed wire fence, but the writing was Japanese and it all looked old. Later we looked it up and found out that it's the McBryde Sugar Plantation Cemetery and a local woman has been working to uncover the gravestones, which were almost completely buried in weeds until she stumbled across them. This is why I love our smartphones! We learn so much more about the places we visit than we could have in the days when our only resource was a AAA guide.

We took a few pictures through the fence and  then walked down the hill to find the beach, which is a very narrow strip that had at least a dozen people beach combing while we were there.  I didn't see any recognizable pieces of bottles, just amazing little grains of tumbled glass.

Amazing that a garbage dump can turn into something this beautiful. (And I'm sure a lot of what was swept out to sea wasn't as pretty or as inert.)

Washed Ashore

Litter is bad. Plastic on the beach is extra bad. We can all agree on that, right? But I'm still drawn to the photos that The Dainty Squid takes of the colorful plastic bits she finds on the beach near her home. And when we saw Washed Ashore featured on the local PBS station, I knew I wanted to take the kids to see it in person. 

All of this plastic stuff was picked up off of Oregon beaches and now it's part of travelling art exhibits. The colors and amount of this that and everything else are kind of overwhelming.

I thought the teeth were impressive, then I looked down the fish's throat --

The salmon inside is just as impressive.

I can't get over how expressive the facial features are, especially the fish in the top picture and this turtle. That's a comb and abandoned shoes creating that eyelid!

If you're near one of the travelling exhibits (or on the Oregon coast), go and marvel at the creativity. You'll be glad you did...and probably also saddened by the message of the exhibit. There's a quilt shop in Bandon, too, with a Row by Row Experience pattern. Which had absolutely nothing to do with the planning of this family road trip!