5elementknitr: One Last Frog...

Still fighting with the Hateful Bed Jacket. The sleeve that was too short before was still 4 stitches too short. It may not seem like much but part of that 4 stitches is a lacy bit so it was almost 2" too short. sigh. I could've folded the long part on the back of the sleeve in and sewn it down that way or I could've tried to force/ease in the extra but I've struggled with it this far that one last rip and redo wasn't going to be that big a deal and I want this to be, well, if not perfect, at least well done.

Here comes lots of pictures - hope you don't have dial up!

I've been receiving a lot of REALLY good yarn for my yarn bouquet! If you're new here, I'm putting together an enormous yarn bouquet for my kids' school's Silent Auction. I have a contest attached to it and you can win this pattern and the yarn (in the colors of your choice) to make it...

The details for this contest are here.

So far I've gotten two packages from the lovely Sophanne. I've already pictured the first one, here's the second...

There's some lovely Alpaca and some Rowan Chunky and Rowan DK. All green - love it!

I got a Sack 'O Yarn from Sam...

There's 5 skeins of Rowanspun 4ply that would make some wonderful fair isle. Some Rowan handknit cotton, Rowan cork, Elsbeth Lavold silky wool, 2 skeins of Araucania Patagonia cotton, and a skein of KnitPicks laceweight. Wow!

I got this great sock yarn from Wanda (sorry for the crappy pic - taken in the basement)

and this colorful sock yarn from ChickenKnits...

That's a skein of Yarn Pirate and a skein of Sunshine Yarns - both sock club selections.

I'm kinda sad this yarn isn't all for me but I will be bidding on it - no doubt! My goal is to get $1000 dollars worth of yarn in this bouquet. I'm going to put it in a ginormous glass vase from Michael's. I think I'm almost halfway there already! I have the contest open until the first week of May - go stash-diving friends!

Also, I've been getting some great stuff in the swaps I've been in.

First, I was in the Sock Knitters of the World Unite and Swap! Long enough name, right? I got a bit shorted at first as my upstream partner forgot to reread the swap requirements before sending. I almost did the same thing so no sweat. She made up for it and here's the two packages put together...

There were many other wonderful things in this package but they've already been put away. The yarn stays out for petting purposes.

I was taking the pictures of this yarn when the Jawoll started acting funny - it was squirming and then started making this horrible squalling sound. WTF??

awwwww, a sweet little baby Jawoll...

OK, it didn't really happen that way. I stuck my fingers in the skein, which I almost never do, and I felt something in there. I thought my partner had put an extra little treat in there but turns out this yarn comes with some reinforcing thread - cool!

In between, my downstream partner, Cleverknits, sent this lovely package to make up for it!

There's some lovely cards, an Addi Turbo needle, a DPN case she made for me, some really cool sock yarn (there's another skein of sock yarn but I'm putting it in the Yarn Bouquet), some tea in a silver bag and a wee sock made into a change purse. I'll be sending her a nice thank you later this week.

I also got an excellent package for an April Showers Sock Swap - what a lovely lantern moon bag and some beautiful Jitterbug yarn, right?

I also did a "Naked Mail" swap. Did you know you can send almost anything through the mail? I got this really cool elephant bank (now residing in D2's room) and it had a ball of yarn inside. SuhWeet!