I finished the poncho for Theresa’s baby, (She’s the snowdrop…remember her?) and it’s cracking me up.
Wait, maybe it’s only funny if you see it like this.
I think it’s hysterical. It’s hitting some kind of knitter joke spot for me. Look at it. Look at the wee dandy fringe! (I know. I hear you. While I am apparently experiencing a second wave of poncho-itis I understand the inherently stupidity of knitting a poncho for a seven month old baby. She is going to chew on the point and gnaw on the fringe. It’s ok. She’s going to outgrow it long before it’s out of style. It’s dumbass and I feel it….did you see the tiny little point though? C’mon. ) The poncho also amused me by using up all but this…
That means this yarn is gone. I love that. I suffer from 1/2 ball yarn anxiety. I am compelled to save them, yet somehow am repulsed by using them. When all the yarn gets used up I don’t have to live with the guilt of saving half balls of yarn and I don’t have to be plagued by the wastefulness of throwing it away. I don’t need to think about it at all. I can let go of big plans for scrap afghans and striped hats that I’m never going to make, I can stop thinking that someday I’m going to take all of these 17 metre balls and make a really stunning Fassett. When all the yarn gets used up I am spared having to come up with some sort of ethical yarn scrap position. I can just Let. Go.
I am unclear about the exact length of yarn that is let go-able, and that which I must keep. I should like, make a chart or something and try to find out.
Where is your cut-off?
In other news, I have indeed begun to rip the back off my house.
This is a weird little unheated 100 year old mud porch off the back of the house. We use it as a racoon proof place to keep the garbage and as an extra large walk in freezer in the winter. We keep skates and bike helmets there…and well, pretty much anything else that doesn’t fit in the rest of the house. I’m ripping the old walls down, then it will be rebuilt (not by me….I’m a demolition sort of renovator) into a ….well. A slightly less weird unheated mud porch off the back of the house.
(As I type that it seems like a less worthy goal than it did before I started ripping the walls down….)
The Rainbow Peerie socks are back on the radar…though my cat seems offended. Look at the “get these crap socks off my chair” face.
Luckily, I don’t care what the cat thinks. (Millie is likely upset about the changes in the house. Yesterday she hissed at a sheet of drywall. I can respect that.)
PS. sing with me.
Emma Emma bo-bemma bananna fanna fo-femma me-mi-mo memma….EMMA!
(Sorry. No more singing. No more ponchos. I’m better now)
Yarn Harlot
Ooh I love the poncho! hehe Who cares if she will outgrow the poncho soon just think of how damn cute she will look that first time she has it on (the pre-fringe-knawing wear) LOL
Why is it that the smaller things are the more precious they are?!? The poncho is just adorable – and baby will look even more precious chewing on it!
Great. Now I’ll have the Name Game stuck in my head all day. Thanks(thanks bo-banks, banannafanna fo-fanks).
That mini-poncho is the cutest thing.
love the ponchos! love the name game! we like to horrify my 10 year old son by reminding him that we called him sammy bo bammy until he told us to STOP! 🙂 he is now “only” sam. not sam-i-am, not sammy bo bammy. good luck on cold weather construction. you’re a brave woman.
I am saving up little tiny bundles of sock yarn to make 5 different toes on otherwise-grey toe socks.
We had a room like that way back when. Dh worked in brewing process development at the time. He referred to the room as “the beer room” and filled it with cases of beer. Admittedly, we were much further south than you, so it wasn’t quite so cold in the room…still, it’s something to consider, if you can attain the perfect beer-keeping temperature in your room.
I love both ponchos! I say keep knitting them until the moment has passed. With regard to your let go-able question, at the risk of creating a ruckus, my policy is that everything but the smallest, teeniest pieces can find a home. I’m a new knitter but have been hooking rugs for a bit longer. The rugs create a lot more scrap wool, and I put it out in a little wire mesh container for the birds. I’ve found several nests with little bits of scrap wool. Since I’ve started knitting, I’ve put some yarn scraps in there, too. They’ve disappeared, but I cannot confirm that the yarn has found its way to bird nests as I haven’t actually seen any woven into nests.
Those Rainbow Peerie socks are great! What yarn and pattern are you using?
I love the banana song!
me-mi-mo memma….EMMA!
And I’m one of those that keep the ends of my project yarns and actually use them for other projects I make up. Sometimes I make a trade with a friend of mine who’s also a weaver. It works out in the end.
Is it normal Canuck behavior to begin house reconstruction as winter approaches?
I have to admit that to try and escape the guilt of throwing away yarn I have left a couple of leftovers within the grasp of my cat. She soon puts any thought of using that yarn in a project to rest – and relieves me of my guilt. (Although only temporarily as I realise that I might be committing yarn-i-cide – a deadly sin!)
Awww… what a cute widdle Snowdwop. Sorry… the song got to me.
(Harlot harlot bo barlot, banana fanna fo farlot, me mi mo marlot, Harlot!)
I *need* to know, what was the knitting in the freezer?
What yarn did you use for the tiny poncho? I’ve got a grand-niece who’s going to be 11 months old when I see her at Christmas and, well…you’ve pushed me over the edge and now I have to knit her a poncho.
I hadn’t thought about the Chewing Issue, though. What’s good for a baby to chew on?
I love the “wee dandy fringe” on the baby poncho!
What a pretty, pretty cat you have. She does appear to be angry at your socks, but she’s probably just projecting. “First the drywall, then these socks on my chair.” You know. Your socks are lovely, btw. 🙂
And here I was posting in my blog that *I* had knit the world’s tiniest harlot poncho for my small two-year-old!
BookBookBookBookBookBook!
You know what I mean.
The poet Donald Hall wrote a book of short stories called “String Too Short to Be Saved.”
I *could* come up with a list of things you could do with the amount of yarn visible in the photo, but that wouldn’t be very nice of me, would it? I understand how hard it is to Let. Go. and would never try to send you into yarn-disposal regression by mentioning how cute multi-yarn pom-poms can be, or something.
BookBookBookBookBookBook!
Laurie, I’m getting the feeling the Harlot’s using the ponchos and house reconstruction to avoid us.
IT’S OFFICIAL FOLKS
PONCHOS HAVE JUMPED THE SHARK.
Unless you tell us otherwise, I’m going to suspect that something horrible (m*ths) happened and that’s why you had knitting in the freezer.
Or you got bubble gum on your knitting.
Really, all other logic escapes me. ‘Fess up.
Love the baby poncho! Miniature knitting is magical. And the socks look great too, even if in normal size.
Of course, I know why the yarn is in the freezer.
Who cooks? Therefore, who is most likely to open the freezer? And therefore, who is most likely to do so after a long, tiring day? And therefore, who is most likely to need a little pick-me-up while they’re cooking dinner?
Yup. I have yarn stashed with the bathroom cleaning supplies. For when I need a little boost.
Why, is that weird?
Charming, charming, charming! Thanks to the advice of your friend Rana, I’ve been able to start my own blog and wanted to tell people whose blogs I’ve enjoyed about my own conversion. Again, sweet pictures!
I have a Millie, too. Regardless of whether or not I care what she thinks, I have to pity her, because I imagine that she honestly believes that somewhere in the great scheme of things, between incarnations, she got short-changed. She was actually meant to be large enough to eat humans, as opposed to being so small as to have to put up with them. Poor baby.
What a precious little poncho!! I keep offering to knit my daughter a poncho, and she keeps turning me down 🙁 Doesn’t that 8 year old know they are in style now???
My Mom, sister and myself have a great use for scraps of yarn – we knit finger puppets for our local hospital, and for the children’s hospital in the city. Whenever we have to take our son to the children’s hospital for an appt. I make a delivery; right now I have 1200 of them sitting here waiting for a drive down. We don’t do fancy ones; but the kids appreciate getting them when they get a needle. And we’re always looking for more yarn to use 🙂
Love the ponchos, love the socks. You are the best, and all of your friends and family are very lucky!
I love the socks when you first showed them. I don’t think you let us know where you got the yarn from. So?
There’s not let. go. of too. short. yarn at my house. I WILL make that afghan sometime.
Oh, thank various divinities for the immigrant factor. I don’t know that song. I’ve never heard that song. There is no way for that song to get stuck in my head. Unless you sing it to me.
Shhhhh….
Hello Fellow RAOKer! Love the poncho, love the socks!
With respect to left over yarn … I too had that problem. But now I knit with a group of ladies for local cancer patients. Any yarn I have left, I hand over to them and THEY turn it into a hat or leftover afghan or granny square or some other lovely item. This group loves donations of yarn. Maybe you can find a group like that in your area.
~Beth
http://diamondsnpurls.blogspot.com
About that porch… …I’m a translator, you see. And I once took some time to look up the etymology of the Hebrew word for mess “balagan”. It seems to come from the same Persian word that gave us “balcony”.
In other words – historically, porches were the places where mess was kept, to the point that the very word for mess is derived from porch, in Hebrew. “Put the bikes over in the mess, there…”
I dunno’, it hit me right in the etymologist’s funnybone.
I love the baby poncho!
Sadly, I have absolutely no cutt off for yarn remnants. I keep them all tied together in a little ball that grows slightly with each project. All the ends I cut off that are more than a couple of inches are saved and tied on. One day, I will make something out of it…but for now it is just sitting in my knitting bag…. I just can’t throw the little bits away….
My home is slowing being taken over by small balls of yarn-but I can’t throw anything away. The little poncho is darling, and so is Emma’s. And I understand the cat thing-my cat hid for a whole week in the basement when we installed a new dining room fan. And I think Joe better hide the sledgehammer. I can only imagine how bad your need to renovate would be if you did not have all that knitting to keep your little hands busy.
*still laughing at “get these crap socks off my chair”*
And why (ok, I know why, it’s cause I’m insane) does my brain want to devise a National Geographic-style monologue to go along with the poncho/baby poncho picture…
“…here we see a mother Sapieponcho Harlotus floating alongside her newborn ponchling…”
So what can we call this Bonsai of ponchos? My mind is blank…. but it’s certainly ‘darn’ cute…
More fiber! That’s what babies need! Chewey fringe with special knots. Hmmm yum.
I think yarn could be cut into 6 inch pieces and placed like tinsel on trees to help birds line their nests. And I suppose if it were wool, you could chop it and either felt it (like paper making) or re-spin it…..).
I keep any ball of yarn bigger than a walnut as long as I like the colour. You don’t have to undertake a whole Fassett masterpiece to use them � they are also great for hats and other small projects.
I “Pottery Barn” my house with little balls of leftover yarn in baskets or bowls. They look pretty, and I don’t feel like they are going to waste in the bottom of my stash closet – which is, of course, full of hanks of yarn for future projects.
My house has a weird little utility room off the kitchen that was poorly built by some owner in the ’30s. It leans like crazy, and it’s starting to leak. It currently stores mops, brooms, and the catbox and it’s my fond dream to rip the sucker off entirely. We’ve been dithering for months about whether to take it off, so I admire your decisiveness, and I’ll be watching your progress.
I found a bird’s nest on my roof once, made of the usual twigs and leaves, and–pink wool I’d set outside to dry just out of the dyepot!
Good luck with the new mudroom. We once single-handedly ended California’s 7-year-long drought crisis by remodelling our house in winter. Sprung 17 leaks in the roof, had no back wall of the house, and it set records for rainfall. Brrrrr. Slosh.
Ooooh – it’s teeeny tiny!!
Have I missed a couple of seasons? Beginning a reno in November? Yesterday, Bow Bells Woolworks (in Markdale, ON) sheared their sheep!! In November.
I must have taken an extra long nap.
BTW – take a very deep breath and pack up all your tiny bits of yarn. March them around to the Salvation Army store. Someone will truly enjoy them.
i use my bits of yarn to tie on tags for the beanies that i sent to the front lines and the chemo caps for fiber content and washing instructions..no extra bits here..they’re all colorful ties on the tags…
what # did you c/o for the baby poncho and what size needles did you use? we have a few baby girls on the way to being born around here..i’d love to whip up a few…please oh please i beseech of you…and while i’m begging and bowing to the hallowed ground you oh mighty designer float on …how long(length) did you make the baby poncho…i’m so clueless on their sizes..my kids are all taller than i am..i have no little models to measure.
Have I told you lately that I adore you? Prolly not officially, as its my first comment on your blog. The poncho is darling, the namegame will be passed onto all those I can gleefully torment (read: husband) and you have lifted my spirit from the dregs of math-depression. YAY! A hot cuppa and some yarn; life is good.
Pretty little poncho.
I no longer have odd ball guilt as I give it all to the school craft club who are making blankets for Project Linus.I give them bags of stuff I bought in a weak moment,years ago,that I no longer like.Guilt free.A rather liberating experience.Fab !
Emma looks lovely in the poncho. I hope you show a photo of Snowdrop in her poncho.
I hate waste and like to use up every last bit. I have been known to cut up yarn into 3 inch lengths (to make thrums) to be carded with wool. Every few years I make a garter stitch blanket with leftovers. Each row is a different strand and the ends form the fringe on each side.
of course I sang along… it’s my perogative as a former camp counsellor.
My extra scraps of yarn end up wedging themselves into the cracks of the sofa until I give up looking for them. Then I find them clinging to my rear when I’m out in public. Go figure.
Tiny balls of yarn, after being well aged, and if of natural fiber content…. end up in the compost bin.
It is painful the first time, but there is only so much spit splicing even I am willing to do.
Thanks for the good laughs in the midst of all my studies!
What a cute little poncho 🙂 I had one of those mud rooms on the back of my house. Tore it off, replaced the back door with a glass one I could see out of and built a deck where the “shack” used to be. Much nicer. If you wanna throw more cash and have the space for it a sunroom (with room for a spinning wheel) would be a nice replacement. I’ve also seen people build mud-like rooms with enough space for a powder room too. (just to start “renovation spiral” ideas in your brain 😉
OK, the left over sock yarn makes the cutest baby socks. And the rest…well, if you bag it up it might make a pretty cool prize for a little Harlot Contest. Think how much fun you could have coming up with ways to make us do silly things for yarn scraps. Because you know we will.
Personally I think all of you should send me your scrap skeins, I’ll sort them out by color palette, and then we can draw straws or lottery off each color group and then make those scrap scarves or afghans. Those in turn can be donated to a charity for an auction or something.
Scraps are so much more fun and interesting when they are someone elses.
Left over yarn?
I use it in little knitted beaded bags and in scarves, but I knit with a lot of *SINthetics* – I love my fancy yarns 🙂
I like Laurie’s suggestion but maybe you should send them to me and I’ll make the whackest pair of socks anyone did see!
I love the look on Millie’s face – get these THINGS OFF MY CHAIR or I *will* attack them! Most unimpressed! LOL
Hi,
Love the socks ! The kitty is cute too – even if she is preturbed . What yarn and pattern are yo using for those gorgeous socks ? Also , need to know if you knit in your sleep – if so , please share the secret ! 🙂
Happy Knitting,
Kim O
Stephanie
COuld you post what number you casted on for the baby poncho? I have 2 babies coming soon and wanted to make them one.
Thanks BTW, I will be postng pics soon on my own VHP. Thanks for the great pattern.
Melissa
the baby poncho is ADORABLE! I <3 it, and I wish I had had one when I was a tot.
I need to make myself one of your ponchos. it’s gorgeous!
I too was wondering how many stitches you cast on for the baby version…and if you made any other changes to the pattern.
I love your blog.
Maya
Everyone say it with me now… “Awwwwwww!”
I gotta borrow me a kid to knit for – those wee little things are so satisfying.
Like someone else way up the comments list I have no cut off for saving remnants. You never know when you’ll need a bit of something for something else, whether it’s tying up a package or fixing a hole in the original garment, or a pocket on a baby jumper or contrast ribbing on a hat.
You just never, never know…
When I was a little girl of 8, my mother took me to visit a lady (this was in 1957) who taught me to knit. She knitted constantly and what she made were sweaters for the Red Cross. People gave her leftover yarn (everything was wool back in the good old days) and she would just knit sweaters and pay NO attention to the colors. It was a wonderful service. Maybe something similar could be done with your little leftover pieces? I LOVE the baby poncho. Could you tell me the dimensions? Maybe it’s in your posts somewhere, but I am totally new here and have not read it all. Take care.
Nice poncho, however, you have *nothing* to complain about re:Christmas. Chanukah is is 23 days – *24* days. You Christians have it so easy.
Cheers!
Combining cats and scrap yarn… my local humane society has 8″ knitted squares perpetually on their wish list. They use them for the kittens to snuggle upon, and then they can send the square with the kitten when it’s adopted, to ease the transition. That’s where my scrap yarn goes…