It's my birthday!

I wasn't going to say anything about my birthday, but I got such beautiful flowers from a co-worker that I had to share them. They are right in my line of sight for my computer, so I am enjoying them tremendously. They smell sweet too.



This temari is completing two "obligations/challenges" at once. In one group we are looking at HHG (Hite Hude Gake) stitching, also known as continuous path stitching. In this method, once you set up your path, you can stitch it all day without having to worry about layering, colors, changing threads, or stitching things out of order. (It turns out because of that it is very relaxing to stitch.) The other challenge, from another group, was to use Olympic colors or themes in a temari. I really love the colors that Vancouver is using as their theme colors in all the venues and contestant bibs, etc. so I found those colors in my stash and went ahead to use them.

Here's the result:



This is a 32 face temari. The south-bound path was started with dark blue, the northbound with dark green. After 3 rounds, I changed the southbound to light green, and the northbound to light blue for 2 more rounds. Using the darker color underneath, and the lighter color on top (and switching the colors around) really blurred the typical NNG bi-color look, and made this ball very pretty. I think if I had used the lighter colors first, and the darker colors on top it would have looked more like I was expecting. That's why making temari is so much fun, it will surprise you all the time.

This ball is fun to study, you can look for the 5 point or the 6 point stars, you can look at the negative space flowers and hexagons, or you can follow the color patterns spiraling around the ball. All in all, I am very pleased with this one.

Requests

Today I will be responding to requests and questions.

My fans (thanks mom!) want to know how big the thimbles are. Here is a picture of them on my hand. (My hands are not beautiful, but they are capable, and I'm very grateful for them.)

This is where they would sit on your fingers to use them as thimbles, pushing the needle from the front or from the side.



DH wants me to show you why the mittens are as warm as they are. They have floats added in on the inside with very bulky yarn. The floats are why they keep their shape so well also. The pattern called for skeined roving, but this bulky yarn works fine. The yarn shop didn't carry any roving.

My First Thimble

Here are a couple of poor pictures of my first thimble. It looks better in person too, because you can't see through the stitching into the color behind as much. I need to work at packing the stitching closer together. Other than that, I'm very pleased with it.



The stitching around the edge is quite even (if I do say so myself) except I just discovered I was making the stitch backwards. But I'm still looking forward to making another.



Thank you again, Chloe Patricia!