A Tale of Two Butterkitties

This

is Butterkitty, you may remember her and her balloon. We named her Butternut but our niece, Lily, dubbed her Butterkitty and it stuck pretty hard.

Butterkitty is very nice and let's Lily haul her around by her armpits, basically.

Butterkitty has a new friend

but not for long as come Christmas this Butterkitty will be going to live with Lily!

Notice a resemblance?


The two Butterkitties like a lot of the same things... this Butterkitty likes food
and sitting in the double-decker kitty house.
And, she has a tail! That might seem obvious but the pattern didn't call for a tail! Of course, if this is to be an authentic Butterkitty it needs a tail.
And so ends the tale of two Butterkitties. :-P

A bit of knitting...

Like I said last time, most of the knitting I have finished recently are gifts I can't show yet. But here are a few things I can share... (Amy - when you read this don't let Lily know because there's something for her!)

A few weeks ago the owner of a LYS did a beginning knitting class for me at my library. To thank her (she did it for free!), I did a quickie dish/face cloth. (of course I got this idea the day before the class so it definitely had to be quick!)


I packaged it up in a take-out style container with two pretty face soaps and there you go.


One of my coworkers is on a Conference committee and they are looking for prizes for next year's conference. She asked if I'd knit something and I said "a baby hat???" ;-) The conference theme is red, white, & blue so I did stripes. This is KnitPicks Shine Worsted in Sailor, Cream, and Hollyberry and I love the muted old fashioned tones so I call this Colonial Colors. The top doesn't show well but it is i-cord that is tied in a cute little knot.


The last thing I have is a Christmas present but since she's 3, I think we can manage to keep it from her! ;-) For my niece, we have Finger Puppers! A tiger, a pig, an elephant, a rabbit, and a bear (or a dog, Trevor thinks it is a dog, so whatever she wants it to be). These are very quick, very cute, and only use scraps (of baby hat yarn coincidentally enough). So I think I might make more... we just got an invite for a 2nd birthday party that I don't think we can make but these would go in the mail no problem.

Edited to add an updated photo of the Tiger! Pattern note, I realized that the Tiger has a tail in the photo but there isn't one in the pattern. So I used the elephant trunk pattern except in stockinette instead of garter...

A Blue Ribbon Day!

I decided to enter a few knitted things in the fair this year! Thanks in part to Jenna's post reminding me that I had thought of it earlier in the year. :-) I dropped my stuff off on Friday then waited until Tuesday for the fair to open so I could go see if I won any ribbons.

My Dutch Bonnet was entered in the Knitted Baby Bonnet category and it got a green ribbon (Honorable Mention)My Cherry Entrelac Scarf was entered in the Miscellaneous Knitted Accessory category and it got a yellow ribbon (Third)
And... my Another Rainbow Marley was entered in the Knitted Hat category and it got a blue ribbon!! Everybody knows what a blue ribbon is, right? ;-) edited to add: for the Canadians - that's a first here!

I'm very happy with that, and it gives me the confidence to try again next year. If I hadn't gotten anything, I probably would have given up. :-P

Here's a wide shot of the Marley hat in the cute baby crib display
and the Cherry scarf in a pink-ish display

I also entered a bread contest, I didn't win anything there but it was still fun so I'll blog that in another post.

p.s. I have been knitting up a storm but it is almost all secret gift knitting for people who will see it here so I have nothing to share!

Batter Blaster!!!!

Last week we were grocery shopping and saw this intriguing thing near the eggs

Batter Blaster!!!!!1!!!! Pancakes! Organic, even. That's right, they now have pancakes in a can. The same kind of can as the miraculous squirt whip. They were a bit pricey ($5) but we've already made pancakes for the two of us 3 times and it isn't empty yet. And whoa, the convenience factor (not to mention the coolness) - we really wished we had seen this a week earlier for the tent camping trip. Totally worth $5 to avoid mixing etc. while camping. We are planning on getting it again for our cabin trip in September but that has a real kitchen and everything so it isn't really necessary...

Handy diagrams

Pancake squirting action shot

They're good but they do taste a little different than my usual pancakes... lighter? fluffier? Like there's a lot of air in them, which I guess there is.

Speaking of breakfast breads, here's a gratuitous shot of the yummy french toast Trevor made with my homemade potato bread. It made really good french toast!

A garden is never so good as it will be next year. -- Thomas Cooper

This is the first harvest from my garden! It doesn't look like much but considering that last year every one of my pepper and squash plants gotten eaten by the groundhog, this is a great start. The little green guy is a jalapeno, the yellow one is a hot banana pepper, and the orange one is a Yummy sweet pepper. Or maybe that's supposed to be Sweet Pepper Yummy, whatever. And a few cherry tomatoes.

Tag, you're it!!

I'm way behind on everything, both in life and in blogging but I wanted to get this one out there:

Sign-up for this year's Dish Rag Tag is today! And I got in!! woo! The thrill of competition... :-) The wonderful Emily at Yarnmiracle started this last year and it was fun just watching so I'm excited to participate this year. Basically, she creates teams and each team starts with a box - ball of dishcloth cotton, a small goodie, the pattern, and a completed dishcloth. You log in to the super agent dishrag software and strategically determine which team member to send to next in order to attempt to be the first team to get the box back to Emily. When you get the box you keep the completed dishcloth and the treat, use the cotton to make a new dishcloth, and put in a new ball of cotton and treat along with the completed dishcloth. Then it goes on to the next team member. A few things are different this year, such as there is an official pattern that must be used instead of using your choice to make it more even among competitors. Emily keeps track of finishing places and there are prizes.

If anyone wants to try and get in, this is the sign-up page, and this has more info. I'll be putting the button up on the sidebar at some point or other.