I needed a housewarming gift for my sister, and I knew that in the past her bathroom was themed "fish," so I came up with this painting. It's 10"x8" in real life, and though Swish's dorsal fin is a bit funky, I still think he's pretty cute.

I hate the name of this pattern because it's just plain wrong. This pattern is knit such that the bag ends up on the bias. However, I did knit it practically stitch-for-stitch from Knitty's Unbiased, so I guess I won't change the name.

The one thing I did have to do different from the pattern was knit two of the pieces "backwards": increasing at the first stitch and decreasing at the last stitch. This was because my pieces, unlike the ones in the pattern, had a right and wrong side--not because of the stitching (I used a garter stitch) but because I chose to do a contrast stripe to emphasize the biased nature of the pattern.

I love copper. Buffed and shiny, with a young bronze patina, or weathered to verdegris, I enjoy copper in its varied forms. Josh and I built our wedding chuppah out of copper plumbing. The chuppah was an 8-foot cube, but the tube was sold in 10-foot lengths, so I had all these 2-foot "ends" lying on the porch all winter, developing a patina. I decided to string them into a windchime, and I'm glad I did. I love the low, firm tones it produces.

*In the Classic era, copper was called cyprium because it was mined in the city of Cyprus, which was sacred to the mythic goddess Venus.

I've discovered a cute pattern for a bunny made out of a square peice of knitting (I'm guessing crochet or even fabric would work). I've made a couple of mods: instead of pointy ears, I made floppy ears by knitting a rectangle 6 sts by 9 rows in garter stitch, then "gathering" them at the top. I also went ahead and made a pom-pom tail in place of the suggested "polyfill" and "i-cord" tails.

Like I did with my last bunny pattern, I'll play round with the ears and tail to see what other animals I can get. Swatching doesn't seem so pointless when I get a cute animal out of it.

My other sister got hand-embroidered handkerchiefs for her birthday.

Every year our cat "appropriates" this particular pot for her own use. This year, I dedided to be preemptive and planted the pot with cat grass and catnip. I then added some smooth black stones so she could lie down without getting dirt in her fur (I think what she likes about the pot is that the sun warms the black dirt) and a sign so everybody knows it's Zora's pot.

This project is a variation on the lop-eared bunny in First Knits. I simply swapped out the floppy ears and pom-pom tail. The tail I used is a simple braid, the ears I made according to the following pattern:

CO 25
row 1: knit
row 2: p2tog*12, p1 (13)
row 3: knit
row 4: p2, p2tog*4, p3 (9)
row 5: knit
row 6: p1, p2tog*3, p2

My husband talked me into adding the embroidered whiskers. I thought it looked more like a moustache--a fancy musketeer's moustache. I gifted the mouse to my sister for her birthday with the request that she give him a French name.