we'll miss ewe

so finally i can post about something i've been working on all summer ... a little project for a friend of mine who is leaving our knitting group. when i first moved to this area, we "met online" through meetup.com - turns out we have little boys born within 2 months of each other and both have knitting obsessions. she's a navy wife, though, and is leaving as soon as her house sells.

so i got all the knitters together to do an afghan. i spent ages looking for just the right yarn - i wanted washable (she lives with a 3 year old and a dog) but i didn't want to go all acrylic because i wanted it to last and not pill. i wanted something that came in several nice shades of green (which i was guessing was her favorite color). eventually i settled on plymouth encore, a nice acrylic/wool blend. my MIL helped me pick the colors, and we found all of them together in a little shop in charlottesville. (that was the visit that i stuffed the carseat bag full of yarn on the return flight.)

obviously, she has a thing for turtles! i took the patterns from various afghan books and from a search for "turtle" on ravelry. here are the squares that i did.

from the "great american afghan" book. the pattern for the first square originally called for a crab applique, and i substituted a turtle from one of my crochet afghan books. the button in the middle of the red accent square is from stitches midwest.

beth and i recently figured out how to knit in a moebius round - a technique that is kind of mind blowing when you think about the details. i did it out of noro kureyon to commemorate the booga bags that we did together. i was a little worried about putting it on a washable afghan, so i kinda just tacked it on, but i figured that even if she washes it, the felted product would also be a reminder of the felted booga bags.

a dinosaur, to commemorate our sons' favorite creature

our mutual friend bethzabe knit this square, and i did the turtles (from a turtle potholder pattern).

and lastly, a sheep - my first knitted bobbles. like the beady stare?

so yesterday was the going-away party. one of our other knitting friends is also moving, but only gave us a month's notice so no afghan for her :). and she's only moving to the city, so we'll see her around. we got her a gift certificate to her new LYS, the new franklin habit book of knitting cartoons, and i made her some earrings and stitch markers. i made my first decoupage'd box to house her present, using papers that didn't make the cut for arielle's wedding invitations.

i also decorated a cake inspired by a blog i saw on ravelry.

here are some better shots of the individual squares that she took: http://www.flickr.com/photos/twertlegirl/sets/72157609001467900/

whew! time to move on to other projects!