In which the Rabbit keeps felting

At 170 stiches per row, this bag kept the Rabbit knitting until her little paws ached, but she's pleased with the result. The Paton's worsted weight merino felted beautifully, and it was cheap!

But alas, all is not copacetic in the warren. Last night the Rabbit tried to teach herself to knit berry stitch, which involves knitting, then purling, then knitting all into the same stitch. This concept proved way too much for the bunny brain. Fortunately, there's a fab video on YouTube that demonstrates how to do it quite clearly. She also tried to start a tiny iPod case using sport-weight merino on tiny double-pointed needles. This proved very difficult without thumbs.

But today is a new day, and the Rabbit will try, try again.

In which the Rabbit makes collages

The Rabbit will have more the say about the collages, and about collage in general, at a later date. But for now, here are a few of them.

In which the Rabbit knits and felts another bag, and it's even better than the first

Same yarn, different color, yet this bag is a bit larger and a lot fuzzier than the first. The first one, by the way, is still waiting for buttons.

The Rabbit is now working on another felting project to be named later, and which will probably take her at least a week. Watch this space.

In which the Rabbit knits and felts a bag

The Rabbit decided that she might stop just buying the yarn and actually make something with it. She chose a pattern from Leigh Radford's One Skein, which, by the way, has lots of intriguing-looking quick projects. The wool, which is not in the stash picture below, is Manos del Uruguay's Wool Classica. The Rabbit loves this combination of colors—she seems to be in a major rusty-orange and deep-pink phase. Since the project uses size 15 circular needles, it knits up really fast (even with paws!). None of that pesky purling. Before felting, the bag looked like this:



In other words, a very baggy bag. But, with the help of a fantastic little primer about felting on Knitty.com, the finished version ended up looking like this, which made the Rabbit perform a little hop of pleased excitement:



The plastic bags peeking out the top are for blocking purposes.

The pattern calls for a little embellishment with buttons. The Rabbit is considering using some or all of these:



A picture of the blocked, dried and embellished bag will follow.

The Yarn Stash

As promised, a picture of the yarn The Rabbit can't seem to stop buying.

In which the Rabbit buys yarn

The Crafty Rabbit is on a yarn-buying binge. Five days ago, she woke up with an overpowering urge to knit, something she has not done for years, stimulated by listening to a single episode of Brenda Dayne's knitting podcast, Cast On. Why, you may ask, was the Rabbit listening to a knitting podcast when she hadn't knit for years? Well, the Rabbit likes to listen to crafty podcasts while working away in her warren/studio, and she had run out of Craftcasts and gotten dangerously low on CraftyPods. And she happened across the fabulous Ms. Dayne.

The episode was called "Panacea" and one of the things it was about was knitting as a mindfulness practice. And this spoke to the Rabbit. That, and the fact that the TiVo had been filling up to overwhelming levels while the Rabbit was busy experimenting with collage and found-object assemblage. The Rabbit saw that an answer to the dilemma of how to make something every day and keep up with In Treatment, all while cultivating equanimity, was . . . knitting.

So she went to the yarn store. And she bought some yarn. And the next day, she went to another store, and bought some more yarn. And the next day, another store and yet more yarn. The Rabbit may soon require an intervention. Or, she's just in the collecting mode that Twyla Tharp, in The Creative Habit, calls "starting with a box." Hard to tell.

Pictures of the growing yarn stash, and the current project on the needles, to come.