In October, my husband George's youngest brother, Mark, married his girlfriend of eight years, Lizzie.  I made Lizzie a wildly coloured felted bag as a welcome-to-the-family gift.

I used four colours of Cascade 220 and a yellow eyelash yarn.  This also took 3 washings to get to a felted appearance I liked.  (The bag is stuffed with washclothes in all these pics.)



Here's a picture of its bottom:



And here it is hanging to show the length of the strap:

I knitted on the shrug constantly on Wednesday and took this progress photo this morning.



That's 2 skeins of Jiffy yarn.  I think the entire shrug is going to take just under 4 skeins.  I'm really liking how the mock rib is looking.

Back in late 2005, I made several felted bags and a purse.  I made the greens & purples bag first.  I used 5 coordinating colours of Cascade 220.  I knitted with each colour until I felt like a change.  It took 3 trips through my front-loader washing machine to get it felted to a point I liked.  The handle on this bag is about 14 inches long.  I use this bag as my purse on sunny days.  It's too open for rainy Seattle days.



The bottom of the bag came out looking like tie-dye.  I liked it so much I deliberately did the same on the next two bags I made.

I finally got my test machine at work set up properly using Ghost images and spent the rest of the day playing with Quick Test Pro (QTP).  QTP is used to create automated tests by recording the actions and entries of a website or application user.  The recording is then modified to allow for parameterization and such. 

I got so involved in what I was doing that I completely lost track of time.  I find that happens often when I'm really interested in what I'm doing... suddenly I look at a clock and hours have gone by.  Between that and the buses running slow, I didn't get home until nearly 9pm tonight.

I finally uploaded the photo George took on Sunday (4/2) morning.



This shows 6 inches of 2x2 ribbing and 1 inch of mock rib.  The color is a lot better in real life.

I've completed one of the socks for George and have the second cast on.



I cast on to two needles.  I'm thinking for my next pair of socks of casting on to a slightly larger needle as Cassie of Too Much Wool does.

My niece Sarah is going to be 14 on April 18th.  About a week ago, I put up a webpage of possible knitted gifts for her to choose from.  She selected the Circular Shrug in cream.  Sarah can't wear wool so I bought some Lion Brand Jiffy.  It's working up beautifully.  I have the first 6" of 2x2 rib done and about 3" of the mock rib done.  I'll try to put up some progress photos tomorrow.

I got a lot of the 2x2 ribbing knitted while George & I were down in Corvallis, OR visiting our friend Alan for his housewarming.  Alan has set up a theater in his living room and I knitted while we watched Peter Jackson's "King Kong".  I was actually able to knit by feel for once.  There are some advantages to knitting with worsted weight yarn after all. :)  (Usually I'm knitting with DK or thinner yarns.)

I'll try to write more often and also put up a gallery of previously finished projects.  I just have to hunt down years worth of photos.

I started a 6-9 month contract at RealNetworks on March 15th.  I'm working in Ecomm QA for RealArcade so part of my job is playing games.  So far I'm enjoying the work and once the large wave of projects is over, I'll start automating some of the basic verification tests using Quick Test Pro.

Hello.  My name is Emma Bartholomew.  I'm a dual Irish/American citizen.  I was born in Los Angeles, California as a US citizen.  A year ago, on February 16, 2005, I became an Irish citizen via marriage.  I recently sent off for my Irish passport.  My husband George is a native of Dublin, Ireland.  He became a US citizen 3 years ago after living in the US for 13 years.

I am also a knitter.  I enjoy knitting, but I'm not obsessed with it all the time.  I go through phases of knitting/not knitting.  When I am knitting, I go through phases also.  For awhile before the winter holidays, I was doing a lot of felting.  I made bags for myself, my new sister-in-law Lizzie and my eldest niece Catherine.  I also knitted & felted a purse that I'm still working on since I need to add some support to it.  I'm not much of a sewer so that's what's slowing me down.  I also knitted my first fair isle project - a drawstring bag for my sister Maggie.  And I made scarves for George and his brother Mark.

For the 2006 Knitting Olympics, I made a Fenna shawl.  You can see pictures of it here.  I'm now working on a pair of socks for my husband.  I'm using the "Madder Ribbed Sock" pattern from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks book.  I will start a circular shrug for my youngest niece Sarah this weekend for her 14th birthday.  I found the pattern on the web at a craftster.org forum. 

I'll save more for later.  Meanwhile, welcome to my blog!