I finished something
So I finished a couple of things over the weekend. I guess that's a good start for the new knitting year. Let's hope I can keep it up. The best thing about it, those are all for ME! Well, somewhat for me anyway.
First up is a quick crochet beret I made up for a friend of mine after the hat her mom made a while back. I modified it a bit, just to get the type and number of stitches and the size to where I wanted it. Make up a quick pompom and here we go. A fast hat made of Red Heart Acrylic yarn from my leftover stash. It's not my fist choice in yarn, but it did the job for this prototype.
Next up is cardigan for my dad. The pattern is Veronik Avery's "
His Llama Cardigan" from the book Knitting Classic Style. I even almost matched the color, but not the yarn. My sister, who is doing my dad's laundry, insisted on a washable yarn, so I substituted with Wool-Ease Worsted in Blue Heather. I started this one on Christmas Day and finished it 17 days later. Not bad, I'd say. All I have left to do on this one is find some good buttons and working around the button holes. I finished seaming the jacket on a road trip. Lucky for me, because I ended up having soda spilled on my own jacket, so at least I had something to wear. :)
The road trip lead us through Russelville, KY and we stopped by to say "Hi" to Ashley and her mom at
Enchanted Yarn & Fiber. I received such a nice and warm welcome as I walked into the store and I was so surprised that Marmee recognized me. How cool is that. Well, I have to say that I had to call the store for directions, but I'm sure I'm not the first one to do that, because our GPS lead us completely out of the way onto a gravel road in front of a trailer home. So make sure when you go see them, that you follow the directions on the website and don't always trust the electronic voice that tells you where to turn. If I wasn't living about 1 1/2 hour drive away I'd be hanging out there all the time. They not only make you feel so welcome there, but they also make sure the husbands are comfortable and taken care off and can sink onto the couch in front of the fire place with a cup of coffee and a bowl of snacks, so we, the knitters, can shop and browse in peace without getting the evil eye and the silent question "Are you done yet?" (Not that any of them would ever admit to doing that)
Finally I finished what was supposed to be a travel project on our move from Georgia to Kentucky. Never would I have dreamed that this little scarf will drag out to take 6 months to finish. I'm talking about the
Traveling Roses Scarf. After 15 repeats of a pattern that. up to this day, I still can't memorize without the leaflet, I finally had enough. Don't get me wrong, the pattern is very nice, but it's not one that I'll make another scarf of. The scarf was as long as I am tall, unblocked, and I figured that was a good size for me. It's made from recycled cashmere and after all that time it's going to make it worth knitting, just for the feeling of this soft yarn.
I don't want to stress you attention span too much so I'm leaving you with a snap shot of my latest project:
Labels: FO, Scarf
Greetings from Kentucky
Hey ya'll. I'm waving hello to you from my new home in
Fort Knox, Kentucky. Well, more or less new home, since I'm greeting you from our hotel, where we are currently staying in. If you read my blog more often you'll know that my husband is in the military and that it was time for us once again to pack up our TA-50 and our bags and move to our new duty station. We left Georgia last friday and made our way up to Kentucky, with a quick stop over night in Nashville. We signed in here on post on saturday and are in the hotel since then.
We used the weekend of explore our surrounding towns and made our first trip to check out Louisville.
Here is where we ate for lunch:
And this is what's located right next door. Too funny.
After running around like crazy for a couple of days and getting my kids set up for school, it's quiet time for me right now. I'm knitting along on the
Traveling Roses Scarf that is my travel project, but I got a little bored with it. So since knitting stores are not on every corner here, Walmart had to come to the rescue and I got some size 8 needles and some pastel colored acrylic yarn (don't booh me for that) and I started on a new baby blanket from these dish cloth patterns
here.
My plan is to knit the whole alphabet and then piece it together to make a blanket. So far I'm on "C" and it's coming along pretty good, except that I'm not very happy with those 14" way too long Boye needles, but they'll have to do for now. Hopefully by the end of the month I'll have all my stuff back. So keep your fingers crossed, that we find a right house for us soon.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Do you remember that pile of grey yarn with those blue? Well, I found that on the Knit Picks site. This is what it turned out to be.
Surprised?
Labels: family trip, KP, On The Needles, Scarf
Just a quicky
Here are just two promised model shots from today's Christmas party at work with the happy faces of the lucky recipients of my knitting.
First up is Kim with her Shaped Triangle Shawl, very happy to be wearing this beauty next Sunday to keep her warm in church.
Then we have Jinelle modeling her new hot pink fuzzy scarf, which was a real breeze to knit with 8mm needles and Paton Twister yarn. She is also the one that got the hot pink and black Endpaper Mitts. Go figure, she's a hot mama. :) (Please ignore the clash between the red shirt and the pink scarf. The shirt was part of todays uniform.)
Labels: Lace, Scarf
Chevron Scarf is done
Wow, that was one long scarf. I'm done, with this one that is. I finished the scarf actually two nights ago, but had to wait for the batteries for my camera to recharge. Now that that is done it's pouring out of buckets here and there is no better picture possible. Anyway, here it is, my fuzzy chevron scarf in all it's 85 inch glory.
I just kept on knitting this scarf until I had no more yarn. The funny thing about it is, that I used two yarns that, except for the
fuzzyness, had nothing in common what so ever. At least not that I knew off, and they both ran out at about the same time.
What a coincidence. So I guess that means they were made for each other. Now, what to do with the other lonely ball of blue yarn?
For all of you that are knitting the Mystery Stole 3. Did you get today's clue? What do you think about THAT? Are you going with the pattern? I don't think so. Swan Lake as a theme is OK to me, I would have never guessed that, but then I was never into the theme guessing thingy anyway, but knitting wings into a shawl? I'm glad I'm slow on this one and didn't get to the lifeline yet. I think I'll go with the option of knitting the whole darn other half again and then grafting it together. I hate grafting. I was wondering if anybody comes up with the idea of just knitting it down to the other end. I know who to knit lace and to follow the pattern, but I don't know how much it would effect the pattern if I would just keep on going. I think the decreases and stuff would look different, coming from the other direction. So I guess grafting it is. I can't wait to see some of those "wings" posted. I'd also like to see a picture of the finished, blocked shawl. Not that I'm going to change my mind, but I'd sure like to see it. Well, Pat, what do you think? Wings or no wings? (That sounds kinda like an always commercial :)
My baby blanket is coming along too. I had to run and get a second ball of the baby colored yarn just to find out that naturally after a year of laying around in my knitting room, now they had a totally different dye lot. The colors are a little different, I think. The lavender is a little more blue, the peach is a little lighter, but it's a baby blanket and the colors are separated by the white. I just hope that the overall patterning won't turn into vertical stripes. I had that happen before with a second pack of yarn too. What a bummer.
Labels: FO, MS3, Scarf
Mystery Stole 3 Clue 2 Update
Wow, what an official title that is to this entry. Despite all the sidetracking and all the other things I did since Friday, I did manage to finish clue 2 of the ongoing mystery stole.
It's turning out very nicely, but surely needs some vigorous blocking to show all the details. Maybe I should have used a thicker yarn or a smaller needle size after all, but all will be revealed when it's done, soaked and blocked at the end. Right now I'm ok with it. The pattern emerges quite well, but unlike so many others, that knit this stole, I'm not jumping to any conclusions on what the theme might be. I'm just happily knitting along. You might want to check out the group and see what all "interesting" theme guesses they are coming up with.
My chevron scarf is also growing and growing. Right now, unstretched, it's already measuring a generous 33 inches. Of course that's easy to do since I'm working with fuzzy yarn and 5.5 mm needles, compared to the other KAL knitters who are using STR or any other kind of sock yarn. I'm not cheating, I'm experimenting and altering the scarf to fit my own needs and expectations for the outcome (hale to the big words).
Labels: Lace, MS3, Scarf
Chevron Scarf
Or should I say the things you do when you have nothing else to do? I signed up for the Chevron Scarf KAL last week and so miserably failed to produce a scarf with my first attempt. I didn't even make it in front of the camera, before the frog jumped it. It' was just not soft enough. So I took another look at my stash and found this. 
This eventually evolved into that.
Now I'm surprisingly pleased with the way the colors change on the greenish yarn, which by the way I have no idea what it is. It's one of those mystery balls that my sister scored somewhere and it made it into my stash and now it jumped me. The blue one is almost as fuzzy, but I actually had a band for it. It's ancient from my aunts store and it's a acrylic/wool/viscose mix of some kind. Anyway, it's soft and I totally adore the way the colors change. Did I say that before already? Well, anyway, I guess that shows I'm really loving this and I might just keep it for myself instead of making this an early Christmas present for I don't know who yet.
I also have the monkey socks finally finished. You might not believe this, but after I have no idea how long the two little monkeys are finally together to play. Wow. Don't ask me why this took so long. Looking at Teenie's blog, she whipped out those monkey is only a couple of days. 
My foot model was a little shy this time and his feet were too small for the socks, but I didn't want to stretch them out by putting them on my paddle feet. My sisters are a bit smaller than mine and that worked out with the pattern just right. The only change I made was, that I used the short row heel. It's just my personal choice. Somehow I just like that as a heel as well as a toe, even though I have to sew up the toes with a kitchener stitch. For me it's worth the extra step.
Otherwise, lets cross our fingers for the UPS guy today and hopefully you'll see some new teaser pics from my new Knit Picks project. I know I'm bad.
Labels: FO, Scarf, Socks
Minor Distractions
So you want to know, why the Bonita Shirt is taking a break? Well, I guess I could say I got blinded by all the white, but to be quite honest, I was getting a little bit bored, so I got side tracked. I finished the cotton socks and now have to hold myself back not to start on the second pair from the toes up. They also have to wait, since a couple of minor (two of them not so minor) "orders/requests" from neighbors and coworkers managed to skip ahead to the top of the waiting list. I have a coworker that wanted to make her daughters some fuzzy scarves, but we know now that fuzzy yarn like fun fur is no FUN to crochet. Since she hasn't knitted in years and didn't know how to do it anymore, I had to come to the rescue and knit the scarves for her. Here is FO pastel scarf and not yet FO fuzzy rainbow scarf. They are knitting up fairly fast, so there is no problem there.
I also was asked to make a somewhat patriotic bear. Well, I guess here comes Pooh Bear once again, this time in different colors. Just stay tuned and find out what I'm coming up with for this special little bear.
Also a "baby" blanket is on order. To replace a somewhat tattered original blanket, which after 9 years of love and wash is not longer so desirable, I'm asked to crochet a new blanket in similar pattern and similar color. This is going to be in pale yellow Chenille and crochet with big needles. Here is a look at the pattern it's going to be. It's the letter "C" for Classic Cover-up from the Leisure Arts Leaflet 3014 "Our best Afghans A to Z.
Labels: FO, On The Needles, Scarf
It is finally done!
Believe it or not, but my Kimono Shawl from Cheryl Oberle's book Folk Shawls is finally done. It took long enough. A five hour trip in the car finally made me finish it up. I was about to give up and only make 20 instead of 25 repeats of the pattern, but I stuck with it. Aren't you guys proud of me? 
Now it's blocking on the floor and I'm happy to say that all the kinks from this being recycled yarn are literally washed away. I stretched it to 24 inches wide and about 72 inches long. I know I should have blocked the edges with a string, but didn't think I wanted to do this when it was wet. Plus I knitted this with cashmere and it was already pretty fragile while I was knitting it, so I don't know how well it would have taken to haven a string running through the edges in it's wet stage. Now I still have lots of this cashmere left and have to figure out what to do with it. I love to knit with it and I love the lace shawls, but I don't even know if I'll wear all of them. I think this one will be one that I'll actually put on but now draped around the shoulders as much as worn around my neck like a regular scarf. On another note we just came back from a little family trip to Sea World, Orlando and Busch Gardens in Tampa. Unfortunately my planned shopping trip for the third day had to be scrubbed, since the Army said so and we had to be back asap. Instead of getting to spend a little more time with me and the boys here at home my husband had to go back to work. This sucks, but I guess that's just one more thing we military wives have to put up with. I think you'll see a lot more knitting and other crafts here on my blog in the future, since I will be having a lot of spare time. We just have to hang in there like the rest of them and make the best of it and hope for a save return.Labels: family trip, FO, Scarf
Playing ketchup ;)
Hi everyone. I guess it's time for me to play catch up with all the projects I've been talking about, working on and unable to post properly. I temporarly solved my computer problem by hooking up a monitor to the laptop, which seem to be working fine. Now I got some pictures to show you:This is what the nice mail lady brought me last week. It's a box from Rachel. She hear me crying about how I never had the pleasure of knitting with handspun and came to the rescue. She sent me some of her very own handspun yarn to play with and this is what I finished with one of the balls of yarn that is unfortunately missing from the picture: 
Isn't it cute? I just had to give this stuff a try and I absolutely love the way the colors change. Great job spinning this up, Rachel. Next up is a ragquilt I threw together in a day for the new little baby girl of a soldier in our unit to accompany the baby booties. Here is a little work in progress photo gallery (I guess) of the different stages of the quilt. Really simple and really fast too = instant gratification. I love projects like these:
Then, like that wasn't enough yet, I knitted up this little hottie in a day with my trusty size 8 mm sparkly needles. Maybe that's what made my fingers fly? I think it's more like the size of the needles :)
After all of that I needed some time out and I made a couple of the mini socks from my left over sock yarn stash and gave some to my deserving friends and I knitted a couple more rows on the infamous kimono shawl. It's still not finished, but after a couple more visits to the dentist's office with my kids I should be done with it soon ;).
Gotta run, I hope that will keep you reading for a while. At least I put enough pictures in there to keep you entertained. I know how boring all my babling can be :) Later :o)Labels: FO, Quilt, Scarf
