Knitting Progress and a Sock Monkey

Hello,

I thought I'd zoom in with some of the progress I've made on my knitting since I last wrote about my projects here. This is an effort to demonstrate that I actually do stuff when I'm not writing on the blog... I do assume that you know that, especially since I haven't been writing that often... I do other things.... OK, right, here are knitting projects in progress:

1. The Cascade Chunky Baby Alpaca Throw which looked like this:

And now looks like this:

Almost exactly the same...

I had knit through two balls of the gray yarn and added a cream stripe and a red stripe when my daughter said "Hey mom, that looks like a sock monkey." It did indeed look like a sock monkey and while I do like sock monkeys, "sock monkey throw" was not the look I was going for... so I frogged it (knitter speak for "unraveled it" because you rip it rip it rip it, get it?) and started again, this time with a version of the Double Seed Stitch Blanket from Purl Bee. I say "a version" because I cast on a bunch of stitches and I didn't do a gauge swatch so I don't know how big it will end up. I also bought a light gray so it will be dark gray, light gray, and cream striped and I'll use the red to teach Lu how to knit.

2. The yellow swing cardi which looked like this:

And now looks like this:

PROGRESS!!! Love it. So fat it's a good pattern and I have no desire to frog it. Bodes well.

3. The swing coat by Debbie Bliss which looked like this:

And now looks like this:

More progress, fun pattern, no desire to frog it, all good.

Then, I added three more knitting projects to the list. One day soon I'll explain my weird relationship with my craft supplies and weeding out, but suffice it to say that my mom knows that when I "weed out" my yarn and fabric it's only a matter of time before I take it all back again. She has that time to use what she wants before I come and collect it, which I did over Christmas (sorry mom) Like is said, weird.

Anyway..

4. The Tea Leaves cardi by Madelinetosh available here.

This is a hugely popular sweater to knit (if you know what's going on in the knitting world) and for good reason too, it's pretty and it's knit from the top down. That's the neck/yolk you see there. It's super-easy to follow and I've seen so many on Ravelry, they come out beautifully! 

5. Shift of Focus from Rain Knitwear available here.

So this yarn is very special. A woman in Vermont hand spun and hand-dyed this for me. It's a merino/tencel blend and it's just GORGEOUS! I saw it at the Montpelier Farmer's Market and I went ga ga over it. It was very expensive (the way handmade things should be) so I'd knit to the end of a skein and get another. Here's the problem though, I love that yarn SO MUCH that I have completely frogged it twice. As in: it was finished and ready to sew together and I unraveled the entire thing...TWICE. I need to have the exact right pattern for it and I've found it with this sweater.

Of course I've had to unravel this one once because I did it wrong. I was looking at it going "I'm not seeing how this is working. Maybe that's because it's top-down with short rows? Maybe if I keep going it will make sense to me? Nah, I was doing it wrong. Now that I'm doing it right I can see it. It's amazing how doing something the right way makes so much more sense.

6. This baby bonnet from Purl Soho's Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

I love this book! I love and have all of Purl's "Last Minute" books. I have knitted this bonnet twice before without incident but this time it's giving me absolute fits! I've frogged the stupid thing six times. It's not a hard pattern either. I keep getting distracted or something, I don't know, all I do know is that I'll be happy when this one is done! Gah! What a pain in the patootie!

Hun is really annoyed when I unravel something. He takes it personally. When I unraveled the Shift of Focus he was like "ARE YOU UNRAVELING THAT AGAIN!!! WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DO THAT!!!!"  Alas, I believe that herein lies the difference between knitters and other species,  we actually find the act of knitting calming and meditative, "I'm at peace when I knit" so to speak. So while we do enjoy finishing projects, the process is also enjoyable so unraveling isn't the worst thing in the world. Besides, yarn is expensive so you want to get it right. Except that dumb bonnet. I really just want to get that thing done.

I have the yarn for four more projects here. I have the patterns all picked out and the gauge swatches all knitted for a couple. I may start all of them at once. I keep very good notes so I know where I am on a given project... Hey, I get bored easily, what can I say?

So i'm off to finish the dumb bonnet, hooray. Hopefully I won't have to frog it again.

See you soon,

H

STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER!!!!

I was in a rut. Feeling really blah. More like blaaaaaaaaaah...... Which seems to happen to me when I spend too much time in front of the computer. Don't get me wrong, I think computers are just fine, but they aren't a substitute for actually doing stuff. Pinning cute ideas on Pinterest, reading fun things on blogs, saying "hi" on Facebook, avoiding Twitter like the plague, are only semi-activities, for me to be happy I have to actually do something.... in the actual real world.... with no (little) help from the computer... 

Because I'm a person with a gazillion ideas and a very short attention span my preference is to go from doing nothing to doing EVERYTHING!!!! Or at least a lot of things all at once. 

That way I don't get bored... I often don't finish anything either but I'm eternally hopeful that I will complete 90% of the projects I start one day. Hope does indeed spring eternal. I thought I'd show you what I'm doing on the off-chance you were curious.

First of all I'm doing three knitting projects:

There they are.

The first is what will be an extremely expensive, absolutely FABULOUS baby alpaca throw for my couch. I should write a post about "How to Knit Something Wicked Expensive without Laying Out a lot of Cash all at Once." Truthfully, I don't really need to write that post because I can just tell you: 1. pick a yarn that is unlikely to be discontinued. 2. By one skein and knit to the end. 3. Go buy another and repeat. 4. Make it striped so the color can be out of stock and you won't lose your momentum.

This is Cascade Yarns Chunky Baby Alpaca. I have no intention of calculating how much the 20-ish skeins I will need will cost. If you make that calculation, don't you dare tell me.

It is the softest, loveliest yarn and the throw will be big enough for Hun to sleep under. It's about 80" long! That is, in fact, 80" crammed on that needle right now.

My next project is a pretty swing cardi made from yarn that I've had for about four years.

Here it is:

That is Peace Fleece Worsted Weight in Chickie Masla. I LOVE that color! and the pattern is from Debbie Bliss Magazine Fall/Winter '09 which is still available here. I probably won't knit the collar but do a crocheted edge instead. Not a huge fan of the collar.

Right now I'm still doing the gauge swatch for this one. The pattern will tell you haw many stitches you should have in four inches. If you get it wrong the sweater could come out any size, from an infant sweater to a cover for a barge, always knit a gauge swatch. That's the gauge swatch on the left there. I was really happy to see that Boye is making rosewood needles now. Brittany used to make them from walnut but they discontinued them. I like the wooden needles if I can get them.

The last knitting project (for the moment) is a swing coat again by Debbie Bliss:

I'm making this one out of Valley Yarns Stockbridge in Periwinkle and that pattern can be found in Debbie Bliss - Design It Knit It  I like a lot of her patterns, particularly the ones that are a little deconstructed and very simply designed. I'm not big on frou frou. 

SO lots of knitting.

I have a bunch of sewing I'm doing too, six or seven tops, or possibly five or six tops and a jacket, we'll see. Here's the fabric:

All but the gray on the lower right are Rowan's Kaffe Fasset Shot Cotton, which is woven with a different color on the warp so they have a little more depth to them. The gray on the bottom right is a much heavier woven that might be better suited to a jacket, we shall see.

These are the patterns I'm using:

You can see what they're called in the picture; you can get Amy Butler's Liverpool here, Lisette's Continental Blouse here, Sew Liberated's Schoolhouse Tunic here, and Wiksten's Tova Blouse here. All but the Liverpool are very straightforward. The Liverpool has lots of button holes so I imagine I will be calling my mother for help before all is said and done. That's if I get that far. Right now I'm trying to overcast the pieces to the first Schoolhouse Tunic I'm making and my machine is not cooperating. It sort of makes me want to smash the machine to little pieces with a hammer but I realize that would be bad.

Here are the cut-out, half overcast pieces to the tunic:

That's the 7th color right there. I'm mostly confident that I will finish this without hammering my sewing machine... mostly.

Finally, I'm baking.

First, I'm baking cookies. This knitting book contains my favorite butter cookie recipe:

The fact that one of my favorite cookie recipes lives in a knitting book is obvious to me. We knitters are cozy, cookie-loving people so why wouldn't you combine cookies and knitting? I'm a master at it. 

I'm also baking bread from this book:

I actually think that my involvement with the bread is under five minutes but I will be doing a post on this and I'll time it. This is an amazing book! I'm just waiting for the right moment to do the photography for the post. That moment is the elusive time when three factors converge - 1. it is daylight, 2. my kitchen is clean. 3. I have the inclination to bake the bread. So far they haven't lined up. I suspect that cleaning my kitchen is the hold-up. That's probably it.

So there you go! I have adequate reasons to close the computer and do something creative and productive. Hun is really happy because he no long has a wife who feels blaaaaaaah so she's boring and depressed and chronically ignores housework. No sir, now he has a wife who is happy and energized and who undoes any housework she might do by covering it with projects in process. Hey, at least I'm happy... and cookies and bread! There's that too.

Are you the one project at a time kind of person or the multi-project crazy person like me?

Happy Hump Day!
H

The Sky Scarf

Happy 2012 Everyone!

I got this really cool scarf project for Christmas. My mum found the Sky Scarf from Leafcutter Designs. The Sky Scarf is a "Conceptual Knitting Project" where you look at the sky every day for a year and knit two rows with the colors of the sky that day. In 365 days you will have 730 row scarf that is a complete record of the sky for the year. It also happens to be a beautiful scarf! So when my mum asked me if I wanted to make one I said "YES!!!"

Here are my first two rows. Yesterday, when I noticed the sky, it was a pretty blue with white clouds. Every row is two strands of yarn so you can combine blue skies with clouds or dark clouds with lighter clouds, whatever the sky is doing.

There's an interesting twist where I live in upper New England: the sky changes multiple times every day. There's even a saying "Welcome to New England! If you don't like the weather, wait a minute." Since I've started prepping for and typing this post, it's been sunny, overcast, it snowed for about a minute, and now it's sunny-ish again. The sky here can do lots of things over the course of a given day.

One way to get around that is to look at the sky at the same time everyday. I will never remember to do that so I'll just knit the rows when I think of it. My sky scarf will be a 365-day record of the moment when I noticed the sky. 

Here's all of the yarn. You get: two bright blue, two light blue, two white, two darker gray and two lighter gray balls of yarn. My mum threw in a light blue mohair to add a little more texture to it. I love the whole concept of "conceptual knitting" or conceptual projects for that matter. If you're not a knitter you could paint stripes or dots on a canvas... or paper. You could use colored pencils and color stripes. If you're a quilter you could do a sky quilt! I'd have to think about how you'd do that but I'm sure there's a way.

Lea Redmond, creator of the Sky Scarf concept's scarf.

The pattern is a free download available here. You can get the yarn from any yarn store. She has more specific instructions on her site. I think it's pretty cool that on December 31, 2012 I'll be able to wear one year's worth of skies around my neck :-)

See you tomorrow!

H

I Never Finish Anythin

I have decided to set a goal for my self. If you know me I'd appreciate it if you'd stop laughing. If you don't know me you might wonder what's so funny? Well, here's the thing, I set goals all of the time, sometimes I even strategically plan and make detailed lists with smaller sub-goals and time lines. I can spend HOURS planning. It's impressive. Then, after I've gone through all of the planning I start working on my goal. I finish brilliantly, accomplishing my task with pride, on time and... wait, nope, sorry, that's not me. No, what I do is lose the list, get distracted, get bored with the project, forget about it completely or decide that I'd rather be doing something else during the times when I should be working toward the goal. I imagine that people who both make and accomplish their goals are pretty self actualized. I wonder what that's like.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Oh, sorry, I'm back. I WILL FINISH THIS POST! FOCUS HEATHER, YOU CAN DO IT!

Anyway, I'm setting a goal and I'm posting it here. Important point: The fact that I've posted it here will not make me any more likely to achieve the goal. No sir, it doesn't work like that with me although I wish it did. No, I'm posting it here because I'm hoping it will remind me to work on it and I'm hoping that you might ask me about it so I don't lose sight of it. We'll see if this works.

My goal is centered around this:

No, it only looks like a yarn shop threw up on my bed, THAT is my pile o' projects. Five sweaters in various stages done-ness. That rainbow-y one just needs to be blocked and sewn together, it's been that way since 2008. The pink striped one was for Lucie, I started it in 2009, it's too small for her now so I'll be finishing it for my niece. I'm thinking of re-knitting the yellow one and I'd like to re-knit the mohair one but I'm not sure that I can unravel it without breaking the yarn. I have no plans to finish those anytime soon. 

Here is my goal: I will finish the pink sweater and the purple sweater by October 1, 2011.

This is the pink sweater:

I've finished the back and most of one side. I have the sleeves, collar and the second side to go. This is a really quick knit so it won't take me long.

This is the purple sweater:

I just have the button plackets to go on this one.

Both if these are from the book New England Knits by Cecily Glowik MacDonald and Melissa LeBarre. You can find both of them on Ravelry too. The pink one is the Melrose Peacoat, which I'm knitting in Classic Elite Duchess in the color cameo and the purple one is the Fairfield Sweater, which I'm knitting in Valley Yarns Northhampton in the color lavender. I LOVE this book! I love their other designs too.

Ironically, the reason that these aren't finished isn't because I'm a slow knitter, I'm actually very fast. I just get bored. The fact that I get bored with the project is really sad because this:

is the rest of my stash. That's eight projects worth of yarn that have been waiting for me to get my butt in gear. It's nice yarn too! If you know yarn you'll see that there is a sweater's worth of Noro Kureyon. That aqua yarn is Rowan Kid Classic and the light green in the front is Blue Sky Alpacas Silk Alpaca. Nice stuff that could be beautiful sweaters if I'd just knit them. Oy!

To make things interesting the sweaters are dusty because they've been in a basket in my living room, which means that I'm allergic to them. Yep, fun. I'm going to have to figure out how to de-dust them before I can knit them. At least I keep the other yarn in a plastic bin. That shows some planning. Whatever.

So, two sweaters done by October one. I just rhymed, did you notice?

How about you? Are you a self actualized person who achieves their goals or do you have a proverbial pile o' projects calling to you?

Until Monda