WIP Wednesday - February edition

Well, since the last time I did this I made just a little progress...although I haven't been entirely strict with the 2 to 1 rule. Two things did come off the list, (the sister yarn, and the chase the chill) as well as this little guy who was never on it, and two more jumped on, so technically that's a net decrease.  




On the needles
 (in order of cast on age, with approximate completion status, and links to the pattern I'm using, changes in bold)

Finished chasing the chill - still need buttons

1. Sock yarn blankie (10%) 
2. Dancing socks (75%)
3. Fern garden scarf (40%)
4. Hubby's annual sweater for 2010 (75%)
5. Diamond socks (60%)
6. Slump socks (60%)
7. Broken pumpkin socks (75%)
8. Interstices (55%) 
9. Exploration Station (99.99999% - seriously I just need to weave in the ends and fix a hole!)
10. Pinnate (20%)
11. Welcome back (80%)
12. Yummy Cowl (50%)
13. Rivercat socks (70%)
14. Prolly Folly (40% - what I named this says it all, I knew it was destined for abandonment)
15. Building Blocks (40% - took it out to frog and now I like it)
16. Pay it forward mittens (75%)
17. Peace 2016 (20%)
18. Ingwer (10% - for the ESK yarnathon Q1 knit a long) 
19. Snowmelt MKAL (20% - I blame my family for this)

On the wheel

The sister yarn

1. Trying for three - my first attempt at 3-ply, one bobbin full, second halfway there

On the loom

1. Clasped weave scarf  fabric current length 27 inches.

On the hooks

1. hexagon shawl
2. cuttlefish
   

On the machine

1. Jelly roll race - awaiting sandwiching
2. B's baby quilt - yea he's 6.5 - wanna make something of it!
3. Self designed overly ambitious quilt
4. Scrap shirt quilt

Yarnathon plotting....

16 badges and 140 points earned in last year's yarnathon booster club at eat.sleep.knit.  Enough to get bronze, but not quite enough to get gold.  This year the system is a little different, but I'm aiming for the middle of the rainbow, some lemon-lime goodness! Some are lifetime achievements so I'm already 35% to cherry. If you don't know about the yarnathon check out the details here.  Be warned, it might make your stash grow.  This, I know is in direct opposition to my goals for 2017, but I'm going to be careful how I select projects, and yarn.  I think I'll mostly be participating in KALs and badges for the first 6 months at least. 

WIP Wednesday - Coming clean in the new year

Is WIP Wednesday still a thing? I'm going with yes.

Spoiler alert:  I have too many.  Way too many.   Thus I'm giving myself a challenge: I've decided for the next 6 months I have to finish or frog two knitting projects before I can start a new one.  It's a two for one.  We are also applying this principle to our house clutter, 1 in 2 out.  For instance, I got some awesome slippers for Christmas and that meant two very ratty pairs went into the trash bin.  Quality over quantity, less is more, blah blah blah.

Back to the crafts.  Here is the embarrassingly complete list:

On the needles
 (in order of cast on age, with approximate completion status, and links to the pattern I'm using)

1. Sock yarn blankie (10%) 
2. Dancing socks (75%)
3. Fern garden scarf (40%)
4. Hubby's annual sweater for 2010 (75%)
5. Diamond socks (60%)
6. Chasing the Chill (85%)
7. Slump socks (60%)
8. Broken pumpkin socks (75%)
9. Interstices (55%) 
10. Exploration Station (99.99999% - seriously I just need to weave in the ends and fix a hole!)
11. Pinnate (20%)
12. Welcome back (80%)
13. Yummy Cowl (50%)
14. Rivercat socks (70%)
15. Prolly Folly (40% - what I named this says it all I knew it was destined for abandonment)
16. Building Blocks (40% - destined for the frogging)
17. Pay it forward mittens (55%)
18. Peace 2016 (20%)

And for full disclosure there are 11 projects on my ravelry page marked as "hibernating", meaning I haven't frogged them, but I'm also not entirely sure where they are located in my home.  Maybe the endless decluttering will help with that.

On the wheel

1.  Sister yarn - two bobbins resting to be plied
2. Trying for three - my first attempt at 3-ply

On the loom

1. Clasped weave scarf  fabric current length 21 inches.

On the hooks

1. hexagon shawl
2. cuttlefish
   

On the machine

1. Jelly roll race - awaiting sandwiching
2. B's baby quilt - yea he's 6.5 - wanna make something of it!
3. Self designed overly ambitious quilt
4. Scrap shirt quilt

Bring on the finishing 2017!  Let's have this down to 10 UFOs by the end of the year!

Knits as they are known: Shur'tugal socks

Still cold enough for socks around here.  So this week's edition of knits as they are known is also a pair of socks.  According to my Ravelry notes, this took about a year to knit, and they just turned 4.

NOW

THEN

Pattern: Shur'tugal 

by Alice Yu

This used to be a free pattern, but it's not anymore.

Yarn:

Socks that Rock Lightweight  by Blue Moon Fiber Arts in color "Princess Plummy"

My Thoughts: According to my notes, I didn't Love the knitting process on these, although I do love the yarn.  As far as sock yarns go, however, I find the finished produce to be a little thick.  I actually can't tell too much difference between these and a pair I knit out of medium weight STR.  The end result of that is that they don't always fit in most shoes, but they are very thick and comfy. THey really only fit in my Halflinger clogs (specifically these). As a result and they really become hanging around the house and weekend socks.  Which is a good thing, because this particular pair has fallen victim to some unknown misfortune:

Sad sock hole.

That, however, is mostly OK. It speaks to the quality of the yarn and/or pattern. That hole has been there for *cough* several *cough* years, and at least half a dozen machine wash and dry cycles.  It seems to just be the way it is.  It doesn't grow, it doesn't get worse, and when they are worn it looks just normal:

Yes the hole is still there, just hidden during normal wear

  I'm too lazy to darn it as I should.

Final assessment: socks that rock does indeed rock and live up to the hype, although it is a little thicker then one might want for socks in the South.

Knits as they are known : Pillar Socks

The other day, it got cold and I had to wear socks.  Yes, where I live it is possible to avoid wearing socks until December. Yes, I still knit wool socks.  It's a contradiction, I know, but if I keep knitting, and keep living here, I could possibly knit enough socks so I never have to wear a store bought pair again.* It's a life goal.  Aim high I say.  Anyways, I digress.  It was cold. I wore socks.  Specifically, I wore the first pair of socks I ever knit in the round.  More specifically, I wore a hand knit pair of socks that are more than a decade old.  They still fit, they still bring me joy. I will not be Kondo-ing  them away anytime soon.

It got me thinking about the destiny of all the things we knit. We knitters of the Internet love to knit things and love to show them off.  We carefully pose a freshly knit and perfectly blocked FO to show it (and our skills) off to the world. Sometimes we tell a little story about why we knit it, what inspired us, the tribulations we went through while doing it, etc.  We follow trends, and sometimes we all knit the same thing.  Patterns come and go. More recent converts to the knitting world may not even know the February lady sweater craze of 2008, or the monkeys, oh the monkeys, and how can we ever forget the clapotis Seriously, 22000+ projects and I'm still not even sure how to say that word out loud.

Pretty knits are shown off, and pressed into to service by their new owners, and forgotten to time. When was  the last time you saw a picture of handknit socks years after they came off the needles? Well today I remedy this.  I'm going to try my best to start documenting,  the full life of my knits.  How do they wear? how do they work? how do they wash?  Where they really worth what was put into them? It is these burning issues, understudied in the knittingverse, that I will attempt to address. 

So in that spirit, here are the socks I wore today:

 

 And here they are when I first knit them (and blogged them):

Pattern: Pillars by Lisa Stichweh
Yarn: Knitpicks Stroll Tonal, I think the color was called Sunflower. 
Knit 2011/2012: I knit these mostly on airplanes.  I don't remember finishing, but I do remember starting them on a trip to Seattle.

4 years of service and they have held up well.  I was pleasantly surprised with the relatively in-expensive yarn in both the knitting and wearing process.  They still fit, they are still soft and comfy, the go through the wash fairly regularly.  I've been mostly good about keeping them out of the dryer, but I know they've been through at least a couple of times.  There is always some fuzz on them, but it makes them all the more beautiful to me.    Good pattern, great yarn, happy results. 

*I might still buy happy socks, because they are pretty damn comfy. Comfy and cotton. 

A FO Friday

Twas the day after Thanksgiving, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring....

Yeah, right.  I have a three year old boy.  Someone is always stirring in this house!  Today it was a lot of Playmobil pirates, but I did manage to finish off two items and get them on the blocking board.

The first is the beautiful Silverwing Shawl by Baroque Purls.

Here is is straight off the needles, it's drying now, so it will get a proper debut sometime later. 

I knit this because I needed a new project and we were flying to the beach the next day. The design is inspired by Amy van de Laar's hometown of Whakatane, New Zealand, and the pūkeko birds she sees there.That region of New Zealand was one of the places and things I was busy with in the long hiatus of the blog, so it struck me as appropriate.

I followed the pattern as written, except for the bind-off.  It was coming out too tight, so I switched to a stretchy one. I loved everything about this knit, except the yarn.  The Numma Numma Panna Sock was a sale purchase from Eat.Sleep.Knit earlier this year.  It was to get me to another planet in this year's yarn-a-thon. The color is beautiful, but it didn't play well with my knitpicks harmony  rainbow wooden needles - think squeaky yarn - ewww.  An "emergency" trip to the yarn store in St. Petersburg was necessary to find some Chiaogoo's.  Hubs was kind enough to indulge me.  There may also have been some minor stash enhancement.

FO Friday

It's done!  Well, it has been done for a while, but I've been too lazy to take pictures.

Here she is. A whale of a tale!

This is my first completed project from New England Knits, which my sister gave me for Christmas to remind me of home and I want to knit everything from it!.

I had one ball of the navy and one ball of the white that I had purchased to try out for a different project, but decided it wasn't right for that.  It's knitpicks Palette.  The teal is a little - a very little - bit of Online Supersock 100 leftover from my Pomatomus.  I didn't have a fourth color like the pattern calls for so I just did a little row of navy at the edge of the chevrons.  Looks great, but it meant that there were a couple of rows that had all three colors floating around, which was a bit of an annoyance.

When it was done, it wasn't quite as floppy as I wanted, but blocking it flopped out a bit more and in the end I'm quite happy with it.  Of course it was 80 degrees here today, so it will be a while before the whales see the light of day again!

WIP Wednesday

Sadly I have no pictures to post today, so I'm going to infect your brains with something else.  I'm making the Whale Watch Hat from New England Knits with some yarn that I had purchased to test out as sweater yarn for a hub's next sweater (likely you'll hear that story next week).  In any case, it's super cute and I just finished the second row of whales.  But every time I work on it this just keeps running through my head:



Ahh good memories. Hope you enjoy it!

FO Friday

I didn't do much Christmas knitting this year, but I was inspired to make one garment for my sister.  When I was home over fall break it was a bit chillier than she had expected and she borrowed my Pteryla shawl one day, she really liked its size and weight.  Then I got that sock yarn book, then I uncovered some yarn purchases I made over the summer and it seemed the fates aligned.

This yarn:



desperately wanted to be this shawl:



for my kid sister, who always had a thing for the sparkle.

FO Friday

Did I mention I went to SAFF this year?  Hub was nice and took me there, we had a lovely day trip that included fall colors, yarn and antiques.  It wasn't as big or diverse as Rhinebeck, but I did find a few unique yarns that were new to me.  One of which was a sock yarn called Cool Wool Sock, from Carriage House Woolens, which I can only assume is a very small company because that webpage seems to work only intermittently.

I was intrigued by this particular yarn because it was a mix of Wool and Coolmax.   I even looked it up on the web browser on my phone before purchasing since I had never heard of it.  What got me about it was that my mom loves the socks I make for her, but sometimes says that the warm woolies are a little too warm.  I thought this might make a pair that could be a little more versatile for her.

Combined with my signed copy of One-Skein Sock Yarn Wonders*  I was off to the races with a new pair of socks.

I started them at a knit night and they went pretty quickly.  I brought them with me on my field trip in November and turned the first heel when I visited my old knit night.  Unfortunately I was in auto-pilot mode and didn't really read the pattern.  The gusset decreases are not standard and I tried to fudge it, but it just wasn't working, so I had to rip back all the way to the leg again and start over with the heel flap.  At this point they went into time-out for a while, to be picked up again shortly before the holidays when I was determined to finish them for Mom's birthday (Christmas Eve).  I finished the first one at a knit night and was terribly disappointed to try it on and discover that it was really tight at the ankle.  So it just got thrown in the suitcase.  I brought it home and Mom tried it on on her birthday and said it fit her just fine.  So I finished them up on the two post-Christmas snow days we had in New England and left them there with her.  At last report, she loves them!

Pattern: Eyelet and Feather Socks by Anne McClure in the above mentioned book
Needles: US size 1.5 (2.5mm) Susanne's ebony needles (mad love for these)
Yarn: Carriage House Woolens Cool Sock

* I highly recommend this series of books.  I have the original, the designer and the sock yarn versions and I've used them extensively.

FO Friday

Remember this Rhinebeck yarn:



Well in just 8 weeks it became this:

Pattern: Drops 119-25 (Terribly long pattern name here)
Yarn: Bartlett Shetland Sport Cone in color dark jade heather - Probably a little more than half the cone. I think there is enough left for another sweater!
Size: Modified Large. I followed the size large pattern, but after I went 4 inches past the underarms I realized it was way too big, so I ripped back and didn't cast on any of the underarm stitches.  This required some changes to the sleeves which ended up being somewhere between the medium and large size at the start and decreased down to the medium.
Needles: Awesome Ninja needles size 4.

WIP Wednesday

I finished a few things up over the holidays, each will be revealed on my FO Friday's to come, so here's the WIP list:

1. Adult surprise jacket: ripped out and has now started to become an Epaulet Jacket
2. A new sweater for Hub: 10 inches into the body
3. New socks for Hub: halfway through the first cuff
4. Ying Yang Cowl: to match my endpapers.  1 stripe done. 

Hibernation list:

1. Fern Garden Scarf:  row 99: still haven't found ANY quiet time to knit on it, even dragged to the field and back with the hopes of quiet hotel time, but I was too pooped to bother.
2. Charade Socks: 50% complete: Haven't bothered to look at it.
3. Fingerless gloves: Three fingers left, I'm getting nervous that I'm going to run out of yarn.
4. Sabine: Ummm I kind of forgot about her.
5. Decimal: hibernating due to missing yarn.
6. Shawl in progress: Still needs some decision about what to do.
7. Mittens: one complete, but it seems a moth ate through the tip...

WIP Wednesday

Here's a quick WIP Wednesday just so you all know I'm still alive (I went back to the field last week and that just generally messes life up)

Last time we left with 8 projects in the mix. Now we're up to 10.  I have no self control.

Here's where we are now:

1. Fern Garden Scarf:  row 99: still haven't found ANY quiet time to knit on it, even dragged to the field and back with the hopes of quiet hotel time, but I was too pooped to bother.
2. Charade Socks: 50% complete: Haven't bothered to look at it.
3. Fingerless gloves: Three fingers left, I'm getting nervous that I'm going to run out of yarn.
4. Sabine: Ummm I kind of forgot about her.
5. Decimal: hibernating due to missing yarn.
6. Shawl in progress: Still needs some decision about what to do.
7. Mittens: one complete, but it seems a moth ate through the tip...
8. Adult surprise jacket: still increasing (about 2 inches done). Considering frogging in favor of an epaulet jacket from knitting workshop.
9. Xmas gift #1: 25% complete
10. Jade Cables: Cast off the body portion last night.  Neckband and sleeve to go.  This is my current obsession and I'm going to try to finish it by December 1! 

In addition there has been some serious swatching and prepping for hub's next sweater.  Crazy me thinks I'll finish by Xmas, although the yarn hasn't arrived yet!  Ha! I crack myself up!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Rhinebeck Wrap Up

So, I'm like a month behind, but whatever.  I think it is the fate of a busy academic to always be one step behind herself.

So Rhinebeck!  This year for me Rhinebeck wasn't really about the event, but it was one thing I did over my fall break, right there along with line-dancing with mom, museum and apple picking (we hit the macouns in season-woohoo!) with my nephews and sister, and hiking with my parents.  It was a busy four days, but just the right amount of new England fall fun to soothe my soul.  The worst part of moving far from home is, well, being far from home, I have a wonderful family and I love spending time with them.  I miss then terribly when they aren't close.  The last two years we didn't make it home too much, and when we did get home it for for specific reasons (like weddings) and not much just chill time.  Last year we didn't even make it home for Christmas because plane ticket prices were out of control.  No one was able to come visit us either for the same reasons.  Being "easier" to get home was one of the deciding factors in the move and I am determined to take advantage of it.  This year, Rhinebeck coincided with our fall break so really it was just gravy.

The event itself was fun. It was great to spend time with my family and friends. I love walking outside in the fall weather, even it if was a bit chilly for a southern gal.  I did find, however, that there were many more people then when we had gone three years ago.  Last time, Ravelry was brand new and no one really knew what it was and now, if you knit, you know.  If you knit and you don't know you live under a rock and probably wouldn't ever go to Rhinebeck anyways.  So it was much more crowded and for me that makes it less fun.  Some booths I didn't even see because they were so packed and it just isn't worth squishing in.  After all it's just yarn it's not worth getting stepped on or something, which is generally what happens to me in crowds.  (I also have an awful fear of large crowds.  There was an incident at DisneyLand when I was a child.  I get flashbacks. It isn't pretty.)  This meant no Socks that Rock or Sanguine Gryphon for me.  Aside from the crowds, I feel like alot of the stuff was more mainstream than it was last time. It's good and bad.  Good=more options, bad=less intimate/local feel.  Another aspect of Rhinebeck is getting to see people you are "friends" with online but don't know in person.  That just messes with my shy side, so I don't do it unless it's prearranged somehow, which I didn't do.  But I had a cute baby to play with most of the time so I was cool.

I did buy yarn and I'm back to knitting and spinning at a pace I like:


Shetland sport on a cone from Bartlett Yarns. The color is dark jade heather. I've used some of their yarn a long time ago (I bought it at the big E probably in 2004) and it was nice. This is the start of this sweater from Drops, and it is my current obsession. I also bought some roving from them, in color blackberry (8oz for $7.00 seemed like a good deal).


This is some standard wool from Apple Hill Farms (I can't find a link, they are from Hudson, NY). It's destined to become a sweater for me but I can't decided what. I'm debating between a ribby cardi, a roam or a bramble jacket. But I also have some other ideas percolating.


This was a total impulse purchase, but it was just sooooooo soft. Sock dream from the periwinkle sheep shop, color hydrangea.

I also bought a kit from Gia Maria (also linkless) to make a scarf for my MIL. This was really more about the awesome shawl pin then than yarn.

Next year, the festival and fall break don't happen at the same time, so I likely won't go again, but I will likely take my fall trip home, yarn or not it's a great time to visit :)

How my knitting was saved

So, if you remember correctly, I was all settled in, with nothing to knit, expect those socks.  My yarn stash problem was going to be solved because fall break and Rhinebeck were conveniently the same weekend, so I had long planned a trip home for a visit.  My needle problem, however, was a little more challenging.  I first decided that I would just buy cheap needles as I needed them, but a trip to my small LYS store came up empty in trying to find a pair to finish Pteryla. Then I decided it was going to be a really big PITA to have to run out and buy new needles every time I needed a different size.  I remembered reading about getting whole sets of needles really cheap on Ebay, so I did a little bidding. Eventually,  I won a full set of 24 inch circulars...from China.

They took forever to come, and I fully expected that for ~$1.25 per pair (including shipping) they were going to be pretty crappy needles, but I figured they would get me through.  Once they did arrive, I was pleasantly surprised.

I opened my metallic-bubble mailer (looked something like this) to reveal a handy wallet of needles:

Other than the 0-16, which refers to the needle sizes, I have no idea what this says.  I'm going with "surprisingly awesome ninja knitting needles" because that is exactly what I found when I opened the snap.

There was a bit of confusion on my part because that particular pouch was labeled as size 15, which it clearly was not. So I busted out my handy Susan Bates Knit-Chek and discovered that in US terms I had a set of 12 needles ranging from size 0000 to 7.  Plus a small needle sizer and a darning needle to boot.

You can see here where I attempted to sharpie the correct US sizes on the pocket sizer, I'm still attempting to locate a slimmer sharpie.  The needles themselves are very lightweight.  I was expecting very heavy stainless steel needles, but they are light as air, smooth and fast.  The joins are really smooth and while I don't think they cables are flexible enough (or long enough for that matter) to magic loop, I hate magic looping anyways.  

I quickly transferred Pteryla over to give them a try and WOW.  She flew to the end with no problems.  A truly enjoyable knitting experience.  

Enter the sock

Near the end of the summer, hub flew back to take care of all our stuff and there was some confusion on his flights. The first time we were quite lucky that I had come into the airport with him because he had to come back with me and stay an extra few days.  The second time I dropped him off, and I was ~10 miles away from the airport when he called to say he wasn't entirely sure if he had a seat on the plane.  So I pulled into the nearest yarn shop to kill some time.  A few hours later he was in the air, and I was on my way to a concert with a good friend and a new pair of socks on a new pair of needles.  Sometimes I have no self restraint.

In any case, they became my traveling companion socks and were finished up on my plane ride home to visit my family and go to Rhinebeck.



The yarn is from libertyfibers an independant dyer who sells on etsy and it was very soft and squishy to knit with.

I'm really quite happy with them, and it is just becoming sock weather here in the south so I'm happy to have a new pair to wear.

Returning to the WIPS

It's been a long while since we did a WIP Wednesday around here, so when I started to write this I decided that's what it would be.

Once I was settled and got over the disappointment of the inaccessible stash and missing needles, I realized that I shouldn't be sad because I had a whole list of WIPs that I could just finish up.  They were already on their needles so that wouldn't be a problem. Plus, I typically store each WIP with the rest of the yarn to complete it in a big basket, and I knew where it was!  In all honesty, it would take me a year to finish all them up anyways.  Yippee, my knitting life was saved. Almost.

Here is the list as it stands now.

1. Fern Garden Scarf:  row 99: still haven't found much quiet time to knit on it)
2. Charade Socks: 50% complete: All set good to go here!
3. Fingerless gloves: This one was first on the finishing list and it's almost made it.
4. Sabine: Satisfying my sweater knitting I'm now about 5 inches into it.  I realized I never measured my gauge and it's very off, so I'll have to make a bigger size.  This may mean I don't have enough yarn.  This realization has dampened my enthusiasm, but I'm going to plod through anyways.
5. Decimal: body and one sleeve complete.  Hmmm.  It seems I'm out of luck on this one.  I only kept one more ball of the yarn with the WIP, so I can do the next sleeve but the yoke will have to wait until next year.  This was a big bummer for me. I was hoping this would be my Rhinebeck sweater, but it wasn't meant to be.
6. Shawl in progress (gift for mom): Now this is rapidly joining the unspeakable list.  I'm having hand-dyed-skeins-aren't-always-the-same issues and I can't decide how to fix it. 
7. Mittens: one complete, but it seems a moth ate through the tip...
8. Adult surprise jacket: still increasing (about 2 inches done). I have all the yarn, and the needles, but my copy of Knitting Workshop...you guessed it, in the abyss of storage. Ugh. 

Oh well, there goes that plan.  Good thing I was headed to Rhinebeck!

petryla

She's done. I'll explain how some other time, but depending on the weather she might make an appearnce at Rhinebeck tommorrow.

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Stored up.

So, the socks, the blanket, where does that leave us? Ah yes,

#3. Pteryla: ~50% complete and would make good car and plane knitting
to
#1. Pteryla: ~90% complete

Pteryla was started sometime in April after I ripped out yet another attempt at a Clapotis.  (the clapotis by the way is dead to me, it's name will not be spoken again).  The yarn I was using some Araucunia Ranco Multy was just screaming to be a shawl of some kind and after some Rav searching Pteryla was it.  Easy pattern to remember, right amount of yarn.  It was the perfect substitute for the name we speak no more, and I was very much looking forward to seeing it completed.

Pteryla does indeed make good car and plane knitting.  In fact, it makes such good car and plane knitting that I made really great progress on it over the summer and was happily knitting away in the Chicago (?) airport waiting for my last flight of the summer conference season.  I had just come to the conclusion that I could likely cast off before I landed when right then and there MY KNITTING NEEDLE BROKE!  The cable from my knitpicks options just fell right out of the needle!  To be fair this needle had seen it's fair share of abuse over the summer travels, but GRRRR.  With a little yelp I managed to pick up the stitches and save the shawl.  But my summer travel knitting came to a screeching halt right then and there.  I think I scared the nice lady reading her kindle next to me, but man, I was pissed.

Let's review.  I'm living out of my car, that means no spare knitting needles or extra options cables.  In fact at the exact moment of instrument failure all of my possesions were on a moving truck somewhere between FU and NU.  They were most definitely not accessible.  This means not only was I not going to finish before landing, but there was no hope of finishing in the foreseeable future either. So back in the bag she went, so close to completion, but yet so far.  I was pretty sad.

Now, here is were we reach the really sad part of my knitting story.  We haven't found a house yet, so we are living in a sabbatical house for the year.  Which means, all non-essential possesions are in storage.  In fact, everything we own except for our clothes, bed, sheets and towels is in a room that looks like this:

Try as we might, hub and I have not been able to unearth my knitting needles.  One box of stash, a basket of the remaining WIPS, and my DPNs, but no straights, circulars or options components.

What's a knitter to do?

Head to Rhinebeck of course, I'll be on the plane when you read this. :)

The baby blanket

When I found out I was going to be an aunt again I was ecstatic.  I love being an aunt.  It's probably my favorite role in life right now, so another niece or nephew was thrilling!  I also wanted the new one to know right off the bat that they were loved just as much as the first one.  So there would be knitting.  I queued up a bunch of blanket patterns in ravelry and patiently waited to find out the gender.  I found out that another nephew was arriving just days before I stumbled upon a score of Queensland Bamboo Cotton in Tuesday Morning for a song.  I couldn't resist.  The stash doesn't have many baby friendly yarns in it and those it does have are mostly pink.  Immediately I had a plan and 5 balls each of powder blue and light mint were on there way home with me. 

I decided to use my Vogue Stitchionary Volume 3 to make several squares or panels and then sew them together to make a whole blanket. The process and the blanket just sort of grew out of that.

Here's some pictures of the final result:




 

I apologize for the picture quality, I haven't quite figured out the lighting my new digs yet.

From left to right the stitch patterns are "scooter pie", "switching yard", and "masonry.  I joined the panels with a little triangle edging that reminds me of a dragon back.


I joined the panels by picking up stitches up one side of panel one and then down one side of the next panel on a large circular needle and folded it in half.  Then I worked an edging like you would on a shawl knitting together one stitch from each side at the end of each mini-row.

The edging in worked separately along each edge and it's just a simple ruffle pattern, which takes forever but has a nice effect. 

Overall I'm really happy with it.  Next time I'd use smaller needles to account for the drape of the bamboo, but since it's a blanket that doesn't matter so much. 

All in all it took 3 balls of each color, which means I have some leftover.  I don't have any plans for it right now, so it will return to the stash.

The one downside to this project, however, was that it took me a really long time to do it.  I just couldn't seem to find the time to finish it during my busy summer schedule.  I also wouldn't knit on it when my sister was around because I wanted it to be a surprise.  So, I didn't actually finish it until last month.  Parts of this blanket were knit in probably 7 different states and near the end, that edging really became a labor of love. 

Then I stupidly sent it in a package with a gift of crayons and a coloring book for my other nephew, From the south. In the summer.  I'm an idiot. My sister claims that there was only one small spot of red wax on the blanket and that she was able to get it off...but really my heart can't handle what I suspect to be the truth.  Sometimes I am my own worst enemy.