I made it

Rainbow lace blanket for baby Cherie

Tuesday I wove in the ends, and then washed it with its sister blanket on Sunday right before the shower.



I wish I'd had enough yarn to make it bigger - as it was, I ended up using a little bit from an extremely similar ball of inherited yarn to finish off the last pattern repeat and do the top border. (You can kinda tell, but not much. The variegation went in the exact same order and almost all the colours were the same - just the green was more yellowy and there was a much longer run of orange.) However, it is plenty big enough to adequately cover a baby, and I guess also that its smaller size will make it more drag-around-able when the kid gets to be a toddler (if, of course, the child likes it enough to drag it around, which I certainly hope will be the case). The mommy-to-be really liked it.

Mitred blanket for baby Julie

Huge credit has to be given to my husband for my actually being able to finish this on time. I told him about nine days before the shower that I had badly underestimated how much time there was left (which makes me very dumb, since I was completely aware of the date of the shower...I guess I just never put two and two together to realise how many days I had left) and that the coming week would be filled with Panic Knitting. So he enabled my panic bee-yew-tifully by taking the kids more often and not complaining about the lack of clean laundry. He was great, and I was able to make my 'stitch quota' each day and get it all done on Friday. It got washed on Sunday before being wrapped up.

I'm very very happy with it, although there are a few noticeable bits of fluff left on it from the provisional cast-on that piss me off, but what can you do, hopefully that will go away with use and more washing. As well, the gauge of the graft is not perfect, but again, hopefully use and washing will do the trick by evening out all the stitches. And I don't think the recipient noticed - she really seemed to love it, even though it turned out waaay bigger than I had intended! She even left a thank-you comment in my last post. (You're totally, totally welcome. Despite the panic, it was an absolute pleasure. :)

Anyway Em, I'm really sorry I didn't get out to the SnB on Wednesday (especially since I missed Mel, phooey), but this blanket is why - last time I was there I didn't get any knitting done, and I just couldn't afford that this past week. Hopefully I'll be out again soon!

The only question left now about this project is what to do with the pattern. I was thinking of writing it up and asking Knitters Attic to try and sell copies, but now I'm thinking, maybe the construction of the blanket is unique enough that Knitty would be willing to use it? I don't know. I'll have to ask Amy. But then I start getting paranoid that she'll think I'm some crazy blanket-obsessed person who keeps submitting blanket patterns in the hope of wearing her down. Ack! I'm going to have to figure out how to word what I'm going to say or write to her so she doesn't think I'm heading up some kind of baby blanket special interest group lobby.

Either way, I'll need to do up another one as my model for the completed project shots. This is not a hardship since I'll be able to use it for my own baby.

Slippers for DD

I ripped this out again and restarted it using stocking stitch and the smallest size. I managed to get both slippers done with almost no yarn left over - triumph!



When DD first tried them on, they seemed to fit, although it was clear she'd be growing out of them fairly soon:



However, she wore them last night (I discovered after I finished them that she wanted them not as house slippers, but to sleep in - so cute!) and it looked like they kept coming off because the heel isn't far enough up her foot. So, drat. However, none of that seems to bother her, she really likes them, which of course is the point. I may have to make new ones pretty soon, though.

Now that the big 'blanket push' is over, I'm feeling a bit at loose ends as to what to pick up next, especially considering that it's a dumb idea to knit my husband's Christmas present right in front of him. I'm also not able to fill in the gaps with Ravelry yet:

You signed up on July 6, 2007
You are #14465 on the list.
4028 people are ahead of you in line.
14679 people are behind you in line.
35% of the list has been invited so far

However, my invite should be coming in a matter of a few weeks, since the big-capacity servers shipped last Monday. Install like the wind, Casey!

I have promised DH that, once I get my invite, it will not affect our sex life. :) I was not, however, willing to promise that it will not affect the flow of clean laundry around here. But I did promise to try to make sure all the laundry got done. What can I say, it was the best I could do.

On another note, thanks to everyone for the compliments on DD2's latest baby picture! I absolutely looove her smile, it's really infectious.

As for my elder daughter, Carrie K, a trip to California to wind yarn is definitely appealing, but I don't think I can let her go juuust yet. :) Besides, she still exclaims, "Oh, I just can't leave my mummy!" and comes back for another hug before going to the bathroom...I think a trip by herself out-of-country might be a tad too much for her. We'll have to be content with the meagre amount of local yarn-winding opportunities available. ;)

Sleep socks for moi

I pulled this project out last night and got a few inches done on the leg, so it's slowly getting there. Em, I used a really basic toe - just decreased at the sides every other row, and then grafted it shut. (If that isn't enough of an explanation for you, let me know, I can go into more detail.)

Larry's Cashmere Cabled Pullover for DH

This saw a teeny weeny bit of action soon after the blankets were completed - I joined the second ball and got a few more rows done while DH wasn't around. I'm hoping it won't be too tough getting going on this thing again, even though I no longer have the commute to work on it away from his eyes, and we're both at home together a lot. He does a lot of golfing and yardwork, so I should be able to find the time.

(PS - Aven - you moved? How did I miss this? Where are you now?)

Take me out to absolutely nowhere

I think I'm one of the very few GTA knitters who did not make it out to the Stitch n' Pitch on Wednesday. A thousand curses on my cash-strapped situation. (Mind you, even if I had money to burn, my husband's work schedule never gives him Wednesday evenings off, so I was screwed anyway.) I feel seriously forlorn and socially deprived. Poo.

(No pictures today, sorry, the stress level is high.)

Mitred baby blanket

This project is another reason I've been holing myself up in the house. I'm nervous that I'm very, very doomed. I've only recently hit the halfway point of the blanket, and yet I've got to complete it (including grafting 99 stitches) before Sunday at noon. Throw in a teething-cranky baby, the need to bake banana coconut squares for the shower, and losing a day of knitting between now and the shower to an all-day family reunion, and you start to see why I'm desperately nervous. I calculate that I have something in the neighbourhood of 36,000 stitches to knit before I can even start the grafting. I am in full-on panic mode.

Rainbow lace blanket

Knitting is done. All that's left is to weave in the ends and wash it in Ivory Snow.

Dress socks #2 for DH

I got some of the toe done at the last sock class. It still needs a fair bit more decreasing before I can finish off the first sock.

Larry's Cashmere Cabled Pullover for DH

Thank you, everybody, for your opinions on how to apply the navy to the sweater. Option five was your favourite as well - that's the one where I make the sleeves entirely out of the navy, with the rim of the neckline done in navy also. Unfortunately, there is no way that my two skeins of navy (well, in actual fact, I have three, but one of them is not the same colour as the other two) will make two sleeves. So, the next best thing seems to be option #2. This (which Tumblina also thought of) is actually the same as option #5, but with navy stripes on the sleeves instead of all-navy sleeves. So what I've done is to start the body in the steel blue. I may or may not go back to Knitters Attic to get enough navy to do two whole sleeves, depending on how much I can get done on the body with the amount of steel blue that I have.

Tubey for moi

The knitting on this sweater is now complete. I have cast off and tried it on, and it's verrry revealing across the chest. You can see a great deal of bra, and if I were to eliminate that problem by removing the bra, a simple slight accidental pulling down of the front of the sweater would, shall we say, begin a rather thrilling game of peek-a-boo. I am definitely going to have to sew the front up along the sides of the shrug part to 'modest things up'. Some additional sewing around the armpits to stop the stitches from gaping from stress is probably also called for.

Foot-pampering socks for moi

I took this to the park a week or two ago to work on while DD1 clambered on the playscape and pranced in the waterpark. Just got a few rows done, but hey, progress is progress.

Slippers for DD1

DD1 has requested red knitted slippers. I am trying to oblige. I have some pinkish-red chunky weight wool/acrylic left over from this project that looked like it might be enough for slippers for a four-year-old. I found this pattern and gave it a whirl. I like the pattern very, very much, it is dead dopey simple and quick. However, it uses up far too much yarn in the garter stitch for me to be able to make two slippers out of it. So my next move was to try using stocking stitch instead, but I also went up a size just to make absolutely sure they would fit. Unfortunately, I think I'm going to run out of yarn again doing it that way. I think I might stand a chance at having enough yarn for both slippers if I do stocking stitch in the smallest size. Stay tuned.

Ravelry update

You signed up on July 6, 2007
You are #14465 on the list.
4883 people are ahead of you in line.
12616 people are behind you in line.
34% of the list has been invited so far

With the new servers coming, and Casey's plan to invite 5,000 people a week once they're up and running, it shouldn't be long now! I'm very excited!

What do you think?

Larry's Cabled Cashmere Pullover for DH

Okay, I've been playing around with Photoshop to try and figure out how best to incorporate the navy with the steel blue, so that I don't run out of steel blue when I re-do the sweater in the next size up. Here is the picture of the completed sweater from the book, in a colour vaguely similar to the blue I'm using:



And here are the different applications of navy that I've come up with:


OPTION 1


OPTION 2


OPTION 3


OPTION 4

There's also a fifth option, which is actually my favourite, but I don't think I have enough navy to pull it off:



So, dear readers, tell me...which of these possibilities do you like best? I know which one is my preference, but I'm putting the question out there to you guys because I'd like a second opinion and I can't ask my husband, obviously.

Rainbow lace blanket

And on and on and on I go. I've finished 34 pattern repeats.

Dress socks #2 for DH

I hustled on this over the past few days and am now ready to start the toe for Wednesday's sock class! DH tried it on for me so I could confirm this. And after seeing the length of his toenails, I threatened to withhold any future handknitted socks until he could start trimming them on a regular basis. I swear, the length of them is actually frightening.

Mitred baby blanket

I decided to go with another baby blanket as the second gift for the double baby shower I'm going to at the end of August. So I plugged some texture and cable motifs into my plan for a mitred baby blanket, and - tadah! A pattern. This morning I cast on (provisionally) and got going. I think it'll look nice.

Lastly, I shall perk up your day and distract you from the fact that I have no actual knitting progress photos in this post by showing you a gratuitous cute baby shot:

(I couldn't resist.)

And suddenly, more than a week goes by

I'm not sure why the knitblogging fell to the wayside over the past 10 days...I wasn't tremendously busy, but somehow it just never got done.

I suppose one excuse could be that I am busy raising the next generation of knitters. :) My eldest, for example, is being tremendously enabled by June, the owner of the LYS, who has gifted her with some yarn over the past few weeks (most likely as an unofficial thank you for the cotton lace doily display piece and some more yarn from my friend's grandmother's stash for charity):

And speaking of my friend's grandmother's stash, my elder daughter has recently discovered the joys of...THE BALL WINDER. She watched me using it while winding up some of the aforementioned inherited stash, and asked if she could try. Heck, fine by me! Fast forward to about a week later, and she has single-handedly wound up at least half of the yarn, saved me a ton of time, and gotten me ready to bring the rest of the stash over to the shop for charity projects much sooner than I expected. Her chief complaint now is that there is no more yarn to wind up. :) I have promised to try and find her some.

And hey, on a related note, d'you remember this blanket project? The one where I ran out of turquoise yarn, knew it was discontinued and wouldn't be able to find any more, had to cannibalize the turquoise dragon motif in the middle of the blanket to have enough for the edges, and generally stressed out over the possibility of not being able to finish? Well, guess what was in the inherited stash:

Yeah.

Well, what can I say. Timing is everything. In hindsight, I'm still glad I got rid of the dragon motif, I think the blanket looked scads better without it.

The sock knitting class is moving along. I was a bit frustrated by last week's class. It was Heel Day - the students had to do an entire heel in two hours, and we went seriously overtime. This was more of a problem than it normally would have been, since DH's work needed him to come in an hour earlier than usual that day, so he had to walk over to the shop with DD1, leave her there with me, and take the car to work, leaving us all to walk home in the serious heat. To top it all off, DD2 sensed my stress about all this and fussed for a lot of the class. I was feeling a bit off my game, and didn't relay the heel knitting concepts as much as I wanted to. So...not one of my more successful teaching episodes, unfortunately. Fortunately, I think my students are willing to cut me a bit of slack there.

At this point, I am feeling a little better about the course generally, because I've already completed writing up the handout for the final class on Wednesday! I think it's good, thorough, comprehensible, and covers everything I want it to. DH gave it a proof last night and pronounced it good. So you see, Carrie K, he does have his uses, even though he will never mistake bread for yarn. :) (I must also tell you, in the interests of total honesty, that he adores your his sweater and would put up a serious fight for it if you tried to take it. So nice try, but no dice.)

Now all I need is for three more people to sign up for the next sock course, and I can do it all over again!

Still no picture of my great-grandmother knitting, guys, sorry - I keep forgetting to borrow it from my parents' place. Hopefully I'll remember this week.

Rainbow lace blanket

This is coming along very nicely.



I've finished the first ball of yarn, and it yielded 21 pattern repeats. The original blanket this is based on calls for 63 pattern repeats. However, since the remaining yarn is (guesstimately speaking) roughly the same amount as the first ball, I definitely won't make it that far. However, based on what it looked at at 21 repeats, 42 repeats will still probably give me a decently-sized baby blanket, so I'm not too stressed about it.

Sleep socks for moi

Finished the first sock!



Ends woven in and everything! It took tremendous strength of character to cast on for the second one, but I actually did it. I'm hoping to have it finished pretty soon.

Dress socks #2 for DH

Instead of just stopping at the end of the leg, I decided to complete the heel flap for the class to look at on Heel Day last Wednesday. Unfortunately, what with DD2 fussing during the class so much, I didn't get to demonstrate much of the heel turn on my own sock, so it hasn't progressed much beyond the flap.



I'm going to have to do some serious zooming along on this before Wednesday to get to the beginning of the toe.

Tubey for moi

I'm almost finished the body! Just an inch or so more to go, I think.

Like, totally top

June has very kindly offered to do some research with her yarn suppliers to try and find a good substitute for the Schaffhauser I wanted to use for this top. Hopefully she'll be able to find something good.

Ravelry update

You signed up on July 6, 2007
You are #14465 on the list.
6473 people are ahead of you in line.
8629 people are behind you in line.
33% of the list has been invited so far

The J and Carrie K rubbed it in by telling me they already got their invites. :) I cannot wait to join you in there! Alas, it looks like it will be many weeks. :(