I'd like to thank the Academy...

Kathy, who goes to (and now works at!) my LYS has given me an "I Love Your Blog Award"!

Isn't that lovely of her? And she's a really good knitter, too, go check out her blog.

The rules for receiving this award are:

1. Post this award on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you.
3. Nominate at least 4 other bloggers, and add their links as well.
4. Leave a comment at the new recipients' blogs, so they can pass it on.

And so, I give you:

• Rick Mercer's blog
• A Little Pregnant
• Navelgazing Midwife (warning: photo in header is not work-safe)
• Crazy Aunt Purl

Yep, not a whole lotta knitting content in there, but they are certainly blogs that I love. I am, however, too shy to do #4 on the list. To distract you from my failure to follow the rules, I present...much knitting progress!

Anouk for baby Mendez

Done! And IloveitIloveitIloveit, it's really sweet. I especially like how all the pastel colours work together.

Double-faced bib

This is also finished and it looks amazing, if I do say so myself. Alas, that's all I can tell you. I'm hoping to publish the pattern, so you won't get a picture; and the mother-to-be reads this blog, so you won't get details on who she is or what the bib looks like or much of anything else, either. Sorry. I know, I know, the secrecy thing blows.

Stretchy socks for Mom

I finally got the cast-on done properly and got going. I'm almost finished sock #1, but the foot seems way too small. I'm not sure how this happened, because the toe looks like it turned out as long as it was supposed to be, and, accordingly, I started the toe when the foot was as long as it was supposed to be, given how long the toe was supposed to be, and yet somehow the two lengths didn't work out to a nine-inch foot. I've lost count of how many times I've checked that my math was right (7 5/8 inches of pre-toe foot plus 1 3/8 inches of toe should equal 9 total inches of foot), so that's not the problem.

At this point I am studiously avoiding trying to find out what the problem is, because I'm sure the solution is going to be ripping back and knitting more foot. Or snipping the foot open and adding more length before grafting the foot back together. Either way, grumbling will be involved and I'm not ready to go there yet.

St. Brigid wrap for moi

This project right here pretty much sums up me as a knitter.

About two weeks ago, the chill of autumn began making its way into the weather, and I was completely unprepared because I haven't got a transitional (read: spring/autumn) jacket. In the interests of saving money, and because I am trying to snazz up my wardrobe wherever possible, I decided that knitting myself a wrap was in order, using the shape of the Chunky Highland Wool Wrap but something else for the actual pattern.

I've been drooling for some time over the cables in the St. Brigid sweater pattern by a certain Outer Hebridean designer whose name dare not cross my keyboard. :) So I redacted them, put 'em together in such a way as I thought would give me an 18-inch width, and got going, using some royal purple Emu Superwash DK that I had 7 balls of in my stash thanks to a Knitters Attic sale last year.

Unfortunately, once the first ball ran out I only had about five inches done...


(It's actually much more purple than this in real life.)

...and since the wrap as I planned it would require a total of 94 inches, it was pretty clear that my remaining six balls weren't going to cut it.

So I went looking for something else in the stash that I had enough of.

Enter my 19 balls of blue Angora Extra, which I had acquired during a ridiculously good online sale at the studio. This is supposed to be an Aran-weight yarn, although when you feel it it seems like fingering or sport. However, the label says 4 stitches per inch, and I got the distinct impression from reading other people's projects with it on Ravelry that it would "bloom" like crazy...so I assumed it would be Aran-weight, and removed two cabled braids from the pattern I'd worked out.

And oh...my...GAWD. This yarn is AMAAAAZING. It's sooo soft. You know that scene in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where Ford and Zaphod are admiring the black ship? The dialogue goes something like this:

Ford: And feel this surface!
Zaphod: Yeah...hey, you can't!
Ford: I know, it's just totally frictionless!

That is exactly how it feels when you touch this stuff. It's absolutely gorgeous, I'm completely in love with it. The cables looked awesome knitting with it, too, not too fuzzy at all.

Once I'd knit through the first ball, though, the logic centre of my brain was telling me that I should really confirm that it would indeed bloom as expected. So I did up a swatch and soaked it in Eucalan for about half an hour.

No bloom.

Like, maybe a little bit of horizontal expansion that was really just the cables relaxing out, but the yarn itself bulking up? Nada.

Cursing viciously, I ripped out the whole thing (alas, I did not take a picture before doing this) and re-cast on with enough stitches to put the two missing cable braids back in. I finished two rows, went to bed, and didn't get a chance to work on it for a few days.

During that time, I discovered a spring/autumn jacket in my closet.

It's a gorgeous jacket that I'd forgotten all about...one of my dad's cousins visited us this summer and had bought this jacket for herself as part of her trip (which included some sightseeing in Alaska, I believe). She no longer wanted the jacket and didn't want to haul it back to Australia with her, and so she gave it to me. It's gorgeous, warm, classy, and fits me perfectly, and I love it.

Unfortunately, I'd also forgotten all about it. Had I remembered it, I could have avoided this whole wrap fiasco entirely. However, I am clearly an idiot, and an knitting-enthusastic one at that, and so we have the saga that you have just finished reading.

I don't quite know what I'm going to do with the yarn now. I love it desperately and absolutely want to make something with it (something for me, dammit), but don't know now what it should be.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see what comes to me.

Log Cabin blanket

This is proceeding very nicely indeed and I really like how my little variation on the Log Cabin theme is working out.

Turquoise socks for DD1

Well, with the wrap project scrapped; the Log Cabin project too big to transport (the blanket itself could probably be shoved into my bag, but the balls of yarn are enormous); two other projects finished; and two other projects being assiduously avoided; I needed something else to do. So why not make some socks for my older daughter.

I had some fingering weight acrylic in a greenish turquoise kicking about, probably enough for two pairs, so I started with that. It's going pretty well. I'm using my new sock pattern which I can't wait to have published so that I can link it up to all these damn sock projects I've been doing lately in my Ravelry notebook, and to show you some actual pictures of the socks.

Log Cabin for baby Miller

My parents were over at my place last night (happy birthday, Dad!) and told me the news that one of my second cousins is expecting her first baby. This is extremely good because she has MS, the symptoms of which apparently go away when you're pregnant, which is certainly good news for her right now. She's due in November.

After they left I started thinking about what I could make for her, and - despite having a long list of baby stuff in my queue - I settled on doing another Log Cabin blanket. I'm not sure why...but I'm quite happy with the decision and I like the way it's going so far. I'm using some Patons Knit 'n' Save bulky yarn in my stash. I'm not sure I have enough to make this blanket (I think there's more in the basement, although I haven't found it yet), but as per my usual style, I'm blithely forging on ahead regardless of potential consequences. This should be good for a laugh or two...

Actual visuals

Well, good news - the sock pattern has been written up and sent off! I proofed it about eight million times, but I'm still worried there's something wrong in there. However, it's gone now, so no use worrying (although I probably still will). I actually got the family in their socks at the same time and got them to hold still enough to take some good group feet shots. Hooray!

Double-faced bib

This is coming along very nicely and I'm really pleased with how it looks. The main bulk of it is finished, I just need to pick up stitches and do the neckline. But first I have to weigh it and the remaining purple yarn so I can write up the pattern with an accurate idea of yarn requirements.

Anouk

No progress, but I did finally take a picture:

Log Cabin blanket

And once again, my obsessive nature takes over. Here's the whole sordid story:

A few weeks ago, my LYS brought in a new yarn: Marble Chunky. This is very similar to the Marble DK that I used for all the KWB/TSF hats I made a while back, but in a thicker gauge and different colours.

And oh, the colours. I'm particularly obsessed with MC3, which is a very righteous purple/blue/green combination, but there are lots of other good ones, which make the whole line pretty much Covet City. And at one point I was looking at them on the shelves and was seized by an inspiration to make a baby blanket out of the pink and light brown colourways using the Log Cabin pattern.

Now, I've never done a log cabin blanket before, but it seems really cool and people have done some wonderful stuff with it. I'm not yet in a position to buy the Marble Chunky for it (I'm waiting for the right gift-giving occasion to come along which will give me an excuse to buy it using household funds instead of my own spending money), but I figured I could practice the concept with stash yarn and do some stash busting in the process.

And so, we have my first log cabin blanket in progress:



I'm not sure whom it's for nor how big it's going to be, although I do have about two pounds of each colour to use up. It is, however, a fantastic project to do while spending time with my girls when they don't need to me to actually do stuff with them - it's completely brainless and I don't have to look it, so I can watch and talk with the kids at the same time. I'm definitely enjoying it, although of course it's going to get more and more sloggerific to make any progress the bigger it gets.

I'm thinking maybe it'll end up being an emergency blanket that we keep in our car trunk.

The socks ate me

Carrie K pointed out (not directly, of course, but I know what she meant ;) that there aren't a whole lot of photos being splashed around here these days. It's quite true, and I'm very sorry about that, especially since there absolutely zero photos in today's post to make it up to you with. But I've been doing a lot of designing (or finalizing designs) lately, and it's all stuff that I want to be published commercially, so I have to maintain a hush-hush factor. It's pretty exciting for me whenever I have patterns I hope to share with a wider audience, but yeah, it makes for more boring visuals for you guys. I hope you'll bear with me anyway.

Mind you, I suppose that if you're still reading this blog after all my long stretches of absence, you're probably going to bear with me even without pictures. Thank you for continuing to 'tune in'. I keep telling myself that I must get better at blogging frequently, but I also want to be so thorough when I describe what I'm doing with my projects (both for my own recordkeeping and any edification that readers may get out of such details...oh, and plus, I don't know when to shut up). With everything else I have to do in my life, the non-essentials often fall by the wayside and the result is that you get weeks without a peep from me.

(I am hanging my head right now.)

I will just have to try to be more brief, that's all. Maybe not be completely detailed most of the time, and every now and then do a really big post that contains all the gories? I dunno. But I shall try.

At any rate, as you would expect with an over-three-week span of bloglessness, there's been a LOT going on with me, knitting-wise.

Firstly, if you're on Ravelry, you'll probably have heard of "Ravelympics 2008". This was kind of like the winter Olympics thing that the Yarn Harlot did, but it was Ravelry-based, and there were teams and events and other different stuff. Aaaand...someone pledged to do my Around the Block pattern as their Ravelympics project! This of course was very exciting for me (although the blanket is so huge that I did question her sanity just a little bit). But even more exciting is what she wrote on Ravelry in the comments section of my pattern:

"This is a great pattern. The charts are comprehensive and detailed, the instructions are straighforward and the photographs describing the grafting are very easy to follow and a massive help.
The blanket itself it lovely and is so much more interesting to construct that a straightforward back-and-forth square.
Completely recommend this."

Isn't that fantastic? I got all giggly and squee-y when I read that, I don't mind admitting. Hands may even have been clapped girlishly. She didn't actually finish it in time, but is still working on the project and is still keen about it. Of course, what I'm really terrified of is that my yarn usage is way more efficient than other people's, and therefore she'll run out of yarn before she finishes the blanket and will curse me into oblivion and I will feel like scum. But I guess we'll fall off that bridge when we come to it.

She's "Lolli" on Ravelry, where she's posted pictures of the blanket in progress. You can also check out her blog.

And speaking of people doing my patterns, according to Ravelry, another poor sap intrepid soul has started my Reversible Celtic Patterns Blanket pattern. She is the third person to do so (not including me). However, I should point out that the other two people ended up not merely frogging their projects, but actually deleting them COMPLETELY off of Ravelry (as opposed to merely marking them "frogged"). I must assume they did this in an attempt to wipe out all evidence that they'd ever even heard of the pattern and thus block the pain and suffering from their memory. :) I do honestly feel a little sorry for people who try to take that one on. I really only published it for the purposes of education and inspiration of other knitters, not because I actually expected anyone else would be masochistic enough to do it! :) But y'know, it takes all kinds. I guess there are actually some people out there who are as crazy as I am!

Stranded vest for moi

On Monday evening, I finished it.

And I. LOVE. It.

I am thrilled. Seriously, seriously pleased with how it looks. Mind you, it is a bit wide, it comes right out to the tips of my shoulders, which I think is too much. When I write up the final version of the pattern I will make the armholes deeper. But I still love it, and wore it yesterday, and felt like a million bucks. DH took some photos, and now all I have to do is print them off on some photo paper, do up a swatch, write up the proposal, and shoot it off to a pattern magazine. Whee!

There is just one downer here. The Sockina Colori yarn which I'm using as one of the two colours - the yarn which is key to achieving the awesome visual effect that makes the whole piece - is now discontinued. Words cannot express my frustration. I mean, seriously! This is the second time I've started designing something with a Schoeller & Stahl yarn and had the rug pulled out from under me partway through the process because the yarn got discontinued. I'm pretty POed, I don't mind saying, and I hereby swear that I shall never use another Schoeller & Stahl yarn in any of my design prototypes again. I just can't trust them. I'm going to submit the design anyway, though, because it's too good not to, and anyway, maybe there's an adequate substitute yarn out there...somewhere. Anyone know of a 3-ply sock yarn where one ply is black, another white, and the third variegating in rainbow colours? Anyone? Bueller?

Really Christmas socks for Dad

Also done!

Well, sort of. The first sock is too short in the foot. I'm going to have to lengthen it before I can give the socks to my dad. Curses.

Foot-pampering socks for moi

I've really been on fire, because this is also done! I'm really pleased with how they look, fit and feel, so hooray!

The completion of these socks means something else really good. It means that I now have socks from my pattern done up in large baby, child, woman and man sizes, which means that I can take a family photo of the socks on four different sizes of foot (the specific feet to be photographed of course belonging to me, my husband and my two girls). This will bring me one step closer to being able to send off the final version of the pattern. DH is working tonight, but maybe we can get everyone's socks on them on Thursday when we all get home.

Anouk for baby Mendez

This is coming along very nicely, considering that I only work on it in front of the computer. This is because I started the project when I had a laptop right next to me on the couch, so I was able to knit it without needing to print out a copy. At first, only working from the online instructions was just a well-the-laptop's-right-here-why-not thing, but now it's turned into a bit of a refusal-to-give-in, save-the-trees kind of deal.

But this hasn't hampered my progress so far - both sides and pockets are finished. I decided to duplicate stitch the flower motifs onto the pockets after the fact rather than go through the hassle of knitting intarsia with cotton as I go. (Ick.)

It's turning out really adorably, and is such a cute and fast knit. My only complaint so far has been that the shoulder instructions are completely mixed up and thus rather incomprehensible. Left, right, back and front labels seem to have been assigned randomly, so it took me a good deal of back-and-forthing between the instructions and the garment to figure out which instructions should probably be applied to which shoulder sections.

Itsy-bitsy baby socks

So after I finished the whole socks-for-the-family marathon, I decided to see what other sizes would turn out to look like, so I cast on for the wee baby size using the leftover Trekking XXL from my daughter's leggings. Result: very wee and very cute. I'm only about two-thirds done the first sock, but it's really sweet. And FAST, holy cow! (This shouldn't surprise me, given the size of the feet the socks are being made for, but it does.)

Stretchy socks for Mom

And the sock jag continues. I decided I wanted to use my own pattern for these socks instead of the toe-up thing I had going before, so I ripped it out. However, I've started the cast-on about twice and it's not tight enough, so I'm going to have to do it again with smaller needles and then switch to bigger ones once I have the stitches all set up. (Insert grumbling here.)

Double-faced bib

And finally...this project. Amazingly, it's not socks. :) I got back into it because I really want to finish it up, and also because nothing else in my list of current projects appeals right now. It's coming along very nicely, and I'm just one row away from starting to divide for the neckhole.

What other projects?

Stranded vest for moi

So I have a sock pattern to finish testing and writing up; another person I know who's having a baby; a very large sweater and some socks to make for Christmas gifts; and a ridiculously neglected Schedule...and what have I been doing? Working on my stranded vest.

Seriously. I am completely obsessed with it.

It's gone in rather a different direction from my original (admittedly vague) vision, and the new concept plays perfectly off of the colours I'm using. I know this probably makes me sound like the most conceited person ever, but I'm absolutely in love with the idea and the look I've finally managed to achieve (I say finally because there has been much ripping back and starting over), and am so proud of myself for eliciting it from my brain. I love this vest. Love, love, love.

Which is kind of surprising, considering all the frogging it's endured (and will yet endure, since I decided this evening that the last two inches need to become toast because where I started the neckline shaping is just wrong, wrong, wrong). A number of the problems have been because I didn't like the way the design was working out and needed a do-over, but unfortunately, more than one of the froggings have been because I plain old screwed up.

(A knitting truth: There is no pattern too simple, nor a knitter too experienced, to eliminate the possibility of making a truly dumbass mistake.)

On the upside, prior to one of the froggings, I tried it on, and holy flurking schmidt, it fits PERFECTLY. I'm not sure how I managed to swing that, but it's true.

At this point, I think I really know what I'm doing (at least basically) and for a while there I was pushing forward like crazy on it because watching the motif take shape in knitting form was so exciting and thrilling I could hardly stand it. Now, however, I've finished one repeat of the pattern (it looks deliciously swizz), so I've calmed down about the project a little.

Alas, there are no pictures, because I'm now pretty sure I'll be submitting the concept to a magazine when this prototype is done. I hope it does get accepted somewhere fairly quickly (or as quickly as acceptances tend to happen, anyway) because I can't wait to show it to people! Of course, I'm talking about it here in such a built-up way that when you do finally see what the pattern looks like, you might be disappointed. But hopefully not.

Foot-pampering socks for moi

I had set this aside for a little bit out of frustration. When I got to the point where I could try it on, it seemed a little snug and tough to get on. This was quite frustrating, because I really didn't want to go back to the drawing board for the women's size, I wanted to finish the damn sock so I could take pictures, write up the pattern and send it the heck off! But of course if a pattern doesn't fit the people it's intended for, well, that's a pattern that pretty much sucks, so I absolutely had to fix the problem. The first step was to find out what constituted a "standard woman's foot". Finally around the middle of this week, I did some research to figure out girths, instep heights and whatnot, and determined that the sock I had was a pretty good match to what it was supposed to be. I also tried it on a second time, this time making sure that the vast volume of ends was more out of the way (thus interfering less with the fit) than when I'd first tried it on, and it went on a lot more easily. So I've concluded that it's just fine and I can keep going.

Unfortunately, Carrie K, there will not be any pictures immediately, nor of any of my other recent or in-progress sock projects because of pre-magazine-publication restrictions. But they're forthcoming, I promise!

Anouk for baby Mendez

One of my co-workers is expecting #2! (November.) And on Thursday, I found out that the ultrasound says it's a girl. Their first baby is a boy, so they already have a lot of boy things, and therefore have had to go shopping for some new stuff. So I wanted to make them something girly. Usually I go with gender-neutral stuff, especially for first babies, because many people have more than one kid, and that second kid might well be a different gender from the first kid, and if that's the case, and I've made something gender-specific for the first kid, that gift won't see the light of day the second time around. But in this case, the circumstances are different, so I feel quite free to go as girly as I want.

I first considered my leafy baby poncho pattern. It's quick, fun, sweet, and uses something that's really easy to get: sock yarn. Added plus: it's easy to find machine-washable sock yarn (machine-washable is key for baby knits). Second added plus: it's easy to find sock yarn in nifty colours. However, I don't think I have enough sock yarn in appropriate colours in the stash, and I'd prefer to use stash yarn (I'm running out of stash storage box space). So instead I went with something I've been itching to knit for years: Anouk. This is a frightfully sweet pinafore dress that can double as a tunic top as the baby gets taller, and it will work equally well worn by itself, or over a shirt. Plus, I have a variety of cotton yarns in my stash that are either the right weight, or which can be doubled to produce the right weight. Winnah.

This is what it looked like this morning:



Now, however, it's much bigger - I'd guess I'm about an inch away from starting the neck shaping. It looks adorable.

And speaking of babies, heartfelt congratulations to Megan on the arrival of her new son, Elwood. Yay! He's so cute. Admittedly, I haven't seen him in person yet, just the shots on Stephanie's blog, but those pictures make him look highly nibblable. Gosh, I love babies.