Being responsible

Astonishingly, I'm continuing to prioritize the priority stuff.

Ruby for DD1

This came out of my closet yesterday for the first time in quite a while and saw some good progress. You can't tell, because I've never posted a picture of it before, but it is coming along nicely:

Yarn measurement sample

I've got a submission in somewhere that will probably need to be turned around super-fast if it gets (fingers crossed, toes crossed, eyes crossed!) accepted, so I'm trying to get a jumpstart on that by getting the write-up as close to complete as possible and by figuring out how much yarn each size will take. So I'm doing up a fast sample using some acrylic from the stash. I don't have nearly enough to finish the whole thing, but I should have enough to a) satisfy myself that the garment will work nicely (and so far, oh my goodness, it is, I'm very pleased); and b) be quite precise about yarn requirements.

Unfortunately, I recently realised I'd screwed up two rows back. Sigh. That's gonna be a lot of tinking.

Twin blanket for DD2

Got hexagon #26 finished, and #27 started. Woohoo.

Holiday present for DD1's teacher

It has been reported by my eldest that her teacher's favourite colour is red, and that she likes murder mysteries. Now, I'm not sure how I can work the murder mystery thing into a knitted gift, but I can definitely run with that red thing. With any luck, this can be the project that uses up the rest of the lovely red Cascade 220 in my stash. I've been thinking of a cowl, since apparently she has a class full of rowdies and she has to raise her voice a lot and her voice, consequently, gives out on a regular basis. So it would be nice if she had something to keep her throat nice and protected from the cold, I think. I expect I shall soon sit down with DD1 and do a very precise Ravelry search for something nice.

Oh, and also...

And now for something completely different

See this?

Here it is stretched out:

This is a Baby Surprise Jacket that I started, oh, probably a few years ago now, one night at Lettuce Knit. I cast it on at the beginning of the knit night, and I think that's as far as I got before going home and never working on it again.

Today it got sent to the frog pond.

I actually love the way it looks with the striping and the combination of yarn textures. But there were a few key problems with it. Firstly, towards the end of that knit night evening, it was becoming more and more obvious that my odds of having enough red to be able to finish the jacket were pretty slim. Secondly, the fuzzy yarn was more bulky than the white and the red yarns, and it was making the blue stripes sort of bubble/bunch up.

But, flash forward to today, however many years later, and we get to the real motivation for the frogging: I need the white for DD2's blanket:

...and the red for this:

What you see there (blurrily) is the start of part of this year's Hallowe'en costume for DD1. She is going as Hermione, which you may remember she dressed up as for a Harry Potter-themed birthday party earlier this year:

However, if she is actually going to wear this costume outdoors, at night, at the end of October, in Canada, she had better be going as Hermione-dressed-for-cold-weather as opposed to Hermione-dressed-for-just-going-to-class. And therefore, she will need some extra bits of costume, such as a hat, scarf (already made thanks to her grandma) and mittens. And it is a tiny bit of the mittens which is pictured above. Eventually I will bring in the red of which I spoke, and then the mittens will have owls on them. The pattern is Owlet, by Odessa Reichel, from Petite Purls, and I have been dying for an excuse to make it ever since it came out, I love it.

And on a completely unrelated note, I could not stand having this yarn (which my LYS owner gave me to make something for DD2 out of) STARING at me from on top of the computer desk any longer!

I had to start this:

It's Gilet sans coutures de Lison, an extremely nice cardigan pattern by La P'tite Charlotte, and it has been translated from French into English over on its comments page on Ravelry. The translation is not perfect, but I have been able to muddle through so far.

Odds are, though, that it will be put aside soon as I start hitting the panic button on all the deadline knitting.

The goose is getting fat

There are 100 days left until Christmas. This means I'm now officially starting to freak out about all the knitting.

To that end, on Sunday I hit the LYS and picked up yarn for my older BIL's hat. I'm using my own KWB/TSF hat pattern (all profits from the sales of which, incidentally, go to Médecins Sans Frontières), which calls for a DK weight yarn, and because my BIL is bald (partly via nature, partly via razor), I wanted something very soft and very warm. June (the shop owner) did a fantastic job of finding possibilities for me. I ended up going with Filatura Di Crosa "Zara", in a blue; and StahlSche Wolle "Merino Superfine", in a grey. I cast on on Monday, and so far we have this:

grey side:


blue side:

I have many other Christmas projects planned, but getting this far this fast on one of them is at least a good start, I think.

As well, my "secret sample project" should be available for public consumption within the next few weeks, and I think I'm up to 22 full hexagons on DD2's blanket project. So things are ticking along!

I also realised I've been remiss in that I haven't thanked everyone who has left congratulatory commments about my newest daughter's birth, or complimentary comments about the photos of her that I've been posting. So...thank you! Fussiness aside, she's wonderful and we're all completely crazy about her over here. Here's a sample of why:

Just yer average knitting progress post

Secret sample

Photo shoot and pattern write-up are donedoneDONE! Still can't show you anything until it's published, though, and it has to be reviewed before it can be published, and I have to send in the sample piece and a signed contract before it can be reviewed. But I'm definitely moving along.

Twin blanket for DD2

The long slog continues - I got hexagon #20 done and got #21 started.

Rodekool

This pattern has intrigued me for a while now. Last night I thought, what the heck, and got it started just for fun, after grabbing some leftovers in the stash. I have no idea whom this will be for, and certainly the two colours are not very contrasty, but I still think it'll turn out very nicely. This brioche stitch thing is very new to me and I like how it's going so far, even if I haven't done much...

green side showing:


beige side showing:

Miss Dashwood for DD3

As I knew I would, I ripped out the first version I made and got started again with a smaller size. I decided to go with the smallest size (0-3 months) instead of the second smallest size (3-6 months) that I was originally thinking about re-doing it in, because my first attempt (6-12 months) fit my eight-year-old.

It didn't take long to make all the pieces:



And looking at it, I think it is small enough that it will probably fit DD3 next summer. Hooray! Now I just have to get off my heinie and sew all the pieces together.

Oh, and also...

Plans in action

Secret sample

Triumph - this is finished! Now I have to add in all my changes to my pattern write-up, do a photo shoot and send the sample piece off. I'm pretty excited, even though I'm not sure how fast I can get all of that done.

Twin blanket for DD2

Slowly coming along. I've even started sewing the pieces together. Well, not so much sewing as three-needle-bind-offing. That gives me a seam that stretches more like how the rest of the knitting stretches, which I like. And now that I have a more accurate idea of how big this thing will be once it all comes together, I think I can get away with a lot fewer pieces. Specifically, 77 hexagons, 6 half-hexagons and 18 edge triangles. This means I might actually get the blanket finished in this century, not to mention that I might actually not run out of white yarn like I thought I was going to.

Lavender yarn for the edging, however, is a totally different story. After consulting DD2, I will be combining two really sweet motifs - a textured butterfly and a nice lace edging, both from Nicky Epstein books, one from "Knitting over the Edge", one from "Knitting on the Edge" (although I can't remember which one is from which book). I've figured out how I want to combine them and have charted it all out. Based on this, I estimate the edging will be about 8" wide, and I really don't think the 445 yards of lavender I bought is going to be sufficient for it.

Here's how the pieces looked last week, just sitting next to each other:


Right now, however, I'm much further ahead (19 hexagons, 1 half-hexagon and 3 edge triangles, with all pieces but the half-hexagon and two edge triangles pieced together), even though I don't have photographic evidence of that yet.

Miss Dashwood for DD3

Since I was coming along so well on my other priority stuff, I gave myself permission to start this on Saturday night. It is a very fast knit, because here's what it looks like now:



The only problem is that I'm not getting gauge, so it's rather too large. I was shooting for the 6-12 month size so that she could wear it next summer, but instead I've ended up with a hat circumference that is only marginally smaller than the 1-2 year size is supposed to be. Given what a fast knit this is, I'm strongly tempted to solve this problem by ripping the whole thing out and doing it all over again, this time following the 3-6 month size instructions. This - if my gauge remains consistent - should give me a hat which is roughly the circumference that the 6-12 month size is supposed to be. The only problem with this plan is that the cotton I'm using is rather hard on my hands and my right knuckles have started to ache nastily while using it. Oh, well.

Drops in the bucket

This week, I was working exclusively on my sample piece, which I've been making really good headway on, having gone through three of the five balls of yarn that I think will be needed. But this weekend, I've also been working on something else, sort of baby-related, but not exactly.

You see, for a few days now, DD2's room has been painted, and all the new furniture moved in. (Consequently, I've been able to make the nursery ready for the baby, which is awesome.) Here are some shots of DD2's new room earlier in the week, when we hadn't yet brought up the desk or the second bureau, or stuck any of the decorative butterflies she got for her birthday on the wall. But you'll get the general idea:

accent wall:

bed and night tables:

night light/bureau wall:

As you can see, the wall colours (chosen by the girl herself) are very pretty, but the room definitely needs more voom. We're working on figuring out curtains, but one thing that will really help is an honest-to-goodness bedspread. (That star afghan my mom crocheted for her birthday is an excellent accent, but it doesn't exactly cover the whole bed, as you can see.)

What I would really like to get her is this quilt, but it's vastly beyond my budget, unfortunately. (Which is certainly not to say that I don't think it's worth the price - a handmade quilt should absolutely be quite expensive; it's just that, sadly, I can't hack expensive.) So, since bedding reconnaissance trips to various stores and searches on Kijiji yielded no joy, I instead went looking for knitting patterns. (Of course.) I suggested Kim Salazar's Mountain Laurel Crib Counterpane (with rather more hexagons than the original pattern specifies to make it the right size), and DD2 really liked that idea. We're going with white, with some kind of purple edging. I was thinking a lace border, but then I was trawling through one of Nicky Epstein's edging books and found a verrry cute textured butterflies motif that I could probably make work really well. (Final decision on the edging, of course, to be made by the blanket's recipient.)

So I got started. Based on the size of the first hexagon I made...

...I'll need 94 hexagon pieces, 10 half-hexagon pieces, and 20 edge triangle pieces.

Thus far, I've made a grand total of...five hexagon pieces.

Whew. This is going to be a pretty long haul.