Progress resumes on my West Knits KAL

Now that the Olympic Games are over and the shawl I knit during them is complete, I am going back to work on my WestKnits Rockefeller Shawl. I am about half way through Clue 2 and it is pretty slow going. The work isn't hard - but it's just not fast for me. I think the strings of color work slow me down, and then of course weaving in the ends every time I finish adding in one of the rays of plum color takes time too. I just have to tell myself to go at my own pace and to enjoy the process.

I find it interesting the way the Noro yarn is unfolding in the pattern. It feels like the Noro "knows" when I am getting ready to do a purple strand and that it wants to be purple then too. Perhaps Noro has nanotechnology and it is becoming sentient? I would not be surprised.

Anyway, I am happy to be back to work on this and am anxious to get to Clue three and Clue Four!

FINISHED! Noro Shawlette!

I finished another project I have had on my needles for a few months. My Noro Shawlette which I started back in March. This is a free pattern on Ravelry that i have made several times called 22.5 Degrees by Martina Behm. Very simple, very functional and just wonderful!

I knit this from most of two balls of Noro Silk Garden Lite I had in my stash. This yarn had SO many bad splits and joins in it that I actually cut out a color join at one point. It made me a little hostile at Noro, but it's hard to be pissed off when the results are so pretty.

A shawl in the bush is worth????

Here it is blocking out. I soak it in Eucalan for about 20-30 minutes, squeeze it, roll it in a towel and then pin it to the mat to air dry. I only used about a dozen pins on this one - I wasn't trying to aggressively block it - I just wanted it to dry in a nice shape.

I love this pattern and am very happy with my finished product!

Westknits Mystery Shawl KAL Progress Report

I feel like this KAL has kind of taken over my life - and I am pretty happy about it! Clue 1 was waiting for me when I got home from work last Friday and I cast on and dove right in. I started this in

Sun Valley Fibers MCN Lace in the colors "Plum Crazy" and "Autumn". I swatched and had the needle I wanted - a Size 4 - which is probably one of the smallest needles I have done a project on! By Sunday I had 9 "wedges" complete and was kind of at a stand still. My short rows were pretty ugly and I was just not happy with how the project looked. My knitting was not pretty. Add to this my hubby asking if I "would really wear a shawl in THOSE colors?" which turned this from looking like an Autumnal shawl to Witchy-poo socks in my head in a hot second. Suddenly I was feeling kind of sad about the shawl.

After going through all my stash options (a process that took a couple hours! Must organize stash!) we ended up going to The Yarn Garage where I picked up some Noro Taiyo Sock yarn. When I got back home I did a practice test of German Short Rows on some acrylic and when I was satisfied I started over with renewed vigor! Am so happy I started over! Normally it kills me to "knit over" but it was a really good move this time!

The Noro is a three ply and the Sun Valley Fibers is a 2 ply - so my new project is coming up just a tiny bit larger than my old. Here is a comparison of the two projects side by side - the difference in the 9 wedges is just about an inch in length. I can't feel the difference and the way it is working up I feel like this was a good choice to make. I have more than enough yardage so I know I will be fine on that end as well.

The new Clue was unleashed yesterday and I cannot wait to dig in. I finished knitting up my Clue one  today and will be heading in to Two-ville as soon as I get some chores done.

This is my first Westknits pattern I have worked up and I am really happy I am doing this with a huge crew of people in this KAL. There are many things I am doing in this project that are new to me and the support in the Ravelry Forums has been amazing! Enough talk! Time to Knit!

A Swatch of ill repute

So I have finished blocking out my swatch and it's measuring about 19 stitches over 4 inches on size 7 needles. Sadly this yarn is STILL harsh! So I am leaning toward mittens (with a liner) and bags. If I had a loom I would make this into wool rugs in a heartbeat as I think this would be excellent rug yarn. It's REALLY scratchy. So I guess that's good to know.

I have been making progress on my Well Named Vest over the last week. I am a quarter of the way through the color work on the bust area. I love how it's turning out and I love that it's looking like an actual vest! I am still praying it fits when I am done. I have discovered that I can only work a chart when I am focused. That ripping back color work is poopy. And that as big of a pain as it is - I don't like the look of long floats on the back of a project. My first row of this has long floats and I almost ripped it back and re-did it. But lazy won and I just kept going with floats only carrying over 2 or 3 stitches for the rest of the color work. You can see some of this peeking out from the inside of the vest. I am not sure what proper carrying technique is for carrying floats in color work - I am not very experienced with Fair Isle or Intarsia. I just know what works for me.

In other news - it got into the 60's here today. That is INSANELY warm for us. After my workout today I went outside to fill our bird feeders in my t-shirt and Capri's (work out gear) and felt really comfortable! It's just so crazy! LOVE IT! I think I am destined for a warmer climate when I get older. I love Minnesota - but man the winters here really get me down!

Leap Day, Bad Weather and a Vest

It's Leap Day and I have to say it got off to a pretty rocky start. Our dog Emma freaks out about high wind, thunderstorms, rain, snow, sleet.... and is VERY reluctant to go out and do her business in the morning if any of these conditions are happening. This morning we happened to have most of these conditions all rolled into one. So I (still in my pajamas with garden gnomes, glasses on, and hair flying in 17 directions) throw on my husbands giant boots, tuck my gnome pajamas into the boots, put on a wool coat and cap and start the "Come On Em! Let's GO OUTSIDE! WEEEE" Game. This resulted in me standing out in a couple inches of slush, at 4:45 in the morning, with sleet/rain/snow pelting me and soaking my gnomes, while Emma circled the yard looking for some magic spot to go potty. This is how my day started.

Next I got to drive my car in this crap to work. This also sucked donkey balls. Seriously. Every time one of those trucks would drive by me on the freeway it was like someone opened a dump truck up on top of my car of slush. It was terrible. My hands and shoulders just ached from the tension of holding the car on the road with my mighty knitter hands by the time I got to work. My 30 minute commute took just over an hour. YUCK. AWFUL!

I really feel like I shouldn't complain either. We have had one of the mildest winters I can remember. Still. YUCK! Blessedly the drive home was MUCH better. YAY!

I have made a little progress on my vest. I am into the color work portion now and am anxious to keep going. I am still finding the pattern REALLY annoying. When I got to the point where I was able to join in the round I was finally given a stitch count. I was supposed to have 162 but I actually had 186. I reread the pattern to see if I could see where I picked up so many extra stitches - but I am at a loss. So I decided that I would knit a few stitches together to bring my count down to 180 which would put me one size up from where I wanted to be. Since this is the chest area and I am pretty busty, I think this will work out. Also, I know if I rip this thing out and start over I will not start over - so I am now in the "Winging it" portion of the vest.

In the back of my head a little voice tells me it's ok if it ends up too big because it's all knit in wool and if it's too fugly I can always felt it a little to shrink it up a bit. I have not yet decided if this little internal voice is a white hat or a black hat. We shall see!

Izzi snoozing the afternoon away.

Does anyone have any Leap Day Traditions? It didn't occur to me to do this until the day was pretty underway, but I thought I would see if anyone had any that they did on this "Extra Day" every year. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have it be a "me" day where you slept in, gave yourself (or went and got) a pedicure/manicure, maybe a massage if you like that thing.... I see possibilities here!

Let's Get it Started!

I have begun my George Sand Vest! I had been avoiding it a little bit and once I realized that I was a bit afraid to start I kind of had to jump in and go! I re-read the pattern cover to cover twice, gathered all my supplies and started. For the record, this is knit with Cascade 220 and the color work will be with Noro Silk Garden.

I find that I am having a hard time understanding what the writer of the pattern wants me to do rather than the actual execution of the pattern. (The stitching is the easy part  - the reading the pattern is the hard part!) The Vest is a top-down construction and it is knit flat and then joined to work the body. The pattern does not give a stitch count through any of this top part. It also has you do increases by saying things like 'Do 2 (4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18) neck increases.' (numbers were made up by me for example purposes) and then of course - no stitch count to verify you are on track.  So I feel like I am on track with the pattern - but I have no way of knowing if I really am or not. I REALLY get frustrated with patterns that you pay for that you have to spend all your time trying to figure out what the author wants you to do. The stitch execution on this has been really easy - but the pattern itself could be better written in my opinion. All that being said - this is really the first complex item I have knit so some struggle is expected.

As you can see I just got the arm holes created. That was kind of exciting. :) I could finally hold it up to my hubby and say "See! Vest!" and have him not look at me like "Crazy lady waving yarn! Crazy lady waving yarn! Back away slowly!" So that was nice too. :)

I have spent about 6-8 hours knitting on this so far. Would LOVE to stay home all week and just knock this guy out. I have to say it's pretty exciting to knit something that is NOT a hat or scarf! :) I can see how people might get kind of hooked on knitting sweaters and vests!

Never Beret-ed

My first hat of 2012 is complete!

I knit this following the free pattern on ravelry called: Super-simple fast and easy chunky hand-knit beret! by Laurie Perry. (You might know her from her blog or her books: Crazy Aunt Purl!) The yarn is Hitsuji by Noro. I knit this in four hours including the time it took to eat dinner. (So probably 3 to 3.5 hours of knitting would get you a hat.)

I was a little freaked out at first since it seemed to grow quite a bit after the bath and air dry. The ribbed brim is really loose around my head. That being said - this is the only hat I have made that I can take off my head without having that lovely ribbing line show up on my forehead - also I can wear it without fear of smooshed wool hat hair appearing after I take it off. It's sloppy and arty farty and I think I am kind of in love!

Here is a side view. Love the colors in here. Turquoise, Mustard, Hot Pink. I don't know who does the color work for Noro but I am always amazed at what they come up with.

What I don't love about Noro is the breaks in the yarn. See that hot pink stitch on the lower edge of the picture? It goes from VERY pink to gray here because they did a yarn join here and they just tied it on with gray rather than matching a pink. I have found something like that in almost every Noro I have used. VERY irritating. I would love Noro so much more if it didn't pull that crap. Grrrrrrr.

Now that THAT is out of my system - I am still darn happy with the results here.

Day Off + Eye Dr. = Yarn!

I have been getting a lot of headaches at work lately. FINALLY figured out that it was probably my eyes. So today I took a day off from work and went to the eye Dr. and got my peepers looked at. I am getting new glasses and will order new contacts next week if the new prescription is working. (I am trying out a lower prescription on my contacts - so we will see if this works out.) If the new contacts don't work - We head to bifocals. Uffda.  Honestly I didn't know you could get a bi-focal in contacts. I find that amazing! Apparently they are rather spendy though - so the longer I can put them off the better for my pocket book!

So after my eye Dr. appointment I went next door to the yarn store and had fun blowing money on a few things. I am proud to say that I went in with two projects in mind and got all the supplies I need to make both of them. And I only bought two things that were not on my list.

The first was this Lotion Bar. I have been wanting to try one of these for quite some time and when I saw this on the counter I had to grab it. The company is Milk & Honey and I am loving this product! I already wish I had bought more than one bar.

 My other splurge was this ball of Noro Hitsuji. I went back to it over and over and then I just said "Screw it! YOU are coming home with me!" I really had no choice.

On my list of things to get was the yarn for a vest I found on Ravelry called George Sand. It is a $3.00 pattern and I knew I wanted to make it the minute I saw it. The Cascade 220 will be the main color and then I will work the pattern in the Noro Silk Garden. I ended up going with really bold Noro because I really want the pattern to pop out of the dark grey yarn. It will be my first vest so I am excited and nervous. I have the pattern, needles and yarn - so I just have to ball the yarn and then cast on! WOOT!

And finally I bought the yarn to make a little afghan to replace the one I use in the bedroom. Since I am always frozen I have a couple of blankets I throw on top of me every night in addition to our other blankets. One of them is an afghan that my mom crocheted in acrylic in the early 70's or maybe even the 60's? The colors are Hot pink, neon green, yellow.... it's just LOUD. Add to that it's scratchy as hell. My hubby calls it the Luffa blanket because it's so scratchy it can take the calluses off your feet. (Ouch!) So I decided I should probably knit a replacement.

This past spring I knit a baby blanket for our neighbors I called And the Bee goes Buzzzz and loved it so much I had a hard time giving it away. The pattern was simple and you just hold two strands of worsted together. It goes pretty fast and the yarn I used softened up a lot after a wash and dry. I found some blue and gray yarn (to go with the colors of our bedroom) and will soon be knitting my new blanket. The pattern can be found in a wonderful book called Plymouth Yarn 636, The Encore 8-Hour Baby Blanket...Revisited and although I have only made one blanket from it so far I have to say I see myself keeping this book forever. Perfect go-to for baby blanket gifts.

December is HERE!

Puppy Power!

Emma seems to have a love hate thing for the snow. Last night we let her out and she was bouncing around in the falling snow and scooping up mouthfuls and having a gay ol' time. She does not seem to like doing her business in the snow - I think when we get an amount like this and she drops into position and feels the snow on her parts she doesn't want to go. I guess that is good since if she did her business in the snow it would get all over her. I will need to talk to Tom about shoveling (or blowing?) an area for her in her "Poop Zone" so she can have an area that is more appealing for taking care of business.

I went to Chuck & Don's yesterday on my lunch to see about getting Em some sort of coat to keep her warmer this winter. Her hair is pretty thin on her underside and I worry she will get frostbite or something. They had nice items - but I just couldn't get myself to spend the $50.00 on a dog coat that may or may not fit and that she may or may not use. I think I need to get knitting on more doggy apparel.

How's the weather up there?

We got some serious snow going on. I would say it was a healthy six to eight inches that dumped on us this round. It started yesterday around 1:30 or so and stopped just after we went to bed. Now the temperature is going to drop and it will be cold and gross. Yay. Love Winter. If it's not dumping on us with the white stuff then it is colder than a penguins butt. At least it's sort of pretty and I suppose it's Christmasy. Still. Yuck. And as far as this much snow this early and temperatures being this much below normal - it's just going to make the winter seem ridiculously long. It feels long on a normal year - but to be dealing with serious snow from November to April is just going to seem like FOREVER.

Pod People

I had to stop listening to the Bark n' Knit podcast for awhile. I was getting bored by it honestly. I think I might have to stop trying to catch up from the beginning and just listen to the newer podcasts. Or admit defeat and move on. I think I read in the Bark n' Knit group on Ravelry that she is (Did?) have a baby. And I REALLY don't want to listen to baby baby baby crud. Having to accept that we are not going to have children has been tough. Accepting that all our friends and family are breeding with apparent ease and want to tell you all about it all the time - not so easy. Having to listen to a podcast that is supposed to be about knitting and dogs and having it turn into Baby baby baby? Not so much. So I think I will try some of her newer episodes and see how they feel - and if they are "All About Baby" I will just move on to other podcasts.

In lieu of podcasts I have been amusing myself with Jen Lancaster's Audio books. The girl is FUNNY and very easy to relate to. I am a little surprised to being all hearts and flowers on her since she is republican and conservative and that is SO not my worldview, but I am learning that people (myself included) are more than the sum of their political and world views. She really is funny. And although her life is very different than mine, I find myself enjoying her struggles to be a better person. I feel like that is my life theme. "Always struggling to become better." My husband recently told me that that is one of the things he admires about me. That I don't give up and am ALWAYS trying to be better than I am. Pretty big compliment there!

Stick it & Stuck it

I have been knitting almost every day since my last blog. I finished my "It's My Birthday Too!" Cowl and I love it. I wore it all day at work yesterday and I am pleasantly surprised that I am as in love with it as I am. I thought it's tightness would really bother me - but it was like a free range turtle neck that didn't grab tight at my neck. I wore it with a long sleeve t-shirt and a heavy vest - and it was just wonderful. I found when I ran errands in the snow storm yesterday that it was quite convenient for tucking my chin and lower face into for protection and warmth. Yup. It's a goody! Plus (Hello!) It's knit with Malabrigo. I mean SERIOUSLY. What is NOT to love here?!?!

I also finished my Charity Ornament for the auction at work. I had to mail it to our head offices in Texas - which I am sure cost more than the materials to make the item. **Shrugs** What cha gonna do? I thought the ornament turned out fine. The pattern is really cute. It was knit on size 3 double points with is pretty small needles for me. And I could not get my pom pom maker to work for the life of me. I ended up going old school and wrapping the yarn around a box and trimming it down to size. Worked much better than the stupid pom pom maker. :) Hopefully it sells and hopefully they get lots of money to feed starving children.

I also finished my Noro Band of Truth!

It's the second time I have made this pattern which is REALLY simple and yet very wonderful. I love both of the headbands I have made and think I will just continue to knit these for all my future events. I can usual fix mistakes on something this simple - and I can talk and knit this one. Pretty awesome. I will probably go through my stash today and find another single ball that wants to be a headband and cast on so I can have it "At the ready". I am pretty burnt out on dishcloths. :)

I am also working on The Fidget (or as I call my "Fidget of Doom!" - just because Drama in knitting is funny.) Very easy pattern and the results are quite lovely. I am about 90% done with the knitting and I need to figure out what kind of buttons I want on it. Hopefully I have some lovely one's free ranging around the house - but I am not going to settle on them if they aren't perfect - so we will see. I might have to hit the stores.

OH. And How could I not mention this. I went out to ONE store on Black Friday. Three Kittens in Mendota Heights had a one hour before we open for 3K Club Members only Private Sale. It was INSANE and I spent a BoatLoad of money in under one hour. I am still giddy at what I got - but conversely - OY. Spent a lot of money and have a TON of new yarn I am trying to work into my stash. Uffda! I seriously have more yarn than I can knit in my lifetime. Sick. Awesome. Sick. ;)