When I Put My Mind to It

I actually can get things done. Here’s one FO finally! The Triangle Scarf… now called “My Favorite Scarf” finished while there is still snow on the ground. LOL!

Pattern: Triangle Scarf by Ginger Luters Yarn: Poems Worsted in colors 556 and 558 Size 6 circular needles

This is actually a really quick pattern to knit; but it took me longer because I was working on other things.

I also made progress on some little socks for my grandson:

Annd the bad front to delve has been sent to the frog pond. Hopefully I can get it restarted today. What’s in your knitting basket? Happy knitting!

Un-Done

I suppose there are plenty of Chicago area bloggers who posted today about the Snow or March’s definite lack of lamb-ness in it’s almost departure. So, I won’t go there today. I’ll just say that I’m feeling a little housebound.

All you knitters out there are probably thinking, ‘sounds like a perfect excuse to knit’ and you are probably right! So why am I sitting here in front of the computer?

Good questions? Could it be that the un-done-ness of all my projects is making me feel a little like procrastinating even more? Probably right again!

Sigh….

There’s nothing I’d love to do more than post a finished FO, except that I don’t have any. I took a quick trip to see my parents this weekend (cut shorter than I had hoped to ensure getting home ahead of the nasty weather). That kept me from working on much for the last two days. I made a little progress on the scarf, the little striped socks and the falling leaf socks, but the Delve sweater front ended up in time-out and probably won’t come out until it’s ready to be frogged. You see, I’m off by one stitch and it’s only been two repeats of the eyelet row; seems like the best course of action is to frog.

Here’s the kitties thoughts on visiting ‘grandma and grandpa’s’ (there was a dog and a three-year old in the house)

"we are not moving from here"

Oh, and it’s baaack…. (okay so I went there anyway)

Evil Snow Mound I certainly hope it won’t take another three months for that thing to melt!

Be Square

Linda got a few samples of Kollage's new circular and double point square needles in at the shop yesterday. Of course, I couldn’t help poking thru the pile. So I’m standing there with the square size 2.75mm dpn’s in my hand and she asked me if I’d like to test them…. Silly question! So I brought them home and cast on a little pair of socks…. The square needles are made of coppery brown aluminum and are very light. So far I don’t notice much difference from working with regular round needles. They seem just as comfortable as round needles. I like the tips. Not too pointy, but not dull either.

My assessment is that if you are looking for 5” dpns in a smaller size but don’t want to worry about breaking the thinner wood, these might be for you.

I’ve been slow with my knitting projects this week. I finished the back of the Delve sweater and started the front. Here’s a peek…

I need a bigger blocking board if I’m going to keep knitting sweaters! The falling leaves socks are taking a bit longer than I’d hoped. I’ve had to do a little bit of ripping again, since I seem to have a bit of trouble following the pattern. For some reason I do fine with the first half of the pattern repeat, but keep messing up the second part; especially if anyone even looks in my direction while I am knitting. Probably shouldn’t be trying to work on this one in public. I’m also at a decision point about the heel; do I do the afterthought heel the pattern calls for or forge ahead with a flap heel? Either way; I doubt I’ll get them done before the end of the month, sigh.

Old Socks, New Socks

Green, red, and blue socks…. Presenting the finished Couplet Socks:

Yarn, Poems Sock Yarn color 958 Size 2.50mm dpn needles Basic 7 stitches per inch pattern by Ann Budd; eye of partridge heel Started: March 2, Finished March 17

These were a really quick knit even with a whole weekend of ripping and re-knitting to get the colors to combine nicely in the stripes. You can see the effect I was trying to avoid a little bit on the blue / purple heeled sock, right before the start of the heel where the two reds were starting to get really close in color. Despite that little issue, I might have to do more of these.

And on to the next pair;

After reorganizing and taking stock of my sock yarn stash, I decided to stick with my previous plan for the next pair and I cast on Weds for these:

The Falling Leaves Socks from the Lucky Lurker Sock club 2007 by A Swell Yarn Shop. The pattern and yarn was a gift from a swap I did last year. So far the socks are working up nicely. They are eventually going to go to DD#2 who has been waiting somewhat patiently since September when I promised that I would make her another pair of socks to replace all the ones that were worn out or tortured in the laundry by her boyfriend. So they are on the needles.

Overall, yesterday wasn’t a very good knitting day. During my pre-work knitting I wrestled with the start of the diamond lace pattern on Delve. It took me about 24 rows to get the 12 row pattern right. Then I went to work, but it was too busy there to do any knitting (between the shop having a sale and giving a private lesson). But, I did give it a good try at knit night. I pulled out the triangle scarf thinking it would be a good thing to work on with all the conversations that go on. Nope! I couldn’t get my brain around how to start a new triangle … that took two attempts. I did manage to finish one triangle but decided maybe I should put it away and not tax my brain further by attempting to do the other triangle with reverse shaping. So I pulled out the falling leaves sock to work on. I finished a couple rounds and noticed the pattern wasn’t looking right, tinked back, restarted then it was time to go. Got home, “finished” the pattern repeat… still not right, tinked 7 rounds and decided I was done knitting for the night. I had a little better time with it today and was able to make up for all the lost rounds. Just for fun, I might try to get these done by the end of the month and make March a record 3-pair month. (March madness indeed!) We’ll see. (The colors are more accurate in this pic) And on the subject of things that are nearly impossible to do… One thing that is almost impossible to do around Chez Nana is to get a really decent picture of Zelda with her eyes open. She has shutter sense like crazy and almost always waits until the second the shutter closes to blink. Because of her black face, this usually results in a picture where she looks like she has no eyes. Today she was camped out in the office looking really cute so I fooled her. I used the shutter delay setting and called her name and got her to look up at the camera right before the shutter closed, but before she realized that the first click wasn’t the real deal. So here she is eyes and all, looking totally sweet: (Oh, hai mommy... are we going to post the blog nao?)

Have a nice weekend!

You Might Have a Sock Yarn Problem …

IF You check your stash on ravelry and more than half is tagged as “sock”. . .

You knit one pair and buy yarn for two more then queue three patterns. . .

AND

Your storage system is labeled like this:

And looks like this: AND

(there are still more skeins in another basket)

AND

You can’t decide which yarn to use for the next pair you plan to knit…

You might have a sock yarn problem

(Sigh...and I thought the sock-a-month KAL would be my twelve step solution!)

Next post, the finished couplet socks!

Pile o’ Undone

I had so wanted to post a picture of the finished back of Delve. Not. I had also planned on finishing the couplet socks over the weekend and having a post about that. Not! After driving myself crazy over the color combinations of the stripes and frogging back to the cuff (or beyond) four times, I finally managed to get to the start of the heel on the second sock. If I’m a good knitter girl, maybe they’ll be done in a couple of days. Sigh Between recovering from an ear infection and aforementioned stripe obsession, very little progressive knitting actually occurred this weekend… I think this sums it up best:

For those of you who are of Irish descent like me or those who just wanna be…

May the road rise to meet you, May the wind always be at your back, May the sun shine warm upon your face, And the rains fall soft upon your fields, And until we meet again, may God Hold you in the palm of his hand.

…. And may all your WIPs be happily finished! Happy St. Patty’s day and happy knitting

I’m a Very Busy Knitter

I finished the Celtic Knotkins! I liked this pattern pretty well, but wanted to put my personal stamp on it. In addition to the picot edge, I also modified the heel and toe to use the more traditional style just because that’s what I prefer over the short row heel. I also did the eye of partridge version of the heel flap because I thought it would be pretty with this yarn. I like how these turned out. Pattern: Nutkin Sock; by Beth LaPensee Yarn: Knitivity Down Home Sock in Shamrock Size 2.75 dpn needles

These will be perfect to wear on St. Patty's day!

The Knit Out event is coming together; but it’s still a bit of a bumpy ride. I have a feeling that it’s going to keep me busy and make me crazy all the way down to the very end.

Somewhere during last week’s craziness, I succumbed to the siren call of some skeins of Poems I had sitting out in my work room, (I think they were there to be photographed, because they weren’t in my stash on ravelry) and cast on for a scarf. Here’s the result so far:

Triangle Scarf (pattern by Ginger Luters) Poems Worsted in colors 556 and 558.

This project barely escaped tragedy last night when Saucey unceremoniously deposited all of her (previously eaten) dinner on and near the ottoman that most of my knitting lives on. I was mid-row on Delve and trying to count (because I thought I missed a decrease) which is not a very good thing to be doing when the cat decides to explode very close to your knitting. I’m happy to report that having your various in-waiting WIPs safely tucked into knitting bags and baskets is a good thing. The bag got a little soiled and ended up in a nice luxurious soak after I rescued the safely contained knitting. WHEW! That was a close call… (Note to self; might need to re-think keeping knitting projects on and around ottoman)…So after a little initial yelling, a lot of cleaning and apologizing to the not-feeling-so-good cat, my knitting is safe … and I actually have the right number of stitches. I’m almost to the yoke part of the back so I need to re-read the pattern to figure out the shaping before I start the rest.

There’s also a new pair of socks in the works. I think I might have mentioned that we got the Poems sock yarn in the shop, and, I started a new class this week, so I needed some plain socks to work on for demonstration purposes… nobody said that they couldn’t be striped! I’m using both ends of one skein of Poems sock in color 958 to make the two row skinny stripes…so far …. I like!

You Read it Here First!

Gosh, I think I should be knitting right now. But there’s so much to do! You see, I have been sort of putting together a little event for the shop. Well if by little you mean that it’s going to be held at a nearby mall and includes a fashion show, contests, demos, lessons and possibly even a book signing or two. Whew! I haven’t mentioned it before, because until yesterday’s meeting, it wasn’t real for me. But now that a contract has been signed and the date is going to be announced by everyone involved… it’s REAL… And it’s only six weeks away, and, I’m in charge (yikes!). The event is the North Suburban Knit-out and Crochet event 2009. We’re going to take over the Northbrook Court Mall in Northbrook, IL for a whole day on April 18th and show the world what knitters and crocheters of the new millennium are all about. Please keep your fingers crossed for me that everything we’re planning works out! I’m pretty sure I’ll go through all sorts of crazy before the event gets here, so send good yarny vibes my way too. So maybe I’ll just take a wee break from all this planning right now and go knit a few rounds on my sock. Happy Knitting!

Oh, My Goodness!

It’s March…. and this is what greeted me when I looked outside this Morning:(there was some across town yesterday, but none here) oh, and it’s also 18 degrees out…. I had to put my boots on to get the newspaper for goodness sake! BTW, that mound at the end of the driveway has been there since Christmas. It's much smaller now, but still there! I am officially complaining once I figure out who is responsible for this. (“Miss Golightly… I must protest!”- Mr. Yunioshi) Sigh… weather rant over.

Since the last post, I have knit, frogged and re-knit the same section of sock #2 of the Celtic Knotkin socks twice. A couple of factors came into play. In comparison to the second sock I realized that the cuff on the first one was sort of a disaster and the leg was too long. Then I made a mistake on the pattern in the second sock, so I decided since I was going to end up re-knitting sock one anyway, that I wanted to tinker with the pattern a little bit. I had one of those flashbulb moments at knitting group on Thursday and so I ripped it back to the cuff and started over with my revised pattern. Well, I ended up going back to the original pattern because although I liked the result of my experiment with the pattern modification, the leg was coming out too tight and rather than waste more time tinkering and trying to resolve that problem, I decided to just get the pair knit. So, I ripped back to the cuff and started over a third time. I have turned the heel and am halfway down the foot, so I feel like some progress is being made.

I plan to revisit the ‘new” pattern variation at some point; I kept good notes and have a pretty good idea of how to fix it… I just didn’t want to play with it anymore on this pair. Did I mention I really love this yarn? It seems like I didn’t have to play with starting points or any of that other trickery to get a consistent patterning. Maybe I just found a really good pattern / yarn combo, or maybe the stitch count is perfect for the color repeats… whatever it is, I like the way the colors are playing nice. I also forgot to post this:

This is the yarn my DD#1 brought to me when she visited and the potholders her girlfriend sent. They are trying to spoil me! Well, I need to go get ready for work. I hope your March is less snowy than mine!