Keeping Time

It's been nearly a year since I posted any projects. I find that I can do most of what I want on Ravelry. At some point I may change, so I'll keep the blog here in case.

Mystery Shawl Clue 2 and the Bun's Blanket

I'm a little late posting these pictures but I made some good knitting progress in February and the beginning of March.
Mystery Shawl is now 14" long and at row 107. I got home from work with a little sunlight left so I took some pictures in natural light. You can see the beads better here:






Finished just in time was a project I've been working on since July, the Bun's Blanket:


The is the Pinwheel Baby Blanket in Blue Sky Alpacas Skinny Dyed cotton color 316 (French blue). I knit it at roughly 6 sts = 1" after machine washing. It softened up nicely but shrunk a little as predicted from the swatch. It came out to about 36" diameter. I did 3/4" seed stitch for a border.






This is a really easy and cool pattern. Setting up the center takes a little work, but then you have 10 sections that get a yarn over increase every other round. It grows as the baby grows if you're knitting for an expected baby. I might have been done a little earlier than I was, but I didn't want to bind off until the baby was full term and then wove in the ends after he was safely arrived.




Here it is in full on the dining table.








And with Cassie, who loves to model knitted items even more than Arthur.

Arthur can be trusted with a swift and ballwinder, however.

Mystery Shawl Clue 1 Complete

Clue 1 is complete! I really like how it looks, though I think the beads could be larger. They don't show up well with the flash on, but do add some sparkle to the piece in person.


I initially started on a 3.5mm (#4) needle, but found the lace too open for the pattern. So after 40 rows I frogged and started again with a 3.0mm needle.



It seems to be impossible for me to take any knitting photos without assistance from one or the other cat . . .



. . . just as it seems to be impossible to set the table.

Mystery Shawl 11 pre-clue 1

I'm so excited to be doing Mystery Shawl this year. I needed something to look forward to, but it had to be cheap and had to give me several week's worth of fun. So lace knitting with mystery clues was perfect!

I ordered some Knitpicks Gloss, and picked up some mystery seed beeds today (I don't know the size, but I hope close enough to work) and I'm off and running. Here are my supplies. I'm using the crochet hook method of beading. My hook is a #14, which is almost imaginary it's so small.


I've been looking forward to today for 2 weeks. I finished a big project at work that I worked on the entire holiday. So I get the day off, no guilt. Got some wine and crab legs, Kurt Warner kicking butt on the TV and a brand new knitting project.

The test swatch. I think the beads may be too small, but there weren't any beads in the next size up that matched.

BSJ and Trellis

The pictures are pretty bad because I was in a rush to mail them, but they are done! I haven't done baby clothes before, but they are certainly a lot of fun because they're done so quickly.

All the details are on Ravelry.


Trellis from Knitty.com, in Rowan Handknit Cotton, which was my Rowan membership gift a couple of years ago.

A baby surpise jacket in a toddler size, with I cord- bind off and trim.

Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009

2008 was a funky year, a year of extreme highs and lows, both personally and professionally.

Every New Year I look back and think, "Maybe next year will be better. Maybe X problem will be resolved." But things don't generally improve this way. I'm coming around to think that I need to take the bull (perhaps in this case Taurus the bull of worldly success) by the horns and aggressively MAKE it better.

I'm no longer on a "yarn diet," I'm "stash busting". Active instead of passive.

Anyway, I didn't get many projects completed this year and what I did complete wasn't very interesting and I simply put it up at Ravelry. I would like to get back to more documenting here. I'm doing Mystery Shawl 11, my first mystery knit, and I'm really excited. I need some small weekly cookie. I will try to document each clue here, though I doubt I'll be finishing in anything resembling on time.

One of the good things from 2008 is new kitten Cassie, who keeps Arthur busy and plays with yarn in approved kitten fashion. She also turned out to be a little typhoid Mary (one of the bad things), but I think both cats will finally kick all her shelter-born diseases shortly.



Oh, I did learn to knit fair isle holding one color in each hand!

In which I spend my birthday money on yarn again

Ah, birthday yarn money.

Remember when I got that Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn?

http://punkknit.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html

Good times.

This year I got a gift certificate to kpixie.com. I got some Skinny Dyed from Blue Sky Alpacas in this midnight-blue-almost-black and Zodiac cotton from Karabella in cherry red (looking a little pinker than life here).

The elephant incense burner is from friends. I have been feeling the green this year, and something about elephants is appealing right now. Wisdom and patience. Things to work on.

Anyway, the blue is for Camilla by Kate Gilbert:

And the red is for the Wallis cardigan in Summer Interweave:

Yes, I know I have lots of cherry red sweaters and cherry red yarn. But I don't have any cherry red cotton yarn or sweaters.

Given my history of eternal frogging, the sweaters I have picked for the yarn are, well, frankly just ideas. Drapy cardi for the red, pullover with little stitch patterns for the blue. I am already worried about how the sleeves will look on the Wallis cardigan (linebacker?), but I'll cross that bridge when I sew it in and try it on.

What else is going on this year of the big 31? Trying to publish, not perish, as usual.

And Arthur loves roast chicken.

Finishing

I really need to do something about getting flash card reader so I can post pictures. I finished three lovely pairs of socks, two hats, and have just begun a Baby Surprise Jacket.
All gifts. I need amazing-in progress photos of the BSJ.

But, considering my extreme number of works in progress and constant frogging, I don't even believe myself that I finished all that stuff.