Nothing to see here folks, move along

So, I wonder if I should count sewing projects in my "started/finished" counter? Possibly, I am overthinking this. On hand the first, this is a blog wherein I have occasionally mentioned other crafts. You know, like quilting. I also sew. I initially intended this as a knitting blog, but dude, I barely have enough RAM (random access memory) to keep up with this blog. Its not like I'm gonna start a second sewing/quilting blog. Now, on the other hand (I do have two, ya know), I had originally intended the counter to motivate me to finish knitting projects.

Why do I keep insisting on compartmentalizing my life?

I put together a seriously cute bag for the Bardic Olympics. I'm gonna try to borrow Jess' camera to get a picture of it before it escapes out into the world. I'm meant to make a ritual robe for Himself this evening. See? If I counted those, my numbers would totally go up.

I'm such a dork.

Shawl? What shawl?

I think that my grand plan to complete my shawl through slow but steady progress would ultimately be more successful if I were to ever, say, pick it up. I haven't knit a single lacey stitch since I publicly announced I would complete two repeats a day. I think I'm just tired of the durn-blamed thing. I will do better.

Meanwhile, I have completed the back of Rowan's pirate sweater up to the point where I need to start shaping for the armholes. Go me! He is really excited about it — I picked up the sock I'm working on and he said "But I want you knit my pirate sweater!" Demanding little booger.

And, speaking of the socks, I'm an entire 13 rows into the Glad Raggs pattern. Size 1 needles are wee and ickle, and sharp. Ouch. That's all I'm sayin'.

A Case of Startitis

Apparently too much knitting monogamy is bad for you. That's the excuse I'm looking to use anyway. I'm at the point in the MS2 shawl where I will be adding edging until I die. In fact, I'll die, and I'll keep knitting the edging onto this shawl.

So, my current plan is to do at least 2 full repeats a day. That will effectively bind off 10 stitches a day. Until I die. Yup.

So, meanwhile I've started a pirate sweater for Rowie, from Little Badger Knitwear by Ros Badger and Elaine Scott. There is serious cuteness ahoy.
I cast-on on Sunday and have finished two sleeves and about 1/3 of the back. Dude, I so rock. This sweater will be done before I die, yessirreebob, in fact it could totally be done before the four year old graduates from college from kindergarten. He is already highly enamored of it. You'll remember how excited he was about his Weasley sweater.

I've also begun the Gladd Raggs socks from the Six-Sox Knitalong. I'm using lang jawoll in a brown/natural ragg -- its groovy, it even comes with extra ickle yarn for the toesies and heel. Hee. Who knew that reinforcing yarn would make me giddy?

For yet another child, Morgan this time, I am planning a stripedy cardigan. I am loosely basing it off of a pattern in the 2005 Knit It mag. By loosely I mean "am totally re-working the directions, shaping and making up. In different yarn." This will be more of a "inspired by" project. I am pretty proud that I have progressed to a point in my knitting where I feel confidant enough to do that. Which is not to say that it will work, mind you, but I'm brave enough to try.

Rhiannon will be receiving a Flower Basket Shawl in the medium-gray Knitpicks Palette, and I'm comissioned to do another for a friend out of Midnight Alpaca Cloud. My queue is filling right back the hell up.

What happened to February is For Finishing you ask? Dude. Its March. March is for Making (New Things). Get with the times.

Okay so I totally intend to keep working on finishing things. Really.

Happy Birthday, Baby

Jess' post about her pretty girl prompted me to take a turn bragging about one of my kids as well. Rhiannon turned an amazing 12 years old this past Thursday. Happy birthday my beautiful, talented, amazing girl.




Here she is with her Olympic Gold scarf. Yeah, she made that. All by her onesies, and in plenty of time to get the gold. I am so proud of her.

This is me, still working over time

Man, I'm even starting to bore myself.

Although I've been striving mightily, my knitting monogamy came to a screeching halt. I've started working on the tank top I keep in my drawer at work (emergency knitting). I'm also starting to plan the pirate sweater I'm going to knit Rowan.

This morning as I'm driving to work I'm on the phone with Carl, getting him to measure the gauge of Rowan's Weasley sweater for me. All so I can do math to plan the sweater here at work. I am such a dork.

All of your overtime are belong to us

Still no gold.

Still working overtime.

Still too lame tired to blog properly.

The hateful shawl is proceding apace — I have the edging approximately 1/3 down. We hates it forever, precious. It is going to be a lovely shawl.

Blog button!

So, in a fit of frustrated creativity, I made myself a blog button. The back ground for the button is Rowan's Weasley sweater (which he has nearly outgrown, by the by).

I didn't get the gold

My plans for the Knitting Olympics did not include the national roll out of Borders Rewards, nor 11+ hours of mandatory overtime. Alas! Woe! While I might be able to afford some yarn, I did not finish my shawl.



This is me, Sunday night.

I think this picture speaks for itself.

Olympic Progress

My Olympic progress thus far has been (in my not so very humble opinion) pretty spectacular.

Day 1: completed Clue 1 and a few rows of Clue 2
Day 2: completed Clue 2
Day 3: completed all but a skosh of Clue 3
Day 4: completed Clue 3
Day 5: a day of rest

My big plan for this evening includes watching more Olympics and picking up approximately 5 trillion ickle stitches in my lace weight merino. That'll be fun.

Pre-Olympic Jitters

Well, I haven't finished anything else. I have made some progress however. My green tank top is coming along nicely, and I guess I better find the pattern soon so I can do the shaping. I've also been working on Morgan's Cardigan. I engineered the shaping for the cardigan front neck(s), and figured out a button-hole that would suit my purposes. I have the second front about 1/4 of the way done. Then I have sleeves and the making up.

Meanwhile, in Harlot-town and Torino both, the Olympics are starting tomorrow. Which means my other finishing efforts are going to be set aside until the MS2 is complete. I am rationalizing thusly: Stephanie allowed for swatching, and I figure if something's swatched then its started. Therefore, the MS2 qualifies for both events. Tidy, eh?

I'm not feeling an overwhelming landslide of finished-ness. I keep repeating to myself "You went from 19 UFOs down to 7....today is February 9.....this is a marked improvement.

Drive By Posting

Its my day off so, rather than write about knitting I'm going to go curl up with a cup of tea and knit read a romance novel. More news (with pictures!) tomorrow.

How Cool am I? Or, "And Then There Were Seven"

So, in a fit of extreme groovitude, I finished Rhiannon's socks last night. That's right folks, I finished my first UFO on the first of February.

Woot!



And the ubiquitous "Sock on Feet—Action Shot!"



Project Specs

• Lionbrand Magic Stripes sock yarn in colorway "Purple"
• Two size 2 circulars
• CO 60 sts.
• Project begun — some time in December 2005
  
• Project finished — February 1, 2006
  

February is For Finishing, Day One

Okay, I'm all excited, because I've roped three other fools serious knitters into Finishing with me. In my incredible geekitude, I've even made a blog button and added a list on the sidebar.



As we finish things, let me know, and I'll start a counter, and post either a link or a picture of the item, if you have one.

I have kicked major patoockus on Rhiannon's second sock, and might conceivably have it finished today or tomorrow. Now wouldn't that rock?

The Ugly Truth About the UFO situation

So, I bit the bullet and rounded up all of my knitterly UFOs, in order to begin preparations for "February is For Finishing." After piling 19 (yes, that's as in "Nineteen") projects on my bed, many begun over 2 years ago, I considered renaming the month "February is for Quitters who hide under their beds rather than face up to three years of accumulated unfinished crap"—but really, that's too long and not at all catchy.



After ruthless consideration, I've frogged and flung my way down to 8 projects that I intend to finish. At least three of them are major, large scale projects. And whose stupid idea was this anyway?

February is For Finishing:

• Rhiannon's Lion Brand Magic Stripe socks (in the purple colorway)
  
• Mystery Shawl 2 (I have swatched....that's like starting, only swatchier)
• The Kerry Shawl from Waterman's Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls
• Morgan's Lion Brand Cotton-Ease Heart Cardie
• Branching Out scarf bag (there's a story behind this, I'll tell it another day)
• My Luster Sheen Tank Top
• "Another Turn" poncho from Knitters 78 in Red Heart Symphony
• Colinette Ab-Fab throw kit in the Antique colorway

The two shawls, the afghan and the poncho are each more than enough to be going on with. February isn't 'til tomorrow and I'm already feeling the onset of panic. Dude. There ain't no way.

February is for Finishing

February is also for Frogging, and Flinging (as in “out of a moving vehicle”).

I hereby declare February the official month of uFo banishment. Who’s with me?!? Who else would love to start March with out any unfinished knitterly objects? Who else wonders if that’s actually possible?

But wait! We’ll have none of that silly “You’ve got to be out of your frickin’ mind” kind of talk here, no sirreebob. February has 28 entire days in it. That’s *drags out virtual calculator* 672 entire hours! How much could you finish in that amount of time?

oFFicial rules For February is For Finishing

• during the First week of February, uFos should be Found and indentiFied
• appropriate ways of dealing with uFos include: Finishing, Frogging and in certain extreme cases, Flinging
• blogging should occur to detail the process. It’d be cool if we had a running tally of FFOs —February Finished Objects

The observant among you will have noticed that February is For Finishing might interfere with The Olympics. To that I say… Not necessarily! After all, part of the whole point of Stephanie’s challenge is to finish whatever project you choose. Now, I can certainly see that those 16 days might cut seriously into some UFO banishment time, but hey, there are 12 entire other days in February. Ya bunch of whingers.

New Kniting Shop in the Boro!

Gretta and I made a wonderful discovery last week. There is a new LYS in town. (By "Gretta and I" please understand that she said "Hey, did you know that there is a new yarn shop in town?" One of her co-workers told her about it.)

She and I had a date for lunch and fiber-frolicking last week (Hobbidy Lobbidy had their knitting paraphernalia on sale 1/2 off). So, after she made her startling pronouncement, I set to Googling, found the place and called to ask for their hours.

Let me just say now that I am both quite pleased, as the place is beautiful, reasonable in terms of their prices, and really accessible, but also more than a little bit jealous. Man, I want a Knitting/Quilting store when I grow up.

Anyway, with Meredith's permission, I made a button, and have linked to their website. To size it for my side bar I set it at height=50 width=120

Oh, and the store's name? The Knaughty Knitter. Hee.

Flower Basket Shawl

For my first major accomplishment of 2006, I knit "grown up lace"—Evelyn A. Clark's Flower Basket Shawl, initially published in Interweave Knit's Fall 2004 issue.



(For those keeping score, I also really want to knit the sweater on the front cover).

The shawl was knit from Knitpicks' Shadow in Campfire. It's a 100% merino wool laceweight yarn at an insanely affordable price. Something like $2.39 per 440 yard hank. I am absolutely in love with this yarn. On size 7 needles, it knit up into a gorgeous fabric that blocked like a dream. Oh yeah baby, will I knit more shawls outta this stuff. (I already have Oregon Coast lined up for the MS2, and have four skeins of Vineyard for I dunno know what yet.)

Now, on to the pictures!




Why this lace pattern is called "Flowerbasket" is beyond me. Looks more leafy-like, ya know?



I call this shot "Shawl with Obligatory Cat"

Project Specs

• Pattern: Flower Basket Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark. Published in IK F'04
• Yarn: Knitpicks' Shadow "Campfire" 100% Merino Laceweight one 440 yd. hank
• Needles: Addi Turbo size 7 24" circulars
• Date begun: December 28, 2005
• Date finished: January 7, 2006
• Total cost for materials: $2.39
  

Go Me!

Socks!

I have recently discovered that I really like knitting socks. I like it enough that I'm bound to get myself in trouble with it. (6 Sox Knitalong and 200Sox spring to mind....)

I have Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks and Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks. I haven't actually knitted anything out of the second yet, but I've heard nothing but good things about Nancy Bush. I have used Schurch's book, and I love it. It has instructions for 4 dpn, 5 dpn and 2 circular methods, side by side in a chart, and includes enough variations to keep you busy for the rest of your natural life. Its a book that encourages design, rather than a "recipe" book for socks. Bush's book is more the latter, but her recipes are so good, its hard to complain.




My first pair of "grown up" socks were knit from Schurch's book. I used the garter rib pattern with two size 2 circulars. The yarn is Peter Pan Wendy (a baby fingering yarn) and my only regret is that, at the end of the day, its acrylic. Its a lovely soft, ickle acrylic, but acrylic nae-the-less. So, they make better "wear in the house socks" than "wear in the tennis shoes" socks. In any case, they are pretty good lookin' if I do say so myself. (And I do).



I have also been working on socks for Rhiannon (who, at 11 has feet almost exactly the same size as mine). I've been designing PoA-style Ravenclaw socks for her. I'm not entirely happy with how they came out, but she seems pretty pleased. The yarn is Knitpicks' Essential in Navy and Ash. I used two size 2 circulars for the cuff and leg, and switched to size 1 dpns for the foot. If I had them to do over again, I'd do the whole sock in 1s. I like the fabric much better that way. They are finished save the toes—they turned out about 1/2 an inch too short, so I'm ripping back and doing the toes a second time.



(N.B. They aren't quite as squanchy in real life. They look funny because I'm holding the 16 live stitches at the top with 2 dpns.)

New Side Bar Tally Dealy

I think that I should start a running tally of projects completed vs. projects started during 2006. I mean, afterall, how better to know whether or not I'm living up to my goal of finishing more than I start? Plus, that'll give me something else to crowd up my sidebar.

Since it's only January 21, I figure I still have time to get my math sorted out before it becomes impossible to keep it straight.


Begun in 2006:

• Flower Basket Shawl
• Tank Top, loosely (very loosely) based on a design from a Knitter's mag

Finished in 2006:

• Flower Basket Shawl
• Half-circle pi shawl for Morgan (begun in 2003, more on that later)

Hmm.... so far I'm two for two.

Olympic Knitting Hopefuls

Still pondering the big Olympic Knitting question. Above and beyond Stephanie's requirements (mainly that the project be personally challenging and that it not be cast on before February 10), I have some individual requirements of my own.

Its gotta be out of my stash. I am a bit on the financially impaired side these days, so my desire to knit Knitty's Bristow is to be temporarily thwarted. Not that I don't have yarn, mind you…. I mean I totally do have yarn. I just don't have the yarn for Bristow. Or for anything else I'm ever likely to ever want to knit. But really that's a post for a different day.

It has to be something that I can knit while at work. There is a fine line between interesting enough to keep me occupied, but yet not so "interesting" that I can't knit it and call stores about their Online Reserve Alerts at the same time.

It cannot be mind-numbingly boring. Maybe this should be a subheading of the above requirement. I mention it because I'm actually considering doing my PoA-style Griffindor scarf. It definitely meets my first two requirements, but I'm not sure it meets this one. It does have the "every yea so often color change" to keep it from total yawn-dom, but 9 billion miles of stockinette is still 9 billion miles of stockinette.

Must not be hinky, manky, funky, or any other derogatory adjective that ends in "-ky"

At this point my real contenders seem to be the Mystery Shawl Along 2 Shawl and the previously mentioned Harry Potter scarf. Also in the running, however, are the Mystery Shawl Along 1 Shawl, the wassname Shawl from last Fall's Vogue Knitting (this presupposes that I can find the bloody magazine its in), or possibly some groovitundinous socks. The socks would have to be a bit above and beyond the standard rib-cuff/stockinette foot style in order to qualify.

Maybe I should spend tomorrow hunting through my stash, in order to more fully appreciate my options.

ETA: I found the Vogue Knitting magazine, and the other shawl is #15 "Lace Wrap."