I’ve just RSVPed for the Yarn Harlot’s appearance in Los Angeles. This means that I will be spending my first Saturday off from the library in a month… at the library. Funny how that works out.
Welcome to Points West
I seem to be doing things a bit backwards, moving from my own domain to WP’s, but it was getting a bit silly to pay for hosting for a site that I never quite managed to design a splash page for. Things may be a little disjointed around here while I sort out old links and photos, but at least I didn’t lose my archives this time.
In the move, I found this partial entry relating a conversation I had with someone about a big yarn organization I had just done:
“How big is the stash?”
“Smaller than it was, since we found bugs in it.”
“Oh, no. Was it a lot of wool?”
“Yeah. But they were also in the acrylic. Except those were dead.”
“Makes you wonder if we should really be wearing that stuff, doesn’t it?”
“Well, we definitely shouldn’t try to eat it.”
WiP Wednesday: Christmas in July
For months, I’ve been saying that I wanted to cross-stitch new Christmas stockings for the family. K has a stocking her mom made for her when she was little, but my stocking is plain red fake fur (although my dad did recently send me my childhood stocking), and Little Miss doesn’t have one yet. So, when JoAnn Fabrics sent me an email about their “Christmas in July” sale, I went for it. I ordered three stocking kits, all featuring Santa. I’ve started on the one for Little Miss. It’s a Dimensions pattern, called “Checking His List”.
So far, I’ve finished Santa’s belt and a bit of the jacket. I have a long way to go.
FO: Baby Shrug
Pattern: Baby Shrug
Source: Simply Baby, by Debbie Bliss
Size: 12-18 months
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran, color 300601 (Lilac), about 5 skeins
Needles: 7 and 8 Denise Interchangeables
Modifications: None
This is a lovely little sweater, but I’m concerned that Little Miss is going to outgrow it before it gets cold here. Especially since my unfortunate row gauge seems to have resulted in a sweater a good three inches shorter than it was supposed to be. Love the yarn, though. Which is good, since I have two bags of it earmarked for a Hooded Jacket for Little Miss and a Cardigan for Arwen for me.
WiP Wednesday
Inspired by something I read on (where else?) Ravelry, I’ve decided to start doing WiP Wednesdays. So, of course, I’ve been having technical difficulties with this here blog all evening. But I’m here now, with three hours to spare.
Allow me to present the Baby Shrug, from Debbie Bliss’ Simply Baby.
The yarn is Cashmerino Aran in lilac, purchased from SuperCrafty a few months back. It’s very cute and oh-so-soft, but even though I made the 12-18 month size for Little Miss, who is now only 5 months old, I think she may outgrow it before it gets cold enough to wear it.
The pattern is fairly clear, although I didn’t see any need to switch from straights to circulars – I just used my Denises the entire time. And I ran into an issue in the sleeve shaping after the right front. If one starts with a right side row (as one does) and then works an odd number of rows, then when one reaches the instructions for the front shaping, one is on a wrong side row when the directions say one should be on a right side row. I think I solved this by knitting an extra row (or maybe one row short – I don’t remember), but I’m wondering if I missed something. Missing something would explain why the chest and sleeve measurements are right on, but I seem to have come up a couple of inches short in the length to the shoulder. Well, missing something and the fact that my row gauge is off.
Don’t Let It All Unravel
From time to time today, we’ve been watching parts of the Live Earth concert. We caught one of the films, “Don’t Let It All Unravel”.
Watch it. It’s so neat. I particularly like the trees.
Ravelry!
I can’t seem to stop playing with Ravelry. I took pictures of a bunch of my yarn today and uploaded them. Over the last few days, I’ve found pictures of projects I completely forgot about… and uploaded them. I’m actually using my Flickr account for the first time in about a year, and I even switched from Safari to Firefox.
I love, love, love this site. The design is slick and classy. Other people’s photos on there put mine to shame, but I don’t care. I’m just having so much fun chucking my stuff up there.
My favorite feature at the moment is that you can look up patterns people have made with a particular yarn. I have a few stashed yarns that I have no idea what to do with.
And then there’s the queue. This is a wonderful and dangerous feature for me.
Speaking of wonderful and dangerous, I learned today that Knit Picks was having a 40% off sale on books. I now have several books on the way. And also some yarn. For a couple of those projects in my queue.
Still Little
That’s the Little Miss at four weeks old, wearing her Baby Bolero. She’s worn it once – maybe twice – aside from posing for that picture. It was usually too warm, or else she was wearing a warm footed outfit and didn’t need a sweater on top of that. Mostly, the sweater’s been hanging in her room on a decorative hook. And now it’s considerably too small.
K gave me two knitting books for my birthday – four days before the Little Miss was born – and I’ve been working on a sweater for next winter from one of them. Occasionally. Knitting’s taken a bit of a back seat in the last five months around here, although I did spend the week or so before Little Miss was born frantically finishing a pair of cabled baby socks.
Still, I was excited to finally find an invitation to Ravelry in my inbox. Come find me, I’m on there as Plexippa.
Baby Bolero
Yes, I have been knitting!
The picture quality is somewhat lacking, I know. I discovered last week that the focus button on my camera has gone missing, and without it I now have a fixed-focus digital camera.
Pattern: Baby Bolero
Source: One Skein, by Leigh Radford
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton, slightly less than one skein
Needles: 8 and 9 Denise Interchangeables
Modifications: Left out the eyelet pattern. Not really a modification, since that’s an option in the pattern.
It’s a cute pattern, but it seemed more complicated than necessary. And I don’t know what happened with my provisional cast-on, but I could not get it to come out without the help of scissors. Effective, but slow going. Also slow going was sewing in the sleeves. Sewing is not my strong point. I seamed the second sleeve before pinning it in place and sewing it in. Looking at the picture, it looks like one sleeve is bigger than the other, which is odd. They’re the same size, really! I even managed to knit both of them at once, working from both ends of the skein on my Denise needles.
My main reaction so far? It’s so little!
Something Else
There will, at some point, be knitting content on this blog again. In the meantime, I leave you with something I saw at the County Fair.
All the way on the end, there. The Krispy Kreme Chicken Sandwich. Why? Not to mention the Fresh Veggie Combo, all of which is deep-fried.