Blogging mojo

My blogging mojo has left me so I’m struggling to get it back. To try and move things along I have for you today a “what I’m knitting post.”




It’s from a pattern and yarn that I got from a vendor calledKiparoo Farm that was at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I have adjusted the pattern. The way it was written didn’t work for me. I have to confess this makes me nervous because I lack the confidence or maybe I should say skills as a knitter to veer away from patterns. In the past it has turned into a disaster. I’ll let you know as time goes on if this can be related to one of the most catastrophic occurrences ever to occur in the history of my knitting. Ok that catastrophic stuff was a bit over the top but Dax thought it fit in well with the post so I’m leaving it in.

To also boost my blogging mojo I have signed up for the Ten on Tuesday that I’ve seen mentioned on some other blogs I read. If you are interested in participating you can sign up at Carole knits to get the topics sent to you thru e-mail.

Silver Bell

Happy New Year!

Yeah, I'm still here, just been very busy. I did finish my silver belle. Actually I finished it back in May. I noticed it was over a year ago that I last posted about it so here it is all finished.
Pattern: Silver Belle from Vogue Knitting's 25 Anniversary Issue. The pattern is free online.
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. I loved using this yarn!

I had to order more yarn to finish it. I can't remember exactly how much more yarn I needed but I do remember it took more than what the pattern recommended.I also had to go down a couple of sizes on the needles. I knitted the bottom part of the sweater first and it was huge. I mean really huge.

I found some buttons at the local fabric store that has a celtic look to them. I like how the buttons turned out looking with the cabling in the sweater.
The only downside of this sweater for me is that it is a heavy sweater and drapes pulling downward because of it. I hope that makes since. Overall I really like the sweater and wear it whenever the days are cool enough for it, like today.


I hope everybody is having a great day.

Summer knitting

I wanted to knit something for the summer so I narrowed it down to three different projects. There was the petal halter from Interweave Knits Spring 2009 issue.
Then there was the Ogee lace skirt from Interweave Knits Summer 2007 magazine
And the last choice I had was Pink Frosting from Interweave Spring 2006 issue.

Yeah I have a lot of Interweave magazines lying around. I also have enough yarn in my stash to do any one of these projects.

I finally decided to go with the pink frosting.I’m knitting this in the round using Rowan 4 ply cotton that I got awhile back from a sale at Webs.
My knit stitches look so sloppy to me and the cables even worst. I have frogged this twice. Once because I had a twist in the cast on and the second time because I just didn’t like the stitches. Finally I went to Ravelry to look at others who have done this top and noticed their stitches were much prettier but also very similar to mine. I’ve decided to just keep knitting and love my sloppy stitches. This must be the nature of knitting with cotton?

Challange

Wow the weeks are going by just as fast as ever. I hope everybody else is able to keep up better then I have been able to.

I had to put my silver belle to one side for now to work on these.Last year the 7th graders at Dax’s school made a blanket for charity. The idea was that all the 7th graders made a knitted block and then volunteers crochet the blocks to make them 8x8 squares and then pieced them together. I’m not really much of a crocheter but I can do it, so I volunteered to help out. The blocks were hilarious; most of them were not square at all. Anyway they asked if I would be interested in helping out again this year and of course I was excited to be asked. Aren’t these (uhm, I guess you can call them blocks) interesting. I call this one the deranged tomato.
This one I call the dripping mask. One of them has a little flap thingie. I'm not sure what to do with that.

I’d never call myself an expert knitter but I wouldn’t exactly say I’m a beginner either, but I can tell you these little blocks are very challenging to me :). It is so tempting to redo them but they really need to be the kids blocks so I'll try and work with what they gave me. Hopefully I’ll have them done in a month or so.

On to other news I went ahead and purchased plane tickets to go to the Maryland sheep and wool festival. I was thinking that with the issues with the economy and prices of gas going up etc.. I would not be able to make it this year but I saw Southwest had a great deal on tickets last week. So, I couldn’t resist. My flight plans are made and wahoo, I will be going again this year! (Happy Dance)

For those who are wondering, Rudy participated in the Disney marathon last weekend. He finished 119th overall with a time of 3:06:19, actually it was a 3:04:19 but they put their foot across the chip mat two minutes before the start of the race so it registered them as running already. I'm sure there will be some complaints about that. They did a little blurb about him in the florida today paper. I had to laugh when I read it mentioning him mixing up his nutrition and training. As I was reading the article I looked across the room at him to see that he was eating chips and dipping them into some kind of cheese sauce. Yep, that’s Rudy give him something to dip with a beer or a bowl of ice cream and he’s a happy guy, not exactly what I'd call marathon nutrition ;).

Vest

This is a knit a long project I’m doing with my sister who lives in a different state. I have somehow managed to get further along on it then what she is. Actually I know how I’ve managed this, I only have about three projects on the needles at this time instead of the 5 or 6 she has. I also haven’t been getting to go to all the fun vacation places that she has been going to. You know how all that fun vacationing stuff squashes the time you get to spend knitting. Anyway, I was going to wait till I finished it before I posted about it. I am so close to finishing it, but I ran out of yarn. Don’t you just hate when that happens? Not to worry though, more is on its way.

I’ll give more specifics on it when it is done. I had added stitches for the length (which is probably why I ran out of yarn). I told my sister I would post pictures so she could see how the extra stitches look. That way she can decide if she might want to add more stitches. I had added enough stitches to give it an extra inch in the front and an inch in the back. I really think it would be long enough without adding more stitches. I just don't like things to be to short in that area. Cropped tops are not my thing. I don't have much experience in blocking but I'm guessing that blocking it might add length to it to but I'm not sure. I am hoping that blocking it will take some of that curl out of the front edge.


This picture isn't that great at showing the length. It is still on the needles which makes it pull up on the right side of this picture but I liked the picture. It shows the texture nicely :).

Dax is modeling this. She is a little shorter than me but so is my sister ;).

Have a great day!

The Ugly Sweater

It’s not actually ugly, it just got nicknamed that over time. Back in March of 07 my sister and I wanted to knit the same sweater pattern and we choose this,Surplice Lace Top.

My sister kept showing it to friends and family members and didn’t get the excited response that she felt it deserved. The responses were something like, "it’s ok," or "are you sure you want to knit that." So she dubbed it the ugly sweater. I of course liked it, so we started looking for yarn to knit it. The yarn suggested for it was not in our budget so we started looking for something that was a little less pricey. We ended up not finding anything. I put the pattern back on the shelf for another day.

I saw on Mcknitter's blog that a somewhat local craft store was going out of business. It’s a little bit of a drive for me to get there, but not bad. So I made a note to make sure to go by the going out of business sale later that week. When we got there everything was at least 40% off. It was crowded. Dax went to the painting section and I went straight to the knitting section and it had already been hit hard. I did see some bernat organic cotton and thought maybe this would work for the ugly sweater. The yarn suggested for the original pattern was also 100% cotton. I had to make a decision, the yarn was quickly disapperaing so I bought it. I know this yarn is usually used for rags. This could be one of my worst ideas in knitting, maybe my surplice lace top is destined to really be the ugly sweater. Throwing all caution to the wind, I casted on.If this doesn’t work out I’m going to have a lot of rag yarn in my stash.

As for the craft store sale I also found some jacquard dyes and Dax got some paint/paint brushes. So it was worth the drive, not to mention we ate lunch at Panera Bread.

I hope everybody has a great weekend.

Bayerische

Yeah, they are done and I really like them!
I present to you my bayerisches.


Specs
Pattern: Bayerische, This pattern isn't as bad as it looks. Once you get past a few rows it becomes much easier to follow. The pattern requires you to k1tb before each chart but it is not on the chart, so I had to write it on my chart to remind me to k1tb. I loved this pattern so much that I can see doing them again as a gift.

Yarn: Regia Silk. I did love knitting with this yarn but I also noticed that it has fuzzed up a little bit so I am concerned that over time it might turn into a fuzz ball. We’ll see.

Needle Size: US Size 1 (2.25mm). The pattern called for size 0 needles but I decided to use a size up. I’ve done size 0 needles on socks before and have found them to be to snug. If I had to choose I would rather my socks to be lose then tight. But I didn't need to worry, the size 1 needles worked out well for me.

Today was the last day of work for me. Summer vacation has officially started!

Nifty Thing

Sorry I had to repost this one. I was playing with the font size and it got way out of hand :).

Have you guys seen one of these nifty things before?

I first saw this little heaven sent item in January when my sister showed me hers. When she first showed it to me I thought, “oh, yet another gadget for knitting.” I have several gadgets already and I really need to cut back on spending money on gadgets so I just gave it a “hmmm.” Well that came back to haunt me.

You see, I almost always have some kind of knitting project with me. You never know when you’re going to be stuck somewhere with nothing to do. And every knitter knows that yucky feeling of having to wait for something or somebody and not have something to knit while you wait, so to avoid that I usually always have some kind of work in progress with me. My choice is a sock and it is usually in my bag with a gazillion other things. And yes occasionally I will lose some stitches because the yarn has slipped off the needles. This can be annoying at times but I’m ok with it. Normally I just slip the stitches back on and off I go again. But then there are projects like the Bayerische socks. Believe me you do not want to lose a stitch, not even a little one on those socks. After losing stitches way to many times I decided that I really need one of those little nifty gadgets. It would save my sanity.

Soooo, when we were at the sheep and wool festival, I reminded my sister several times that if she sees one of those nifty little things that she showed me back in January buy it asap and I would pay her back. We never did see one but she must have got the hint that I really, really wanted one of those nifty little things because I received a wonderful package this week that had not one but two in it. I am so so happy with this little gadget.
Yeah, no more dropped stitches!


The packaging says “DP Wip Tubes”. I guess that is what it’s called. It’s made of a thick cardboard tube that has a slit in it that you slide your project into. It has another tube that is slightly bigger to slip over the original tube. Everything is held in place and I love it.

The grey sock in these pictures is the second sock of bayerische. I’m about to start the heel, finally. The purple one is Dax’s. She is using a pattern called the mystic sea and I’m not sure what the yarn is called except I do know it is superwash.

Bayerische

Since I am probably the slowest knitter in the world it is no surprise that Bayerische is not only still on the needles but is not even half way done. On the up side I am oh so close to being half way.

I only had two skeins of yarn for this project. I was debating about doing one more repeat but decided that I would try and get a pair of socks out of what I had. The pattern warns that these socks eat up yarn. This is how far I got with one ball.
Hmm, obviously that little amount of string was not going to finish this sock.

I started looking on the internet and made an order from The Loopy Ewe.

Wow, did it get here fast. I was very impressed. Then when I opened it, I started to feel like it was my birthday. The yarn was wrapped up, a little hand written note was in the package and some small strips of sample yarn, very nice.

Maybe I can have the Bayerishes done by the end of April, maybe.

In other news I’m going to Maryland for the sheep and wool festival! Wahooo! Can you tell I’m excited? Plane tickets have been purchased, camp site has been reserved and finally I asked for time off work. Now I'm going to go find my calendar so I can mark off how many more days till the festival.

I hope everybody is having a great day.

Time Out

I had decided to work on Chuck’s Cabled socks first because I thought they would knit up faster than the Bayerische. They have given me nothing but trouble, Arrrr.


I got this far on them and decided to run some yarn through them to see how they would fit. I could get them on my foot but it was really tight. So I frogged them and tried again with bigger needles. That didn’t work for me either. I didn’t like how the yarn looked with the bigger needles so I frogged them again. I then decided to add a stitch of the black color between the main cables. This added four stitches to the sock. But it also left a span of 4 stitches to carry the gray yarn on the back. I usually do not carry the yarn on the back any further then 3 stitches at the most. These stitches are purl stitches and there might be a way to hook/twist the back yarn with purl stitches but I don’t know this method. This started to frustrate me so I have put them to one side and started working on theBayerische socks. I have not given up on the Chuck’s Cabled socks but I think a break from them would be good for me right now. We will just call it a time out.

Dax has a performance this weekend. It’s some kind of Orchestra competition. I’ve never been to one so I’m not sure what to expect. I do know she has been practicing more than usual for it.




If you didn't notice she seems to have adopted my Ruffle jacket. We had some cooler weather this week and she decided the ruffle jacket was perfect to keep the chill away. She told me she got a lot of compliments at school on it.

Nice Weekend

We’ve had some wonderful weather this weekend. Soo, I dragged Rudy and Dax out to Rockledge Gardens Nursery yesterday. I really love going there and just walking around all the plants. But this time we also made some purchases. We got a blueberry bush and some flowers. They’re still in their pots right now. I keep moving them around the yard to try and decide where the best place is to put them. With all the trees we have put in the yard it’s beginning to become hard to find a good old sunny spot.

Rohan seems to really like Dax’s roses she picked out. I kept trying to make him aware that there are thorns on the bush but he kept sticking his nose in them any way.

He looks curious doesn’t he? I don’t know if you can see it in the picture but his whiskers are all perked up. He spent most of the weekend chasing lizards and squirrels. Maybe he thinks there’s lizards in the roses.

Other than playing with plants I spent a good bit of time sitting outside knitting. I want to thank you for the comments on which socks I should knit. I finally decided which sock to do.

I decided to knit Chuck’s Cabled socks,



And Bayerische.


How’s that for being decisive? Now let’s see if I can finish at least one of them before the deadline.

Have a great week.

Forever socks

Finally I finished these socks.
I made them for my mom. I have started to refer to these socks as the forever socks, because it felt like it took me forever to finish them.
Yarn: Tofutsies
Needles: Size 2
Pattern: Pomatomus.

For my next project I am thinking about knitting Eunny Jang’s Bayerische socks for the Febuaray sockdown on Ravelry’s Sock Knitter’s Anonymous group. It’s either that one of her Chuck’s Cabled socks. I like them both. I’m on the fence for either one. What do you think, which do you like better?


We also had a celebration this past week. Guess who turned 15?
Yep we celebrated Tyde’s 15 birthday. Time sure does fly. He now stands taller than me but not quite as tall as Rudy.

And, here is proof that you can still get a 15 yo to smile on Dumbo.
Ok, I think his aunt’s antics is what got the smile but we have photo proof that it can happen.

fetching

Remember the purple stuff. It’s the purple roving that went back and forth between my sister and me. The last time I saw it I had finally spun it and sent it to my sister. Well, some of it has made its way back to me. For Christmas my sister gave me these.


It’s the purple stuff all knitted up as fetching, pattern is on knitty.com.


Thank you Cyndi for making these for me, I love them!

Ruffle jacket

The ruffled jacket is finished, yeah. I did frog it and redo the cables. I can honestly say that next time I will just leave it. It didn’t make that big of a difference.


So here are the specs.
Pattern: Ruffled Jacket from Vogue Knitting magazine Fall 2007
Needle size: US size 10 (6mm) 24” Addi turbo cables


Yarn: Elsebeth lavold chunky AL 50% Alpaca, 50% wool


Modifications: Other then fixing the correction on the pattern not much. I did have to do another section for the ruffled bell pattern that borders the sweater. I had to cast on another 231 stitches to have enough to go around. Here's a picture showing how short I was of the border reaching all the way around.


I also knitted the front and back in the round. There was a lot of seaming in this sweater. In addition to the usual seaming at the sleeves and shoulder, you have to also seam the cable border on and then the ruffled bell border. A button on the front might be nice to have to. All in all I am very pleased with the sweater and I think I will get a lot of use out of it.

I hope everybody has a great weekend.

Dish Rag Tag

The running ragged team should get an award for perseverance. Even though we may have came in last place we at least finished. Well as long as the package doesn't get lost again. The box got lost one person before my tag. I was beginning to think it would never make it to me. But then, on Saturday I found this in my mailbox.



Thank you Jannett for all the goodies! The rag is beautiful, the caramel bites were delicious and I'll get good use out of the note cards and pocket pics book.

I immediately started working on my rag to send to the finish line. Jannett had sent some pretty pink yarn and some variegated yarn. I really liked the rich colors in the variegated yarn and decided to use it.



I wanted to keep it simple and stick to just making a square rag. Then I saw a cool looking stitch pattern at Yarn over Manhattan's blog. I just love how you can find great inspiration from other people's knitting on the internet. She called it the 2-Colour Star Stitch Pattern from a book I didn't have so I looked in some books that I did have and found a stitch pattern that looked similar. It's the daisy stitch from Vogue Knitting Stichionary book.

A big thank you to Emily for hosting the Dish Rag Tag. It was exciting waiting for the box and trying to decide what to knit for the rag. The box alone was really cute. Everybody that got the box left little messages and stickers on it.

First I want to thank everybody for their nice comments. I really do appreciate it. I have to admit I haven’t been keeping up with e-mails and blogs like I have in the past but I’m hoping to catch back up soon.

I’ve casted on a new knitting project. It’s from the Fall 2007 Vogue Knitting magazine. The pattern is called Ruffled Jacket. The yarn I’m using for it is called elisebeth lavold chunky AL, and I love it. It is oh so soft, 50% alpaca, 50 % wool. I used some birthday money to get it at Webs. It was on closeout and I hope I have enough of it to finish this project.


I'm not so sure about the cable pattern that runs up the middle. Something about it looks funky. The magazine does not have a good close up picture of it. I looked on line to see if there was a correction to the pattern but couldn't find one so decided to just stay with it. The yarn is more brown then what the picture is showing it to be.

I still have the shrug on the needles to but decided it would be better for Dax. It looks much more appropriate on a teenager then ah a mature person of my age.

We have a busy weekend ahead of us. Dax has her soccer game Saturday. There is a local fiber festival going on, and I told Dax and a friend of hers that I would take them to a theme park on Sunday since they have no school on Monday. Hopefully Tyde will come for the theme park but I’m not sure if spending the day with his younger sister and her friend is high on his agenda list. I'm also hoping to catch up on some internet stuff. I have been a member of Ravelry for awhile now and have yet to post a project. It would be nice to get at least one project posted.

Rudy has been working on this.


I know it doesn’t look like much now but in the near future (hopefully) it will become shelves to put in my craft/bamboo room.

I hope everybody has a great weekend.

Finished Socks

A finished object.


Pattern: Latvian socks from Folk Socks by Nancy Bush
Yarn: Tofutsies 50% Superwash Wool, 25% soysilk, 22.5% Cotton, 2.5% Chitin
Needles: US 1 or 2.25mm

I finally finished these socks. I enjoyed knitting them. The pattern was easy enough but not one to do when trying to carry on a conversation. I also really enjoyed using the tofutsies yarn. I’m eager to see how it stands up over time.

Not much

Not much knitting going on. I picked up these again. The Latvian Socks from Nancy Bush’s Folk sock book.


It is taking me forever to finish these socks. The pattern and everything is easy enough to follow but I keep getting distracted and forget to k2tog or yo when I’m suppose to so I have to back track to fix my error.

To have something to knit that does not need me to pay attention to the pattern I started this shrug. The pattern is called evening shrug from fiber trends.


I’m kind of at a stand still on this one because I didn’t have size 8 circular needles. I had size 8 straight and casted on using them but now I need the circular needles. I have so many stitches on those needles that they are about to burst off of the needle and I have more increasing to do. I’ll have to wait till I get out to the store for more needles before going any further on this one so back to the socks.

I’m hoping to get the shrug done soon because I will need it at my now permanent job. The elementary school that I got a temporary job at as a media/library assistant offered it to me as a permanent job. Yeah! I noticed that whoever has control of the thermostat in the library keeps it freezing in there. The shrug will help take the chill out of my bones.

I almost forgot to mention that I got my invitation for Ravelry. I’ve been on it for a couple of weeks now. I haven’t been able to spend as much time on it as I’d like. Mostly I’ve been looking at everybody else’s projects but I haven’t been much of a contributor, yet. I go by kriskrafts.

For the relatives that like visiting the blog I leave you with a couple of pictures of the toads.

Here is Tyde at the pottery place painting his candle holder sorting hat. The lady in the picture with the big smile was a wealth of knowledge on painting pottery.


Here’s Dax with Sierra and Solly at the bookstore.


They have been staying in Orlando for the past month because Sierra was accepted at the Orlando ballet summer school, otherwise known as ballet bootcamp. It's been great to have them staying so close.