Synchronicity

What I said Thursday: I have no babies to knit for! Boo!

What my cousin L called to say on Sunday: I'm pregnant! Yaay!

Yes, I'm totally judging this news based on my current yen to knit baby things. My summer of small things almost demands baby knitting, don't you think? Even though baby's not due till well into winter.

First up, EZ's February baby sweater, which I've started (I actually started on Friday), frogged back to the first increase because I forgot buttonholes, got back up to where the lace should start, but now I'm thinking I have gauge issues and this is far too tiny for any size human to actually wear, so it may be frogged and restarted again, either with larger needles or different yarn.

Tomorrow I need to clean the stash guest room, and I'm planning on taking the opportunity to see what exists in the stash closet that is baby-appropriate.

Meanwhile, I've got a deadline a little more than a week off for Mom's feather and fan socks, and I'm almost to a second heel flap. I've broken down the rest of the foot into daily-ish assignments, so that I can get it done without totally submerging myself in it and imbuing the sock with bitterness. Time to take care of that for the night. (While watching History Channel's "All About Dung." Good times.)

Bag love

Yeah, I totally didn't go to the store all this week because my grocery bag wasn't finished yet. Sat down and sewed on handles today, and so tonight I picked up a few staples. I'm totally in love. Wanna see?



That's what it looks like with a basket full of groceries. Here's what it looks like otherwise.



How cool is that?

Being able to carry my groceries over my shoulder made leaving the store so much better, I had no idea. Fumbling for keys is much easier without both hands full. Plus I had that feel-good thing when they asked "paper or plastic?" and I handed over my cool green bag. Yay happy!

Festival of Finishing

Many thanks to Mandie for having me over for end-weaving and chinese food Sunday night. This post is brought to you by her hospitality.

Newest stuff first: another Mason-Dixon dishcloth. The first in another trio of dishcloths, the second has been started, the third will happen someday.


Next to the grass, the sage green looks kind of grey, but I think it'll look nice in a pink kitchen.

The trio of cloths for the Kid Brother:


They're fun.

And then the happy hempwol Knucks.


So amused. They're totally not useful at this moment in time, but I will enjoy them in the fall.

Ends got woven on the green string bag too, but it doesn't have handles yet, so it's not technically finished. I have the handles, I just haven't attached them. So that's another post soon. Working on getting other things done. Quinn got picked up again over the weekend, a heel was turned on the grey work socks, and Mom was asking about her Mother's Day socks yesterday, so I'm a little shamed there. Ravelry says I only have four projects going now, and a couple of those are pretty close to finished, so that's something. (Of course, the new dishcloth hasn't made it in, and neither has my crocheted pillow stuff, but never mind, things are getting done here.)

Okay. Should probably work on Real Job and Real Life stuff now. Food may or may not exist in my kitchen, so that's something to remedy.

Finishing. Or not.

Have been on a Tour of Local Craft Stores lately to try and find notions to finish the green bagstopper. (Cast off Wednesday morning before school. When I get obsessive, I get obsessive, really.) And in doing so, I wandered up to Hobby Lobby today, at which I saw the new sock yarns from Lion Brand and Red Heart in the wild. They are both pretty and about $10 for a pair of socks. I vaguely preferred the colors in the Heart and Sole to the Sock-Ease, but both look good.

There was an orange/rust/brown/navy shaded one in the Red Heart that I totally would have taken home today if there had been two - Lion is doing 100g balls, Red Heart is doing 50g ones. Each company had apparently sent a sampling of single balls to Hobby Lobby, that they then put on the shelf. Kind of amusing, but frustrating today, because I totally would have knit the orange and blue during football season. War Eagle.

Turned the heel on the second neverending work sock today. I also wore my red sweater. Finished knitting the knucks and the last Kid Brother dishrag at knit night last night. Am considering a festival of end-weaving this weekend. Or knocking out a few other small things. We'll see. I have tv on dvd to watch, so things are good.

Well, that didn't work

So, remember last Friday, when I dragged all my WIPs out of my knitting bag and posted them here in the hopes of finishing some of them?

Nope, didn't work.

So here's two new things! A third dishcloth:


I love this stitch pattern, I totally ganked it from Mandie, (ravelry link) who made it up one night at knit night. It's totally fun and awesome. The yarn was a random "need yarn" ball that I grabbed during a chance trip to wal-mart, and the orange in it goes with the other two orange dishcloths, so I think the three are going to go together out to Kid Brother soonish. Of course they'll all need ends woven soon enough. :)

And then! I was rooting through the cotton stash bag and came across a bunch of lime green cotton - bought in the same way as the multicolor above - but long enough ago that I didn't knit yet. There's more yellow in the green than is showing in this picture, the yarn is Lily Elite Cotton in Spearmint. I think I tried to crochet it into something once and then quit. But anyway, here's what's happened to it since Saturday:



The pattern is the ubiquitous Everlasting Bagstopper, and once I got through the bottom, it's love. Super-easy mesh pattern, it grows pretty fast, (although I'm getting to the "I need a marker to move up" black hole part) and somehow it's a comforting knit. I want to use it soon.

It's like a clown car in there.

Despite today's grayness, I have been meaning to photograph and blog some stuff for a while (note last post), and just hadn't gotten there. The blocking growth pictures of the pink shawl are locked away in the husband's pc, so I'll get a new picture of that, and then there's the finished sweater and that's it, right? No more "but there's no sun!" excuses. Photos today!

Pink Wrap:

Still in love. Need to dispatch it. Don't want to let it go.

Red Sweater:

This turned out well. It's my new favorite thing.

Of course then there's the rest of the stuff in The Bag. The Quinn Bag hasn't changed much since the last photo and the two socks in progress are second socks, so they're boring. But hey, there's knucks:


Yummy yummy hempwol.

There's dishcloths:

Mason-Dixon dishcloth and one from Designer One-Skein Wonders.

There's the helmetliner I started last week at the State Museum:

I'll probably mostly just work on it when I volunteer there, but it's a nifty little balaclava pattern, I dig it.

And that's just the everyday knitting bag. There's a lace scarf that sits by my chair and thus totally didn't get inventoried by the camera, and the crocheted pillow that has a back barely begun - living in a different bag with all the colors of acrylic in which I am knitting it.

Have I shown my handspun? Paige lent me her lovely Kromski Symphony a few weeks back while she went traveling. My results are below:

From left to right in order of spinning. The peachy stuff is my favorite, it was an insanely fine single that I chain-plied. I will be getting a wheel. The question is when.

And while I'm not usually a "flash my stash" kind of girl, but I went a little nuts at the Hoosier Hills Fiber Fair on Saturday, and so here is my haul. There's a good assortment of fiber types, some dyed, some not, and a lone skein of sock yarn that (in my defense) will make an awesome pair of work socks.


The beautiful greeny-blue and pink are from Creatively Dyed, as I'd been coveting her stuff since the Fiber Event in April. The sock yarn is Lotus Yarns Nirvana in "I Wanna Be Sedated" (that song gets into my head every time I look at the skein. I'm hoping the socks have the same quality.). The light blue in the plastic bag is a mill-end merino-silk mix that I totally fell for while trying out a Kromski Sonata. (I'm leaning toward a Kromski, can you tell?) I'm trying to return to my spindling for a few weeks/months/however long it takes for me to figure out what's best as far as wheel-buying goes. I should still have plenty when the wheel does come.

That's all for now. Summer is here-ish, we've had all kinds of stormy weather, and I'm leaning toward getting things finished and working mostly on smallish projects for the foreseeable future. (As in, till August. The Olympics are coming, I'm going to crochet an afghan for them, and that, my friends, will be epic.)

Things that haven't made it to picture phase yet

Finished and blocked pink wrap. It needs to also make it to the intended recipient, but meanwhile I keep reaching for it when I feel a tad chilly. LOVE it, and I probably need one just for me in a more me color. Although the bubblegum pink grew on me. (Seriously, I need to go get myself some wool for my own wrap, or that one's never getting mailed.)

Knucks out of Hempwol that I picked up in Nashville. Yummy blue yarn, happy blue gloves. Need to bind off the second, the first still needs ribbing.

Orange dishcloth for kid brother. First in a series, he may get a small collection of various patterned cloths from the same yarn. Another friend needs green dishcloths by mid-July. Dishcloths are not my favorite, but I'm feeling the itch lately.

Red sweater is a cuff and a mess of i-cord from being done. Whoo hoo.

Started a lace scarf of my own design for the grandmother I have yet to knit for. I'm thinking this may be a long-term thing, since it's pretty mindless yet still a tad fiddly.

Stalled: Quinn bag, plain dark socks, feather and fan socks.

I have new sock yarn that's begging to be cast on (Nashville is a yarny happy place - did I mention?), but I'm trying to finish my two second socks first. Summer of Socks, needless to say, isn't such a thing for me this year. Am I changing my sock-whore ways? We shall see. I think the one-piece sweater is not something to knit during the summer. Good thing mine is almost finished.

I have plans to replicate the afghan that my grandmother made my mom ages ago (and with which the Kid Brother and I grew up) in non-seventies colors. The pattern is a classic Red Heart crochet one that I came across a long time ago. I've been trying to find the appropriate palette since. I'm thinking it's going to be Christmas for the Kid Brother. (Never mind that the appropriate palette is still in the works - a Hobby Lobby trip may be in order.)

That's all I can think of, and I'm about out of evening. Need to clean the kitchen and maybe finish this dishcloth before bed.