27 September, 2008

The Time Suck

I have just been updating some of my Ravelry projects. I Love Ravelry for various reasons. It is however a horrid time suck. I have spent the last 3 hours uploading some photos to Flicker and entering some of the items that I have started and some even finished that had yet to make it to the Projects page. Three hours.... and I am no where near being done.

Speaking of another Time Suck I also need to get started arranging my stash again. The plan is to take photos when I go in and shake the stash up this time. ( Still have to enter a lot of yarn in the Stash portion of Ravelry) Shake it up is probably the wrong phrase to use. Skeins of yarn are being pushed off the shelves at me when ever I enter the room. The yarn on the back of the shelves are being squashed as more keeps being added to the front. I am thinking of getting some of those large ziplock bags... I think that they would be cheaper than the Vaccume seal bags. (not the kind used for freezer food storage) the kind for sweater /blanket storage. However, I did see roving packaged seal a meal style while at the Black Sheep Gathering in Oregon. So, will the hubby notice if the large roll of seal a meal stuff is gone?

Vaccumed the floors in the living room and bedroom today and took Hubby off to catch his flight. He will be gone most of October to Malaysia. Visiting his parents, his mom's birthday (87th) is the 1st of Oct. I went in late January with him for our yearly visit. I am not fond of traveling there during our winter... too much of a temperature change and way to many sick people traveling. The last 2 times we have gone during this time frame one or the other of us has gotten sick. So the next visit will be in Spring, Summer or Fall. He may get to go yet again this year after our trip to Hawaii. We will be heading there in late November or the first week in December.

I am going to try taking advantage of his not being here to get some of my "junk" cleaned up. Go through closets and drawers etc and get rid of whatever has dust on it. :-) So what am I doing in front of THIS time sucker.??

ARGH- There is always something!

Happy Knitting!

23 September, 2008

UFO Outing


This is Sophie... who is checking out the sweater that is taking forever. I don't reccomend knitting a 40-44 inch sweater with 2mm /US 0 needles and sock yarn unless you are a fast knitter. Which I am obviously not. That or I am extreemly bored by black sock yarn in stocking stitch. I don't want this to be a textured sweater. Just a plain and simple sweater. You can't see the body of the sweater because of Sophie dear... but it is only 3 inches in length. The arms... they are done.
A washcloth... I wanted to see how this yarn worked up. Hempathy ... like it so far. Just a wee bit splitty but not too bad. I don't know how well the blend will work as a washcloth, hemp, coton and modal. (think that was the spelling. Can't find the ball band. Will have to look that up and see exactly what Modal is. A synthetic of some sort I am sure.










A baby blanket for our little grandson due in Dec. Have made it almost through one skein of yarn in both colors... 2 more of each to go. I will probably be picking up stitches on either side and knitting on a border. I think that it is turning out a little skinny. We shall see. Using Cascade 220 superwash.



This is a Lillie's Little Sweater for my DIL's sister who is due in Mid November. Should be able to get this one finished. Also have to do one in Pinks for a friends co worker. Using Dream in color yarn. Love it.









Hubby Yellow socks.... what you were expecting another color? If I can, I do his primarily in yellow as it surely is his favorite. He likes short socks too... and he has smaller feet. Did I luck out or what? I did have to frog the second sock, I was at the turn heel, or rather I forgot to TURN the heel, picked up the gusset stitches and started the decreases and hadn't been looking at my work. I was disgusted when I finally did look down to check my work and realized that I had nearly finised the decreases but forgot to turn the heel. ARGH. I was a bit enthusiastic about the frogging and didn't stop till the sock was gone. Now I have to restart.... Haste makes Waste. Must remember that.









This is a feather and fan shawl for my daughter in law. As you can see, she will be waiting a while before she gets this. Luckily for me, she doesn't know that I am knitting it, so she isn't waiting for it to be finished. Good thing huh?









This is another of the Baby Mexacali Ole sweaters but in the largest size this time. Just about finished with the last sleeve, then have to pick up the neck stitches and make the collar.









This is the Marihone by Dale of Norway. Only partway to the armpits as you can see. The hat is all but finished. Have yet to weave in the ends and put the spots on the lady bugs.









There are a few projects that didn't end up making the photo op. One is a pair of purple socks that I am knitting (baby) for a lady in my Thrusday night group. Made her a cute little hat as well and already gifted that to her. Didn't take a photo. Also the sock yarn scrap blanket. Didn't get a photo uploaded of that. It disappeared twice after uploading. Don't know what I did, but sure it was me and not the computer. The MS4 Stole that I showed you yesterday. A Philosophers Wool Sweater that I started a few years ago, one sleeve nearly finished.... It stayed on the shelf in all the stash tossing that I did the other day. Now I have to organize it by how much to do and when it needs to be finished and START working on them. All in all I am shocked that there are so few I somehow expected more. Now to curb the urge to cast on a few more items... for the moment any way. I am doing a KAL with a friend and we will be casting on next weekend (not this one) I believe.

Knit on!

22 September, 2008

Finished and Unfinished objects

First the UFO. This is my start at the Mystery Stole 4. Only part way through the first clue, so ages behind the crowd I know, and no hope of catching up. I should be getting a bit more time to knit in the next few weeks, which will be nice but there are quite a few projects on my knitting "plate".


The beads on this project are Amethyst... tho they are dark in this photo. I will try another day to get a better shot. I'll wait till I'm further along as well. The color of the yarn however is quite accurate.





This little guy is wating to go for a hot water swim in the washer, and then a bit of stuffing once he's had a chance to dry out. He was one of the many projects I pulled from the UFO shelf this weekend. He was all but done, when for whatever reason he was stuck to the back of the shelf. Probably cause I needed to take 5 flippin minutes to sew his body together and then pick up stitches and knit his apendages. I will be needle felting on his eyes. once he is stuffed. ( It was finish work... not knitting, that's why he got the back shelf). I realized that he would be done in about an hour if I just sat myself down. So... he will be off to Hawaii this winter, to live with his new owner... my soon to be born Grandson Kaden.

This is a finished object. Hooray! I have been working on it about 2 years. It has had a few incarnations, and spent rather a lot of time in time out for bad behaviour. It started out with a feather and fan motif on the lower half and then switched to stocking stitch for the upper portion. Couldn't have the ladies covered by lace... When I tried it on, I discovered that the lace did indeed come up way, way too far... and frogged that puppy back completely. Restarted just as a basic shell. Details on my Ravellry, didn't think to bring the pattern out to the computer. If anyone is interested, leave a comment and I'll get back to you with the details. Missed getting it finished for this summer, but I am going to Hawaii this winter, so it will be worn lots then. Glad that it is finally done.

So, that is 2 sets of needles that were freed from use, and I frogged 2 other long term UFO's as well. Wow! Now need to organize the UFO piles. There are quite a few projects stacked around. I think that tomorrow's post will be a PHOTO of each and every one of them and details as to how much work I think that they will actually need. Maybe this will shame me into resolving their status one way or another. Gotta do something. As much as I love my LYS I'd rather be buying yarn and not duplicates of needles that I already have that are just in use. And the pity is that while they are indeed in use, holding the yarn on UFO's, for the most part they aren't being used actively. The turtle sat for over a year... granted I don't use size 10 1/2's on a regular basis, but that isn't the point.

Off to take photos of those that haven't seen the light of day in a long, long time.

19 September, 2008

Back Again

The computer arrived yesterday afternoon about an hour after I arrived home. So nice, as someone needed to sign for it. Surely did miss my toy. Yea for fast service!


I've started on the mystery stole 4. I am dredfully slow. Still on clue number 1 and clue number 3 arrived today. Doing both ends at the same time, so each "row" is forever long, I timed myself on the row, both sections takes me 40 mins. The "way back" is a purl row for the most part and no beads, so much faster. I think the final estimate on the bead count is aprox 1000. Yikes! Hope that I have enough. I was told that each of the tubes I purchased had about 800 beads. I surely hope that number is correct. I am keeping the ones that won't slip easliy onto the crochet hook in a separate baggie. Just in case there isn't enough, I will see about getting one of those bead borer thingies. Or begging to borrow one at the shop where I purchased the beads as I won't be using beads enough myself to really warrant the purchase of one.

It is an interesting process, but is a bit tedious. Each of the beaded stitches is done individually, the beads aren't threaded onto the yarn in advance. I am using the smallest crochet hook I own (1.25mm- I believe) and size 8/0 beads. Oh... and I need to wear magnification glasses so that I can see the buggers. The beads are amethyst colored, and are a higher contrast with the yarn than I originally intended. (I was thinking about a barely there beaded look) However, I believe that this will be a good thing. I didn't end up purchasing the beads until after I had the first clue and could see how important a role that the beads were to play. Going to be a pretty piece. I will have to purchase clothing to wear with this stole. I don't have anything that would do it justice.

To bead the stitch, you first knit the stitch you wish to bead, then slip a bead onto the crochet hook. Slip the bead up past the hook. Grab the stitch you just knit with the beaded crochet hook, pull it (the stitch) taut, and slide the bead onto the stitch and place the stitch back on the needle correctly oriented with the bead below (obviously) the needle. Did I mention that this is a slow process? And that the pattern calls for nearly 1000 beads? I think that this stole will be a long time in the making as I really don't have vast amounts of time to knit and there are a gazillion things I wish to knit. Don't look at my Ravelry listings.... that is not nearly updated enough. I don't seem to have much time for that, can't knit and play on Ravelry.

Photos soon!

11 September, 2008

9-11

We will never forget!

09 September, 2008

Computer Update

Just got off the phone with the HP guys. Boy was this an improvement over the Dell Customer Service. I was really happy. One hour total on the phone. Good and bad news though. Bad news is the computer has an issue with the mother board. But... good news is that it is a known problem and so it will be fixed free of charge even though my warranty is of course out of date. A computer won't break until a week past your warranty coverage. So I will be without my laptop for a week or two... Fellow said 9 days average... but it will be fixed! Back up is done.. just in case they have to wipe it.

Happy knitting!

Harder than it looks...

to pick the pit bull out of a line up. Took me 4 tries to get it right. I thought I would be better than that. However, I don't think that they used a very good photo either.

I heard about the "photo line up" while listening to the report about the elderly lady that was attacked in King County. I hope that she recovers fully from the attack.

03 September, 2008

OUCH....

Screen doors hurt... Just ask my kitty.

I went out to the back deck last night and shut the screen door behind me. Spice ran up the back steps and through the closing screen door... and very nearly made it... but not quite. I took her in to the vet today, as she was comfortable last night and in good spirits despite the sore tail. Unfortunately, she did have to have her tail amputated as the cut was deep and went nearly all the way around. So her long beautiful tail is now just a short four inches. I talked with her vet just a few hours ago and she was waking well from surgery despite the funky cone hat, and wrapped up tail. Let's hear it for good kitty feel good pain drugs.

01 September, 2008

What's more important?

"What's more important, Knitting or Camping"? That's the question my husband asked me. My answer was of course "Knitting". He then re phrased his question stating what he really meant to ask. "What's more important.. Knitting or Me"? Well, put that way, I had to answer that he was more important.

No that doesn't mean I have to stop knitting, it means that I will not be at Friday Night Fiber Frenzy at the Lambs Ear this friday night. I will instead be up at Silver Springs camping. As much as I want to go to this knitting meeting I have to admit that my husband comes first. This should also be the last camping adventure of the year, pity that it coincides with the restart up of knit night. I tried to get him to agree to let me drive out later that night, but there is a $9.50 charge for additional vehicles. Ah well.

I finished up my bamboo tank top. Will be wearing that to the Thursday night knit group. If I make the pattern again I will have to make a few changes. The shoulder straps are to thin for my liking, and the neck shaping is higher that I would prefer. It fits nice, with just a wee bit of negative ease... I was quite unsure of that bit, but it worked out well.

Still needs to be washed and blocked out. Have to check and see if "blocking" would be the proper term for the bamboo yarn. May just need to be gently patted and smoothed into shape. Have to find that swatch and check it out. No I did not block my swatch... I knit it and it gave me the gauge I was looking for and all was good. amd so I knit. My swatch has never touched water. I am now afraid to let my tank touch water. I need to test this before Thursday. Yikes.

What's more important?