Random Tuesday

Hello everyone, 

It's kinda rainy and dark out this afternoon, but I thought I'd pop in for a brief update. It's been awhile since I've checked my mail, since all I have is a PO Box right now, so I stopped at the post office today and sure enough : 






The first packet is my 2nd braid from Willow Mist Acres Braid Bonanza club, the second is a solicitation for a knitting magazine subscription. I included it in this photo because I was just so tickled pink to be getting yarn junk-mail. Just finding an envelope with the words "Love of knitting" on them put a big grin on my face. I'm not really big on knitting magazines though, so I'm not really familiar with love of knitting at all, and had to google it when I got home to see what it was all about. 
Anyway, enough talk, I'm sure you want to see what the fiber looks like :





Once again, I love the colors!!!!  Especially the orange and the teal! ZOMG ^^;;
For refference, here is my current progress with the first braid :

The first braid was 5.2 oz (there was a bit extra thrown in ) The second one is 4 oz.

FO Friday - Hat

Hello all. I promise to get back to the knitting soon, but for now, I finished a hat. It's Crochet.

The pattern is a slouchy beanie and it was very simple, quick, and fun to do.
I knit it using various leftover DK weight from some baby-blanket projects I did last year. The purple bits are peaches N Cream cotton which worked surprisingly well, considering.

I found the puff stitch very relaxing and slouchy hats are extraordinarily forgiving of newbie crochet mistakes ^__^ 

I'm also *practically* done with the Zombie Vixen mitts.... Just 7 rows of ribbing and a thumb remain!

See more FO's at Tami's!

Monday Meh

Hello Everyone, Today I have more to say on the subject of crochet. For starters, that is a really weird word to say, I'm always spelling it wrong, and don't get me started on how many times I have referred to my crochet as "my knitting" this past week. Guess I can't get mad when other people get them mixed up anymore!

I finished my Hat (blog post pending ) and, eager to start on a new crochet adventure, I started these mitts with some Lorna's Lace I had on hand.




First I cast on 60 stitches like the pattern said. Since I was using a smaller hook than called for I figured I'd be set. No such luck.




Then I cast on 40 stitches. This fit much more snugly (to the point where it was a bit tight to get over my thumb)  However somewhere along the line I started adding stitches




Now I have almost 50 stitches.  Ack! I know this problem is related to the problem I had with my hat - not joining the next round consistently. Instead of a nice tidy line of joins I had this weird zigzag thing going on. While the mitt's joins seemed to line up much nicer, I must still be doing something wrong here to create new stitches. I fear that not only will I have to rip out and start (almost ) from the beginning, but I will have to COUNT to 40 every row until I figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Also. The pattern didn't specify exactly how to work the thumb, so I guessed. Does this look right?

I realized when I said that I had a book of 'fancy crochet patterns' that I didn't really specify what I meant. Just so that we're on the same page, it's this book.

I love pretty much everything in this book, but especially love the Shimmer beaded lace cape and the Visage Lace Beret

FO : Masonic Lodge

Hello everyone, I meant to post this way sooner but the day kind of ran away on me! Long story short there was a deposit put on a reception hall for a wedding, and then Aaron insisted on watching Hunt for the Red October and I completely forgot about knitting for a scary chunk of time. How does that even happen?

Anyway, I finished Aaron's socks and I think they are pretty spiffy.

Pattern: Masonic Lodge
Needles : US 0
Yarn : Shibui Sock (2 skeins)
color : Midnight
Cast on: Jan 5th
Cast off: Jan 20th




This was my first time knitting with Shibui sock. Instant favorite! Such a pleasure to knit up and the colors are just enchanting. I really enjoyed the slight variations in blues. They mostly behaved and gave me a pretty decent attempt at stripes, but I almost like the heel/toe part better where the colors all just kind of blurred together without actually pooling.

Although I am on a huge crochet granny square kick right now, you will NOT see the left overs from this project in something crochet. I have something else in my queue in mind for this :)

Make sure to check out Tami's  for more FO's.

Crochet or Die

Hello all, Today's WIPW post needs a bit of an introduction.
I am a knitter. I've been knitting for a long time and I love knitting. I'm also a dabbler. I can't stand seeing someone do something crafty without at least finding out the basics of how it works. So I've had an on and off again affair with crochet. One of my BFF's Crochets, she's bought me a few crochet books and patterns, and occasionally, due to her influence, I've knit masses of random unrelated granny squares, and once, even a hat.

I want to get better, but unlike with knitting, every time I start a crochet project I have to re-learn all the stitches. And the patterns in the book I have are all knit with difficult types of yarn, like lace weight, or ribbon yarn. So I want to make sure I really have stuff down before I start. Plus it's all charted in that book, and crochet charts still look like black magic to me!


All that being said, I promised myself I would try to knit crochet This Hat after I finished Aaron's socks. (Finished, btw, photos on friday. )

But I wanted to practice the stitches first, which meant granny squares. Last week on WIPW I read about a bunch of crochet projects that other people were doing that inspired my granny square choices.

Yarnknitreadlit got me started with granny square CALS and a cool plaid crochet blanket
Little Bird knits  is doing a weekly granny square pattern. So is
8th Gem
Mixedmartialarts introduced me to this pattern, which I am now obsessed with!


So, to make a long story short. I've been making Granny Squares using leftover sock yarn and a 3.50 MM crochet hook.




I also finished the band for the hat :

The puff stitch is so relaxing I can't put the thing down!

 


For more WIPW posts visit Tami's Blog!

WIPW

So I'm trying something different today. A few things actually. There's this cool work-in-progress thing going on that I found out about on Ravelry, I thought it would be cool to try to be more social and participate in some group stuff.  Also, hopefully I'll get some new readers. Hello everyone :)

So this is what my workspace looks like on the week-end. 

My computer is on the right and Aaron's is on the left. We generally sit side by side knitting, playing gameboy, watching TV, and surfing. Usually simultaneously. All that diet coke belongs to Aaron. I don't like soda and caffeine makes me crazy. But he goes through several a day!

As you can see, I've got a lot going on. The blue yarn is the second sock for my Dreamy Knight project. I feel relatively optimistic in the possibility of finishing the pair in just two short weeks. A record for me with socks! The little pink book the yarn is sitting on is my small-project notebook. It's graphing paper so I can keep all of my pattern charts and notes in one place that fits in my purse.  Also in the picture is a Dragon Ball Z DVD (loads of knitting gets done during that ) Below that is the Juneberry chart, and then a book on Russian Grammar. The dry erase markers are for practicing various languages on my dry erase board. Currently Aaron is teaching me Russian and I am brushing up on my Japanese and trying to teach what I know to him. 

And this is one of my many WIPs. The Juneberry shawl, knit with SHELTER. It's coming along well. I love how sharp the stitch definition is and how crunchy the yarn is. I'm about half-way through chart D and my 2nd skien of yarn. I'm really enjoying this project and would be farther along if it wasn't so big. Cant' really cart this to work with me so I'm averaging 3-4 rows of this during the week. More on week-ends if I'm not too busy.

Knit Knight

Today's WIP highlight is the Masonic Lodge socks.
I started knitting them on Saturday. Got the cuff done and memorized the pattern for the leg and then set them aside. (No point wasting an easily memorized pattern on a weekend). On Monday I knit the whole leg at work, and then at home I tried to finish the heel flap and gusset. I couldn't get it all done in time, however, and not wanting to deal with that fiddlyness at my desk, the Zombie Vixen Mitts went to work with me on Tuesday and Wednesday instead.

I did have a pretty serious moment of panic doing the heel flap, where for several minutes the instructions for continuing the pattern looked like complete gibberish and I was very upset. Fortunately the moment passed and then everything worked out ok.  The long and short of it is that today I knit the first 4 inches of the foot, and only have 3 inches left before I start the toe decreases. I think I'm making pretty good progress on these.

Another kind of cool thing about this project; I think I'm finally getting the hang of turning the heel and the gusset! I could almost but not quiet do the whole heel from memory, which was kind of cool. I had the instructions on hand but I found myself regularly anticipating the next step and then just double checking with the instructions to make sure I was right.  Pretty sweet.