YOP 3 Week 8 Update

This past week has been strangely productive. I think it was due to a visiting friend but I got the urge to spin again! My wheel came out one evening and I finished up some green fiber I got as part of a spinning class I took....last year? There's some more green that's a lighter shade that still needs to be spun and then they'll be plied together. Brilliant move on the instructor's part to give two colors. It really helps you see what you're doing.

It's Renaissance Festival season again. I see people with their knitting out there and I wonder how they do it. Not because they are knitting in public but because of how dirty it is out there.

Exhibit A: He's wearing a white shirt.

This is a friend of mine out at Fest. That shirt started out white. And I'm sure the head covering thing was really black and not that dusty gray color. I can't think about bringing out my knitting to Fest. My taste in yarn is too expensive.

But I had a visiting friend, remember? She learned how to spin on a drop spindle. I own a drop spindle and have attempted to use it a few times but haven't been very successful with it. I decided that I would bring that out to Fest (with some basic sheep wool) because it was okay if those got dusty.

While sitting with some friends, I decided my hands were feeling too twitchy, so I attempted to work on the spindle. And I had success! It wasn't perfect but it was progress. I eventually saw my friend and she learned that she spins (at least on spindle) in the opposite direction than I. This was really funny actually as she would start the spindle and everything would untwist and it would fall. As we were watching a stage show, she briefly "kidnapped" (spindle-napped?) my spindle to play with it. I think it's the first time I've seen her spin. And while I have another friend who has been spinning for ages longer than either of us, it was fun to learn from this visiting friend who I don't get to see very often. I like to think that it's possible to learn from anyone and I definitely picked up some new things to try.

We had also met earlier in the week for tea. She showed me All the Projects. Or, at least the things she's made recently (including a shawl for her oldest daughter) as well as a dragon that she's working on. It was at this point that she pointed out how she had learned that when seaming something, you seam loose and then tighten the stitches! Wow! I'm glad I hadn't started on the shoulders yet! I had no idea that you should do that instead!

After tea, she came over briefly and I gave her a gift I've been meaning to mail for months. Yarn! Three lovely skeins left my house!

So I spun, had stash-ish yarn leave the house *and* learned a new technique for a current WIP. I think that makes the week a win.

Finished Projects 

• Girl on Fire

Works in Progress

• Browncoat Top  
• Pretty Pillars Test 
• My Driving Gloves
• Apollonia Socks 

YOP Year 3 Week 7 The Pictures Edition

Girl on Fire

Girl on Fire

Browncoat Top 

Apollonia Socks

Finished Projects 

• Girl on Fire

Works in Progress

• Browncoat Top  
• Pretty Pillars Test 
• My Driving Gloves
• Apollonia Socks 

YOP Year 3 Week 6: First FO

Last week I spent time waiting in line to see some fringe shows and I was serving at my church by running the lighting during a leadership event. There was quite a bit of down time or as I like to call it, knitting time. I brought along two of my sock projects to work on. While listening to the different speakers, I was able to finish a pair of socks! Of course, I still haven't blocked them or taken pictures but darn it, I wove in the ends! That means Girl on Fire is my first FO for the year! They would have been finished much sooner if I hadn't kept putting them off to finish up different projects. I am glad that I finished them before I passed a year from cast on.

The Browncoat Top has passed a year since cast on. I haven't seamed the shoulders yet. Husband keeps wanting to know why it's not finished and I explained that it's a project that I need to do while sitting still, in good light where I don't have to be paying attention to anything else. This means it doesn't go into the car now and I definitely don't do it while we watch "Sliders". It's going to need something that I've seen a million times, like "The Princess Bride" or "Goonies".

As I finished the Girl on Fire socks, I set to work on the Apollonia socks. I feel as though I messed something up in the heel turn as I seem to have a small hole/gap but the math is correct. It's amazing how much my knitting has improved over the years. I look now at my first socks and am delighted with how far I've gotten. A pattern like this one would have scared me when I first started as it uses a chart but it's now amazingly simple. Turns out I prefer charts to written out patterns. It's much easier for me to find where I am when I set something down for several weeks.

My plan this next week is to take photos of things, cast on a youth sweater and come up with something to knit for Husband's 2nd Cousin's 2nd child. Most likely another blanket but I want to do it in a different pattern.

Finished Projects 

• Girl on Fire

Works in Progress

• Browncoat Top  
• Pretty Pillars Test 
• My Driving Gloves
• Apollonia Socks 

YOP 3, week....5 Oops

Just over a month since my last update and I've yet to get around to replying to comments from the last post! This must be a sign that I really am busy and am apparently not sitting in front of my computer as often as I imagine.

 Confession time.

I haven't done much knitting in this last month.

I haven't snapped any new photos of my WIPs.

But....

I have finished up the main body of the Browncoat Sweater. Shoulders need to be seamed and then there's some finishing work. This will also be followed by weaving in all the ends and blocking it out but I can feel that it's getting closer! The pattern is fairly straight forward though I did get hung up a few times with the wording. The author responded to my questions on Ravelry which was really awesome. Eventually I was able to figure out where I left off last autumn and discovered I hadn't done something correctly. This meant it was easy to frog it back to the spot in question and get a clean go at it.

Yesterday I received this month's Cookie A sock yarn. It's a yellow color. I've seen the spoiler photos but I haven't opened it yet. Husband did ask how my stash is holding up. It's getting tight but if I can finish up a few things, I'll be in good shape.

A knitter in one of the local groups I try to attend asked for test knitters for a youth sweater pattern she has written. My youngest step-daughter is small for her age and would probably like to have a sweater knit for her though I just put her laundry in the dryer (the kids wash their own clothes and I decided to be nice and not have her things sit all night in the washer when I took my clothes out of the dryer) and there may need to be a conversation about how not everything should go into the machine first. I do have other friends with younger children who might get more use out of it. The pattern is sized up to 6 but I really don't know what that means. A quick glance has me feeling like it shouldn't be too hard but I need to look closer at measurements.

Husband's Wesley sweater ended with arms that aren't long enough. To be fair, he was traveling most of the week during this time period so I was doing a lot of guess work on how it would fall on him. Instead of frogging back past the cuff, he wants me to add onto the cuff. I said I'd do it if I can get a picture of him in it first. His job has settled down but the weather has gotten terribly hot and I haven't had the heart to ask him to pose in the sweater yet. He was worried that I wouldn't have it done in time for the cold weather as I did start a pair of socks since then.

A large part of the reason why I haven't been knitting lately is because of the Bathroom of Doom. This is the latest remodel project that started a couple of years ago when we cut off the hot water to the bath/shower as it was leaking. It became an actual "now we're going to fix it problem" about a month ago. I ended up taking the week off from work (well, I went in one day and the end of the week was a paid holiday) to assist Husband on the project. I've made all of the hardware store trips, mostly by myself. So far there have only been 11, half of which have been me returning plumbing parts and getting the correct size.... So after exhausting days of ripping out walls and dealing with plumbing, my hands and mind had no interest in knitting anything.

That's all for this week. Happy knitting!

Finished Projects 

Works in Progress

• Browncoat Top  
• Girl on Fire
• Pretty Pillars Test 
• My Driving Gloves
• Apollonia Socks 

Year of Projects: REBOOT (Year 3, Week 1)

Well...here is it, my 3rd year in a group blog-a-long. Last year, I basically fell off the internet map. I pretty much stopped blogging about anything for various reasons this past spring. I didn't stop knitting and I definitely didn't do any spinning (that was one of my goals for this past year), but I didn't get around to documenting things. Or at least not blogging about them. Below is the list of things I did manage to finish.

Finished Projects 

• Mint Twist Socks
• Shrubbery Caulking
• Husband Driving Gloves
• Crusher Sweater 
• Holly Socks

Not a whole lot but better than nothing. One could argue that the Crusher Sweater isn't actually finished as my ape-armed Husband needs slightly longer sleeves, which has yet to happen. I still need to get the initial finished picture of the sweater with him in it. The body was the hardest part of the sweater for me because it just kept going and seemed as though it was never going to end. I guess I felt the same way about the sleeves. I almost had second sleeve syndrome now that I think back to it.

I did manage to cast on and finish a pair of Cookie A socks in record time for me. They were nice and mindless. Husband called them my Holly socks. If you click on the link, you'll see why. I changed the heel to a short row heel as I've decided that I really like the way that they fit. I've started to wear my hand-knit socks on work days in which I know I might be annoyed (such as a long day of opera) because then at least my feet are happy.

I've made a new page with this year's goals. Here's hoping that I get the Browncoat Top finished. I set it down sometime last fall...and didn't clearly mark where I was in the pattern. I figured out where I was in the back section but I may have to frog back to a point I recognize for the front sections. It also turns out that finishing this project wouldn't really have helped me with Husband's Sweater because they were completely different types of tops. Husband did comment in amazement at how much faster the sweater was knit up as compared to his gloves.

I have less than a month to finish the 2nd (first made, second finished) pair of gloves if I want to enter them into the State Fair this year and then wear them this winter. I'm not exactly feeling motivated to deal with it though. Socks and knitted tops are less annoying.

Works in Progress

• Browncoat Top  
• Girl on Fire
• Pretty Pillars Test 
• My Driving Gloves
• Apollonia Socks 

Yop#2.32-36 or It's Been Too Cold to Blog

Saying that it's been too cold to blog is really a horrible excuse but it's the only one I have. The desire to sit in front of a computer has been low when I could be bundled up under blankets, streaming Star Trek on Netflix, while knitting. It's also been hard to get time in front of the computer when my brain is in the right spot to write.

So enough excuses and an update instead.

I FINISHED THE GLOVES!!!!

I don't have a photo of them finished yet (it has been below stupid cold here lately and I haven't have the patience to get Husband to model them in the car. I just want to be out of the car and somewhere warm) but Husband has been enjoying them. He told me that I had to finish it before I started my next project so that really motivated me to get them done. That and I was really tired of them.

So what did I cast on next? A pattern test for a sweater but not just any design. This sweater was inspired from the Ensign sweater that Wesley Crusher wears often in the Star Trek: Next Generation series. It's been available for streaming on Netflix and I had only watched a handful of episodes here and there. People would make references and I would smile and nod as though I knew who they were talking about. (Most of the smiling and nodding had to do with the character Q because I didn't want to have gasps of disappointment that I didn't know who they were talking about.) On a whim I decided to start watching the series from the start. After only an episode or two, Husband joined in. When I went looking through the free pattern tests forum to see if there was anything I really wanted/needed to knit, I saw the sweater and knew I had to do it. It would mean buying yarn most likely as I tend to have a lot of single skeins and it would be making a sweater which has intimidated me greatly.

After a yarn shopping trip with Husband (he was having to wear the sweater after all and he did agree to the trip!) at Lakeside Yarn (I'd won a gift certificate there last year at the Yarn Shop Hop) and digging through my stash, I was able to make a swatch and start the sweater.

It's been going really well and quite quickly. Amazing what knitting on medium size yarn on larger needles is like! Husband has even noted how much faster the sweater is compared to his gloves. It's also easier to be using someone else's pattern and not adjusting everything as you go! Even though it's straight knitting (once I get through the shoulder increases) for most of it, I'm really liking that it's a relatively mindless project.  And seeing as how I'm currently updating about once a month, it may even be finished by the time I write again.

Of course, it does mean that my Girl on Fire socks have been put temporarily on hold until I needed to change colours and was out somewhere and then I would work on them. While I had hoped to get them done before the first Cookie A package arrived this year, it seems that it just wasn't meant to be. At least I'm not getting paid or graded on my knitting timeliness!

Finished Projects 

• Mint Twist Socks
• Shrubbery Caulking
• Husband Driving Gloves

Works in Progress

• Lilia Socks
• Browncoat Top  
• Girl on Fire
• Pretty Pillars Test 
• My Driving Gloves 
• Crusher Sweater 

YOP #2.27-31 or This is How a Month Passes You By

Well....I apparently suck at this blogging this so far this year. In good news, I've been productive this year. Since I last wrote, I've refinished part of a futon/couch thing (I also intend to blog about that), hacked many portals, bought new yarn and started roller derby practices again as well as all the usual fun stuff at work.

Additionally, I've spent a lot of time not on the computer when I get home. Blogging at work is...odd, so I tend to not do it in general unless I need to get something out of my head before I go home. The plus side to not being on the computer is that I've gotten more knitting done.

Husband's second glove is starting to get a finger. I was hoping to strand the colors behind each other loose enough that I'd be able to save some time just going forward instead of flipping back and forth. I've tried the first finger twice now and it's messing up my gauge too much and making it too hard to get my finger in, let alone his (not that I've tried, but I don't want to), so once more to frogging it. Then it'll be doing it the twisty way of flipping back and forth as I knit and purl. Due to the semi-tricky step of picking up a stitch to knit or purl with the last stitch of each round and then slipping yarn in front of the stitch on the other side of the end of the round, it's easier to flip back and forth instead of trying to knit backwards. It's also so tiny. I also realized that while Husband is using his one finished glove (and will soon use the pair) that I can send a completely unused pair to this year's state fair as that will be about the time I get around to finishing my pair of gloves.

I've had some time to work on my Girl on Fire socks. I'm nearing the last repeat of the leg pattern. I know once I get past the heel then the sock will go flying off my needles. My pretend goal is to have this pair finished before the next Cookie A package shows up. Seeing as how the first package isn't being mailed out until February 14th, I may actually manage to do this.

In exciting FO land, I have my first 2015 project! I made a pair of boot cuffs for a friend at church. While prepping Christmas decorations, she asked if I'd ever made boot cuffs. I hadn't but I did have a pattern that I wanted to make. She wanted a green pair and we eventually narrowed down the color to green and I showed her a picture of a skein of yarn I thought would work. Sure enough, she loved them! She asked how much I wanted for them and I said they were either a late Christmas gift or an early birthday present (turns out her birthday is in September so it's a very early birthday present). I know that she wanted to pay me and that Husband would think I should be paid but I knit because I enjoy it. She's given me all kinds of chances to use my talent of lighting at church as well as taken the time to get to know me (our church is about 30 miles away in one direction). Maybe one day I'll be up for selling them but for now, I like making gifts for friends. Besides, I have no idea how much to charge for them!

Here they are, just before I gave them to her. I nearly forgot to take a picture!

Finished Projects 

• Mint Twist Socks
• Shrubbery Caulking

Works in Progress

• Lilia Socks
• Browncoat Top  
• Husband Driving Gloves  
• Girl on Fire
• Pretty Pillars Test 
• My Driving Gloves