YOP 3 Weeks 9, 10 and 11 Updates

Two Three weeks have managed to slip by before I've had the chance to write about what I'm knitting! Between the internet being a little screwy and wanting to spend more time with people than on the computer, it's no surprise really. (I started this last week and just never got around to finishing it. The internet has been fussy but I guess that means I have more to write about now!)

I have had plenty of time on my Apollonia socks. Everyone loves the color. The first one is done and I'm moving right along on the second one. The leg is nearly finished. It would be amazing (and actually might be possible) if I got it finished by next Sunday. I won't hold my breath too long though.

The first sock. The purple is so much more amazing than it appears here.

I've decided I need to learn how to double knit. Husband has requested I make a gift for a mutual friend and he'd like it to be multi-colored. This means double knitting in my mind so that both sides are finished. I picked up some yarn at Goodwill last week to work on this project because there's no way I'm going to teach myself on full price yarn. I got two yarns that are close in size and contrasting in color. It's been an interesting process. Not my favorite yarn to knit with and tension has been awkward. I knit in the English style, so I'm struggling to keep even tension between the colors. I have seen tools out there that can help with this when using multiple colors but I'm not sure it's worth the price. I did remember after the first few rows that I needed to twist the yarns so that I wouldn't end up with a gap/hole on the sides. There are definitely holes on the sides for the first few rows. The entertaining part of this was examining someone's sweater and determining that part of it was double knit. He quickly took off the sweater as it got a little weird and we were at church.

Netflix has recently released NCIS on its streaming service, so between loads of laundry, I watched that and worked on Browncoat. The shoulders are seamed! I actually had no idea how to do it, so finally looked it up. Much easier than I thought it would be. There are going to be so many ends to weave in.... One armhole is almost finished (5 rounds are worked to finish the edge) and the other one should go just as smoothly (I hope). A couple of more things and then I block it. The more I look at it, the more I wonder if this is really meant for someone else. I have a friend that I think it would be perfect for though it would end up being bigger on her as I used the pattern sized for myself. I guess blocking will tell.

Finished Projects 

• Girl on Fire

Works in Progress

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

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