Finished (almost) and Other Awesomeness

Bigger on the inside

After waiting for over a year, I now have a door, a proper door, for our bedroom. This was my husband's birthday/Christmas/I love you gift to me. I can also be argued that it was really part of an unfinished art project and was going to be made with or without my consent. Luckily for him, I love it. I do need to get better pictures but I wanted to share it today because it started off my week which ended up being filled with Awesomeness. Of course, as the title suggests, this is also a project that is almost finished. The doors are up and they close but they don't latch. There's also some finish work to be done around the door opening (top and bottom and the inside where there would normally be trim masking the gap). This is where my finished project this week is as well. 

Waves of Love, very wavy when unblocked

Here is the Waves of Love shawl, off the needles. I ended up not finishing it correctly because I really wanted to finish it. It still looks lovely and I'll see how well it blocks. This is the most intricate piece I've had to block so far and I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to block it one. The scarf that went to Japan got blocked using cork trivet things but I need a larger something to block this piece. Thankfully it's a birthday present for December, so I'm not horribly worried yet. Hopefully I can  come up with something before then. I also need to weave in the ends. It doesn't seem to matter how many tapestry needles I own, I can never seem to find them when I need them. I've decided that I'm just going to get some more and put them into my Hippo bag as soon as possible as the Hippo bag doesn't seem to cause things to disappear.  It does mean that I can now cast on Bigger on the Inside, which I've been holding off on doing. I'm trying to limit how many projects I have going at once and of those, how many of each type of project I have going at once. I'm still working on Fuzzy, which should hopefully be done soon. After talking with mom, I've decided to take it to about 36" long. They may not use up all the yarn that I intended to (3 skeins has gotten it to 29" long) but it will be a nice length. Does one block blankets as well?

Monday was exciting because I got my Cookie A October sock yarn. I had already peeked at the spoilers thread, so I knew what the color would look like. I think I drove the kids batty (at least the youngest one) because I didn't open it immediately. 

In fact, I just opened it this morning. 

It is definitely my color. While I still claim that green is my favorite color, there is something about rich reds that I adore. Maybe it's all those years of surrounding myself in green that my eyes love deep reds. Who knows.

Monday there was also a package slip for me. At least I knew it was for me as the zip code of the sender is my mom's. Having a husband with a name that shares your initial is sometimes amusing when they only write the first initial and the last name on the package slip. 

I did know what was coming in the package as well since mom had messaged me that she had sent off the package. This one I did immediately open outside of the post office to take a look at it. Mom did the Colorado yarn crawl this year, which I may have introduced her to by taking her to a new yarn shop this past June where they mentioned it. She managed to get to all of the shops and she bought yarn (though she didn't buy yarn at all of the shops) and sent some onto me. I'm not doing too well at this whole knitting more than I'm acquiring but it's so soft and comforting and pretty. Now to just find the perfect project for all of it...

My half of the haul from the Colorado Yarn Crawl.

Note the awesome color for my soon to be made awesome socks.

 I am also now the proud owner of Qiviut sock yarn. Husband can't tell the difference between it and most of the other yarn (he did notice that some is coarser than this yarn) but I can definitely feel the difference. I can't wait to make these into socks. It's also very similar to the Cookie A sock club yarn so I could make both patterns (I love both of them too!) in similar colors.

 The best part of the package wasn't the yarn, but the swift that was also in it. Thirteen years ago this past April, my Great-Aunt CeCe passed away. She was a teacher and I remember she had a million books (and corgis; she's to blame for my love of corgis) whenever we would visit her house. She also had a million things of knitting. Projects, yarn, needles. She convinced a friend of hers to publish a book and this friend is now a well-known knitting author. Mom ended up with all of her knitting supplies after she passed away. Recently mom found Cece's old swift and asked if I wanted it. This was a silly question to ask as she knows I've been wanting a swift for a while as I find winding skeins tedious without one. It's nice having somethings of CeCe's. She was always this mysterious, elegant woman in my mind. She was always dressed well but not necessarily normally and she didn't give a care what anyone thought of her. I'm sure she probably did on some level as she always looked amazing. I think she and my other Great-Aunt helped inspire my love of museums as they were both involved with the ones in Denver. When we would go spend time with either of them, we were usually going to a museum. So a family tradition lives onto another generation through me. My sister has no patience for knitting but that means that I have another person I can gift things to (the hot pink in the yarn haul picture that's in a separate bag is going to become a hat for her; she already knows about it too).