Down to the wire

At 5:00 last night I finished grafting the toes on a pair of socks that were to be delivered at dinner at 6:30. Both pairs were very well received last night and I have it on good authority that one pair at least was worn to work today. That right there is the joy of giving hand made gifts.

So now I have one more pair that needs finishing (I'm working on the heel flap) before Monday and I'm home free. The hubby already knows he's getting socks in January and I'll work in them on the plane to California.

Since I'm not entirely sure where my camera is at this moment, I have no pictures today. I'm madly trying to get everything done at work so I can leave for a week and not have a disaster when I return.

Wish me luck, I'll let you know in January how things turned out...

18 days until vacation!

That's right in 18 days, we leave for Disneyland! That also means in 18 days I will have not only finished but washed, blocked, wrapped and delivered all the socks. I tried to take a bunch of pictures yesterday so I could show you all the progress, but alas the afternoon light was fading and they are pretty much crap. Today I spent the few moments I had between phone calls and assorted whatnot knitting on said socks instead of photographing them.

I've decided to wait until they are all done to graft the toes so I don't have to relearn how to do that 6 times. I'm sure by the time I'm done I'll have it down, but it's not something I've used often enough to just do it. I now have 2 pair waiting for closure, and I'm doing the toe decreases on another. I have started the heel flap on the next pair, am about an inch shy of the heel flap starting on one more. That's five for those of you keeping score at home. The sixth pair is for my hubby, and I've already told him that he may not get his socks until we get back from vacation. That will give me something to take on the plane, now that I think about it...

Socks are afoot

My holiday knitting is well underway. I think I have now picked out yarn I like and that is machine washable for all those I plan to gift with hand knit socks this year. This was more challenging than you might think. It started with just a couple people and I went and bought sock yard to get started. Before I'd even started those I decided that I really wasn't feeling the love for the colors I'd purchased. Back to the drawing board, and the yarn store. I found new yarn I liked and jumped in. After knitting a good distace on both pair I realized that one wasn't superwash. I'm not going to give hand wash only socks to someone as a gift unless I know that caring for hand wash items is totally cool with them. The second pair got frogged when I realized I had misjudged the size of the foot in question. Oops! Do-over part 2.

I now believe that I have picked yarn for all my recipients (now up to 6) that I like and have accurate shoe size information on all of them. That brings us to the progress!


Here we have my various stages of progress. The pair waiting for toe grafting is Trekking XXL color 135. The pair just past the heel is Sockotta color 5618. The pair just started is Lorna's Laces Shephard Sock color 50 amish. The socks to be started later is Austermann Step color 6. All using the basic Harlot recipe and size 0 (2mm) addis. I have the rest of the sock yarn at home, this is just what I have in my bag at the moment.

I started the Lorna's socks last night. For the first time ever I knit in the car! Dramamine rocks, I just wish I had thought to try that years ago.

Catching up.

It's been a week! Here's the highlights...

Friday night the hubby and I bought a new car. His van had started having issues precisely when the warranty expired. Now we are the proud owners of a 2007 Prius with all the goodies except leather seats. He had the pleasure this morning of filling the tank for $20 with over 400 miles on the tank. Brilliant!

Saturday afternoon we went to a holiday open house where I purchased more candles. That evening was a Halloween gathering with friends. Very low key this year, not many costumes and not as many people as last year. Good times were had.

Sunday was big geek day. Characters were created, background stories were invented, dice were rolled and in the end much turkey was consumed. Mmmm autumn feasting!

Monday night the hubby and I had a meeting with a Real Estate investor to learn more about what she does and how we can get into that as well. I'm excited about things taking off in that direction.

Tuesday evening I spent in Ritual for Samhain. It was a lovely time spent in communion with the ancestors. I honored my aunt who passed in the spring and wore my Diamond Shawl for the occasion. Standing there swinging my arms back and forth I felt like I had wings. A friend commented that the way it moved, the shape and the color reminded her of a Luna Moth.

Wednesday I took the day off from work to attend the Women's Financial Conference. I snoozed and snuggled in bed longer than I should have and didn't hit the road quite as early as I had planned. Traffic wasn't too bad getting into Seattle and I made it there before things got started. There were some great speakers and much information. I will certainly attend again next time they are in town.

That brings us back to today. You may have noticed that I didn't mention much knitting in the last week. There wasn't much. I had a pair of socks to work on yesterday, but found that the speakers were so engaging that I took notes more than I knit. The countdown is on for all the holiday knitting I thought would be great fun and no problem last month before the van crapped out and life got crazy busy. We'll see if I can get it all done!

FO: Irish Diamond Shawl

Here it is in all it's glory!


This is the last picture I took of it before the final product, here it's just past the 650 stitch per row mark. I had every intention of taking pictures of it before and during the blocking process, but evidently my brain fell out between here and there, so then there's this...


I didn't swatch this and when blocked out it came to more like 60" square than the 52" mentioned in the book. It's a good thing I'm tall! ;-)


Irish Diamond Shawl from Folk Shawls. US 7 addi turbos, Zephyr yarn in the Blueberry color. I used about 1 1/2 of the 2 4oz balls I started with which would be about 1900 yards-ish.

Accomplishment!

The Diamond shawl has been cast off! I finished the knitting last night while my hubby went for a walk without me and I sat on the couch determined to finish. Unfortunately the only place big enough to block it is our king size bed, so that didn't happen last night, and won't happen tonight either. Satuday I plan to soak it and pin it out as soon as the bed is no longer required for sleeping. Pictures to follow.

I have a new outfit to go with the shawl, I'm totally jazzed. I'll be the best dressed Witch at the party! I'm sure pictures of that will be posted as well.

I've started one pair of holiday socks and am really loving them. I'll start another pair soon and perhaps get pics up as well. Hard to say since they are gifts and the intended recipients may actually stop by here occasionally.

Chugging along

There hasn't been much news to report, I guess. I'm trying to get the Diamond shawl finished. I'm down to the last 37 rows, but since I'm up over 650 stitches per row now, it just takes time. I haven't really worked on much else in the last couple weeks because I feel like I'm so close to the end of this one that I just keep at it.

I did do a little work on some socks I'm planning as holiday gifts. So far though, I'm just not feeling the love with the socks. In fact, I even frogged the socks I was making for myself with the sock yarn I got as a birthday gift. Perhaps once I get the Diamond done I'll be able to get into socks. For now it's really all about getting through purling 650+ stitches.

Pictures!

It turns out that some of the pics I took recently weren't as bad as I thought they were. I managed to get one of each of my projects that didn't totally suck.

This is the Irish Diamond shawl. The yarn is Zephyr in the blueberry color, on US # 7 addi turbos. I love this yarn and I'm really looking forward to finishing this so I can see it all blocked out. The down side of this project is that it gets bigger with every pattern row. I'm currently up to ~400 stitches per row and it seems to take forever to make progress on it now. I hope to have this done by the end of October.

Here we have Box Lace. The color is more a cranberry than the bright red that comes through here. The yarn is Cashwool by Baruffa, a superfine merino. Size 7 Denise needles. I'm hoping to have this done for the holidays.

Here we have the Icarus shawl. Like the Diamond this is in Zephyr, the Mushroom color. Also like the Diamond it grows with every other row. Size US # 3 addi turbo needles. I don't have a deadline for this project, I just couldn't resist it any longer. This pic doesn't really show the color very well, but it's a cool almost cream almost gray that really does resemble a fresh mushroom.

Finally we have Feather & Fan in unspun icelandic wool on US # 8 addi turbos. I love this project. I have no deadline on this one either, but it's my go-to piece when the lace and tiny stitches of any of the others get to be too much. Now that the weather is turning colder I can't wait to finish this warm and cozy wonder. It has that comforting raw wool smell that makes me want to curl up with it in front of a fire and hibernate for the winter.

The Rose of England is back on the needles with the bellybutton cast on. I'm using the Cashwool by Baruffa and US # 2 addis. For those who asked I am using the magic loop method, at least in the beginning. Me and dpns don't get along, so I use it whenever I can. I will probably switch to a smaller circ. when I get done with chart A since it gets a little funky when you have 5 repeats per round and the slipping your round marker and such.

I should know better.

Friday night was Yarn Yoga night at LYS. I started out working on Diamond until I finished with the pattern repeat I was in the middle of. I was feeling so good about how that was going that I pulled out ROE to do a round on that. Evidently I can't chat and count at the same time. I got to the end of the round and had an extra stitch (crap!) and for all my going back and recounting and rechecking I couldn't find the error. So I tucked it away and decided to figure it out at home when I had quiet to concentrate. Unfortunately, I couldn't locate any error, and figured it must have happened on the previous pattern round. No problem, I thought, I'll just tink back until I know I'm good and continue on. WRONG! Tinking multiple YOs and coming out with the correct stitch count isn't happening for me. Then I rememebered that bit about slipping your beginning of round marker and gave it all up. Frogged the whole thing. On the bright side this gives me the chance to play with the belly button caston I've been eyeballing.

We had a pretty full weekend so I didn't get back to ROE, but maybe tonight. I did pick up the Feather & Fan shawl and got some good progress done on that one. I told the hubby what I liked about that project is that I haven't screwed it up yet! He made all the right condolence noises and made me soup. What a guy!

Insanity or Ambition?

I couldn't help it, I cast on for the Icarus shawl yesterday. For those of you scoring at home, that makes #5 in the shawls on the needles category. I haven't decided for myself on the insane vs. ambitious issue, so I'll let you make your own call on that.

I was sad to discover last night that my Dad's talent with a camera was not passed on to me genetically. I have some learning to do with my new camera. I tried to take pics of my other WIPs last night, but alas, they mostly looked like crap. So now that I've learned a thing or two about that I'll try again soon.

I know you've all been on the edge of your seat wondering if the Diamond shawl and I have made up. We had a long heart-to-heart last night. We got the issue resolved, and it promised to never do that again. We'll see. :-)

Sigh.

The Diamond shawl and I aren't speaking to each other right now. The last two days I feel like I've spent more time tinking that thing than making forward progress. I was almost done with one lace repeat when I dropped 3 stitches and couldn't for all my effort recover them correctly. So I chucked the whole thing on the table and decided to let it sit there today to "think about what it had done".

I'm also considering frogging the ROE and starting over. I read the instructions for the belly button cast on, and it makes such a beautiful center, I may have to try it. Since I'm still debating that and I was too tired and got home late last night I didn't do anything with ROE. I didn't want to continue forward if I'm just going to start over, and I didn't want to start over if I didn't have time to get some good progress done on the new start. So I did a couple rows on the Box Lace shawl and went to bed.

Hopefully tonight I'll have time to get some laundry and knitting done. I hope to have pictures of the other shawls I'm working on up soon. Maybe I'll even feel up to getting the Diamond shawl out of time out. Maybe...

Rose of England pic

Here is the progress so far on ROE!

This is what I got accomplished Sunday afternoon and evening. I would have liked to work on it last night, but spent the evening fighting with my new camera and laptop. Evidently they don't want to play well together. Luckily things went more smoothly today at the office.

Domovoi Shawl pictures!

I have figured out how to upload pictures! So here they are...

This is the finished, blocked and ready to deliver product. The pattern is from Folk Shawls by Cheryl Oberle. The yarn is Misti Alpaca Lace in Black.

Here it is blocked out in my hallway, the only place long enough for the 102" finished length.

And here are a couple shots of the detail...

Rose of England

I have joined the Rose of England KAL. I had planned to do this project, but a little down the road. But I couldn't resist, so here we go. Never mind the three shawls and a pair of socks I already have on the needles, nevermind that I plan to start Icarus as well. And don't forget about Balmoral that I had planned to do before ROE, but plans have clearly changed.

I have a digital camera! New camera, new blog, new projects. What more could a girl want? Pictures coming soon!

Hello World!

Because don't you have to start all new ventures that way?