My quiet corner of blogland

I have been knitting. I have been spinning. I have not been blogging. I finished baby blanket number 1 and have started number 2. I am completely loving knitting this pattern.

I have also started my Everyday Cardigan. In fact, I've been switching back and forth between sweater and blankies to break up the endless miles of stockinette. I'm knitting this out of Peace Fleece and the colorway is called Anna's Grasshopper. I got gauge with size US9 needles, so it is going pretty fast. I love the color and I will wear this sweater, but the knitting is not exciting.

I don't have pictures of anything because it's been really dark and gloomy here. Today it's actually sunny out. Cold, but sunny. Right now it's 29F. Hopefully I'll be able to get some decent pics of the sweater and blankies. Although I won't post pics of the blankies here until after they have been delivered to the appropriate baby showers. There are some progress shots of blankie 1 in my Ravelry notebook.

Feather and Fan Finished!

Finally!

This shawl is so warm and cozy I want to wear it all the time. I want to get a pin for it before I wear it to work so I don't have to worry about it falling on the floor. I forsee it getting a lot of wear this winter!

A weekend of accomplishments

What a rare and wondrous thing! I feel like a lot got done this weekend and I don't feel exhausted. Friday night was Yarn Yoga and I worked on both the feather and fan shawl and the store sample stole that have both been on the needles for way too long. I was pretty tired, so I ended up leaving a little early and heading home.

Saturday we had hubby's family over for a work day. After the water fiasco in January we had cleaned out most of the garage, but there was still a bunch of stuff that needed to go. Most of it was donation stuff rather than garbage stuff. Two loads of stuff went down the road to the Value Village! The extra coffee table finally made it's way to his brother's house! The car once again resides in the garage! My half of the garage is still too full to park my car in there, but that's OK with me for now. We have to figure out what to do with the three bicycles that are in there before both cars will fit.

Sunday I sorted my stash. A while ago I decided I needed to get a grip on the scope of the problem. I moved almost all of my stash and UFOs to the spare room. Saturday night and Sunday were spent sorting and organizing. I'm not finished, but it's much better. And I have much to donate at guild next week. When I was mostly done for the day I showed my hubby how much work I'd done. He looked at me sideways and told me that I could get kicked out of the club for showing him the whole stash. :-)

Also on Sunday I finished the store sample stole! It's taken me 6 months and was mostly an endurance contest, but it is finally done. It's in the car and ready to be delivered to the store tonight after work. There are no pictures. We've hit the season of little light and most of it bad for photos. Also on the finished list are 3 cotton wash cloths that were done but for the weaving in of ends. I did that too.

I did cast on a Koolhaas hat, but it doesn't qualify as a new project. It's the second half of a UFO. The first half was to spin the llama yarn for a friend. Now turning the yarn into a hat is part 2. Still waiting to see if the fuzziness of the yarn works with the pattern. I've also picked up a pair of socks that have been languishing at the bottom of my bag, so progress continues. I plan to continue to work on UFOs for a while. I have plenty to keep me busy at least until January. We'll see if I continue the ban on new projects after the new year. On that note, I feel a disturbance in the force. ROE may make it out of the 'I still hate you' pile before long. :-)

Success!

Here we have the Scalloped Wrap! I finished the knitting, grafting, washing, blocking and crawled into bed at 1am. This morning she was ready to rock. I tried to get pictures of this with me as the model, but they all looked like ass, so here we have the lovely office chair!

If I can get better lighting and pics I'll post them. I may even show you my new shoes. Happy Samhain! <;-)

Can't blog, knitting...

The first half of the Scalloped Wrap is done. I'm 15 out of 27 repeats into the second half. I pinned out the first half to check how big it would be. I think it'll do, but if I have the time I may add a couple more after I get the second half complete. We have a pretty full weekend of non-knitting activities, so this looks like it's going to come down to the wire. Gotta go work now so I can knit this afternoon. I hope my phone is quiet today. :-)

Scalloped Wrap

The scalloped Wrap is coming right along. And I was able to get pictures of it. And I was able to get those pics from my camera to my computer. Truly the technology goddess was smiling on me yesterday. Of course, the penalty for all that was my total inability to open any excel files for the last 30 minutes of my day, but who wants to do any work then anyway?

I am currently working on my 23rd pattern repeat. This is made in 2 pieces then grafted together. I'll finish the 27 repeats the pattern calls for and do the other half. At that point I need to give it a bit of a blocking to see if it's really going to be long enough. I have concerns at this point, but it's impossible to tell what the final result will be without at least pinning it out a bit.

20 days until I want to wear this, I'm feeling good about my progress.

Wanted: more time.

My ravelry invite came last week. In fact it came the same day as the Harlot visited Seattle. Me and my Jayne hat made her blog! So today I've been playing around on Ravelry. My ID is Visionsister, let's be friends! I've done some things from memory, but have realized that I'm going to have to sit down at home and devote some time to sorting out my stuff so I can list it. Crazy! It's the new crack.

I have officially given up on the idea that I'm going to be able to wear my mystery stole any time soon. I still love the project, but the charts require a level of concentration that I don't have available just now. Since I have sort of set a precedent of wearing something hand knit for Samhain I was in a bit of a pickle. Until yesterday. I accidentally fell in to Village Yarn & Tea and bought yarn. And a pattern. And beads. oops! It's a lace wrap with a simple pattern that shouldn't take too long to memorize. I'm using Misti Alpaca lace in a berry sorbet kind of color. It's 2-ply and each ply is a different shade of berry. I'm loving it so far. Luckily the beads are only on the border. You knit 2 halves and graft them together in the middle. That being the case, I'm knitting both halves at the same time. I did the beaded bit last night and have almost finished the first lace repeat today. I have 5 weeks to finish. Think I'll make it?

Slip Slidin' Away

The summer has really just slipped by me. Again. It's been busy and crazy and fun, but I am ready for things to slow down to a more sane pace. So catching up then...

GenCon was wonderful. Four full days of geeky bliss! I hope we can go again next year, I'd like to actually sign up for a game or two next time. There was knitting on the plane, but that was it. I'm still trying to finish the socks I started at Stitch 'n Pitch.

MS3 is still in the same place it was before we left. Collecting dust most likely. I would like to finish it by the end of October, it would be great to wear it for Samhain. I'm starting to get the knitting jones pretty strong. They keep promising the weather is going to cool down, but it's 80 degrees again today. The internal clock is certainly telling me it's time for fall, I was having a fantasy about beef barley soup earlier.

Some friends of ours introduced us to Guild Wars. I never got into online pc games, but I asked about it while strolling around GenCon and next thing I knew we were completely sucked in. I'm really enjoying the game and the ability to hook up online with friends for a couple hours of adventure. The down side is that our evenings at home are now spent with the game and not the knitting. That's going to make it trickier to finish anything. Ever. Like I need anything else to get in my way there.

Once again I have too many books out of the library, too many projects on the needles, and too many things I'd like to do in my free time. Clearly I need more time. Can anyone spare an extra couple of... months?

Oh yeah, and I just checked and there are only 642 people left ahead of me on the Ravelry waiting list. I'm sure that'll help!

This and That

No pictures today because as usual I am lame. I have more MS3 pics, but haven't had the time to deal with the fact that my computer and my camera don't like each other. So, that will have to wait. I have not yet received socks from my Sockapalooza pal. I mailed the Sangria Monkeys on the 2nd and they have safely arrived in California with Cpurl.

Tomorrow we fly to Indianapolis for GenCon, the four biggest days in gaming (or so their website says) for a geek filled vacation. Tonight I will be packing and deciding what knitting will be going with. I'll have to decide if MS3 is worth packing along to knit on the plane, or if it's better to stick to socks the whole time. Such a dilemma!

Mystery Stole 3

Yes, I am another one who has fallen down this rabbit hole. And what's more, I've taken my mom with me. She's in town this week for tonight's Stitch & Pitch game. We had a nice chance to sit and compare our work on this project so far.

First there was this.

Which quickly turned into this.

Right after that dried and I was happy with the guage, this happened.

It didn't take long to finish the first clue. I'm loving the beads and the look of this as it grows. It's fun to see how the chart pictures become real in the knitting. I'm currently working on clue 4 and I have progress pics of clues 2 & 3. If I can manage to get my camera and my computer to play well together, I'll post those soon.

ETA: If there's a way to reply to comments, I don't know what it is. I'm using size US 3 addi lace needles.