WIP Wednesday ~August 31st~

I'm sure everyone this week is excited to see the Patchwork Baby Blanket almosrt completely finished. I'm about a third of the way through finishing the 4 stitch I-cord border that I'm applying to give the blankie a little more structure. It seems the weight of the bottem squares can make the upper squares stretch when up, I'm hoping this will make it a little tougher. Of course, this is a teaser. You wouldn't think I'd give you the almost final reveal, would you? Hopefully, I'll have a beautiful finished blankie to share at FO friday! Feels like forever since I've had a FO..

My Wineberry socks have been coming along nicely too.  They have been making the trek to the lab with me every day and have been steadily growing. I took a chance to stop and smell the roses on the way out today, and found a nice wooden bench for my socks to rest. I think I'm almost ready to start the heel on these puppies.





For more WIP Wednesday maddness, check out Tami's Amis for a complete list of participating blogs.

Yarn in the house

My backordered yarn came in today. 10 beautiful skeins of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes Bulky in Oregano. The pictures I took just don't do the color justice, its an absolute gorgeous olive green. Of course, I should wait until I finish the Patchwork Baby Blanket. Well.... maybe I could knit just the swatch...

In baby blanket news, since I missed WIP Wednesday this week, I am DONE DONE DONE with the sewing. That took much longer than I had estimated, but then again I also estimated that I would only have to sew each seam once. Between my inexperience with sewing knitted items, and being a perfectionist I probably ended up sewing three times as many seams as the blanket actually required.  I also realized that I can't count. I had two extra brown squares when all was said and done. 

This morning, I finished weaving in ends, and this afternoon I started the I-cord edging. I'm so excited to finish this project, especially since I made it without any type of pattern. I'm wondering if I should try to write up the pattern.

Needle Eating House!

Either my house has starting eating knitting needles, or a small black hole has opened up in my living room.

Last night, I was putting up my interchangeable needle set that I had pulled while fiddling with a new design I had been thinking about. I picked it up from the wrong side of the case and all the needles dumped out on the floor. Of course, I panicked, and quickly gathered them up. I came up two needles short. One size 7 was missing, and one size 10.5 was missing.

Now granted, I hardly even use either of these sizes because I typically get gauge with 8s and 11s, but I had to find those needles! It was one thing if they were a set, but now I have two unmatched needles and just looking at them was driving me crazy.

I looked in the couch, under the cushions, under the couch, under the rug, in a couch I wasn't even near, boxes in the next room... I traced the room on my hands and knees looking next to the base boards. Those two needles were absolutely gone. Gone! I think my SO thought I had gone a little mad by the time I was moving the furniture out of the room.

Maybe I should just give up and let them either turn up, or just resolve myself that my two needles have passed through the event horizon never to be seen again.

How Not to Sew Blocks Together

 More sewing fun....
After about two full evening of fiddling with the horizontal sewing for all these blocks, I was resigned. Every time I tried attaching two blocks, one on top of the other I resulted in having gaps in the garter stitch in between. If I didn't have these gaps, I had terrible bunching on the other side.

Yes, the s isn't capitalized. But there is one person out there laughing about Growth Associated Proteins...

Was I fooling myself? Maybe it was supposed to look like this and the image in my head was impossible. I couldn't find any pictures online of what the back of this seaming was supposed to look like, so maybe its a dirty knitting secret no one mentions?  After retrieving the thrown blocks again, I had resigned myself that this was how it was gonna look.

The next evening, I sewed 14 blocks into the first two vertical strips of my blankie. By the third strip, I wasn't paying close attention to what I was doing. (Actually, I was too busy yelling at the TV because the historical inaccuracies, and weapon choices, in The Deadliest Warrior reruns.) I looked down at my blocks. This new strip was different!

 

There were no gaps! I had no idea what I had done! I slowly picked it apart and found that I not chosen the farthest out loop on this one, but had picked one inner loop of the stitch from one block and the outer loop of the stitch on the other block. This resulted in the blocks slightly laying over each other, preventing the gap on the backside!

I feel clever!

Now to pick out the seaming on the first two strips and start again....

WIP Wednesday ~August 17th, 2011~

So many garter stitch squares... (49 to be exact!) Finally finished!  Kera couldn't help posing with the squares. The final products looks like its going to be about 3 feet by 3 feet before I add the i-cord border.

All my ends have been woven in and all the squares have been washed. Last night I happily sat down to start stitching them together. After about four hours of frustration, and several times of throwing two squares across the room, I remembered something that I'm sure my mother and my seventh grade Home Economics teacher know quite well.  I'm terrible at sewing.  It's gonna take a little long than I anticipated to get these squares sewn together in a way that looks decent. I don't even have two connected squares to show you.

I've also pulled a pair of socks out of hibernation to calm the frustration from sewing. My Berry Rose socks are Knitty's Blackrose Socks by Susie Avin in Dream in Color Everlasting Sock. When I saw this pattern I knew I had to do knit in a wine color. Just loving these, and glad that I have time for them again.  If any knitters out there find a disturbance in the space-time continuum that allows for more knitting time, please let me know!

Want more knitterly goodness and WIP Wednesday maddness? Check out Tami's Amis. Happy Wednesday!

Enabling and Fate

I'm surrounded by enablers...

Through my latest perusing of Ravelry, I came across a hoodie that I completely fell in love with. Vivian.  Check out the link, its absolutely gorgeous. It was published in the twist collective in the Winter 2008 issue, so I'm a little behind in the game. (Again.) You can see lots of projects of this work of art on Ravelry, which is really what sold me.

I tell myself "Nope, I'm on a yarn diet." Does that work? Not really. So I relied on my friends and family to keep me on course:

Option 1) The SO
I sent him the link for Vivian and asked him into talk me out of buying the yarn. His response "It looks nice. And, winter is coming" (I still can't believe he used A Song of Ice and Fire reference)
Option 2) The Nonknitting Friend
Again, I sent her the link. She also stated she loved the hoodie, and pointed out that I have a whole yarn closet now. (I did commandeer a whole closet in the new house for my knitting, and it IS mostly empty.)
Option 3) The Mother
My last hold out, I knew my mom would help me talk myself out of making the purchase and using the yarn I already had. She also encouraged me to make it, saying that it was beautiful.

Behold the power of the Vivain Sweater!

I went ahead and ordered the yarn. And as fate has it... it's backordered until September. Back to the garter stitch baby blanket...

WIP Wednesday ~August 10th, 2011~

The baby blanket madness continues and I feel sooo close to finishing the squares. I'm missing a few chocolate squares in the picture. Green squares: Complete! Cream squares: Complete! Chocolate squares: only eight more to go! Woohoo! The garter stitch insanity is almost over.



This week, my very fist drop spindle arrived with a small sample of blue fiber. I'm already in love with it.

Sadly, my yarn is still very sad looking. This was the best picture I could get. I really don't spin in this postion. So far, my yarn is thick and thin. I think I need to work more on my drafting. My yarn is very far past bulky.


For more WIP madness, visit Tami's Amis to see other blogs filled with awesome WIPs.

WIP Wednesday ~August 3rd, 2011~

Still chugging along on the emergency baby blanket, and all other WIPs are on hold still I finish this project.  So far, it's still pretty hip to be a square.

Progress Report:
12 of 12 cream squares finished.
12 of 24 chocolate squares finished.
2 of 13 green squares finished.

26 of 49 total squares done!


However, the loose ends are starting to taunt me...

I'm actually getting excited about stitching these babies together and adding the i-cord. These are both techniques I've done very little. Practicing new things is always fun!










 If you were reading last week, you're probably wondering why so few squares have joined the brigade. My other wip has been taking up a lot of time. With some help from some great friends, and my poor SO's thrown out back, we're officially "moved in" to our new house! Well, our stuff is here... Unpacking to continue.

And the heat around here isn't helping either. But is it too hot to knit? Nah.

Looking for more WIP Wednesday action? Head on over to Tami's Amis to see even more works in progress.