Monthly Archives: April 2008


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getting close to the big 5-2

I was going to post these last night, but instead chose to take a really long shower and curl up in front of Big Brother with my knitting. (I know, I should have taken the shower after Big Brother to get rid of the dirty feeling, but I hadn’t thought all the way through).

In any case, here’s Mommy with Jakob at 47 weeks.
I swear he looks like a teenager sometimes.
It doesnt’ help when we dress him like this. Holding him in this vest is like trying to hold a cuddly marshmallow that gives you kisses- it fills up your arms and you can barely hold on…but it’s worth it!


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red and blue

Things have been getting done around here, I promise. For some reason, though, every night around 8 or 9 pm I’ve been getting a headache and all I want to do is go to bed. I haven’t gotten as much accomplished as I would have liked, but here is some of what I’ve been doing:

I was commissioned to do the finishing work on this baby sweater that my mom’s manicurist knit. This is the sweater that (did I already blog this?) I had to go help her fix when she realized after finishing the two sleeves that she’d knit the cuffs with the larger needle, instead of the smaller one. So I showed her how to slip the stitches of one row onto a smaller needle and cut and unpick 1 row, then unravel the now-released cuff and reknit the cuff in the opposite direction. Anyways, she didn’t feel up to doing the finishing work, so she asked me to do it for her, and handed me the pattern and a bag with the fronts, back and sleeves. I sewed it up for her, and this is the result. It’s a really cute sweater, and it just needs a button to be all finished.
I’ve also been working on Jakob’s Cabled Cardigan lately, and to prove it, here are some progress photos. I keep meaning to block the pieces pre-seaming but I was going to do it after the first front and decided to wait until both were done, then I was going to do it after the first sleeve but am now waiting until both are done. Or I might not block it at all, until after the seaming is done. We’ll see. This photo shows the back, two fronts and 1 sleeve.


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more stash fun!

This is an old post, I had saved it as a draft on April 3rd while waiting to see if it was ok to post Robyn’s April Sock Club kit, and then forgot to publish the post.
Isn’t this gorgeous? It’s similar to the first sock club yarn but still different, and I really, really LOVE the colors. I also think the sock pattern itself is fabulous. It’s so simple, but the effect is really stricking, and I am looking forwards to knitting it.
Here’s a closeup of the yarn. Isn’t it beautiful?

p.s. It doesn’t count as stash purchasing because I told Robyn I wanted to buy it last year.

Other recent stash aquisitions that are not purchases that break my “year of the stash” rule because they are for specific projects:

Black Regia 4ply for Yannick’s mom’s Christmas socks. She wants the Queen of Cups pattern from Knitty.com (I’m too tired to go look up the exact link right now). I have black sock yarn in my stash but one set is acrylic and I’m not giving her that, and the other is Sisu which I haven’t yet washed and I’m afraid to give her something that pills badly. No one is really interested in my knitting and they always hear Yannick rave about his socks and they have admired how well the Regia is after being thrown in the washer and dryer all the time…I’m afraid to switch brands and give them something that doesn’t wear well and have them disappointed with how the socks turn out. (I say “them” because I’m also going to knit a plain stockinette pair for Yannick’s dad).
This is the Dream in Color Smooshy I picked up from Robyn’s shop. I know what you’re thinking, but this really isn’t a purchase. I fell hard for the shawl pattern “Jeannie” from the Winter Knitty, and had Yannick help me choose a color. I wanted black or red but he chose the color “Into the Mystic” from the Dream in Color website. I didn’t think it was what I wanted (I didn’t think it went with black as well as it would probably go with denim) so he said that if I knit it and wasn’t happy with the final result, he’d pay me back for the yarn. I thought I’d ordered it right away but after the New Year I contacted the company and it turns out I’d never placed the order. Right when I was about to order it Robyn told me she was getting some into her shop, so I ended up ordering it from her. In the end the colorway looks NOTHING like what it does online, but I really love the color it turned out to be! It’s going to be one gorgeous shawl.
This is a bunch of Patons yarn that I picked up for my submission to the 2008 Mary Maxim design contest. You have to use yarns from certain brands, so I bought this for my 2 submissions.

Well, that’s it. More yarn added to my stash, although no unlawful purchasing has been done. 🙂


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thursday and friday

You know that ad that seems to run every so often, the one that has the baby in a high chair all covered in spaghetti and spaghetti sauce? The one that makes you wonder how long it took to stage?

For the first time, I believe it wasn’t staged. I also don’t entirely blame the baby. See this mess?
I did it. It was so horrible, I felt like I was in a sitcom. I was about to put Jakob’s supper on the counter to cool but I must have let my hands relax without realizing it, because the next thing I knew the bowl was on the floor and its entire contents were splattered all over the floor, cabinets, counter tops, high chair and even the patio window. Ugh. I think his supper that night was a mix of pasta, chili sauce, brussel sprouts, corn and carrots, but all I can remember is chasing the little pasta balls around the kitchen. Every time I thought I’d found them all…I’d step on another one.

My local library has a section of used books for sale, and I take a look every time I go in. I realized I’d forgotten to post about the different books I’d purchased, so here you go:

This craft book looks very interesting. The whole book is full of full-page color photos, and the crafts will be fun once Jakob is older.
This one looked good too. Did I mention they were $2 each?
The best score, hands-down, was this collection:

I don’t remember how many I bought, but they were only $0.25 each, and each issue has knitting patterns, crochet patterns and all kinds of other crafts. How cool!

Finally, here’s Mommy with Jakob at 46 weeks.

Look at those teeth! His last top front tooth came in today, so that makes all 4 of his top front teeth, and his center 2 bottom teeth. I was going to leave you with this photo and end this post, but I couldn’t resist showing you the next one.
You’d have to know him in person to know what he’s doing here. See his little mouth? He blows kisses at you! I took this photo right as he started to pucker up. It’s so cute, out of the blue he’ll just look at you and start kissing the air. If he’s really feeling affectionate, he’ll pull you close and give you a kiss right on the cheek or lips.

Coming soon…a recap of Saturday and Sunday with Sally Melville and the latest since the weekend.


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And the winner is…

8 of you entered my little contest, so I went over to a random number generator and asked for 1 interger betweenn 1 and 8.

The result, as you can see here, is….

6!!!

Congratulations (hold on while I go look up who number 6 was) Robyn! You win a $30 gift certificate to your choice of online yarn store. Anything you want from your own shop? LOL

To everyone who didn’t win, thank you for playing! I had a fun time coming up with a 7-themed contest, and I hope you enjoyed choosing something for each sin. Please know that everything truly was random and I was just as excited to see who the winner would be as you guys were/are. I hope you feel like I did this fairly, and look forwards to more contests in the future.


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more procrastination…

In keeping with my apparent fondness for throwing in extra projects even when I have deadlines, I present the 2 other projects that made up the 5 that I spent the last week on, instead of the stuff I should have been knitting.

Yannick’s cousins welcomed their second child Emily on Monday, and we were supposed to go to the hospital on Wednesday night to meet her. I couldn’t show up empty handed, especially after making/bringing something for their first-born (anyone remember Elodie’s Sweater and Booties?).

I grabbed some stash yarn and cast on for the Child’s Placket Neck Pullover (Ravelry link) Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. I know that when I’d knit it for Jakob, it had only taken me 8 hours, so with 2 evenings ahead of me, I should have been able to finish a sweater for Emily.

I didn’t do a gauge swatch because I figured it was for a baby…if it didn’t fit her at a year it would fit her at 6 months, or 18 months. Ahem. I *should* have knit a swatch, because after I cast on the number of stitches for the 1 year size and finished the 8 rows of seed stitch border, well, it was big enough to fit me!

That got promptly ripped back. Unfortunately it was now about 9 pm on Monday, leaving me with only another hour or so to knit before bed, and then Tuesday night to make something for Elodie so she wouldn’t feel left out. I had to find something quick. I found it in the Blanket Buddy pattern from Lionbrand. It is a pattern that you can either knit or crochet, and after browsing the Ravelry archives for a bit, I decided I liked the crochet version better. Plus, crochet is faster than knitting (although it does take more yarn), so I knew I had a better chance of getting it done on time.

It came out perfect, with one small flaw. It’s small. It’s supposed to be about 17″ long. Mine? Maybe 8″. I switched yarns and instead of using a bulky yarn I used a dk-weight yarn. I didn’t feel like fussing with the pattern (although it is really easy to make it whatever size you want) so I left it as is.
Here’s a bad photo of it with Jakob to give you an idea of it’s actual size.

I figure that it’s being given to an infant. She’s tiny, so her little toy can be tiny. Who knows…maybe she’ll end up loving it and it will be the “doodoo” that she carries around until she’s 18?

As I mentioned I wanted to give something to Elodie as well so she wouldn’t feel jealous of the attention (and gifts) that the new baby was getting.

After some debate between knitting anothe cupcake, another bunny or another swatch bunny, the cupcake won. Both bunnies only take about an hour or two of knitting, but they each have quite a bit of seaming. The cupcake takes under an hour to knit and really only has 4 ends to weave in once you’re done.

This time I followed the pattern exactly as written. I won’t do that again. There’s nothing *wrong* with the pattern, but my (and Yannick’s) mental image of a cupcake has some overhang where the top meets the base. We’re probably influenced by our love of muffins, and we freely admit that. Regardless…we like my variation on the cupcake better, so when I knit more of these (“when”, not “if”) I will continue to use my increase/decrease rounds in the icing section.

On Wednesday night we found out that they were leaving the hospital in the morning to go home, so instead of running down there we made plans to go see them and their home this weekend. With my now-free time I sat down to knit and by the time the CSIs in New York had caught Suspect X, I had finished all 4 of my swatches for the Sally Melville workshop this weekend.
Yup, I’ll be spending the weekend learning from Mrs. Knit Stitch and Purl Stitch herself. Is it cheesy if I bring my books for her to sign?


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8 entries…

…in my Se7en Deadly Sins of Knitting contest:
Keatyn
Maaike
Caroline
Kadi
Tara
Robyn
Dianne
Criquette snuck in at the almost-last minute.

Keep ’em coming- only 46 minutes to go!

p.s. Just so you know how this will all go down…tomorrow I will give you each a number based on your order in this running tally of entries (Keatyn is #1, Maaike is #2, and so on). I will use a random-number generator to choose the winning number. Easy-peasy.


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procrastinating

Seeing as how I’ve never met a deadline I didn’t like, I’ve got a lot on my knitting plate right now. That still didn’t stop me from throwing some (5!!) new projects into the mix.

Remember those swatches I showed you? They became bunnies!

A friend is in town with her young daughter and I wanted to make her a little something. (I admit to also being influenced by the cuteness of Amy’s swatch bunny and wanting to make one myself).

The pink one is for Rebecca.
This wee little bunny is TINY!
All together only an inch and a half long! Yannick thinks an 18 month old might try to swallow the bunny, so I’ll tell her mother to put it away until she thinks she’s old enough to play with it.

Here’s a link to the free pattern.

I really wanted one for myself too, which led to this little guy:

Isn’t he precious? I followed the pattern as written for each, but modified the ears so they wouldn’t end up too huge. Plus I added a little loop on mine so I can hang it on my keychain.

It will be hard to separate the two- they seem to be getting along quite well!

I don’t know why this photo has me thinking of the Cabbage Patch Kids.


So those are 2 of the 5 new projects. This weekend I also worked on a little something for one of the girls in Jakob’s playgroup. The first of our kids turned 1, and we had a little party for her on Monday. Everyone had agreed “no gifts” but I couldn’t show up empty handed, so I make a quick little cupcake for her. It only took 2 hours to knit, stuff and sew, and I put a bell inside too so that it rattles.

I had wanted to put a “B” on top for Brooklyn, the birthday girl, but after I knit the icord and held it in place, it looked really stupid and bulky (instead of sweet and icing-y like I’d envisioned). Yannick encouraged me to add some sprinkles instead.


The pattern is a free one, from here. I did make a few modifications. Besides not doing the cherry on top, I skipped row 1 and went right into the increase row to avoid the point at the bottom that I saw on some finished ones. I also added an increase row after the first k row of the icing section. I did a *p1, yo, rep from * around” row, and on the following row I purled but every time I got to one of the yarn-overs I purled it through the back loop to close the hole. After purling another row or so I did a *p2tog, repeat from * around” row to get back to the original number of stitches. I wanted the cupcake top to have a puffy look where it joined the cake part. I didn’t stuff it exactly right, but it gives a look closer to what I’d wanted.