Category Archives: Knitting


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a good day

The boys were pretty awesome today, and I was able to first study and then knit while they played quietly around me, and then even more while they napped (while they didn’t actually sleep, they did play quietly in one of their rooms).  Once they were in bed Yannick brought home a yummy salmon tartare supper from Porto Vino (all mine- mussels for him) so I didn’t even have to cook, and then I got to knit even more while he went out to go study at Tim’s.

So now it’s bed time and not only did I manage to get todays’ rows in, but I also got tomorrows’ rows done.  See- a good day.


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hmm

No new progress tonight, but since I’m supposed to do 12 rows/day I guess it’s good I got 12 extra row done last night.

I would have knit today but in the afternoon I got an email needing me to verify one of my patterns after it had been tech edited.  I wanted to be sure it was correct before it was published, so I had to go row by row and check it out.  Then after work I met up with Jakob’s girlfriend and her mom, and we took the kids to McDonald’s for a treat of nuggets and fries for dinner, then some playtime in the park to get their energy out before bed.  I’d thought I’d be home just a bit late for bedtime, maybe 7:30-ish…but we only ended up leaving the restaurant at 8:30.  The kids have such a blast playing together, it’s a Friday so I figured it would be ok if they slept in tomorrow, and plus my future “in-law” and I (so said, because Jakob tells me daily how he’s going to marry his girlfriend) get along super well.

Once we got home and the kids were finally in bed, I kept working on my pattern and before I knew it, it was 2:00 am.  So no knitting, but at least the pattern editing was done.


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and we’re back on track!

Well we didn’t get quite the freezing rain that was expected, but we didn’t know that until late in the day, so I got to stay home.  The boys, however, were at daycare, which meant KNITTING TIME!

Again, the blog is kinda boring, but at least I’ve got good news- I’m officially caught up.  I’m not ahead, unfortunately, but I’m exactly at where I needed to be to be on track to finish in time to ship it in by the deadline.


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today’s progress is…

Hmm.  Confession time.  I mis-read my Excel spreadsheet.  What I should have said yesterday is that I was 32 rows behind schedule, not 6.

Because I knew how much knitting I’d have to do, I spent most of the weekend studying, trying to get ahead to be on track for the knitting marathon.

By the time I go to bed tonight, I’ll be 24 rows behind schedule from where I should have been by tonight.  But I have hope- they’re calling for freezing rain tomorrow which means I’ll be staying home, and can ideally get a ton of knitting done to not only catch up on the outstanding rows, but also get tomorrow’s rows done as well.

I hope!


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so…….

Did a ton of knitting today.  I’ll be doing a ton of knitting tomorrow too.  And the next day.  And…every foreseeable day in the near future.

See I got another design accepted- YAY!

But I’m not allowed to talk about it- BOO.

But it’s really exciting- YAY!

But it’s kinda big and will take a lot of work to get it done by the deadline- BOO.

But it’s my first time that I’m going to be published in this source- YAY!

But I’m not allowed to blog about it until it’s preview goes live- BOO.

So I regret that I won’t have much to show you guys for the next little bit.  I’m going to try to take more pics of the boys to keep the blog colorful.  Since I need to pay attention to this knitting, if I find myself with times where I can work on my January socks (which, let’s be honest, will be moved into February) I’ll blog those.

I can share vague updates though.  I’ve already designed the pattern, and am knitting my way through it to test it out.  Because of this I know exactly how many rows there are, and how many I need to do each night to stay on track.  As of today I’m…uh…6 rows behind schedule.  Oops.


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january sock progress

Last night was fun!  It turned out we had a lot of mutual friends (as evidenced by our Facebook pages) that I’ve known since high school, and a few of them were at the party too.  I got to spend the night catching up with old friends and reminiscing about the “olden days”.  🙂  Then came home and crashed while Yannick went back in to work to organize everything from his busy day (he’d left it all to come home for the party).

Today the boys had swimming this morning, then I had to go in to work to take care of some stuff.  I got home in time to help give the boys supper, then was back out the door to go watch my friend Debbie’s mid-year dance show.  She takes…um…hip hop I think, and every year for the last 3 or so I go to her mid-year and year-end shows.  The dance school she’s in is run by a local guy who has since made it very big, with dancers and crews appearing on major TV shows, in celebrity music videos and he even choreographed a very well-known music video game.  I think it’s really cool ‘cus I’ve known him since before he started all this.  We were in a show together at Place des Arts years ago…I think it might have been his first choreographing gig, plus we both acted in it.  It’s really cool to see people you know “make it big”.

Since I’ve mastered the art of knitting without looking, I spent the whole dance show knitting on my sock.  Here’s the progress so far.  Yes, I’m supposed to knit a-sock-a-month…but I have a good excuse (more info tomorrow).  I’ll get to the socks eventually…I swear.

I’m really proud of the yarn, however.  This was the yarn that I dyed myself and tried very hard to make it self-striping in shades of green.  Mom’s scarf showed me it would stripe, but I’d designed it for the average width of a woman’s sock, and have been really eager to see how it would stripe in a pair of socks for me.  Making me really happy!


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vegas kal #2 also done!

Remember I said I’d figured out how to fix/finish the too-small, too-“not me” Vegas scarf?  It was simple- I’ve got an engagement party this weekend for an old friend- my grad date, actually- who’s getting remarried.  He’s got a daughter from his first marriage who’s 2 months older than Jakob, and we’ve been having playdates with them for years.   Back “in the day” both he and I used to play Vampire: the Masquerade (though not together, except for one truly epic HUGE game at UofM) and he went through a bit of a goth phase, and his daughter definitely has some of that in her too.  Her winter coat is black, and I decided to put the hastily-ripped-from-the-needles scarf back on, and finish it to give to her as a gift.  Her dad (and his fiance) will be getting a gift from their registry, but the daughter is a part of this new family being created and I wanted her to have a gift to open too.

Last night after finishing MY scarf I slowly ripped back the last row of live sts- a fun fur row…making this not much fun at all.  Still, eventually I had all 264 sts back on my needle.

OH!  Guess what?!?  Part of the reason the scarf wasn’t doing it for me, is that I could sense it was kinda small.  Well, no wonder- turns out I wasn’t using a 5mm after all- I’d been using a 3.5mm!!  BIG difference!  I’d had both loose with their Addi bags in a project bag, saw the 5mm bag and nearby a needle and grabbed it, never stopping to see that it wasn’t the needle from that bag.

Anyways, I got it back on the 3.5mm, and did about 4 more rows just so it would feel “finished” to me.  I confess I didn’t roll or flip, I just used the yarns I wanted to use, and made the scarf look slightly asymmetrical, yet balanced.  I got through about 1.5 of those rows yesterday, but it got late and I put it off ’til today.

This is both halves of the same scarf, showing the two different sides.  You can see the split down the middle, though it’s hard to see through the fuzz.

This morning I went solo to the non-zoned French school’s open house.  It turns out it’s not an option for us.  The problem is that you have to apply every year for permission to transfer to your non-zoned school…even once your child is registered there.  So even if Jakob gets in for kindergarten, we’d have to reapply for grade 1, 2, etc before each new school year.  To begin with, they refuse over 85% of transfer requests because they need to keep a minimum of kids in their zoned schools, and what really is the clincher for me, is that even if he gets in for kindergarten, if any random year later our zoned school doesn’t have enough kids, they can refuse us and we’d have to transfer to the zoned school.  There’s no way I can have Jakob in a school and making friends and have to worry every single year if he’ll have to transfer away.  And then in a few years go through the same thing with Henri.  Uh uh.

Once I got home I had some lunch, then sat down to start catching up on the last 2 weeks of Once Upon a Time and Desperate Housewives.  While watching I did the last few rows (everything from the white section to the end from the pic above), and then I bound off with the same yarn combo I’d cast-on with, and twisted the fringe with Maaike’s handy-dandy fringe twister.  Man that thing is awesome!  Gonna have to get Yannick to build me one of those.

Now both scarves are done and I get to head over to my original surgeon’s office to see if he can find my hernia(s) yet, and to let him know that I’ve seen another surgeon, and have got the diagnostic laprascopy scheduled.  Not sure which is going to be more uncomfortable…the examination or the confession.


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organized chaos kal vegas scarf

It’s done!  And it’s awesome!!!

I love this scarf.  Have I mentioned that yet?

I don’t know what’s going on with my eyes or cheeks here, but Yannick’s not home and it’s the best self-portrait I managed to take.

These colors suck ‘cus it’s late and there’s no natural light, and the flash completely washed them out.  But still, I just finished twisting the fringe-

(See- fringe!  It’s colorful!)

-and I couldn’t wait to take pics.  Look- it’s a sequin!  I love how the thinner mohair yarn around the thicker yarn makes that “scribble” effect.  I need a whole shawl like that.

Sorry for the flash, but this was the best I could get, color-accuracy-wise.

So in the end this scarf was 63 rows (61 if you count first and last as co/bo), all designated by rolling a die/flipping a coin, as per my Vegas Scarf AKA The Knitting Game pattern.  I cast-on Jan 21st and finished Jan 25th, but really didn’t knit at all on Sunday or Tuesday, and not very much on Monday, so if you’ve got a bit of time here and there, you’ve got a scarf.  You could also use this same technique for a larger shawl, or tuck the fringe in and make a pillow cover, or a blanket…there’s a lot you can do, and every one will be different.  You can find more pics of mine, and those others have made, oven in Ravelry.

Completely unrelated, but I’ve got Much Music on in the background as I type this and there’s a song that has the guy from Marianas Trench doing a guest vocal.  I love his voice-oh and that scream at the end…amazing!  I’ve been too busy with podcasts to buy any music in the last few years, but I keep meaning to get a MT album, I love their sound and the wit behind their lyrics/videos.  Them, and Pink.  I think she’s my favorite female singer but I’m at least 2 albums behind.


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so in love

Oh my gosh.  I didn’t know I could fall so hard, so fast.

I love this scarf so much.  I cast on while the boys were playing after breakfast and I made it through 20 rows before calling it a night.

Totally gratuitous shot of my sparkly nails.

I love these yarns so much.  Each row is so delicious to knit I can practically taste it in my mouth.  I love seeing the colors line up, and seeing the mix of garter, stockinette and reverse stockinette.

I will confess that this is going to be called my “Organized Chaos” Vegas scarf for a reason.  I wanted to stay true to my original plan, and my original rolls of the die, and flips of the coin.  Luckily I’d prerolled 63 rows for the original scarf, and I decided to use them all, exactly as is.  I only did one teensy bit of pre-planning.  Two of the yarns (Bonsai and Tiara) had pretty short yardages, under 100y each.  I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t run short, so I quickly tallied up how many rows of each color I had prerolled, and assigned the rarest number to the Bonsai, which had the shortest yardage, and the 2nd least common number to the Tiara.  The rest were nearly the same, so I plugged them in randomly.

I did find it interesting to note that although the rolls didn’t seem “random” in the sense that threw people off on FB and in Rav (some numbers occurring repeatedly, or too close together), in my case it turned out that my non-appearing random numbers actually had a pretty even split of the rolls.

Wait, did that come out clear?  Let me rephrase- some people rolled the same number in succession, and chose to re-roll the “non random” number, or swap it for something else.  While the rolls really were random, it was bugging some people that they weren’t turning out “even”.  So what I found entertaining was that even though in some sections of the 63 rows the same colors kept coming up, so that area didn’t feel “even”, overall I got a pretty good split.  See:

Yarn 1: Polaris (gray with sequins)- 11 rows

Yarn 2: Bonsai (green tape)- 8 rows

Yarn 3: Marble (jewel tones)- 13 rows

Yarn 4: Campus (darker green/purple)- 12 rows

Yarn 5: Tiara (mauve with sparkle)- 9 rows

Yarn 6: Party Angel (fuchsia with sparkle)- 10 rows

Which means that yes, out of 63 rows (of which I counted row 1 as my cast on and row 63 as my bind off) I had each of the 6 yarns coming out with 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 repeats.

That’s pretty cool to me!


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new beau

I was originally planning on just hitting up Walmart or Zellers and grabbing some random chunky yarn in colors I liked, or assorted random yarns in 1 color I liked, but Maaike convinced me to check out my LYS first.  I’d been hesitant ‘cus I didn’t want to end up with an $80 scarf, but I went.  And I fell.  Hard.

I’d been thinking something with blue in it, something bright, something to make my eyes stand out, since I’ve got a black winter coat.  I was looking at first at the chunky yarns, trying to find one yarn in 6 shades that I liked, but Diana who works there counseled me to just pull out anything that made me happy, and pile it on the table, and we’d go through it together.

These are what I decided upon.  The huge (almost 400y!) Marble Chunky was the first one I was drawn to, and we kept with the jewel tones and played with texture.  The Marble is 100% acrylic but I don’t care.  I’ve worked with the DK weight before (Jakob’s blue cardigan and my burgundy Clapotis) and I always enjoyed it.  I knew this ball would leave me a ton of leftovers and I plan on making at least a pair of slippers for myself from them.

Going clockwise we’ve got  Kertzer’s Tiara, which is a 72% Wool, 27% Nylon, 1% Polyester aran weight.  It’s the mauve one and it’s got a sparkly strand wrapped around it.  Next we’ve got the fuchsia ball of Debbie Bliss Party Angel, which is 72% Mohair, 24% Silk, 4% Metallic.  I don’t find it sheds at all, and I love the sparkly core it has.  The gray/white ball might be my fave of the bunch, and I hope to make another project with it one day.  It’s Rozetti Yarns’ Polaris, 65% Acrylic, 31% Wool, 4% Other.  That “other” is sequins!  It’s got sequins!  They’re prestrung about every 18″, and I. Am. In. Love.  It’s super soft, cushy, amazing.  Next up is Berroco’s Bonsai which is 97% Bamboo, 3% Nylon  and a lovely tape-type yarn with wonderful drape and shine.  The dark-looking one is another I fell for, Berroco’s Campus.  It’s 50% Wool, 40% Acrylic, 10% Alpaca.  Cushy, lovely, and I think my first time that I can remember knitting with an alpaca content.  Another amazing yarn I hope to use again.

I’m even more excited to re-start than I was to start!