Category Archives: WIP


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a week of pink knitting

I finished the Mary Maxim contest thingie on Sunday afternoon, right in between brunch with Yannick’s family and dinner with my family. They should have recieved it already (must go check that online!) and the judging takes place next week, so once I hear back from them I’ll post some photos of that project.

Once we’d got home and put Jakob to bed I swatched for Eden’s shrug. I swatched the Cottonlook first because I really wanted to use it, and luckily I got gauge easily with the required needles. It’s such a completely different fabric than I would have obtained with the Decor- the CL can actually be used on smaller needles so working on a 5mm results in a slightly open fabric that has a lot of drape, but the yarn (which is probably an acrylic/cotton blend) behaves as if it were a cotton/linen blend. In fact, it feels/looks remarkably similar to the Sirroco yarn I’d used for my Shapely Tank a few years ago. In any case, it will be a nice, light garment that will be perfect to wear over a short sleeved or tank topped dress.
So the swatch was done on Sunday, and then I ripped it out and began the shrug itself. The above photo shows my progress when I went to bed Sunday night.
I tried to get a closeup of the knitting but it doesn’t do the drape of the fabric justice.
This is where I was as of Monday night. It’s a fast knit!

There is no Tuesday night progress photo because I had no Tuesday night. I don’t know what came over me, but I was yawning during my whole drive home from work, and once Yannick came home and was able to take over playing with Jakob, I just crashed. I was actually asleep BEFORE 8pm for the first time in…I can’t even remember how long.
Here’s last night’s progress. All that remains to do is to pick up around the neck/back and do a few rows of ribbing, then the same thing on each cuff. I’m hoping to finish it tonight so it will be ready and wrapped before we meet Eden for the first time.


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what i did monday and yesterday

I unpacked the nuts and fruit and chocolates.

Oy. Let’s ignore the fact that my cuboards are full and I have no where to store the nuts and fruit and chocolates, ok?
I seamed the Marble cardi. I also ignored the pattern, which wanted me to knit the hood, then pick up and knit the button bands on the two fronts, THEN seam the cardi and sew on the hood. I did a few more mods as well, which I’ll detail when the project is finished.
I also managed to knit the two front bands. By the time I went to bed last night I’d picked up and started working the collar (I’m ignoring the hood).

I would have gotten more done, but Jakob has been sick and I only knit when he’s sleeping, if I’m not already eating, cleaning, doing laundry or staring at the TV in a dazed stupor. The poor kid started a fever on Friday night, and has been going back and forth from 99.5 to 103.3 ever since. Yesterday’s high was 102, today he went from 99.5 when he woke up from his nap to 101.5 2 hours later. I know it’s not as high, but his fevers have been higher at night, so we’re going back to the doctor to make sure his cold didn’t become an ear infection. He’s also got a wicked cough and a runny nose, so when he is awake, he’s kinda miserable. (His waking up around the clock has led to my dazed stupor). I’m sure the doctor will tell me it’s just a cold and to keep him on the tempra, but I’d rather be safe than sorry…especially with a fever that has lasted almost 6 days.

Hopefully by the time I post next I’ll have a completed Marble Cabled Cardigan.

You know what I didn’t do yesterday or Monday? Photograph my booty. (Uh- yarn or otherwise). I know you wanna see the new stash…but I can’t show it to you before I show it to Yannick, and he had bowling last night. Don’t worry…you’ll get photos soon. I still have to finish the rest of the WEBS trip. I haven’t even told you about the diner of freaky thoughts yet!


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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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this weekend

This was a good weekend.

On Saturday there was some of this:


Can you guess what those are? That’s a penny in there for scale.

Later that night there was some of this:
We went for dinner with one of the other moms in Jakob’s playgroup, and her husband and baby. She is actually married to someone I grew up with so it almost feels like we’ve been hanging out forever.

Today we had some of this:

My family came over to help Yannick grout the tiles in our den, but of course there were “Jakob breaks” every 10 minutes or so. Luckily the smurf took some naps, or they wouldn’t have gotten any work done!

There was also some of this:

My dad brought Jakob a Rubix Cube. He’s determined to give Jakob “thinker’s” toys to keep his brain working. My dad is also a huge fan of Art Bell, and his latest obsession is the Coral Castle…so I’m just lucky that he didn’t show up with a huge box of magnets (not that that won’t be cool once Jakob is old enough to not swallow them!).

Finally, there was some of this:

Can you tell what this is? I think I left too many details showing- I don’t think it is actually that hard to guess.

Answers tomorrow!


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777

To celebrate my blog reaching seven hundred and seventy seven posts, I’m holding a contest.

You’ve heard of the Seven Deadly Sins, right? (Or you’ve at least seen the movie Se7en, with Brad Pitt?) No? Well, the Seven Deadly Sins are Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth.
According to the Seven Deadly Sins website, these are how the sins are defined:
Pride is excessive belief in one’s own abilities, that interferes with the individual’s recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.

 

Envy is the desire for others’ traits, status, abilities, or situation.

Gluttony is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
Lust is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.
Anger is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath.

Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.

Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.
I started thinking about how these sins could relate to my knitting. I know that they don’t fit exactly, especially with the definitions as stated above. But, I knew that my knitting hobby wasn’t all love and roses either. So here’s my list:
Pride- Knitting Bag with Perfect Pocket. Oh I was so proud of myself! I *knew* I’d designed the PERFECT knitting bag, with exactly the right pockets to hold exactly the right accessories. I’d even created the Perfect Pocket with its specific features and purposes. It was going to be huge! Um…yeah. It’s been in storage so long that I have no clue where it is. It used to be Sam’s favorite sleeping spot, so what was a black felted bag is now really white and hairy. It’s huge- but in a “really big” sense, not a “everyone wants one” sense. And it’s unfinished. I consider my pride a wee bit checked, thanks to this project.
Envy- A swift and a niddy noddy. I’m so jealous of all of you who have one. Do I need them? No. But oh do I want them!
Gluttony-Homespun jacket and hat. Oh the gluttony here! I was in Ottawa and given the opportunity for a rare trip to Michael’s, the craft store. Did I buy something special? No. I bought about 35(!!!) skeins of LionBrand Homespun. I bought enough to make the jacket and hat for myself, plus enough red and black to make Yannick and I each oversized hooded sweatshirts. Well, after knitting with the homespun long enough to make my jacket, I discovered how the yarn releases little tufts of fiber as you knit. I was fed up of knitting with it long before even finishing the jacket, not to mention the way the yarn bunches along itself and has to be eased back down. Oh- and did I mention that I NEVER wear the jacket? It has lived on my mannequin ever since the original photos were taken – in 2006!! This was definitely a case of “eyes bigger than stomach”…in knitting terms, that is.
Lust- The Noro Kureyon striped scarf, as seen at Brooklyn Tweed. Maaike had pointed me over there and when I took one look at the scarf, I was hooked. I had to have one. NOW. I think I ordered the yarn for it in under a week, and not long after that, as soon as we’d finished our “current” projects, we cast on for a knitalong. Ever lust for something and then when you get it, it’s not as good as you thought? This was SO not like that. It was better than I’d thought. The knitting was mindless, the yarn was softer than I’d thought, and the color combination still thrills me. Score one for lust!
Anger- my dad’s thrummed mittens (no completed photo, only some old wip shots there, sorry). I’ve made peace with the mittens, but I’m still a little bitter about them. Of course, I’m mostly angry at myself. I was so looking forwards to knitting with a new technique (the thrums) that I didn’t stop to consider the recipient. Sure, my mom said my dad’s hands were always cold. Sure, nothing would be warmer than thrummed mittens. Sure. Unfortunately I didn’t think about who the gift was for- my dad, the smoker. Mittens have no fingers. You can’t smoke with mittens on. The mittens don’t get worn. Sigh. Moving on…
Greed- Patterns. Oh my- I can’t have enough. And it’s not just the free ones online or magazines, it’s pay ones too! Rogue, the pocket pals books, the wonderful Wallaby…so many patterns have found their way into my grubby little hands. And am I knitting them? Of course not. They are being stored so they can be savored…while I sit here trying to design my own stuff. There’s probably some irony here if I could be bothered to look.
Sloth- the Kosher Sweater. Come on- 3 years sitting in a bag with only 20 stitches waiting to be bound off?? That’s just plain lazy, folks.

So there you have it- my Seven Deadly Knitting Sins. I want to know what yours are. You can send your list by email, you can post it in a comment to this post, or you can post it to your blog and leave me a comment here to go take a look. You can use all words or you can include photos. My only condition is that you list something for each of the seven sins.

The contests starts today, and will end at midnight Wednesday, April 2 2008. That gives you 7 days to play.

Wanna know what you’re playing for?
The winner will get a $30 gift certificate to the online yarn store of their choice. Good luck!

Before I go, here are a few photos:

Mommy with Jakob at 45 weeks. He’s getting so big! This photo isn’t so great ‘cus he looks much chubbier than he is, but you can always go back a few posts and see him in his pjs on the rocking chair to know that he doesn’t have all that pudge. I’m not sure if you can click on the photo to see it bigger, but if you can- look at those teeth! You can also get a look at some family and wedding photos in the screen behind us. 🙂

I actually took this photo a few days ago but never got around to posting it. Since we had our time change so early in the year, there is so much light in the house when I get home from work! I took this photo at 6:30 at night, with no flash, in a room with one big window. I couldn’t get enough of the natural light and so I took this wip photo. Finally I managed to get one photo that shows the colors accurately AND shows the cable. This is the same cardigan front I showed you a few weeks ago.

Tonight there was a West Island Knitters meetup at a local brasserie (tavern) and I finished the front piece. I also helped my cousin Amy finish her swatch bunny. This was her first time seaming, and came right on the heels of her first time purling and her first time following a “pattern”.

It is so cute! Go over to her site to check it out, I’m sure she’ll have FO photos to share. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate- now I want one!

sd


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presenting…

…the swatches! I am so happy with how the yarn turned out! I think I’ve been over using the word “love” lately (I love the yarn, in love with certain patterns, love the way things come out) so I don’t want to sit here and say there’s yet another thing I love. I might have overstated my affection for some other projects. There might be projects that I merely like, projects I wouldn’t mind seeing again, and projects I think I might have a future with. But this yarn? This yarn I really do love!

I did the swatches with a 2.5mm needle (my usual for socks) and on 64 sts, which, depending on the pattern, is roughly my size.
Here’s the Black Cherry. This photo shows a pretty good variation of color, but is lacking the deep tones of wine that permeate every strand, even the deep blacks. This will be stunning with either an open lace or a cable pattern. Yannick would like to claim it for himself but it is mine! This is one side of my Oxford swatch. I took a photo of each side to show you how the yarn will behave on a larger swatch (or a sock). You see how the black-striped section starts at the lower left and moves up on a diagonal to the top right? And how the colored section with no black seems to do the same?
Here’s the other side of the same swatch. # 1 had one dark section in the middle. # 2 has 2 dark sections, one on top and one below, with a lighter middle. What I’m trying to show here is that the two areas of color will spiral around each other, and around the sock.
Look at this! It worked! I can’t believe it worked! I made a self-striping yarn! There is so much I enjoy about this one, especially the palest row of green right above the darkest one. Something about the way one looks near the other really tickles me. If I was to do this again I would only change the concentration of dye to water to try and get another shade in there, as I feel 2 of the rows look the same. It might be related to where I cast on from and how the yarn is wrapping around itself, though.

I have been knitting Bunnies for the last week. The pattern is great, but I’m knitting in Fun Fur which is such a pain! I knit the first one only in the Fun Fur stuff, but seaming it was NOT fun, so I knit the second with the FF held along with a strand of white dk weight acrylic. It made the FF somewhat more bearable.

I’m knitting the Bunnies as a gift for a friend’s 2.5 year old daughter, who brought a gift for Jakob when we introduced them, and I unfortunately showed up empty handed. I found out her favorite colours are pink, purple and blue (is there any 2.5 year old girl who doesn’t have those as her favorite colours?) so I’m knitting a pink mommy bunny, a blue daddy bunny, and a purple baby bunny. As of tonight only the pink is left to knit. Photos tomorrow after the Guild meeting.


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finally the photos of which i spoke

I was going to post this earlier but I had a scary drive in to work this morning and by the time I got there I was a little shaken and distracted. I was in a tunnel that splits in two directions, I was in the middle lane (the middle and left lanes go to the left) and a truck (no container, just the cab part) was in the right (which becomes another tunnel veering off to the right). He lost control, did a bunch of drifting Zs across his lane and mine, then slammed into the right hand wall of the tunnel, bounced back off the wall almost exactly like I did in my car accident two years ago, and crashed into the middle wall of the part that divides the two tunnels. He was no more than 20 ft away from me when he started sliding and I saw it and slowed down to be alert to what he would do next, but by the time he crashed into the middle between the right and middle lanes he was no more than 6 ft away from me. I was so scared that he was going to slide back instead of forwards- if he’d come backwards my car was right in his path and there were cars in the left lane that couldn’t see he was sliding and wouldn’t move away to let me get by. Luckily he came to a stop after hitting the 2nd wall and, although he was 3/4 blocking my lane, I was able to inch around safely. Once I was cleared from the tunnel I called 911 to let them know what had happened, and that was when I started shaking from the shock of what could have been.

Sometimes it’s not good to have a vivid imagination.

So- I’ve decided to put aside some of my current projects to focus on other ones. Jakob’s birthday is coming up in a few months and there is also a contest I want to enter, so I will make those knits my priority for right now. Shawls and stuff can wait until later. In preparation for all that stuff, I’ve gone through my photos from the last week or so and am presenting you with all the outstanding photos. Enjoy.

This is the Marble hooded cardigan. I’m making the 1-2 year size, and hope to have this ready for Jakob for his birthday. It will be too warm and hopefully too big for him in May, but I want to put it together with some other items for his gift.
The colors (and clarity, LOL) are more accurate in the first photo, but the flash obliterated the cable. Here you can see the cable that runs up either side of the middle of the two fronts.

Here’s Mommy with Jakob at 40 weeks. I couldn’t get one of him looking into the camera.
Here’s Yannick and Jakob at last Sunday’s swimming lesson. We tried out this new one-piece bathing suit for the first time (thanks Robyn!) and it worked great! The last few weeks Jakob has started to cry when playing some of the games in the water, and when testing different things in his bath one night we discovered he started to cry when we made him “jump” in and out of the water. We think he was getting cold and that’s what made him cry. I don’t know if that was the exact problem, but this week they even did a part where the kids sit on floatie boards completely out of the water, and he didn’t shed a single tear. Plus he looks like a little skater boy (not sk8tr boi, avril).
These are my dinosaur swatches. See the blue one? That’s the same yarn I used when I knit the dinosaur for my little cousin Oliver. I did the swatch with 20 sts and 20 rows. Next to it is some leftover Homespun from the sweater I made a few years ago. That’s also 20 sts and 20 rows. Nice difference, huh? The dinosaur for Oliver came out to about 20 inches tall, so if this works out according to gauge I’ll end up with a dinosaur over 3 feet tall! I’m going to try to make both dinosaurs from the Family Circle Easy Baby Knits book, hopefully I’ll have them both done in time for his birthday.
Here’s a grin, just because I can’t get enough of them. It’s so sad- he went to take a nap at work yesterday and woke up with a cold. His nose is completely congested and runny, and he coughs every so often…he looks so exhausted half the time just from trying to breathe. At the same time he looks so funny because he’s keeping his mouth open to breathe through it since his nose is blocked, but he’s letting his tongue hang out so he looks like a panting dog!
This is the progress on the Silk Rumple shawl. Everything from the orange marker (middle of the right side) is new. I worked on it last week until I decided to concentrate on Jakob’s projects.

Here’s what I got to see the other day when driving to work. Do you see what I see? No? Here, look closer:
I don’t know if I should be upset that gas is priced so high, or if I should find it amusing that the price of gas was 1.234$.
Here’s another one, just because. He loves to feed himself, and often the only way I can get him to let me feed him something from a spoon is to give him something he can feed himself at the same time. Here he’s enjoying the feel of mashed potatoes between his fingers.
Finally I have a FO that is now more F’d. Remember the Baby Cabled Hoodie? It was done, and looked cute on Jakob, except that (ignoring the whole ineffective hood thing) while the sleeves were too long and the body was big on him, the length was much too short. It barely came to the top of his jeans, and if he raised his arms- forget it. I’d been meaning to fix it for a long time, and this past weekend I finally got around to doing it.
Better eh? I know the zipper doesn’t go down to the bottom, but I can live with that. I had more of the brown Decor in my stash so I picked up sts all the way around, one for each existing stitch, and worked the same cable pattern in reverse. Once I had done a few inches I tried it on him, and when it was at a good length I bound off loosely. I think it even looks like the pattern was always supposed to be this way, and it fits him, and I’m happy.

Now I’m off to watch Big Brother.


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happy day after valentines day

I forgot to mention that I went to see a great show on Wednesday night. I saw Houdini the Musical at the Saidye – whoops, I mean at the Segal Center for the Arts. I met up with a bunch of moms from Jakob’s playgroup, and I brought my mom, and it was so much fun! Our tickets included a “petit souper” (light supper in hors d-oeuvre form) and wine and a raffle. Oh yeah, and I won a prize! $50 gift certificate at a local spa. That will be fun! It was strange seeing these women without our kids but it was so nice to have a little time together as grown ups. We HAVE to do it more often!

Here’s yesterday’s progress on the Silk Rumple. Everything from the orange marker is new. I feel like all these photos look alike, because it is growing so slowly! At least the first ball is showing signs of depletion (the single skein turned out to be 2 smaller ones together).
And here’s the progress on the Noro striped scarf. 144 rows as of last night’s TV watching marathon. Speaking of last night’s TV- any one else super annoyed with which team won on Celebrity Apprentice? Piers or Omarosa need to go home!
In other reality TV complaints- I find I’m kinda irritated at Big Brother for splitting up the real life couple with other “soulmates”. I know they probably did it on purpose to try and trigger some drama, but I still think it’s tacky.


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happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy 10th birthday dear knitting guild, happy birthday to you

First of all, a big apology to those of you who get here directly via http://www.jeloca.com/. I’m sorry it appeared as if my blog had gone bye-bye. Apparently my domain-forwarding-provider decided that since they never sent me a renewal contract, I clearly must no longer be desiring their services, so they dropped me like a hot potato. I swear our phone call went like this:
Me: How come my website isn’t working?
Them: Because you haven’t paid for it.
Me: Well, you never sent me an invoice.
Them: We don’t send invoices until after you pay.
Me: If you don’t send me an invoice, how am I supposed to know it’s time to pay again?
Them: Well, we don’t send invoices until after you pay. Your payment was due in January.
Me: How did you expect me to know that you wanted more money in January?
Them: We sent you an email in December to tell you.
Me: I never got it.
Them: You probably didn’t check your email.
Me: I check my email about 15 times a day. I didn’t get it.
Them: We’re sure it was sent out.
Me: Can you check?
Them: No. The emails are all sent out autmatically and are generated by our system. We can’t check to see who got them. They were sent in December.
Me: But I never got it.
And so on. Ugh…At least everyone is happy now. They have my money, I have a blog that works, and you don’t have to finagle your way here via the http://www.jeloca.blogspot.com/ address. It’s all good.
There was hardly any knitting today, and I might do a few more rows on the Striped Scarf before bed, so I’m saving my row count for tomorrow. Tonight was the 10th anniversary party of the Montreal Knitting Guild, and it was a potluck event. There was so much food! I ate much too much, and knit much too little.
I do have a photo of that Marble Cabled Hoodie thing I mentioned the other day. I’m about 10 rows farther than this, but I’ve put it aside to try and finish the Striped Scarf instead.
Instead of stripes, I leave you with a tutorial on how to eat toast.


Step 1: get toast into mouth


Step 2: get toast into mouth

Step 3: get toast into mouth
Step 4: get toast into mouth
Step 5: grin with accomplishment (and toast in mouth)
Step 6: pose for the camera


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thursday’s stuff

Mommy with Jakob at 38 weeks. One more week and he’ll be at the same number of weeks of my pregnancy he was born at (he was delivered at 39 weeks).
The next photo isn’t the most flattering of me, but I have to share it.
Jakob gives kisses. It’s the cutest thing ever- he actually takes your face in his hands and plants one on you. It’s usually open-mouthed, and mostly slobber-covered, and occassionally he bites, but they are kisses just the same. Sometimes he grabs me for a kiss at least 10 times in 3 minutes, and if I don’t get my face up to his fast enough, he grabs me by my hair and pulls me to him. We were at my cousins’ store this afternoon and Amy caught this photo of him kissing me.
He’s so delicious!
She also caught a photo of his other latest thing:


He waves!


I forgot to post this yesterday, but last night Yannick helped me wind these two skeins of Woolly Bully by hand. Um, yeah. Two skeins. This is a case (Maaike) where a yarn purchase ISN’T a yarn purchase. I already HAD one skein, so I only bought a second one so I’d have enough to make something worthy of it. (I asked Yannick, he said it was ok). 🙂 These balls are huge! Each one is the size of a cabbage!

Here’s the latest on the Silk Rumple shawl. Again, everything from the orange pin (on the right) and up is the new stuff from today.
And finally, here’s tonight’s final view of the striped scarf. I’m at 118 stripes, but realized this am that it doesn’t really matter if I beat Maaike in the stripe count unless I beat her by a lot. I have only 41 sts per row, whereas she has 45. So for example, last night she’d knit 92 or so stripes and had finished the first 2 balls, but I’d knit 98 and needed another 10 or so stripes to finish them. I finally finished mine, though, and am about 10 stripes into the new balls. This officially makes me more than halfway through!