For the first time in 3 months I don’t have any knitting commissions outstanding. This means I can knit *gasp* whatever I want! I’m in heaven!

Yesterday my dad wasn’t feeling well in the morning, so we went in to work a bit late. Wanna see what I did in the morning? I took out my bead and started to make some stitch markers! Yay! I want to make a whole bunch then send out some RAOKs ‘cus I haven’t sent that many yet. Here’s what I did so far:

They’re a bit hard to see, but I made an assorted bunch of knit-related terms. Since they’re all similar, this whole lot will go to one lucky FiberRAOK member! 🙂 I had so much fun making them! I wish I actually owned some myself, of any kind, since my current project is using 12 stitch markers and I’d love to put “jewlery” on instead of my little plastic rings. This Sunday I’ve asked Yannick to make some with me, since his brain works differently and I want to see what he’ll come up with to do with the beads. I think I’ll keep some of our efforts, and send out all the rest.

Wanna see what I did last night? A SELFISH project! Yay! It’s the DKNY-designed one-size-fits-all cardigan in the back of the big Vogue Knitting reference book, and it uses cables to make trees, flowers, a fence, etc…

Here is a (horrible) pic of the pictures from the book:

This shows the front (in my handly little plastic document holder).

This is a close-up of the little pic up there showing the back. You can’t see it well, but trust me, it’s cute.

This is what I’ve done so far. It’s the Left Front piece of the cardigan. After the ribbing you see some grass and a little meadow with flowers. 🙂 I’m right at the point to start the different trees, which is why I decided stitch markers would help. There are no repeats, but I marked off my chart with similar divisions to break down the long row into more manageble sections. I also spent 3 hours coloring in each different key in the chart a different color with 24 colored pencils but that’s not something we need to talk about. 🙂

Now let’s see if I can squeeze some knitting time into this morning before my dad calls to say “leave now!”.

For the first time in 3 months I don’t have any knitting commissions outstanding. This means I can knit *gasp* whatever I want! I’m in heaven!

Yesterday my dad wasn’t feeling well in the morning, so we went in to work a bit late. Wanna see what I did in the morning? I took out my bead and started to make some stitch markers! Yay! I want to make a whole bunch then send out some RAOKs ‘cus I haven’t sent that many yet. Here’s what I did so far:

They’re a bit hard to see, but I made an assorted bunch of knit-related terms. Since they’re all similar, this whole lot will go to one lucky FiberRAOK member! 🙂 I had so much fun making them! I wish I actually owned some myself, of any kind, since my current project is using 12 stitch markers and I’d love to put “jewlery” on instead of my little plastic rings. This Sunday I’ve asked Yannick to make some with me, since his brain works differently and I want to see what he’ll come up with to do with the beads. I think I’ll keep some of our efforts, and send out all the rest.

Wanna see what I did last night? A SELFISH project! Yay! It’s the DKNY-designed one-size-fits-all cardigan in the back of the big Vogue Knitting reference book, and it uses cables to make trees, flowers, a fence, etc…

Here is a (horrible) pic of the pictures from the book:

This shows the front (in my handly little plastic document holder).

This is a close-up of the little pic up there showing the back. You can’t see it well, but trust me, it’s cute.

This is what I’ve done so far. It’s the Left Front piece of the cardigan. After the ribbing you see some grass and a little meadow with flowers. 🙂 I’m right at the point to start the different trees, which is why I decided stitch markers would help. There are no repeats, but I marked off my chart with similar divisions to break down the long row into more manageble sections. I also spent 3 hours coloring in each different key in the chart a different color with 24 colored pencils but that’s not something we need to talk about. 🙂

Now let’s see if I can squeeze some knitting time into this morning before my dad calls to say “leave now!”.

LOL! You always make me smile! If you want to be half the knitter I am, then you need to be 13.5 years old with 3/4 of a year knitting obsession, plus a few months of knitting at 4 years old. (Ha, double all that for my stats). Really, I’m no expert! I just do a lot. It was kind of funny in my knitting class, we’d taken a 2 week break for Thanksgiving or something last year, and after the break Nicole asked everyone what they’d done. Everyone proudly showed off the completed sleeves and such of their class projects. I showed pics of my completed class project, and the mittens for my dad, and the felted bag for my mom, and…. It doesn’t mean everything was any good, it just means that I can squeeze a lot into my time. :] I have an advantage too ‘cus I’m not married yet and have no kids, so my free time is still my own. Yannick’s out a lot for work or bowling and stuff, so I have every Monday all day, every Tuesday night, plus free time during the week and weekend to knit. I also bring it everywhere and I’m not shy to whip it out say in the bowling alley if I don’t feel like bowling and I’ll just watch everyone else. But a million thanks for the compliment! :]]]]]]

Um…what are “hoons”?

Hey! I just checked out your blogger profile to find your blog address, and you’re a Virgo too? Cool! I’m born year of the Snake, how cool is it that a knitter is year of the Sheep? Lucky!

I just “plucked” your blog so I could read through on my Palm later. After a quick look your knitting looks great! I’ll be stopping by more often, promise! 🙂

:] I’m glad you enjoyed the surprise of the mag! Don’t feel bad, I was the one who didn’t think about the digests. I hope you knit tons from it, or at least enjoy the articles!

Thank you for stopping by! I am feeling much better now, thanks for the well-wishes. 🙂 I don’t know what’s with the weather lately, but I’ve been getting tons of headaches.

Thank you for always leaving a little note. It really feels good to know people actually come and read this thing I try to update, and even if it’s just a “hi”, your little notes always bring a smile to my face. 🙂 Happy Easter to you and yours too. I don’t celebrate but passed on the well wishes to Yannick when we celebrated with his family. (I’m Jewish)

Oh my gosh I feel like I haven’t sat down or rested in 5 days. Ok I have sat down quite a bit as I’ve done a lot of knitting, but still.

Friday I wasn’t working so I raced over to the LYS to take a pic of the Duffle Coat before it’s owner arrived to pick it up. I was going to wait and see if she’d take a pic for me, but as it turned out I had to go down to my dad’s store anyways so I just made a detour.

Here it is, buttons and all:

Then, since I was still off the rest of the day, I got a huge chunk of progress done on Spoilt Rotten, the 2nd dog coat that Urban Pet asked me for a few weeks ago. I feel horrible that I still haven’t given the sweaters to them, but besides Duffle Coat I had spent almost a week and a half trying to get gauge on the Classic Cabled Aran and no matter what needle size I used I just couldn’t get it. I’m officially giving up on that one and taking it off my available list. There is an Aran dog sweater in the book that has Spoilt Rotten, if they insist on one (even though the weather’s changing now) I’ll make that one. Besides, after reading through the pattern for the CCA it really wasn’t that nice. It was mostly moss st, very boring, with only one diamond on the bag. Ehh.

Saturday I hurried home after work to take off for up north to have Easter dinner with Yannick’s family. There was still tons of light outside so I got more knitting done in the car. It was a really nice drive up. I’d been listening to a great book on CD in my car and had finished the first 2 CDs. I knew Yannick would like it too, so I brought it along in the car for the ride. It’s called Artemis Fowl. I forget the author at the moment but it’s read in a wonderful Irish accent and is a great tale of underworld crime, deceit, and faeries.

We spent the night up north, stuffed on a yummy rack of lamb dinner, and woke up bright and early for brunch the next day. Truthfully, it’s hard not to wake up bright and early when there are 4 kids under 9 running through the room searching for hidden chocolate eggs. 🙂

When we left we had to come straight back because my grandmother’s 81st bday party was at 2pm. We made it just in time, and I had enough of a long car ride to finish all but the pocket on Spoilt Rotten. It was fun to be at my bubbie’s. It had been a while since I’d seen her, plus it was nice having my whole family there. My mom’s sister Mimi was in from TO and Fran was there with my cousins Mark (in from Ottawa) and Jon, plus my cousin Warren was there and cousin Barbara Anne and her hubby and daughter, PLUS my parents and my 3 siblings. Once you add in the other residents of the home and the on site staff, it was a full house! In keeping with the productivity theme of the weekend I had a chance to discuss my parents’ 30th anniversary gift ideas with my siblings (I have a great idea but I can’t discuss it here ‘cus you never know who might be reading…lol), AND discuss an upcoming trip to Las Vegas. See, a year or so ago my auntie Mimi took my brother Michael, my cousin Mark and my cousin Barbara Anne to Vegas. Why I was skipped I don’t know, since only Barbie is older than me. In any case, this year is mine, my cousin Warren and my cousin Mitchell’s turn, and then in a few years it will be my brother Aaron, sister Laura and cousin Jon. Mimi hopes to travel in May or June, so we’re trying to work out everyone’s schedules and come up with a fun itinerary. Warren has been there before, as has Mimi, I’m not sure about Mitchell, but I’ve never been. We’ll be going down for 5 days so I don’t know what to expect!

Hmm…any Vegas wool shops I should know about?

Finally last night after a quick dinner and more of The Making of The Incredibles on the extra features DVD Yannick took off for my parents’ house to play poker with my dad, brothers and a bunch of others. I stayed home and (guess what?) knit. I finished SR but for the embroidery on the pocket, and started swatching for a very selfish project- one for me! I started looking through my wips still outstanding. Right now there are:

-To Dye For sweater from Stitch ‘n Bitch. It’s all knit up, just needs to be blocked and seamed.
-Mini Plain Cardigan. It’s a 6″ high cardigan that just needs buttons sewed on.
-Entrelac Throw. Only a row and a half done. No where near completion.
-Birthday Suit. Ha! Only 6 rows done out of an entire long sleeved shirt and long skirt knit on sock yarn.
-Yannick’s Thrum Socks. Not yet started sock # 2.
-Lace Socks. These are the ones for my knitting class. I’m working on the foot, almost at the toe decreases. Only on the first sock though.
-Heart Warmer. This is a baby sweater for charity.

I really should have worked on finishing some of these, especially the first 2 since they really are almost done. But instead, faced with the thought that I couldn’t finish SR until today when I met with Nicole for embroidery tips, I knew I had a few hours of selfish time, so I worked on selfish knitting. My DKNY-designed Landscape Cardigan. It doesn’t really have a name, but since the main feature is all the cables that work up to trees and a fence, I named it the Landscape Cardigan, and before bed I finished my swatch. Yay!

Today I slept in until a door-to-door guy rang the bell. Then I made my way through the rain to my LYS armed with a huge bag of projects that I wanted to go over with Nicole. (And I mean huge bag, it was large enough for over 30 sk of yarn!)

First I decided to swap my 11 or so sk of Alafoss Lopi for 11 sk of Classic Merino Wool. I’m told that when it felts it is much less fuzzy and simply a dream to knit up, so I ordered it and will swap once it comes in. It’s cheapter than the Lopi too, so bonus!

Then we measured my machine knit swatch on Paton’s Astra so I could get an idea if it was feasable to use to make the charity baby sweater. It turned out to be spot-on for the rows, but too big for the stitches. I’m going to have to arrange a meeting with Nicole just to learn how to recalculate a pattern.

Then she showed me that the embroidery on my SR pocket was no more difficult than backstitching in cross stitching, so I knew I could do that later.

Finally I remade my LC swatch ‘cus it was too big. With a 5mm instead of 5.5 I was good on the stitches, but a bit off on the rows. I was given the go ahead to make the cardigan body and then Nicole will help me recalculate the set-in sleeves to fit.

Armed with all that, I finally made it home around 3:30 pm. Whew!

I finished SR and just need to cut out my custom labels. I think it’s cute. The words were a bit difficult to embroider, but they are on a kangaroo pocket which looks really cute on a dog sweater.

While I was working on it I got a call from my contact at the hospital auxiliary about the charity baby stuff. She’d given me the yarn in January, unfortunately right before I started making the dog sweaters, so I have yet to make her anything for the hospital gift shop. She’s understandably a little upset. After I call her back I’ll know if I’m to continue working on the sweater, in which case that’s what I’ll do tonight, or if she wants all the yarn back, in which case I’ll work on LC and give her all her stuff back next Monday. But first I’m going to eat supper! 🙂

In keeping with the “I’m a dolt” tradition of this week, I don’t have a pic to show of the finished Duffle Coat. (And I almost typed the Finnish Duffle Coat. See: dolt.)

I stayed up until 4:00am last night/this morning to finish it. Everything was done except the buttons sewn on, because a) I was 1 button short, and b) it was 4:00am!

I stopped at the LYS today after work, sewed on the buttons and left it to be picked up tomorrow.

And then got home and realized I’d forgotten to take a picture even though I’d brought my camera just for that purpose. Not only do I not have one to show here, I don’t even have a film picture for my scrapbook.

I called Nicole and she said she’d ask the woman to take a picture of her granddaughter wearing it and give me a copy, so hopefully I’ll have one in the end.

And now I have a migraine so I’m going to lie down. I’m not working tomorrow so I’m going to get a really good night’s sleep!

And then rush like mad to finish Spoilt Rotten. I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do about the cabled dog coat. It’s giving me a lot of grief for such a small thing.

Had such a great night tonight! After work I went straight to the Wendy’s/Tim Horton’s at the corner of Sources and Hymus ‘cus Cynthia from the MKG arranged a meeting for people interested in helping out with the upcoming fair in October. I didn’t feel like going home first then back out, so even though the meeting didn’t start until 7:30 I got there around 6:30 and was planning on just hanging out. Turns out Cynthia was already there (with someone else- shoot I need to start learning everyone’s names!). I was going to get a snack at Wendy’s and then go sit down so I ordered a fruit bowl…and waited…and waited…after 25 minutes I finally asked for my money back. Everyone had to wait, they were so far behind! To give you a better idea of how messed up they were: while I was waiting a man came up to the counter and asked for the manager. He told her that he’d ordered a whatever burger with no onions. He opened up the burger wrapper- there was the bun, lettuce, tomato, onions- but no burger!

I wound up getting a cheese croissant from Tim’s. Knit my way through the meeting. Yannick came to join us ‘cus he wasn’t home last night and was trying to spend some time with me to make up for it. Oh, and the whole ferklempt thing? (To those non-Jews it kinda translates to overwhelmed, emotional, mishkabibbled…ok I can’t really translate it well.) One of the MKG members (I think her name is Daniella, again I really need to learn all the names!) brought her son Colin (or Collin). He’s 14 months old. And adorable. And spent most of the meeting in Yannick’s arms. [insert double-take here]

Picture me stunned!

For those who don’t know him, Yannick isn’t exactly a kid-friendly person. He’d sooner hold a cat than a baby, and runs at the first sight of drool or spit-up. Which is why stuff like this is such a good omen for the future!

[insert big, relieved grin here]

Now I have to go finish the Duffle Coat so I can deliver it tomorrow. I called the Wool Shop this morning and they have more of the buttons, so I can attach the last one there. I finished the button bands at the meeting, so I just need to sew the side seams, sew on the hood, pick up and rib the hood ribbing and sew on the buttons I have.

I feel really horrible that the pins I used to block the sleeves turned out not to be stainless steel and wound up rusting. I hear that Oxyclean gets out rust stains but I don’t have any, so I’ll have to give it as-is and just let them know. 😦

To Shell: Is his pronounced Ah-ron or Eh-rin? My bro is Eh-ron. Funny thing is at his old doc’s office when he was a kid there was a girl with his exact name! Erin instead of Aaron and our same last name but with a K instead of a C as the first letter. So we always had to specify if we were booking appointments for the boy or the girl. 🙂

To Danielle: Thanks for posting! 🙂 I hope you find those patterns eventually…or are really good at “winging it” lol. I had a crocheted sweater like that once. At least 3 years went by between starting it and finishing it, but by that point all that was left was the end of one sleeve and the seams. Took me 4 days to find where I’d stashed the pattern.

Had such a great night tonight! After work I went straight to the Wendy’s/Tim Horton’s at the corner of Sources and Hymus ‘cus Cynthia from the MKG arranged a meeting for people interested in helping out with the upcoming fair in October. I didn’t feel like going home first then back out, so even though the meeting didn’t start until 7:30 I got there around 6:30 and was planning on just hanging out. Turns out Cynthia was already there (with someone else- shoot I need to start learning everyone’s names!). I was going to get a snack at Wendy’s and then go sit down so I ordered a fruit bowl…and waited…and waited…after 25 minutes I finally asked for my money back. Everyone had to wait, they were so far behind! To give you a better idea of how messed up they were: while I was waiting a man came up to the counter and asked for the manager. He told her that he’d ordered a whatever burger with no onions. He opened up the burger wrapper- there was the bun, lettuce, tomato, onions- but no burger!

I wound up getting a cheese croissant from Tim’s. Knit my way through the meeting. Yannick came to join us ‘cus he wasn’t home last night and was trying to spend some time with me to make up for it. Oh, and the whole ferklempt thing? (To those non-Jews it kinda translates to overwhelmed, emotional, mishkabibbled…ok I can’t really translate it well.) One of the MKG members (I think her name is Daniella, again I really need to learn all the names!) brought her son Colin (or Collin). He’s 14 months old. And adorable. And spent most of the meeting in Yannick’s arms. [insert double-take here]

Picture me stunned!

For those who don’t know him, Yannick isn’t exactly a kid-friendly person. He’d sooner hold a cat than a baby, and runs at the first sight of drool or spit-up. Which is why stuff like this is such a good omen for the future!

[insert big, relieved grin here]

Now I have to go finish the Duffle Coat so I can deliver it tomorrow. I called the Wool Shop this morning and they have more of the buttons, so I can attach the last one there. I finished the button bands at the meeting, so I just need to sew the side seams, sew on the hood, pick up and rib the hood ribbing and sew on the buttons I have.

I feel really horrible that the pins I used to block the sleeves turned out not to be stainless steel and wound up rusting. I hear that Oxyclean gets out rust stains but I don’t have any, so I’ll have to give it as-is and just let them know. 😦

To Shell: Is his pronounced Ah-ron or Eh-rin? My bro is Eh-ron. Funny thing is at his old doc’s office when he was a kid there was a girl with his exact name! Erin instead of Aaron and our same last name but with a K instead of a C as the first letter. So we always had to specify if we were booking appointments for the boy or the girl. 🙂

To Danielle: Thanks for posting! 🙂 I hope you find those patterns eventually…or are really good at “winging it” lol. I had a crocheted sweater like that once. At least 3 years went by between starting it and finishing it, but by that point all that was left was the end of one sleeve and the seams. Took me 4 days to find where I’d stashed the pattern.