Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Will it be enough??

The projects I'm bringing to India:
  • Pagona shawlette -- at least 80% done, will likely finish this on the plane over, thereby freeing up the needles to begin
  • Fannette shawlette -- not sure which yarn I'll bring for this yet
  • Sock project -- currently about 50% done with sock #1 (for the 3rd time -- hopefully I'll make it through this time without frogging)
  • Worsted-weight scarf-y shawl project
The question running through my mind: will it be enough? I have more hours of travel in the next few weeks than I care to calculate, so I doubt that it will be gross over-estimation to think I could work through these 4 projects. I hope I've planned appropriately...

I'll let you know how it goes when we get back in a few weeks. Now it's midnight and we're leaving the house around 10am and I still have some things to check off my to-do list (and some things to remove from the list--like cleaning my whole house... oh well).

Monday, August 29, 2011

Pre-trip update

tie dye

Inspired by the tie-dying we did at camp, I did some home tie dying last week. Using Rit, I dyed 3 onesies for my future niece/nephew and a T-shirt for myself. It was a lot of fun. I'm a little bummed by how the white areas came out light pink; I guess I didn't rinse the dye out as thoroughly as I should have prior to washing all the garments together.

tie dyed onesies

For my next dying adventure, I want to try out this gel glue faux-batik technique.

The other pictures in my camera from the past couple weeks:

thai iced tea

carnations

african violet

plant instructions

I've been drinking yummy thai iced tea that I make in a mason jar. And I read a book (it was so-so). I got some lovely carnations, and my African violet is blooming for the first time since I rescued it from my previous job. I've been preparing for our big trip by writing up plant care instructions.

What's missing from these pictures? Knitting! Ugh--I'm stuck in a rut on all 5 of my projects! I'm half-way done with the border on the baby blanket. Both shawlettes are about 80% done, but I've reach the point with each one where I'm knitting many, MANY stitches per row. One pair of socks is more than 75% done, the other one is about 25% done. Overall, I'm feeling a bit of late-summer knitting ennui.

Knitting ennui aside, I've given lots of thought to what sort of projects I should pack for our trip to India. We have 6 flights and at least 6 train trips planned--> LOTS of knitting time. My iPod is full of books on tape that I've *borrowed* from the library and podcasts that I've fallen behind on. So I've got the time, and I've got the soundtrack, but what will I knit??

My plan right now is to bring my nearly-done Pagona shawlette, and a couple of wound-and-ready balls of fingering weight to start another shawlette when Pagona is complete. I'm thinking of these ones: Ginkgo, Mezquita, Nautilina, Fall of Leaves, Fannette, Haruni. So many options! Maybe I'll just bring the patterns and appropriate needles for all of them and make the decision later.

I'd like to hope that I'll have some finished object posts in a few weeks when we get home--cross your fingers!

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Today I like...

  • Memories of how great camp was last week.
  • Sitting at home, working on my Westknits Mystery Shawlette and watching Hulu without thinking about which camper needs meds next.
  • Thinking about going back to camp tomorrow for another week.
Some early morning phone pics from camp:
The view from my room.
Fountain through a couple of archways

Rose garden, Hippodrome in the background

Monday, August 8, 2011

FO: Rainbow Lights Shawlette

Rainbow Lights Shawlette

Pattern: Northern Lights Shawlette (ravelry project page)
Yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock

Found this yarn in the sale bin at my LYS and bought it on a whim, thinking it would make a fun, bright shawlette. And I think it has.

Rainbow Lights Shawlette

This pattern is pretty simple, though I still managed a handful of mess-ups, knitting drowsy. But none so bad that they couldn't be fixed relatively quickly, thank goodness. I used pretty much all of the yarn.

I've two other shawlettes on the needles right now, and a bunch more I want to start. But I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these. They've already started to kind of pile up. Could we make a push for shawlettes to come in style?? I'll wear them with joy, but I'm not so sure about non-knitters...

Sunday, August 7, 2011

FO: Skinny Skid Hat

Skinny Skid Hat

Pattern: Skinny Skid from Westknits Book 1 (ravelry project page)
Yarn: Colinnette Jitterbug and Dream in Color Smooshy

Skinny Skid Hat

This was actually my second go at this pattern (no pics of the flop). The first time, I was displeased by the color choice and my gauge, so I dug out these bright colors for my do-over and paid closer attention to the tension of my knitting. I made the small size, since I was still a bit unsure about how the result would look. But I like it! It looked a bit odd on my head, but I think it suits my grandma just fine.

Skinny Skid Hat

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Bullet = Bitten

I got over my nerves and started the border on Rupa's Baby Blanket a few days ago.

 Blanket border

I've adapted a pattern from Knitting On The Edge (excellent collection of edgings, btw). I'm attaching it to the blanket as I go by knitting the last RS row stitch together with a stitch from the body of the blanket. I'm happy with my choice to work the border perpendicular to the body of the blanket because I love the color effect of the Noro yarn.

I worked short rows at the corner. I'm a bit on the fence about the way the corner looks. I wish it was a bit more square, but the way I did the short rows, it ruffles a bit. I'm going to go with it, though; ruffly corners might be nice.

Monday, August 1, 2011

My eyes are bigger than my stomach...

...So to speak. While searching high and low for a US4 circ with which to cast on for my next project, I had a thought. Perhaps I have a few too many irons on the fire right now. (Metaphors abound today.)

WIP 8/1/11

Clockwise from top: Rupa's Baby Blanket, Skinny Skid Hat, sock that I'm improvising, second sock that I'm improvising, Pagona Shawlette.

I'm super bugged that I can't find the needle I'm looking for--24" US4. The Skinny Skid and Rupa's Baby Blanket are both using US4, but I know I have a 24"-er floating around here somewhere! Hmph. As soon as I finished that sentence, I remembered where it was :-P

But this brings me to my larger point. With 5 projects active on the needles (and a handful more dormant), why am I so eager to cast on for my next project that I searched high and low for that needle?? I have one theory. My summer vacation is fast approaching its end. In a week, I'll be off to camp for two weeks. I'll probably have little knitting time there, since I'll be "on duty" most of the time. Then after I get back from camp, it's only 10 days until we depart of India. I'll definitely be taking a couple small projects with me--we have lots of train travel planned. But when we get back in mid-September, I start work and perhaps subconsciously (though now not so subconsciously) I'm in a rush to finish as many things as I can before I go back to work, because I don't know what my free time situation will be like then. (It will probably be good, I'll only be working 20hr/wk.)

The other thought I have is that perhaps I should prioritize my WIPs a bit more. Instead of jumping from one partially completed project to the next, maybe I should try to knock a few of them off. It would be nice to have Rupa's Baby Blanket done by the time we go to India, even though I'd probably still have to mail it once we got there because I don't think we're going to see her. I've been at a bit of an impasse with it as I prepare to start the border. I have my plan for the border all charted out on knitting graph paper, but I'm a bit apprehensive about starting it, worried that it won't turn out. The blanket so far is quite lovely (if I do say so) and so I feel a lot of pressure to have the border shine as well. But it's not going to get any easier/less worrisome if I keep putting it off. If anything, the time crunch will make more me more worried. Oy.

Fun fact! All my current WIPs are using fingering weight yarn. :)