Ack! A post! Hold onto your seat!

Things have been hectic here. Between planning the wedding, finding a house and working this stupid night shift, I've lost a bit of my knitting mojo. But not completely:

This is the blanket I made for Naomi's newest kiddo, Kai, who was born a month ago. I used Takhi Cotton Classic and chose stitch patterns from Barbara Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns. The white edging is applied I-cord.

Now back to my current project: packing! We're moving on Saturday into our new townhome in Ballard!

Those green crates are from Frog Box--reusable moving boxes you rent. :)

Look! A blog update!

Oh, hi! It's been a long time. I haven't been knitting very much, and what I have been knitting isn't very interesting yet. Way back when, I thought I would do Knitting Olympics and I cast on for a simple top down raglan sweater, thinking that this would be a realistic challenge for myself. Well, I'm still working on the first sleeve...and by "working" I mean I haven't touched the think in at least a couple weeks. Now that the weather has changed, I'm less motivated to finish. I will eventually, though.

Last month I started my 3rd pair of sock challenge socks...and frogged them an hour later. The yarn I was using (a zauberball) wasn't a good match for the pattern (or for sock knitting in general IMHO). So I'm using the yarn (a luscious green) to make a shawlette...but no pics! Sorry.

Today, in anticipation of my looming vacation (NYC here I come!) I cast on for a new pair of sock challenge socks. I'm working Lindsay in some Koigu KPM that I dyed a few years ago with kool-aid. The resulting color is much less orange than it appears (crappy work lighting!)--more of a coral color with some (odd) purple-ish spots which read more as gray/black/brown on the coral color.

I'm goign to modify the pattern a bit to omit the single rib and instead insert another pattern repeat, in the hope that they'll be slightly larger in circumference. This should be a good purse project for the plane, train and subway rides that are in my near future.

Hemlock Ring Blanket

Friday night I finally got around to blocking the Hemlock Ring Blanket that was finished about a month ago.

I'm sooooo happy with the result! I was worried before blocking that it wouldn't come out looking good. But my worries were for nothing.

I love it so much that I want to keep it. I think it will be great draped over the side of a crib, or tucked around a baby in a stroller. The Cascade 220 superwash is soft and not scratchy--great for keeping a baby warm.

And the edging--totally worth the work! I did the edging that's called for in the initial pattern.

I will definitely be making more of these gorgeous blankets.

Buncha Squares Blanket

Last month, I finished the Bunch Squares Blanket.

For now, anyways. The blanket has gotten lots of use already, and we've come to realize that it would be awesome if it was bigger. Sometime in the vague future, I want to go back and add maybe 6 inches to the top and bottom, and 4 inches to the sides of garter or something. I don't know what yet.

Sock Challenge Update

I finished my second pair of sock challenge socks yesterday. Meet Kai-Mei.

The yarn is Madelinetosh Sock in the color Moreland. I worked these socks on US 1 1/2 (2.5mm).

The 3x3 ribbing on the cuff was fairly boring, and definitely slowed down the progress on these socks, but once I got to the foot my interest picked up and I was able to finish them with fairly good time.

I like that they're mirror images of each other. And I love the saturated color of the yarn.

I also finally got around to taking some FO pics of my first challenge socks, Angee.

I like these ones a lot. More than Kai-Mei, I think.

I'm sad to report that my work blocked Flickr as a social networking site (really??). This limits my ability post interesting posts from work and also diminishes the pleasure I used to get from reading my Bloglines at 3am. Boo!

That went fairly quickly

I made my second visit to East Side Stitchers tonight and finished up the first Angee sock. I was hesitant to go to the sit n knit group because I really don't like getting together with a bunch of strangers. I almost turned around in the parking lot, but the thought of wasting gas forced me inside. And I'm glad I went. I didn't speak very much, but it was nice to sit with a large group and knit.

Once I memorized the lace pattern, the knitting went very quickly. The second sock should be even faster (since I already know the pattern). These iphone pics really don't do the beauty of the color justice. It's such a pleasing teal-y color. The pattern forms a faux-cable braid.

I'm *this* close to being done with the Buncha Squares blanket. I need to weave in ends on 2 more squares (each square has ~16 ends) then I need to sew the squares together. The pattern recipe calls for whip stitch. In my mind, whip stitch doesn't hold as much esteem as matress stitch, but it sure is faster to do, so I'm tempted to use it. I'm also contemplating crocheting them together, but I don't think I'll go this way.

First Challenge Socks

I've chosen the Angee pattern for my first pair of Sock Challenge socks. This pair is relatively simple-looking, compared the other patterns in the book, and I think it will be a good one to ease me into knitting all of the socks in this book.

Like I mentioned last time, I'm using some Dream in Color Smooshy that jumped out to me from the stash. The color is Blue Lagoon and it's a brilliant slightly variegated teal-y blue color. This yarn lives up to it's name--it is indeed smooshy. :) I've used it a few times before (these socks, this shawlette), but I'd forgotten what a pleasure it is to use. I've done a good amount of knitting since the above picture was taken and so far so good!

NOTE: There are some errata in the book. The errata page from Interweave has one of the errata published, but the other is not. The K2tog in the second round of the leg chart should be an SSK.

In other knitting news, I was called last night to share the knitting gospel. To act as a knitevangelist, if you will.



I taught Tamiko to knit! She's well on her way to having a hand-knit dish cloth. :)