Happy Anniversary to ME!!!

Today is my blog’s second anniversary!  Woot! And to celebrate, I’m avoiding sewing in ends! 😀

I have a finished blanket and a finished shawl just sitting around waiting for their ends to be sewn in, and to have a good wash. The power of procrastination is strong with me, so not only am I avoiding the ends, I’m creating more! I stared the summer scarf!

I decided to make it an infinity scarf by adding an additional 12 stitches and joining in the round. We’ll see if that turns out to be a good decision or not.

So for now I have my project bag full. Two “finished” projects, and a WIP. I feel kind of spoiled getting this much knitting done 🙂

What I’m Not Knitting

The chevron baby blanket plugs along (as blankets usually do), and I’m starting to day dream about other projects I’d like to start.  My sister is expecting a little boy in early November, so there is another blanket waiting in the wings, not to mention a few unfinished objects that got tossed aside during the move.  We’re going to pretend those aren’t there right now.

What I really want is something in linen!

Living in Southern California, and having the total lack of winter we had last year, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to knit with things other than 100% wool sometimes.  As much as I love my wool, and all things wolly, there just aren’t enough cold days in our year to add more wool accessories to the mix.  (I know those of you in colder climates are just crying for me.)

I’ve had my eye on the Summer Scarf ever since spying it at Two Sisters and Ewe during the San Diego yarn crawl last year.

Summer Scarf by Janet Avila

I’m also contemplating my first knit top, and the Silken Straw Summer Sweater looks perfectly summery, and not at all deceptive!  I’m just sure I’ll look perfectly fit and flattered in it.  (Just let me hang onto my delusions until I’ve knit it.)

Silken Straw Summer Sweater by Purl Soho

For now, it’s all the chevron I can handle.  ON TO THE BLANKET!!!

 

 

Blanket In Progress

There is a baby. He showed up before his blanket was finished. This is mostly due to the fact that I was busy moving and remodeling and had forgotten al about it until said baby was about to arrive.

In a very interesting coincidence I seemed to have started the blanket just as soon as mama was going into labor. Like, within minutes of each other!

Little baby boy is currently waiting for his parents to discover his name, and his blanket is currently waiting for its last 3 stripes (never mind the ends that will need to be woven in). Perhaps he is waiting for his blanket to be done, not to show up (obviously!), but to receive his name. Maybe I’m getting a little all out in the universe about it. Only time will tell. In the mean time, I shall knit on, and hopefully he will have his name and blanket soon.

Oops

Ya, so obviously I’ve been a bit of a blog slacker for the last, oh, 6 months *blush* sorry bout that.

We’ve gained a condo, lost a dog, remodeled, took up extra projects, and are finally coming back around on the other side.  Mostly.  My free time is usually spent like this…

I’m not sure why she likes to stack toys on me.

I swear this just happens when Little and I “play.”  Of corse she also likes to “help” when I’m attempting to knit as well.

Sly face!

So as you can probably tell, things are slow going.  I’m hoping to get the dye pots out of boxes in the next week.  In the mean time, here’s my first batches of hand spun that have come off my new wheel!

On our sunny new balcony!

Dyed, spun, and chain plied by me!!!

So much pretty ❤

My Morning

This is what my morning is looking like. How are you handling the time change?

Deadline Swiftly Approaching!

Happy Halloween!

Hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween last night!  I’ve been neglecting the blog again to play with yarn (but who could blame me really?).

There’s a baby coming!  That means there’s a blanket in the works.  The shower for said baby is next weekend.  The parents-to-be don’t live super far from us, but it’s far enough that I want to make sure they have their blanket for when he arrives, so I’m knitting my little heart out every chance I get.  The only reason I have a minute to blog now is because I left my knitting at my parents’ house after all the Halloween festivities last night.  I am not a fast knitter, and I need to be working on this blanket every spare minute I have, so a retrieval mission is set for this afternoon.

I’m using the OpArt blanket pattern, which I’m LOVING so far.  I had a few others in mind, but when my husband saw OpArt he said it looked just like a tattoo that the daddy-to-be had, and that it was the one!  I think that’s as good a reason as any 🙂

I’ve also been playing with NEW yarn!  I want to expand my line of hand dyed yarns to include some different weights.  This is my heap of trial yarn to see what I like.  And bonus, all of it is made in the USA!!!

So much wooly goodness!

I’ve been in love with hand dyed single ply yarn lately, and in this heap there’s a very nice one in a lace weight.  There’s also a squishy soft superwash Marino bulky that I can’t wait to knit something up with!

What is your favorite type of yarn to knit with?

Ahhhh

Things have been a little crazy around here lately.  I’ve been dying my little heart out for the Vista Fiber Arts Fiesta (come see me!) the second weekend in October, packing for our move next week, and preparing all the things that seem to go along with a baby’s first birthday.

Well, the birthday stuff is over and done with!  Little’s first birthday was Friday, and Josh and I took her to downtown San Diego to ride an antique carousel, her first one 🙂

She loved it!

We had a birthday dinner that night with grandparents and great-grandparents.

Saturday we had a big birthday party with all the family!  She chased balloons, tore up gift bags, and dove right into her first cupcake!

Yum!

I used my standard vanilla cake recipe, and found the most amazing new frosting recipe to go with it!  Seriously, go try it!  It’s the first time I ever wanted to lick the frosting bowl as clean as the cake mix bowl :X haha.

It was a long weekend, but memorable and tons of fun.  So now I am taking some time, coffee in hand, cat in lap, to catch up on some of the blogs I enjoy reading so much.  And this coming week, I’ll be previewing some of the super fun yarns and stuff that I will be bringing up to the Fiesta with me in a few weeks 😀  (You know, in between packing and moving *yikes*)

So Much Done…

And yet so little to show for it.  It’s been a super busy week, and I’ve actually gotten a lot of knitting done… you just can’t tell.

Driving to and from Grandma’s funeral on Monday I was to car sick to attempt to fix Josh’s hat, but Tuesday I did manage to figure out a way to make it longer (tutorial tomorrow I swear!).  I spent the rest of the day picking back stitches from the bottom.  I’ve never looked at a stupid hat with so much will to have it over and done with!  By the time Josh left for Minneapolis (where the high for the weekend would be 36 *shiver*), it still looked like this…

Picked the wrong time of day for this picture 😛

It is well on its way, and I just need Josh and his head back home so I can make doubly sure it’s the right length this time.  Because I love him, so much, but not enough to redo this hat again.

Tuesday we took LS to her first baseball game!  (Where there was also no knitting.)  Having grown up in San Diego, my team has always been the Padres.  Josh grew up in LA and roots for the Dodgers.  Some day LS will pick a side.  Until then, she gets dressed like this…

She will be a confused child I’m sure.

Of corse it was cold out, so sadly Daddy won out and they were wearing their matching Dodger blue.

“Take that Mommy!”

We took the trolley down to the stadium, and had a great time harassing each other about who would win.  Sadly, my Padres tried to come back a little late in the game, and lost 3-4 :,(  LS was super entertained by everything about being at the game.  The people, the lights, the noise!  She had a blast!  So much so that she completely crashed on the ride home.  We had a great time.

LS’s first baseball game!

Thursday Josh had to take off for the weekend again.  (His job requires him to travel most weekends January -May.) It’s hard to knit and entertain a 6 month old at the same time, but through naps and staying up past my bedtime I did manage to start adding to Josh’s hat again.

Slowly but surly.

Tomorrow I will get to measure it on the boy’s head and hopefully find a stretchy enough bind off for it.  (Any suggestions?)  I will also put up a brief tutorial on how I picked up the stitches, assuming I can find the very helpful YouTube video that helped me (credit where credit is due of corse).

Anyone else have a crazy week?

 

 

Well…

I should have said that I’d be blogging more LIFE permitting.  Sadly we had a loss in the family (yes it was expected, no it doesn’t really make it any easier).  We were so happy that Great-Grandma C got to meet LS.  She was an amazing and strong lady, and she will be missed dearly.

We love you!

*sigh*  Now that I’ve brought everyone down with me, onto the happy shall we?

We had a very laid back Easter at my grandma’s house.  Including special guest Uncle Andy who was visiting us on leave from his Army training!

Big group, big ham, big fun!  Little Sheep even got to participate in her very first egg hunt!  (With some help from Grandma!)

Maybe the Easter Bunny should have brought her some tiny sunglasses…

My Papa always hides Easter eggs around their one acer yard for all the grandkids.  The only problem was, we were never sure if we’d found them all or not (he is a very good hider).  It got to the point where Papa would have a count of all the eggs he’d hidden, so we could tell when we had them all.  Somehow, we still would be finding eggs come July, filled with icky, melted, buggy chocolate.  After one too many of these July eggs ended up thrown across the yard by the ride along lawn mower, Papa started making maps.

This year was no different, except he made the map after the fact and only remembered where 22 of the 24 eggs were hidden.  This has turned into quite the joke hunt, as the youngest of the grandkids (shown below) is 15, and we’ve long since forgotten about the Easter Bunny.  (I guess we’ll be starting up again with LS.)

I love this picture.  It starts out as all of the grandkids humoring Papa, then, it turns into a competition to see who can find the missing eggs.

Papa with his map, and Katie laughing at our inability to find the last 2 eggs.

You’ve never seen so many adults looking so hard for a few little eggs!

LS was more interested in the tag on the bunny bottom of her Easter gift from her Great-Grandma, than any of the eggs.  But it did make for the sweetest photo shoot 🙂

LS starting to sit up (nearly) on her own!

It was a beautiful day, with not a lot of time to knit *sigh*.  I have been plugging along on my mini shawl though.  I’m dying to have it done by this Saturday to wear to a monthly craft fair that I will be checking out as a potential spot to sell yarn in the future.  Although I might look a little silly wearing a scarf when the temp is supposed to be 80+.  Oh well, the sooner I finish the sooner there will be pictures, and a new pattern 😉

Hope you all had a nice holiday weekend!

 

Uugggg

I had planned on posting a bunch this week.  I had done stuff!  I had pictures!  I even had a finished object for crying out loud!!!  Sadly, I also had food poisoning.  Nothing stifles productivity like your insides trying to escape

We started out the week having some good, clean, family fun.  We keep alternating between winter (our version of winter any way. ” Ooo, it’s only 60 out, better bundle up!”) and summer here.  Apparently we don’t get spring this year.  Anyway, on one of the warmer evenings we decided to pack Little Sheep’s blanket and head to the park with the beagles.

H. G. Hankle, always on the look out over Little Sheep 🙂

We even decided to let Little Sheep check out the grass for the first time.

Not sure the grass was more interesting than her though.

Tuesday we had our good friend Liz come into town for a visit.  She’s a super awesome baby person and had fun with LS while I tried to finish up Josh’s “Christmas” scarf before he took off to the frozen north of Toronto for work.  I’m happy to say I was successful!  Although I am ashamed to say that I suck at blocking.  Example:

4am flash photo, not so good

I seriously need some blocking wires, and cats who are less interested in alpaca.  I had to pin it out in a separate room and close the door to keep the cats from rolling all over it.  Although maybe letting them once and letting them stick themselves with a stray pin might teach them a lesson… but I doubt it.  They are super stubborn.

Another lousy picture

I did really love how it blocked out, and you could finally see the single, manly, cable down the middle.  I was a little disappointed with how it tried to curl back up some once I repined it.  Is there a trick I’m missing?  It’s baby alpaca.  I soaked it in wool wash for a good hour before wringing it out and pinning it.  I had a fan on it to speed up the drying process, but I did let it dry completely before unpinning it and weaving in the ends.  (At 4am in order to send it with Josh on his 6:30am flight.  I must love him or something.)  I got to wrap it around his neck just in time to send him out the door 🙂

Since it’s just been LS and me the last few days, with not a whole lot to do other than work out the food poisoning, I finally got a little more knitting for myself done!  I’m plugging along on my “Baaad Sheep” mini shawl.

Slowly but surly

What started out as 10 stitches per row, is now over 150 stitches per row.  I’m hoping to use up the whole ball and get a nice scarf size.  I’m figuring I’m about half way there.  I am loving the make shift pattern it’s got going too.

Close up beauty shot

I can’t wait to wear it!  Hopefully it will be done before the weather warms up too much.  I’m thinking about adding some nice warm weather yarn to the shop.  I’m not a huge fan of cotton, so probably a silk blend of some sort.  I’m totally open for suggestions… hint, hint.