WiP Wednesday

Well, hello there! Sorry I missed last week, I was off to California to run a great big softball tournament. I did virtually no knitting while I was gone (or since I've returned home!), but my Love Actually cowl is through the first repeat.


It should move fairly quickly from here, which is awesome. Then I’ll get back to my EZ slippers, and do a second pair for the Hubster. At least that’s the plan.

Since my return home, I’ve been busy with my part-time job working for SpaceCadet. I had a big pile of yarn to tag and twist. Since it’s for the Interstellar Yarn Alliance I can’t really show it to you, but here’s a little teaser:


I hear my taskmaster has another metric crap-ton of yarn waiting to twist and tag, so it’s a good thing I have lots of TiVo to catch up with. Maybe I’ll even get some knitting time in soon, and be able to start my next weaving project sooner than later.

Let’s face it. What I really need is Hermione’s time turner…

WiP Wednesday

OK! It’s been lots of simple knitting around here. When I’ve been watching the Pens or reading, it’s been my Harry Potter scarf. I’m into the second skein of each color and it’s moving right along.


But, because the scarf now requires a larger project bag, I needed a smaller project for last week’s trips to the theater. Last week started with a field trip with my former co-workers at Bloomin Yarns. When we visited Wexford Dry Goods, there was a really cool dishcloth they had in many colors. So I decided to give it a try!


It’s great for short stretches of knitting, and I’m happy with how it looks. There won’t be a ton of knitting time over the next two weeks, but we’ll see what happens!

Runnin’

When I came home from Beginning Weaving Week at the Mannings way back in 2010, I took show-and-tell to my knitting groups. My dear friend Sara/CelticQueen (who is the designer of the super-awesome Knitty Surprise! pattern Love Actually) admired the twill sampler and thought it would be nice as a table runner for her kitchen. She picked the weft color, I ordered it from The Mannings, and it all sat around exactly like that for … a really, really long time.

I finally got a warp wound in April and had everything ready to weave before I left for the Women’s College World Series the day after Memorial Day. Eventually I started weaving, hemstitched the starting edge, and was off to start the marathon.


Marathon? Yeah. This thing sat on the loom for what seemed like forever. I just didn’t carve out a whole lot of weaving time last summer. I don’t know why that was, but I really want that to change!


I finally finished the weaving in late August. I felt great when I cut it off the loom … until I unrolled the fabric off of the front beam. And realized that I’d forgotten to hemstitch the finishing edge. Crap.

So I contacted the Jedi Masters of Weaving at The Mannings, and Sara (different Sara) reassured me that I could do the hemstitching off the loom, it just would have been a little easier under tension.


It took until January for me to buckle down and do the hemstitching, then wet-finish the piece. I Scotch Guarded it for Sara and got it off to her in mid-January. Finally. It’s chock full of the mistakes of a beginning weaver, but hey. The more I weave, the better I’ll get. Just like quilting and knitting.

Table Runner for CQ 

Draft: Twill Sampler from Beginning Weaving Week at The Mannings 

Thread: 3/2 Perle Cotton

Sett: 15 EPI 

Started: 27 April 2012 

Finished: 14 January 2013

The Owlery

I woke up on New Year’s Day and had nothing planned but a full day of football-watching. I had some breakfast, went to the gym … then came home and decided it was time to start knitting.

Some wonderful friends of mine had been talking about doing a Hogwarts Express Knit-A-Long. I had received the pattern as a Christmas gift. I’d had yarn and beads picked out for this shawlette for months. Yes, I said beads. Don’t panic.


So I started knitting again for the first time since August 12. I know some knitters start tearing their hair out with miles of garter stitch, but I’m not one of them. It makes me happy and made this the perfect re-entry project.

I threw together a dash of recent experience with a spoonful of my knitting preferences and made a few modifications. I hate yarn overs (well, the holes they create), so I did a M1 increase instead. Because I knew this would “eat” any give to the edge that would have been contributed by the yarn-over, I did the edge very similar to Color Affection. I added a yarn over to the start of each row and dropped it on the way back.


I wound up with an edge loose enough to allow some manipulation in blocking, but snug enough to create the required curl. I win. When it was time to start making the Owls, I got lucky and the precise number of stitches appropriate for the repeat. Yay for no adjustments!


I did the wider border version of the pattern, paired with the less-pointy tips, and did not do the “more ruffles” variation. I used a crochet hook to add the beads for the owl-eyes. It was very simple and I’d do it again when I find another pattern I want that needs beads.


All in all, a successful project on many levels. And it’s cute, too!

Hogwarts Express 

Pattern: Hogwarts Express by Susan Ashcroft 

Yarn/Color: String Theory Caper Sock in Skerry 

Quantity: Less than 1 skein. Started with 119.3 grams, finished with 22.5 grams left. 

Needles: US 6/4.0mm Signature Needle Arts 36” circ 

Started: 1 January 2013 

Finished: 13 January 2013 

Mods: No icky yarn overs. Less-pointy tips. Inadvertently did an extra garter ridge worth of border prior to bind-off. Oops.

WiP Wednesday: Re-entry

Back from Florida and trying to catch up. I managed to take a picture of my scarf last Wednesday, on the pool deck at my Dad’s house. Woo 4.5 stripes!


And here it is this morning. Yay 10+ stripes!

I
n other news, I got a big hunk of slipper knitting done before I left on my trip. It wasn’t trip-appropriate knitting, so it stayed home. Hopefully I can finish my pair this weekend. The first slipper is waiting for its exterior second sole, the second slipper is ready for decreases. Zoom!


Of course, the scarf is too big for travel, the slippers are too complicated, so I’ll have a new tiny project to entertain me during intermission at the theater tonight. Lots of littles happening around here, plus planning for sewing stuff. Oh, and two finished project posts coming right up!

2012 In Review

Last year was nothing like I thought it would be, but what year ever turns out as expected?

 I intended to knit 12 pairs of socks. I knit four (five if you count the man-socks as one pair each). I knit a hat early in the year, some shawls/wraps, then didn’t finish much for quite a while. There were two sewing projects for SpaceCadet’s InterStellar Yarn Alliance. A pair of baby quilts. More weaving.

My mom died in August, and I didn’t knit another stitch for the rest of the year, although my knitting needles have gotten back into the action in the last month. In all of its less-than-expected glory, here are my finished projects from 2012

1. Dawn Gnot Socks, 2. Koolhaas Hat, 3. Sweet Tomato Foot Ovens, 4. Gaskell Shawl (name of shawl was changed from Cranford to Gaskell by designer), 5. I.B. Footsie, 6. Ginormous Man Socks, 7. SpaceCadet Notions Bags, 8. Northwestern Baby Quilts, 9. Wiggle Wrap, 10. Color Affection, 

11. Rag Rugs, 12. Rainbow Rep Weave Placemats, 13. Dad’s Doubleweave Blanket.