Repeated Stabbing

Apparently does a sheep make.

This might well be...

... my new favourite thing to do with wool.

Woah! Where did the time go?

Hihihi! Still here, somewhere...

The blankie has been sadly neglected since you saw it last. It fell by the wayside to make room for a baby blanket and a new obsession, needle felting, and well, other life stuff that has been a very welcome and continuing distraction :)

The aforementioned baby blanket was a rare foray into the world of crochet. I'd seen links to the Sunny Spread (rav) cropping up on flickr and I knew I just HAD to make it. I've also had a bunch of cute purple cotton yarn hanging out in my stash for, oh, forever that I was saving for a special project and my friends' impending adoption is certainly a very special event.

I'm so happy for M&J, this has a been a very long road and finally they have reached their destination. Of course from here on in the road gets even longer and twistier and whatnot, but they will have a beautiful little girl to guide them along it.

Details on the ravelry project page.

Just in case you were thinking...

... that it was all blanket, all of the time, let me assure that it's not. It's all blanket, all the time except for four hours I spent last night making pajama pants. See!

These are Heather Ross' Pajamas for Everyone in size medium, in some 100% cotton I bought on eBay ages ago thinking I'd use it for the backing of the Spiderweb Quilt. I didn't end up using it because it was more of a beige and black print that white and black, plus it had a lot more drape than the rest of the fabric. Anyhoo, it makes great pants.

Making the pants was a little frustrating though. You have to trace pattern pieces and parchment paper is all I have. Holy curing batman! And parchment can't be stuck together with tape, trust me, I tried. I also had to do a different pattern piece to fabric layout than suggested in the book which meant that the legs were a good five inches shorter than the pattern, but you see how they are hitting me perfectly at the ankle? Those would have been wasted inches anyway. Instead of folding the two yards on the selvage (short) edge, I folded it along the length (making a 1yard by 45" square) then just cut off the bottom part of the leg pattern that didn't fit on the fabric. As it ended up, the pants are exactly the right length for my 5'5", 31" inseam wearing self.

Once I was really to start assembling, my machine stopped sewing zigzags. It isn't catching the second stitch so even though the needle is moving back and forth all I end up with is a straight line of stitches. I changed the needle, rethreaded, took apart the bobbin holder and cleared lint, rethreaded the bobbin, messed with tension and NO, no zigzag for you! So I sewed a second line of straight stitch outside of the seam and I hope that will stop most of the fraying.

But after all that, they are a well fitting pair of PJs so in the end I'm happy. More coffee please.

Update

And this is where I nonchalantly announce that I made it to half way.

No big whoop.

Heh.

My muse

It sort of feels like...



... the only thing I've done with the blankie...



.... for the last two weeks....



... is take pretty pictures.

601.

One row from halfway done.

Deep breath.

Knit.

A bit late with the blankie update

It's been a bit of a theme this week and last that real life has very rudely interrupted my knitting time. While I was making good pace with an average of 10 squares a day, that average is going to take a nose dive. Last week I saw a play, went out three nights and spent a redonk amount of time in lab preparing for my lab meeting. So I only managed an additional 59 squares last week.

BUT, since I was tricksy with my last photo, by zooming out a little it looks like I achieved WAY more. Heh.

This week isn't looking good for the blanket either, although I shouldn't complain because it means I am actually living, gasp! A LIFE. On Monday I went to a Jeopardy viewing party where my friend Amy won!!

Last night was pub quiz and flip cup, then tonight I'm going out for dinner with friends, Thursday I think I'm hosting prospective students and Friday I'm taking a bunch to Broadway to see In The Heights. I have such a hard life. The blanket is suffering because of it ;o)

Traveling blanket

This week the blanket has traveled far and wide.

First up was a trip to a night of knitting and hot chocolate at the City Bakery, where she was admired and photographed by many knitters, including the ladies from Knitty City. I think I ate my body weight in chocolate and I know I made full use of the bar so the night was enjoyable despite the massive overcrowding and lack of space to move/breathe/knit.

Next I took the blanket to work on Saturday.

I don't, as a rule, knit when I'm at work. But since it was a weekend it's technically my time so knitting at the bench seems a little bit more appropriate. I didn't get more than a few squares done though since I was actually doing work, but every little bit counts!

So at the end of week five where do I stand? Or more accurately where do I lie?

Squares: 462
Dimensions: 65" x 29" (a THIRD of the way to 88"!)
Thumb: All healed

Time to go knit some more!

Week Four

Last Week: 293 squares
This Week: 377 squares
Thumb: Still split

That's an average of 10.5 squares a day. Not bad. I'm about 1/4 of the way through the length so at this pace I should finish by, um, let's not go there.

Let's just look at the pretty instead.

Weekly Weigh-In

Two hundred and ninety three squares down, and I'm-refusing-to-calculate-the-number-of-squares left to go! The blanket is currently 65" long and, at it's widest up top, 25" across. It's getting pretty hefty too although I don't have a scale at home sensitive enough to weigh it.

Still loving it. Loving it so much that I have a split in my thumb where I peeled off a callus and the skin underneath couldn't cope with the knitting.... and I'm still knitting despite it. I have run into one slight problem though... y'all have cats. And I don't. One of you has a particularly viciously allergenic cat. But, re-skeining and washing the yarn seems to have helped a lot with the feeling that my lungs are going to crap out on me. I'm not complaining though! I knew the risks when I asked you all to send yarn and to be honest I kind of forgot that I'm the knitting anomaly who doesn't have a cat because I am a delicate flower that is allergic to EVERYTHING. Most of your cats seem to agree with me pretty well and washing a couple of skeins of yarn is a small price to pay for all of your generosity :)

Knit on brave soul!

Keeping on knitting

Time for a two week check in on my insanity...

I'm still crazy. Bat-shit, even. 65" wide and about 18" deep right now. I'm aiming for the astronomical length of 88". Told you I was certifiable.

You what the most awesome part of this project is? Well, you see all that yarn on my couch? That was all sent to me by my flickr friends and my Sit n Knit friends. They have enabled me in the most wonderful way. Seriously. This project is so, so addictive is because every square is a little gem of awesome in its own right, plus there is so much colour and texture for me to play with that I can't help but immediately pick up stitches for the next square as soon as the ends are woven in from the previous one.

And, to say thank you to all these wonderful people I've been making Kiva loans, one for every five people who sent me yarn. So far we've helped a teacher in Nicaragua purchase a computer to further her own and her student's studies, a baker in El Salvador buy flour, sugar and cinnamon to expand her wholesale business, and a liquor store owner in South Sudan pay for distillation equipment. This makes me happy :)

Now off to knit some more....

Insanity Blanket

No really. What was I thinking?

I got a bee in my bonnet a couple of nights ago about reorganizing my stash since it had gotten a little out of hand and was spread out across my apartment. This lead to me assessing the amount of scrap sock yarn I had squirreled away with no real purpose. So I cast on. And knit.

And knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit......

I'm following the directions for the Sock Yarn Blanket by The Heathen Housewife. I'm knitting on US2/2.75mm needles. And I'm hooked. Completely and utterly hooked.

But I am going to run out of yarn. Thankfully though my flickr and twitter and Sit 'n' Knit New York peeps are coming to my aid and many have promised me their scraps. I CAN NOT WAIT. Seriously. I have considered unraveling things, snipping bits of yarn off of as yet unused balls of sock yarn, I even made up a cart of random 50g balls of sock yarn from Little Knits that I didn't buy. But soon little packages should be arriving from my friends and I can resume my crazy.

I can't wait.

The BIG one

And so to the last of my holiday gifts. One I may have alluded to here. It started out innocently enough with a pile of neatly cut triangles in very thin cotton. 110 isosceles triangles to be precise.

The there was much cutting of random strips of black and red fat quarters. Then sewing, lots of sewing, to create 110 string pieced triangles that looked a little like this.

Then there was more precision cutting of triangles, more sewing and pressing and piecing to create a top that looked a little bit more like the spiderweb I was going for. There were borders made and sewn on, an improvised back pieced together. Basting, quilting and binding. Acres of hand sewing. And then there was this.

The pattern inspiration and cutting templates came from a book, "Scrap Quilts from the Depression", that I picked up in a secondhand store in Vancouver. The pattern calls for 20 octagons (160 triangles) for a queen sized quilt but since I was aiming more for a cuddling-on-the-couch sized quilt I made the top from 12 octagons.... OK, so you got me. I made it from 12 because I ran out of fabric to piece onto and the inclination to sew any more triangles after I hit the 110 mark. I was worried it would be too small with only 12 which is why I added the framing sashing. But saying all that, I really like the way it looks with the frame, and it ties the back to the front better. Or something like that.

After the front was pieced I went on a month long sewing hiatus while I slogged though an obscene amount of bioinformatic data analysis for my Big Scary Annual Faculty Meeting, after which I was left with four days to finish the quilt before I flew home. FOUR DAYS! I originally had a completely different idea for the back along the lines of the back of the Mod Sampler but after laying it out I realized that it wouldn't work without more triangles (see above as to why that didn't happen.) So instead I made a rectangular patch out of the remaining 14 triangles then sashed my little heart out, mimicked the final frame on the front and called it a good 'un.

I basted and quilted the sucker in one day. You may recall that my machine does not like quilting. With this quilt I discovered that my sewing machine prefers me to use a heavy duty denim needle and that I really, really, REALLY need to support as much of the weight of the quilt as possible to prevent drag, and then the thread wont snap. In fact it only snapped three or four times compared to the thirty or forty times it snapped before. I'd call that an improvement.

The next day I made and attached all the binding. I hand sewed the entire circumference in one afternoon. Basically I finished the whole damn thing with a day to spare. GO ME.

But after all that, what really matters is this.

I think they like it.

Catch-up: Impromptu little knits.

Aside from all the shawls, there were two other small knits that were made for gifting and both were made with yarn I'd received for free! The first was a hat for Dash.

With a single skein of Knit Picks Gloss DK from the Ravelry goodie bag at this year's Rhinebeck party, I cast on 90st on 4mm needles. I joined in round and K1 P1 for 1.5", then switched to stockinette until the hat measured 6" or so. Then spiral decreased down to 9st (K8 K2tog repeat, K one row, K7 K2tog etc etc). Then for extra flourish I made a pompom with the leftover yarn. I'm not sure if it is actually going to be big enough for Dash but hopefully it'll fit this year.

Next up was a gift for my lab secret Santa. We pulled names on Monday afternoon (incidentally immediately after my Big Scary Annual Faculty Meeting) and gave gifts on Wednesday. Since I pulled someone I knew would appreciate a hand knit I immediately went home, wound up yarn and set to. Maybe four hours later I had this.

Pattern: Darkside Cowl by Sarah Fama
Yarn & Needles: Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend received in a goodie bag at the Knit1 launch party I went to forever ago, US8/5mm dpns.

The fact that I tied the package with leftover yarn and that the gift was, um, knitted might well have given me away as Santa. But it was very well received and hopefully will be worn!

Catch-up: The shawl edition.

It's that time of the knitting year when a bazillion secret projects suddenly get let loose on the internet. My creaky, old blog is no exception. There were projects that were kept under wraps, some that happened spontaneously, and at least one that I'd been working on since September.

First things first! The gift I knit for my sister way back in September, never got around to mailing for her October birthday, and that was finally gifted in late December. I'm good at planning ahead, just not so good on the follow through!

Pattern: Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn Clark, Interweave Knits Fall '06.
Yarn & Needles: Brooklyn Handspun Soft Spun, Odd Duck (about 2/3 ball) on US6/4mm needles.

This shawl is very pretty, if a little small. I contemplated adding a few repeats to the bud lace section but then didn't even attempt to calculate what would happen to the stitch counts if I did that, so I ended up knitting exactly as written. Maybe if I make it again I'd investigate the math a little more thoroughly. Still, my sister likes it and the colours in the yarn are fabulous, everyone is happy :)

The next shawl to fall off my needles was a spontaneous plane knitting project conceived mere hours before I flew to the UK. I ended up gifting it to my mother.

Pattern: Yvaine by Liz Abinante. Modified to make full use of the yarn (repeated 14 rows stockinette 8 rows seed stitch throughout) and to change the method of increasing (yo instead of m1l/r).
Yarn & Needles: Fleece Artist Somoko, Mermaid from the Ravelry Summer Camp Swap. Lovely yarn, very soft and warm. US8/5mm

The last shawl I knit was for me, out of some very special yarn. I won a skein of Plucky Knitter Merino Cashmere Nylon at Rhinebeck in 2008 and have been waiting for something special to make it into. I give you Lavalette:

It's beautiful and so, so soft. I definitely saved the best for myself!