Is this thing on?

I wasn't sure Blogger would even let me back in after my egregious blog absence. It seems my last post was almost 4 months ago (I'm sneaking in 2 days shy of 4 months...). In the meantime...

I finished my pink scarf:

I sewed an elephant for Baby J:

New hat for Baby B (you can see he loved it):

And nearing the finish line on a sweater for him too:

Sweater for new Baby K:

And coasters:

Phew.

The truth is, though, I've been working on something else really big... a person (Two Potato, as C calls him)! That's right, we're having a kid at the beginning of May. While I was spared morning sickness and crippling fatigue, the bean sapped me of all creative energy and it only returned a few weeks ago. Now I'm playing catch-up.

Have happy holidays everyone! Hopefully it won't be another 4 months until you hear from me again!

Sleeve #2 and Trim

Let me tell you how fun it was to cast on 332 stitches for that border strip and then pray I didn't jam anything up in the stitch pattern.

Now for assembly!

Sleeve one...

And sleeve two halfway done!
Operation Finish Baby Sweater Before Tangled Yoke Yarn Turns Up is a go.

Hopping to

With the new fall knitting magazines out I'm feeling the need to gitty up on my current knitting projects. I really don't like having that many WIPs going at once, so I'm trying to knock a few off the list so I can start new ones in good faith.

For the fall knitting, I've decided to start with Eunny's Tangled Yoke Cardigan from the Fall 2007 Interweave Knits (for non-ravelrers). I am sure I will be in good company in knitting this, considering it's been queued on Ravelry 460 times and counting. I decided against starting with the Placed Cable Aran, which I also adore, because I think I'll get more wear out of the cardigan; I have little opportunity to wear big heavy wool sweaters in my life, it seems. My yarn order is placed, but the Felted Tweed is backordered for 3 weeks! Bother.

However, this is an excellent opportunity to set a deadline for finishing some lingering knits. I would most like to knock off the Dolly baby sweater I've been laboring on since March. There is no reason a baby sweater should take 6 months! It took me 5 months to knit the two front pieces and one week to knit the back, so that's an improvement. I'm also blocking them as I go because they knit up to shriveled stockinette bits of nothing and that's no fun.

I started sleeve #1 today. This pattern has repeatedly bugged me - I'd rather they take the extra space to write out the reverse shaping than telling me to figure it out myself. It's not rocket science, but it's annoying. Also, for the scalloped edge on the sleeve (which is adorable), I'm instructed to lift 8 stitches over the first stitch on the left needle. I started doing a whole operation with my crochet hook before I realized slipping them over one at a time was just as good, and a thousand times easier. At the end of the scalloping I had 49 stitches and they tell me I'm meant to have 50. For the life of me I have no idea where the missing stitch went - the row is not that long and I can see everything I did, and all of my numbers line up. An error in the pattern? I'd like to think so, but there is no errata to be found for Jaeger patterns anywhere on the Internets. I mean, are they really that good at writing patterns? Suspicious. At any rate, I fudged and carried on. I know the infant will not care, and if the second sleeve winds up the same then I'll be vindicated. Isn't the scalloping cool? I love it.

Procrastination

Ravelry is fantastic for a lot of things, one of which is procrastination. In order to avoid doing work and writing my bridesmaid speech (which I'll be delivering next week at about this time, god help me), I thought I'd better photograph and catalog all of my stash yarn. This took the better part of yesterday afternoon, and I discovered I have (a) a bunch of sock yarn I will likely never use, (b) one very small sweater's worth of Cotton Glace, and (c) a gojillion oddballs (sometimes two balls-worth) of every conceivable yarn weight, none of which match each other. So I organized my yarn drawers and put oddballs in plastic bags by gauge and now it's all tidy, although no more useful. Yippee! Does this mean I can buy more yarn?

Now then, is there anything else I can do around here to avoid writing my speech? Oh right, block a half-finished baby sweater and commence obsessing over the new Interweave Knits.

I finally finished the second front of the Dolly baby sweater which I've been working on for months, despite the fact it's only big enough for a baby. As I've said, the yarn is Jaeger Matchmaker Merino 4-ply and it's being scratchy and splitty and generally not so much fun. Plus the pattern is one of those "reverse shaping for other side" jobs which drives me bananas, especially when the first side's pattern includes a lot of "do as set for the last 10 rows 8 more times but decreasing every 2 rows 4 times and then every 6 rows 8 times," etc. etc. Do what?! I can read a pattern, but this makes my head hurt. When I finished both fronts they were little shrively pink bits and I had no idea how big the sweater was going to be, so I was eager to stretch it out for a blocking. Of course, now that I see how big the sweater is I still have no big the average baby is, so it was not much help, although it does look pretty all flattened out.

As for Interweave, I'm loving these two designs:

I'm already envisioning Beaverslide for the first one... Yes Arwen, I see you lurking on the shelf, giving me the evil-unfinished-sweater eye, and quit it! If you were more fun to knit we'd play more, but for the meantime you are staying put.

A Variety of Obsessions

I have two new obsessions:
1. Ravelry.
2. Flickr.

Let's start with Ravelry. Obviously I'm not the first to cry its praises but I LOVE this thing. If you're not already signed up, go get yourself on the waitlist. I have now spent hours uploading all sorts of things, browsing around, admiring other people's stuff and having endless fun. If you're on there, go find me ("onepotato") and let's be friends.

The new obsession with Ravelry then required me to bite the bullet and get a for-real Flickr account. I have actually been resisting this for a long time. I don't love dealing with Flickr and kind of sigh every time I click on a picture and it launches me over there. However, since uploading a ton of photos and beginning to organize them (they are still a shambles, but I'm getting there), I'm becoming a fan. So come be my friend there too!

Right, now back to the crafty stuff. One of my projects is top secret and I will show it next week. I have also been slaving away on my Frost & Flowers shawl. I still love it but fear this project is e-n-d-l-e-s-s. I am not even done with the second ball and have an entire skein left to go. I will persevere. My goal is to be done by Stitches East this fall.





I've also been working on this sweet little baby sweater from the Jaeger JB29 baby book. The yarn is Jaeger matchmaker merino 4-ply. It's a little rough for baby knits, in my opinion, but I think a bath in Eucalan will sort it out. It's slow going as well, though - size 3 needles like the lace. I'm not loving the pattern writing either, so this little item takes a lot of focus, which I don't have when rolling home from work. I fear the recipient will be 3 before I finish - I'm making a 12-18mo but she already looks too big and she's only been around for a couple months!