...and there's even been some knitting.

It was supposed to be a relatively quite little summer, a time to be contemplative and get loads done. Instead, it seems to be flying by! Anyway, I have tried to get some knitting in there too.

Most recent FO, just off the needles today in fact. File under strangest looking knitted object when not on.

What is it you say? Could it be some newly discovered sea creature washed up into the harbor of Baltimore City? You thought I was knitting a mushroom cloud? Silly.

It looks better on, though not much better since it's ON ME.





Max likes it though and these shots on the dark blue more truly represent the color. (Of course you two saw the color directly)


I don't know why all my recent knitting looks deformed when not on me. The sock actually fits wonderfully!! It's Trekking yarn and I can't wait to finish the second one.



These are my own handspun and my attempt to make something like Trekking. I shouldn't say it but I really love them, maybe more than the Trekking. I just keep expecting my handspun to disintegrate in my hands. I couldn't really have spun SOCK YARN!! The picture is a blurry but I really love the texture of the pattern too. It seems to work with the color changes.


Here we have one of the banes of my summer existence. Remember the cream cardigan...you would if you were me. Nothing but trouble, the black hole of knitting, only to discover that due to some wild cruel turn of fate (or perhaps the fact that I didn't really do gauge properly, take your pick) the shoulders would fit a football player...in pads. Oh, well, it's going in the cedar chest for a while...I can't face it anymore.


There's a few other things on the needles at the moment, but I'm simply not patient enough to keep loading pictures!!

Turning back time

Well when I did the math it still wasn't going to work out. Unless I bought a lot more yarn it was going to be very rectangular, and I wasn't sure that would work with the stripe pattern. So, here we are.



Actually it has advanced from this state. I ripped out and then immediately cast on again, but a couple inches less stitches. I'm doing a different pattern this time. It will be 4 squares with the same color on the diagonals. I knit Friday night and Saturday morning and then went and got my Harry Potter book, so all knitting stopped.

Let me know when you finish the book, Jen, and we'll discuss.

Stuck

When I bought the yarn for Baby Brother's (as he is called) blanket a nice lady at the LYS used some chart to help me figure out how much yarn I should buy. Well the chart was wrong people. Very wrong. A few weeks ago I was happily knitting along when I realized I was at the end of my ball of yarn. This was not good because I only had two more balls of the dark blue stuff left and was nowhere near one-third of the way through the blanket.

So yesterday I headed back to the LYS and explained the situation. I gently mentioned that someone there had helped me with the calculations, not because I wanted them to feel bad but because I didn't want them to think I was stupid. They were most apologetic and tried their best to help me. Anyway, there was not anymore of the yarn from that dye lot. Stinky huh? So now I have the blanket with uneven sides that I decided to go on with, but now I can't go on. (Is any of this making sense? I had lots of coffee at bunco night last night and didn't sleep till about 2am.)

I went ahead and bought two more balls of the gray yarn since they did have the right dye lot for that. So I am thinking my options are some kind of stripe, or maybe just a gray box in the middle. Ideas? Opinions?

Here is a picture so far. I am not quite through half of the blue yarn.



And here is a not-to-scale diagram of what I think my options are should I choose to continue with the blanket. I like #2 best though I haven't done color like that before and am a little squeamish about adding another variable to the project. Other options would be ripping and starting over completely or making a hat.

The apple doesn't fall far

Ellery is crawling now. The world is hers! Where would she like to go?