Earflaps are quick to knit so easy to feel sense of accomplishment that I’m reaching in more than once a day for more hats. Will hopefully get through what I have quickly enough to have time to knit extra hats on top of what I already have

I was knitting so furiously in June with an average of three hat bodies per day (sometimes with 5 in a day to compensate for a 1 hat day) that I had to stop knitting altogether for the last 10 days of June cause I was starting to feel the consequences.

Doing better and it helps that it’s much easier to “just finish this earflap” because each is only about 200 stitches altogether! Easy to just do a couple here and there.

Running short of days but have a slim hope that I might actually make my goal, especially if I deliver them myself in San Diego which would buy me a little extra time.

Should find a campground in the San Diego area!

Then I made myself put it down and work on Blankie #4 while thinking about what I’d do for today’s cast on.

Progress on the Blankie: Finished the 5th ball… only one left.

Consulting the lineup in Ravelry, I decided to go with the Granny Bag as I wanted something particularly mindless. Looking at the pattern I saw that it really didn’t matter what kind of square you had but was more about the assembly of the squares. I plan to really have fun with that later but for now a basic bag will do.

I wanted to use some of my huge stash of Bernat Berella 4″ obtained at steep discounts last year due to Michaels clearance sale but couldn’t get at it without waking my mother. So I went with black and green thin worsted acrylics instead that I had laying around. The green comes from an Ebay lot of 20 sk (300yds each) that I bought years ago in a misguided attempt to save money but that’s another story. 20 skeins is way more than I needed so this would be a good way to try using up some of it so the squares are more green then black (Lion Brand Wool Ease).

Also decided to make the 7 round square to get a bigger bag. I did a stupid thing near the end of the first square and snipped the black end even though I noticed that where it was sticking out, it probably wasn’t woven in. But no… I had to cut it, then pull and sure enough the black row (5th) started popping loose. And I’d already crocheted the whole 6th row of green on top of it. Had to rip it out but managed to salvage most of the 5th and then finish the square.

Did 4 rounds of the next before calling it quits for the night. Only need 16 squares to construct the bag so will be interesting to see “how fast” it goes. Seems like a great market/tote bag that’s easily adjustable in size by adding or subtracting rounds to the squares.

It rained! Thundered even!

Got out of the house. Bought a cute bed for Mina for cheap.

But everything else was bad. Felt crappy cause I feel  well again except for heavy congestion so the constant feeling of “holding my breath” or trying not to be a loud breather just got to me.

Was supposed to go to a masquerade ball with friends but that fell through. And it was suggested that I go with the one other person that I’m friendly with but haven’t spent much time with yet and I just got too nervous on top of the literal head game my sinuses were playing to overcome the panic. So I felt crappy over that too.

Didn’t even get shit together to at least go over and hang out with Dad and watch There Will Be Blood with him. More shit to feel crappy about.

Instead I watched The Promotion which perhaps I had it pegged completely wrong but I thought it was supposed to be a comedy? It isn’t… AT ALL. I wouldn’t say it doesn’t have a point at all but it doesn’t really have much of a pay off to spend 2 hours of my life watching 2 guys struggle to keep theirs together and somewhat against each other but nothing ever really happens. I kept waiting for the punchline or the big finish. So realizing that I wasted 2 hours watching that instead of at least doing the former… that really opened the depression spigot.

Visit with Angela and then Angus for a bit and felt better, resolved to at least watch something good and then go to bed and have it be a new day. Put in Hellboy 2 which was decent. I think the storyline wasn’t polished enough but it was fun visually.

Except….

That partway through the movie, I realize that I’d done a mobieus on my Silken Scabbard. It’s my National Sweater Knitting Month project and it was slow going during the Promotion to redo the cast on from last night and get through the beginning rows of 200+ stitches each.  I was on row 9 (almost 2,000 stitches!) when I realized that when I’d joined to knit in the round, my careful attempts to make sure it wasn’t twisted… had failed. No way to salvage it so I had to frog all that careful knitting.

I say careful because I was trying to be gentle with this soft lightweight yarn that’s slightly stretchy. I can sometimes be hamfisted and knit with a lot of tension.

So more annoyance because now I have to start over again… for the 3rd time. I went ahead and did it right then cause I knew if I left it to do when I was ready to start again, it’d put a damper on the next attempt.

Today was definitely a frustrating day for any yarn work. Kept thinking of one thing after the next that I wanted to work on and ended up just sitting and surfing idly instead of doing any of it. But I did do several hexagons in Maxine’s Memory afghan. Now that I’ve realized that I was wrong about how the “flowers” join together, that it’s only a single row of motifs instead of a row of assembled flower motifs in green, it should go a lot faster for the green part but I had to see if the TLC Essentials yarn was thin enough for it. The Bernat Berella turned out to be too thick to be used with a hook small enough to get gauge.

First one I did in H hook was definitely too big but the G hook worked and so I have a total of 2 green ones worked and already joined together. Next I need to count the “flowers” and work out how many more are needed and how to lay them out. Thinking about doing a double row of green pieces to make the afghan bigger without making more flowers.

But Oat Couture and Noni Designs don’t use it. Probably because they’re nervous about people passing around the pdfs instead of buying their own copy.

I digress. ParadiseFibers.net had the patterns and reasonable shipping cost of $2.40 for 3 patterns.

* The Noni cascading fuschias market bag pattern that I bought the yarn for early this summer!

* Oat Couture’s Curlicue Coverlet – the model doesn’t look spectacular but it’s what people have done with multiple colors and variegated ones that have me chomping at the bit to do my own. Will be the first time I KNIT an afghan. Some inspirational FOs:  Solaris, Purlingswine, and FuzzyKaren

* Oat Couture’s Stowaway Bag – I’ve already been making some market bags out of free patterns or my own but I wanted to see how they did theirs with the stowaway bottom.

In the meantime,  I have the “1 skein’s worth of a Clapotis” photo for you that I mentioned before. I’m currently at the end of 4 skeins but not sure how far I am in to the pattern as written. Might end up adding length.

Clapotis - One Skein

Keep feeling like I have to blog about it all.

So tonight, will just talk about what I did today.

First, I worked on my Sunflowers Afghan. There’s 4 colors involved in a motif (the section that is repeated over and over and then sewn together to make the whole afghan). Dk brown for the center (seeds), yellow for the leaves, then a round of green, a round of dk blue, and another round of green. So far I’ve done only up to the blue round as I still need to dig out that skein of blue that I have.

I’m undecided whether to stick with the color scheme as indicated in the book or go all green. Will do one of each and take pictures.

In the meantime, been doing more motifs because with the yarn changes, it’s very easy to just assembly line it. Today I managed to use up the rest of the dk brown skein which shows me I can get 10.5 motifs out of a dk brown skein. Will be useful for figuring how many more to set aside when I figure out how big I want to make it.

Been thinking these might make fun baby blankets too. Keep the motifs the same size but just put fewer together and do it in a softer yarn. Certainly a lot of babies in my life, my cousins have a bunch and other people do too.

Then I decided it was time to see what the love for the clapotis was all about. It’s one of the two KALs this month in Village Hopelessly Overcommitted, and Kimberli helped me out by looking at my stash and recommending Elann’s Pegasus, which is a nice cotton/rayon yarn. Has a nice feel to it. And I had a bag of an intense blue color which should be enough for it plus a skein or two left over for fingerless mitts to match.

Using K’s adapted spreadsheet that is written to purl the stitch to be dropped instead of using a ton of stitch markers. So far so good. Still in section 2, working up the increases.

Good mindless knitting but I still have to pay attention to remember to twist the appropriate stitches.

EDIT:  Finished the first skein and got to 89 stitches which is the end of the 6th repeat. 1.5 left to go in Section 2 and then it’s straight knitting for a while. So just need to make sure I have 1.2 skeins left for the decreasing end.

Liking this so far, fast knit and fast gratification to see something coming out of the needles

Doing the Ravelympics left me with the desire to finish up some of the bigger projects I had going. I didn’t realize how focused  & determined that desire was but I’ve been working steadily on Evangeline with one exception.

One of my Ravelympics projects that I had to give up on was the Sweater Bag and part of my frustration was that was that the ‘plain’ knitting part was all rev st st which meant 50 purl stitches every row (half the row).

But after working on the Evangeline for a while, I realized that every wrong side row was near 200+ purl stitches and I was doing just fine. I decided to set it down and do a little on the Sweater Bag to see if it was still a big frustration.

I ended up not being able to put it down til the body was finished. I even kept going and worked on the strap til the skein ran out.  However the strap left me with a new set of annoyances as it was only 18 stitches done in the round but it still felt like it took forever to make any progress.

I went back to the Evangeline at that point and with a minor exception, have dedicated all my knitting hours for the past couple of weeks to it. Knitted everyday too except the last couple which is why I feel weird right now because I haven’t had my “fix” in a few days.

I’m up to the armhole shaping area on the front now and the piece looks really big but seems to fit right when held against the body. I think it may come out longer than originally planned cause I think my row gauge was off but that’s ok with me. I like long shirts anyways.

There’s so many things I want to cast on that my head wants to explode just thinking about it. But I really do need to soon finish the Purple Cat Pillow for Rachel as I was told tonight that she’s near ready to pop! Ideally I’d devote myself to doing a matching baby blanket in the same yarn as I got enough for that purpose to start with.

And then perhaps I’ll break my beading cherry and make my “Deathly Odessa” which will be a hat made with skull beads that I’ve had for 4 years.

The minor exception to the Evangeline btw is starting a Hostile Bunni on Wednesday which was the day after the official month long Bunnis VillageAlong  for Village  Hopelessly Overcommitted on Ravelry ended.  I did the body up to the last couple rounds, embroidered a face on it, then did the ears. Still need to sew on the ears, stuff the body and then finish the last couple rounds, finish off and weave in the ends to be complete. Angela also had the cool idea to add eyebrows to make him look more hostile. She also said that he looked a little like Winnie The Pooh. In the dark light, the orange looked red from across the room.

I’ve been too lazy to try to take pictures of the current WIPs of the sweater bag or tunic but I did manage to snap a photo of the Bunni to be so here you go!

Hostile Bunni... not quite finished

Tonight I finally put together a website for selling the Jayne hats myself so that my knitting efforts go to support my favorite dog rescue.

Typically all sales of Jayne Hats wherever you might find them to buy go to a charity of some kind. The 60 hats I knitted earlier this year went towards CA Browncoats supported charities.

Hopefully I can get the site out there in time for people looking for Xmas gifts. I’ve got 5 ready to go already and even if they don’t sell, CA Browncoats will take ‘em in February for the con in SF area.

If you know anyone who’s been wanting a Jayne Hat, please point them at http://www.caynecobb.com

How to get back on an even keel?

#1 Read about a very touching love story.

#2 Get and pass on a “chain letter” about women friends and appreciation of them. And end up chatting a little with three of them!

#3 Get an IM at work about what do I want for lunch? They’re buying it today. That was random and nice.

#4 Think about the progress I made last night on my merletto mitts (from the *june* FGF knit along/KAL)

I picked it up while watching the Bones premiere and first I wasted a good amount of time unnecessarily frogging down the first lace pattern section (first 5 stitch section) because I was confused about where I left off. I thought I was about to start row 7 of the 8 row chart but turns out I was supposed to do row 5.

Resolved to try to always end at the end of a chart, or at least WRITE on the printout what row I’m on.

Finished that lace repeat and did another whole repeat so now I’m 3 repeats into the recommended 5 before starting the thumb gusset.

I’m liking the  pooling of the colors on the plain side as well as the pattern side though admittedly the lace pattern is getting a little lost. Looking forward to finishing them. I think I got the lace pattern down finally as I didn’t really have to look at the chart anymore. Was getting a pretty good rhythm going so perhaps if the ADD monster doesn’t come crashing through and make me go to other things, I’ll be able to stick with this long enough to finish it.

But of course I’ve got a lot of other things on the needles that beg to be finished too. Really need to be sure to do the 2nd glove for Ibby’s test pattern asap.  I know some people put on their blog what they’re working on and the progress but holy shit would I have a bunch of widgets in the sidebar if I did that and that’s not counting things that are truly hibernating! I love that Ravelry has that as a status because those sink to the bottom and you can see what you’re truly working on.

I had to sit and think about it for a while, what did I feel like working on? And finally I decided to push myself to work on the Merlettos some because I was starting to kind of hate it and think that I would never get it done. I figured if I still hated it after working on it last night, then I’d frog and give it up as a lost cause. But I got across that line where I finally “got” the pattern which means not only do I not need to look at the chart anymore but I can also tell where I am by looking at it and also quickly see if I’ve gone off.

Oh, forgot to mention that after I frogged and reknitted the lace. I had to do it again because I actually did it wrong  on the reknit. After all that, I was moving along when I realized that stitch #1 or 2 had somehow gotten dropped way down to the top of the ribbing. I contemplated just letting it rip out through the ribbing but that would leave behind a ‘ladder’ that would look out of place. A light bulb hit that if I used my teeny crochet hook, I could easily pick the stitch back up to the top row because it’s like chaining in crochet only the YOs come from each row above. Was pleased with myself for staying calm and figuring out and executing the fix quickly and neatly.

And holy crap, lunch came and they put a whole cow in my sandwich!

Crocheting is less popular so I was able to get in and volunteer and this time I was excited to because she posted a picture of the result and it looked to be a real “designed” pattern unlike the last very disappointing experience (the design was something so basic that I realized I’d already done it years ago when I experimented with gloves in fun fur).

Birthday plans kept me busy from when she emailed the pattern (I barely had enough sense to notice it didn’t arrive and fished it out of my spam folder before it got lost) but I started on it on Sunday night and last night forced myself to finish the first glove.

By forced, I mean that the crossed dc’s was a tough stitch to get used to but worth it in the end for the nice texture it lends. I’m really proud of Ibby for such a great design!

I was so inspired by the finished glove that I took the trouble to go paint my nails a pretty color for picture taking today.

Now, I need to do the second glove before I fall victim to “2nd sock syndrome”.

I think Ibby plans to call the pattern “Pretty In Pink”. It calls for a D hook in sportweight yarn. I used Lion Brand’s Microspun (yarn formerly known as the tangled mess!)  but could only find an F hook. It worked out ok cause my wrists are bigger anyways. In fact, I notice the dc’s becoming rather squat which indicates the fabric is pulling width wise anyways.

In addition to all the other design ideas I have, there’s a couple that are more stitch based that I ought to get a move on for since the colorwork based ones will definitely take more time

p.s. Yay for me for making a timely post on one of my yarn projects.

I didn’t think anything of it and got a skein of “Old Roses” colorway which was so pretty that I figured it’d be a pretty way to try my hand at lace knitting. Plus hey possum!

I suppose I should have thought about it more and realized that possums aren’t like sheep, hanging around to get sheared.

The possums are killed and then their fur is taken for the yarn!

However, in what is a 180° flip on what I expect to see in ‘conservationism’, by buying possum yarn, I am SUPPORTING the New Zealand environmental conservation efforts.

Because apparently the little bastards are eating New Zealand!

If locusts had fur, I’m sure we’d all be happy to buy locust yarn thanks to their crop destroying nature. Dustbowl anyone?

So yea, I’m a little taken aback about this. I’m used to the opposite message of not buying things made from animals because it’ll promote their extinction, i.e. ivory, furs of exotic cats, etc. Gonna have to percolate that in my brain for a bit.