August roundup

It looks likes August was a month where I knitted for others. That's okay, since I have several UFO's that are for me and I hope will soon become FOs. (That's right, ever the optimist.)

For charity I made:

Two pairs of mittens to match two hats,

an adult-sized teal/black hat that still didn't use up the everlasting teal yarn,

and a pair of Magic 28 socks with the bouquet yarn.

I mailed a box to CIC with two pairs of handwarmers and 5 pairs of socks.

And...my splurge: a Noro scarf made from Noro Silk Garden--two skeins each of 201A and 246A. 39 sts of 1x1 ribbing on size 7 needles.

Not sure what I'm doing with it, but isn't it pretty?










I want to make another one.

A sock

A sock. That's what I'm knitting right now is a sock.

It may not look like a sock, but it is.



So far it's mostly heel and a little bit of a gusset. Soon there will also be a foot. But not a leg, since this is a footie.

Just in time for fall. Sigh.

P.S. My scarf is done and waiting to be blocked. There was a slight milk spilling accident by a nameless child in the course of eating his/her cereal, noticed only when the yarn felt wet and the dog was licking my yarn. How do you spill milk inside my yarn bag, anyway? Those were my two clues--plus a guilty look on my nameless child.

Must be blocked--and soon!

P.P.S. Blogging is keeping me awake long enough to get a load of laundry out of the washer and into the dryer. DD needs two white socks for tomorrow, not one white clean sock and one grass-stained dirt covered sock. Or, one clean but soaking wet sock. Ah, the joys of laundry and the lack thereof.

Stripes are marching along

I've done this much on the scarf since yesterday. Let's not talk about what else I did, which is (obviously) not much.



I didn't crop the pic this time so you could see a couple of my toes peeking up from the bottom. DD#2 bought new nail polish and needed to paint my toes these wild colors. They look just like Skittles. (Okay, so you can barely see my toes, but I'm NOT doing a closeup of my foot. Just imagine each toe a different color and you get the picture.)

A lot of progress has also been made on DD's shrug.



It knits up as a big rectangle. The, the sleeve cuffs are added.



I got both of those done and then pinned them together and had her try it on.

It's not a good fit.

The cuffs are too tight and the shrug doesn't come around in front to hide spaghetti straps (which is the point so that she can wear her sundress to school).

Before I ditch it completely, I think I'll add a couple of repeats of lace and make the cuff ribbing looser. I'm very doubtful that it will work (since, it will still be a big rectangle, just a looser one), but it's easier than starting over.

But first, I think I'll knit a couple more rows on my scarf.

I caved

I caved.

The urge to visit my LYS coincided with my payday. I've never bought Noro Silk Garden before (or, for that matter, any Noro.)

But, these skeins were 40% off and I couldn't resist.





Two skeins each of 2 different dyelots. Can you guess what I'm going to make?



It looks like this:



And the pattern, or recipe, can be found here. Jared Flood's striped scarf is probably the first thing to hit my Ravelry queue, and now it's finally made it onto my needles.

It was a long time coming.

Easy?

First, in regards to my fingerless mitts, it's actually my own pattern, found on the sidebar as Diamond handwarmers, and listed on Ravelry here.

For knitting this week I have managed to start a new project. Surprised? DD#2 has a sundress that needs a brown shrug, so I showed her how to make her way around Ravelry and told her to find a pattern. This is what she picked, the Easy Lace Shrug by Lion Brand.

For She-who-thinks-wool-is-too-scratchy, I picked out Red Heart Soft that will feel nice to her but also hold up ok (I hope).

This is what I've done so far:



Well, this plus about 18 more rows, but they don't count since they were ripped out at various times. Two things:

1. This "Easy Lace" shrug may be easy in the directions, but I sure have a hard time counting the whole way through. Tinking works much better than frogging for this project (but unfortunately takes a lot longer.)

2. I could follow it better when I realized that the decreases line up in a straight row, so I can know for every 11 stitch repeat if I counted wrong.

DD is loving it so far, so I hope the end result will be worth the effort.




(The seed stitch I managed to do okay. :)

CIC box

My knitting made it to the local Blue Crabs game on Sat. night. We sat in the outfield on lawn chairs (the "cheap" seats) so it was hard to see what was going on most of the time. But, it was a fun night and we got front row seats for the fireworks afterwards. (Which made us plug our ears and dodge the falling debris.)




That was the second sock, so now I had a pair, and today I mailed them off. These were for the quick CIC challenge. Two pairs of handwarmers and 5 pairs of socks were mailed today, on their way to Russia by the end of the month.

Overheard conversation

From the next room....

"If you don't stop chewing in my ear I'm going to punch you!"

Ah, siblings.

The State of My Knitting

Another week has gone by without blogging. Sigh. It's not even like I've been busy doing any interesting and varied excursions, or even any projects around the house. (My goal was to get a bedroom repainted before school starts. Now we're under the wire with 3 weeks left and no progress to be made. That is, other than putting most of the room's contents out in the living room.)

In an effort to organize my brain ('cause who wants to organize my living room, anyway?), I present to you:


The State of My Knitting.


I've been concentrating mainly on two areas: Charity. And Me.

1. Charity.

CIC has two challenges currently going on. One is for Hands of Help Orphanage in Romania and is collecting 100 hat and mitten sets (or separately to equal 100 sets). These are due sometime in September, but I'm going to mail them soon to get them out of my house.

Here's a rust/brown adult hat that I had done, so I just made mittens to match. Adult sized, and nice and warm.



Same with this set. The hat was done (but the braids were added.) Another adult pair.



The teal White Buffalo yarn just won't go away, so I made another hat, this time knitted with a strand of bland Cascade 220. Adult sized.



The next CIC challenge is a quick one, collecting socks for 2-6 year olds or socks and gloves/hand warmers for 13 and up that will be leaving for Moscow on the 19th. I have a few pairs hanging around, plus I'm trying to knit a pair or two more.

These are Magic 28 on 5s using Bernat felting yarn. So soft.



This is yarn that I dyed that I hope to use for another pair (but the weekend is flying by, so we'll see.)



2. ME! I haven't done much for me lately, but I did buy a skein of stretch yarn this week to hopefully make a pair of footies before the summer ends.



The Mirepoix Bodice has been started. 1x1 ribbing on size 3s. I don't know if I'll ever get to the bodice.



My Cobblestone pullover made out of my very own handspun still sits quietly in the corner. A sleeve has been started, but I'm pretty sure it'll be too big and should be redone. (All 5 rows of it.)



And there it is, the State of My Knitting.