Sunday, October 31, 2010

October Roundup

While not officially participating in Socktoberfest, I still managed to concentrate on socks. Eight pairs as a matter of fact. Most were small socks using 32 sts and bulky yarn, but one was a thin pair with 60 sts.

Also finished was the Curve of Pursuit afghan that started on 10/9/09 and finished on 10/24/10. Phew! Glad that's done!

A sweater and baby set was also finished up and mailed. (Hopefully it will still fit.)

It was a good, knitting month!

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Recent finishings

For a cousin that was born in June, I finally finished her baby set and mailed it out. (Mailing it was the hard part. Getting the yarn and knitting it was the easy part. Sewing the buttons on was hard in a I-don't-want-to-do-it way, but really it was the mailing it that delayed me so badly. I figured I had until fall, anyway, since it was not a summer outfit, but just keep procrastinating and procrastinating. Hopefully it'll still fit. I think it will, but I'm not holding my breath....)




Pattern: The Seamless Kimono Sweater
Yarn: Berocco Vintage 50% acrylic, 40%wool, 10% nylon. Supersoft wt wt and washable.
Needles: sz. 7 (that's what I wrote on the pattern, anyway. I went up a size to hopefully make a 6-9 mo. size.)

It's a really easy pattern that does a K1,yo at each neck edge that makes a finished, nice looking edge. Hmmm, maybe I should make one for me....

And these are actually the first pair of Saartjes booties that I've ever made. Aren't they cute?




Also, as the M4A sock challenge is nearing the end, I managed to knit 4 more pairs. The three tweedy pairs are all on 32 sts and the maroon pair is 36 sts, basketweave pattern. All are on sz. 5 dpns. All were sped along by the massive soccer and field hockey practices and games in the last 2 weeks (the price one pays for the previous rainouts.)



With only four (4!) major UFOs left, I'm starting to feel caught up. (Crazy, I know.) But, nothing can be knitted in the dark at soccer practice. So maybe I should cast on for something new?

Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Curve has been Pursued

DD#2 asked me the other day if I ever blogged anymore.

Yes, I said. Well, kinda.

I haven't blogged lately because I've been trying to finish up my Curve of Pursuit afghan. I'm on the last set of brown triangles and I'm determined to finish before the end of October (which is coming up lickity-split).



But one brown triangle looks sorta like the other one.



A lot like it, actually.



And each triangle takes more than a skein of yarn. And bunches up on the needles so it doesn't look like much.



So they take awhile to do, and it's not very interesting blog fodder.

But finally I finished the triangles.



And was ready for the border. I decided to knit in the round in garter stitch, so it took a lot of holding on to the needles and trying not to lose the stitches.



After awhile I got the hang of it (after losing four purple end protectors.)



I did 5 green garter rows and one brown garter row, plus the bind off.



Each border round was 1064 sts (plus the increases at the corner). That makes more than 13,832 sts on the border alone. Phew! Glad to be done with that!

Actually, I'm glad to be done with it all.



At the moment I'm rather tired of looking at it. This afghan took me more than a year to make. (On Ravelry there's some over-achievers who have finished this in 6 weeks. Crazy.)



When I recover from the knitting of it, I'm going to be really glad of the addition to my living room, even though it will look like this most of the time.



Specs: Loops and Threads Impeccable yarn in chocolate, fern, and off white (all the while wishing it was Cascade 220 but not wanting to spend $$$ on a blanket that I would then have to handwash.) Four size 8 circs, one for each side. Eight stitch protectors, bought specifically for this projects, 4 of which were lost, but then refound.)

I'm still glad that I did it and I think I'm going to love it. But never again.

Although, looking at the Ravelry projects, there's some interesting color combinations. Wouldn't it be pretty as a baby blanket? With pinks and greens... or purples and blues... or...

Monday, October 11, 2010

A lovely weekend (and 2 more pairs of socks)

This weekend we went on a quick trip to Florida for DH's nephew's wedding.

Let me just say that "a quarter to 4" is actually 3:45 and not 4:45. 4:45 is not a good time to wake up when it's 15 minutes after our target departure time! (I still can't believe I did that.)

"Wake up, everyone! We need to leave 15 minutes ago!"

In our mad rush, we left one of DD#1's shoes behind. The one that she drove an extra 1.5 hours the day before to retrieve from a friend's house before driving the 3 hours to our house after going to her night school class. Which meant we had to go shoe shopping as soon as we got down there. Which she normally would've enjoyed, but was still too mad about already having the perfect pair of shoes but not being able to wear them. So she bought an almost identical pair.

We made it to the airport okay, but not without some anxiety. The rest of the weekend, though, was much better.

It was a lovely wedding with some great food (I don't think I'm going to cook for the rest of the week. Just saying... we could all go on a diet for a week.) The weekend was full of hanging out with family. Our immediate family of 6 were together for four days, which hardly ever happens anymore. The entire group of cousins (one of which was the groom) were all present, which hasn't happened in years and years (which would mean that it's never happened since a couple of them aren't that old.)

In between all the events, there was some down time, which meant that I had plenty of time to knit. (Yep, I even knitted at the pool.)

I finished a pair of thin socks (the ones that went to the DC United game).



60 sts, sz. 1 dpns, 79 rows foot, 9.25" long. I made them non-matching and like them that way.

The second pair was started down there and finished today (since who wants to do laundry, anyway? Hey, I've doing pretty well. Since getting home today I've been to a field hockey game.)




Patons Classic Wool in Rosewood. Size 5 dpns, 36 sts, 40 rows for the foot. 7.25" length.

The M4A group is getting close to their goal (somewhere over 500 pairs). So, I could probably stop knitting socks at any time.

The question is...will I be able to stop?

It's doubtful.

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Two more pairs

Two more pairs of socks are done, and here's a quick picture. (Quick, meaning: trying to do this whole post while supper is warming up in the oven. No time to redo the photo, so just ignore the strand of hair that's coming off one of the socks.)




I'm still using up the DK weight tan yarn, this time pairing it with a sock weight green yarn. The right pair is green and yellow/brown sock yarns knitted together. Both are 32 sts on sz 5 dpns.

Not only are we reaching our goal for M4A, but I'm reaching my saturation point on knitting socks. (However, I have 2 more pairs on the needles, so hopefully I can at least finish those.)

Monday, October 04, 2010

Hand of Help

Ya'll have seen these woolies before, but here they are all collected and ready to mail. They're going to Hand of Help that is sending a container over to their orphanage in Russia in October.

5 hat and mitten sets:




6 hats:



They were mailed today, Oct. 4th. Yeah--more warm kids this winter!