Third Hat for January

I've wanted to make this Exact Hat for my DH to match a scarf I made him in January of 2009, but managed to lose the third ball of yarn in the week it took me to make his scarf.


The scarf in 2009
Over the Christmas holiday just past, while attempting to organize the stash, I FOUND IT!!! Woohooo!!


Hat, started Friday
For this particular hat, to make it actually fit DH, I cast on 64 st, then did 8-stitch base triangles and first squares, then 6-stitch squares, then 5-stitch squares, then 3-stitch squares, then 1-stitch "squares" at the top.

He loves it, and actually wore it the second I had finished it. HAT WIN!!

Finished Object - Entrelac Scarf

Amid lots of prep for handing in Masters Level I, I blocked my proposed Charms O.W.L. swatch, since I already had all the blocking stuff out.

I can't put in my proposal until May 1 - which, of course, is tomorrow, and which I will NOT be doing via dial-up. So, first thing on Monday, I'll be putting in my O.W.L. proposal. It may take a few extra days to get it approved (or not, but I'm hoping they'll approve), but that doesn't matter, since I won't be physically starting it until May 16 at the Jared Flood class. (And since I'll be starting Girasole then anyway, I really, REALLY hope it's accepted as an O.W.L. exam!)

On the scarf front - go figure, I have a scarf. Since it was a really, really lovely day out Wednesday, and my allergies were (mostly) behaving despite the hellishly high pollen, I sat on the waterfront for an hour and knit while watching "Whip It" on my iPod. That was the plan, anyway... Turns out it was really, really windy - and cold, and yet sunny enough that I couldn't actually see my screen. So, it was sit at the waterfront for twenty minutes listening to an audiobook and knitting, then move inside for half an hour and keep listening and knitting. Progress Was Made. By lunchtime on Thursday, I'd finished the main part of the scarf. When I got back to my desk, I needed lots and lots of 6" fringe - which is easier made by the foot. Which makes wrapping all the yarn that's left around a ruler a really, really easy way to make fringe.


Had to sneak the fringe on to the scarf while doing other work, but it was what kept me sane Thursday afternoon. (It's "all heck breaks loose" season.) Managed to get that done, so by the end of the day, I had a scarf:

I really like the way the blue diamond pops out of nowhere! PS, SOFTEST SCARF EVER!!!

And it's a scarf that goes well with my spring/fall jacket, too!

I'm sad, but at least I got lots of buttons.

Okay, so, Max & Cindy both thought the entrelac half-blanket looked like a bag of some sort. So, slowly, it's becoming a bag. But not without some related trauma. You see, the last local chain fabric store is moving to Far Away. (Anything that requires crossing two interstates is "far away" in my book. As is anything that requires driving on THREE interstates to get to quickly.) The Hancock Fabrics closed a while back; now the JoAnn's Fabric stores in NoVa are consolidating west of here (good news for my cousin, bad news for me), and thus I either have to drive 40 min to get to a store, pray the one quilting store left locally has what I need, or go to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is not the preferred option.






The store is consolidating because (1) the economy is running six months behind the store revenues - there's been a MAJOR uptick in people making their own stuff again, but those profits won't show until November at the earliest and (2) the idiots at this mall decided to raise the rents. The number one comment heard, again and again, from everyone in line (hey, stuff was 90% off!!) was "Well, I've got no reason to come to this mall any more." And it was a couple of hundred people over the space of an hour! Most also shopped the office supply store when they came, or hit the designer discount shop, or one of the restaurants - but no one said they'd come just for any of those other stores. They came for the JoAnn's.

So, I wasn't able to get the invisible thread or matching lining fabric for the bag that I'd come in for; I was able to score $180.00 worth of REALLY COOL shiny buttons for $18. A huge bag of shiny buttons makes up for a lot of unhappy.

ANYway, I still had a bag to work on. Here's the outside, folded up:


Now, since I had all this blue yarn left over (having completely run out of lavender yarn), I decided to knit a lining, since buying one was Right Out. I cast on half the number of stitches I'd need for a round, then picked them up again on the backside, as if I was starting a short-row toe. This gave me a nice, solid, one-piece lining.


Since "having things work their way into and then through the seams" is something I like to avoid, having a one-piece lining makes me happy. I started it with size 5 needles (what I'd been using for the rest of the bag), then stepped up to 6s, and then finally 8s. I did a k2p2 rib at the top until it looked like it was about long enough (and hey, I wasn't completely out of yarn!).


The lining is currently inside out;
the knit side will be inside the bag; the purl side won't show. After turning the lining so the pretty side will be visible inside the bag, I tucked it into the outside to see if it worked. (Don't worry, I'd been checking the size as I knit - having a Too Big Lining or a Way Too Small lining would've been bad; luckily, this one was Just Right.


The sort-of idea of how it will look.
Now I just have to do the seaming on the outside of the bag, firmly attach the lining, and put on the buttons and the strap. I'll be doing a few more like this over the rest of the year, since it's a fun little yarn-bag, and probably putting out sets-of-three as patterns. We'll see.

The Yarn. It got me. Really.

Sometimes, the yarn just Gets You. In this case, I've had two balls of Feza Iplik "Cyprus Mohair" in the changes-all-sorts-of-bright-colors colorway staring at me for quite some time. Months. (Well, a year... but that was the third ball, which I've misplaced somewhere.) And this weekend, despite all the other projects I should be working on, it attacked me inside the craft room, wrestled itself on to needles and forced me to knit. (Honest, it happened just like that.) I'm doing a 10-count entrelac (2 repeats), which works just amazingly with this particular yarn.

Here it is at the end of Ball #1 on the train last night:


And here it is later in the evening, being all dramatic-like, just before I wove in the ends from the beginning and the join so it will take less time to Be Finished once I actually run out of yarn.


Since I *am* actually getting some of my other knitting work done, I'm allowed to keep at it, so I figure it will probably be finished on the ride home.

Now if I can just find that third ball of yarn, so I can make the matching hat...

TI-neee BLANK-ets, Iiiiin the Aiiiirrrr...

Got a bit bored with all the lavender (well, I've already done an entire project in it, at this point!), so added some blue that wandered into my stash. It's a bit heavier weight than the lavender, so while the doll blanket can take a square or two in it, I can't just switch colors entirely. Because it's just a wee bit bigger, I can get away with some. As of this morning, I have five blue diamonds, and will probably throw in one more just for show. This little critter is almost done. I figure if I can make it the rest of the way across with diamonds (and one blue diamond), then I'll do the foundation triangles coming back, and will hopefully have enough yarn for the eight rows of seed stitch at the bottom. I've also discovered that, much to my surprise, I'm knitting this blanket sideways - the way it would sit on a doll bed is 90degrees from the direction I'm knitting. Which means I'm knitting it width-wise, rather than length-wise. I think. The caffeine hasn't hit yet this morning.


Knitting slowly on it - trying to keep ahead of my YoT:SE knitting and finish up on TKGA Level 1 Submission - Take 1. This weekend is, in theory, somewhat quiet (b-day party for a friend Saturday, which I'll probably be asleep for, thanks to my shot, but I'll try showing up anyway). Should be lots of tiny blanket knitting time in there somewhere, and maybe, just maybe, I'll finally get my darned binder together once and for all!

Frog 1, start 1...

Well, the Traveling Roses doll blanket wasn't working. That pattern really calls for a yarn with just a bit of fluffy to it, which, soft as it is, Dreambaby DK isn't. So, I decided to play with entrelac. And by "play", I mean see if I could remember exactly how it works, not having done any since early 2009. I'm sure I amused most of my new knitting group on Saturday by repeatedly knitting and frogging the corner "square"... by that evening, I'd finally given up, and resorted to looking up "entrelac" in Stanley. Then things went swimmingly! Haven't had much time to work on it, so I'm only on the third "row" (but given I cast on 85 stitches, and an entrelac row such as I'm doing is 1,300 stitches...):


Since I landed a Lily Chin class at the TKGA conference in July, I dug through the pile of knitting magazines I scored at last fall's Library Book Sale. I was pretty sure I had something relevant, and I did:


I wonder what the etiquette is for having teachers sign stuff at TKGA classes? If not sign it, I'm at least going to show it to her. (To see LC's post about the issue - for which she designed the cover item - click here and scroll down to the bottom post.)