Rabbit Day!

Today is Rabbit Day. (Okay, not really, but...) You see, I have now hit the point of Daily Rabbit Count =Thirty Rabbits Knitted, and I just have 28 more to put together. This is a rabbit with its paws finished, but no head yet. Looks like a rabbit suit or baby footiesuit or something.


Hopefully, more rabbit sewing will happen soon, since I only have five days left in the month to reach the official 30 Rabbits in 30 Days goal. I had forgotten, until this morning, the EAR PROBLEM. I have two complete rabbits (with ears - that's four), all six other ears needed for white rabbits, four ears for grey rabbits, and the two chenille brown ears. I have to knit 44 more rabbit ears, as well as all the sewing... YIKES!!

But, just in case I finish early, I've got two other sewing projects.

I got my Ravelry loot last week, and let me tell you something about the "fitted" American Apparel t-shirts. "XL" means "Size 8". Remember this when ordering. I am not a size 8 at the present time, but want my cool shirt. So, last weekend, I found an *actual* XL t-shirt that matched the pink of the "Ravelry.com" on the back of the shirt. I then snipped off the sleeves and snipped up the side-seams of the Bob shirt, and got stuck on just how to deconstruct the insane amount of seaming across the back of the neck and the tops of the sleeves. I think it will take actual deconstruction, rather than just snipping. On the other hand, that should give me the extra fabric I need for around the neck (I hope). Yes, I'm totally winging this.



Eventually, I'll have a custom Bob-Yarnpile shirt that I can wear to work!

The other is more mundane and wifely: I get to figure out how to repair my husband's new shirt.


Thankfully, there's probably an embroidery stitch that was first used for repairs - I just have to figure out which one it is!

... the yarn snuck up on me and attacked. Really.

So, that new sock yarn I told you I got the other day? It's Katia "Mississippi 3".

And it kindasorta got joined by three new balls. (Let's hear it for all the socks I can make for under $20!!)


Katia Mississippi 3 sock yarn, in
Blue (#799, lot 09304), Orange (#785, lot 09307) and Green (#784, lot 04805).
I think the blue will be the center-motif from LabCat's scarf (which I need to find and get going on again), the green will be feather-and-fan, and I'm going to see if I can come up with something that looks like flames for the orange. Debating fancy cables up the sides, lacy fold-down cuffs, and other design elements that I probably won't decide on until I'm actually knitting.

Today's challenge: Finishing my Sockitechture socks before starting any of these!

I Want Candy!

Jess at Stitch DC Georgetown has come up with a good way to sell little yarn bits. Tiny leftover balls of fun, just fifty cents (fifty three, with tax)!


See? Itty-bitty yarn balls!
I got some... um... blue green black bronze ribbon ladder stuff, and I'm knitting a... hm. Headscarf? Hairband? I dunno. It's a triangle right now, and in its third iteration already. No, wait, it's a rectangle... fourth. And it's already finished, two days later... I have so TOTALLY gotten my fifty-three cents worth of fun out of it already.


Plus, since I'm attempting to save up for enough of the yummy silk-alpaca blend in deep rose for the long Katherine Hepburn sweater out of lace style, a ball from the Yarn Candy Jar on the counter will give me the thrill of yarn buying and playing with New Stuff, while still letting me save up the $$ for the Big Purchase. Wheee! In addition, if I'm having a tough day at work and neeeeeeeeed new yarn, I can get bunches. As you can see from the photo, there's more than one ball of Yarn Candy on my chair.

I must add that Yarn Candy projects do not count as "UFOs", since they're mostly just doodling with yarn. Because I say so. Besides, they'd fall under the 24-hour rule most of the time, anyway!!

Just in case there *is* such a thing as "too much yarn"...

Okay, first off, in case you missed it: There's a CONSIGNMENT YARN/STITCHING STORE on eBay! I'm totally going to try them, and get rid of some of the stuff I'm never, ever going to use. They're Stitch in Peace, and it looks like using them would also mean my things would find good homes. Yay! (I asked if they were looking for others to do Art Prints. I've got a good number of knitting and stitching related sketches that could turn into final prints easily, now that I've got a drawing table.

Speaking of S.A.B.L.E., one of the things over the weekend was organizing all the $1-a-skein Patons yarn mom and I got at the Dollar Tree near our gym. Here, the yarn takes up most of the basement floor (which is actually pretty small, for a floor, but it's still a lot of yarn:
It was 34 balls of pink Twister, 32 balls of blue Silverlash, 22 balls of sky-blue Allure, 15 balls of Lacette, 12 balls of ChaCha, six each of Carmen and Melody; assorted colors, totalling 18 balls, of something fuzzy looking; and 6 random balls of various things in other colors that can be used with any of the above.

Here it is, carefully tucked into three extra-large Zip-Loc bags.

Well, almost. The deep mauve Lacette (for both the Go Fly a Kite shawl and the Oriel Sweater), red-and-black Carmen and red-and-black ribbon-ladder-stuff are in a fourth bag, at my house.

But that would've made it look like Too Much Yarn.

Finished Travelling Roses Shawl

The big news: I finished the Travelling Roses Lace Scarf, which became a shawl, thanks to winging it with some lacy ruffly edging. See?


Obligatory shot of whole shawl

Pinned in front

Close-up

Of course, I finished it Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon, we found the two extra balls of Lacette that had gone missing. That's the rule, I think: the yarn won't reveal itself until it's no longer needed.



Had a fun weekend, over all, and I'm really happy I got the shawl done in time for Easter!

Friday Miscellany

Finally got to Sweet Life last night, and it was great to see everyone again. Also managed to pick up the stitches on the ENTIRE edge of the Travelling Roses Now-it's-a-Shawl, and between that and my commute in (plus being driven about in the morning), I'm actually on the THIRD row of what I figure will be about twenty to twenty-four of ruffly shawl edging. Which, I should add, I'm completely winging as I go. Hopefully it will (a) work and (b) be done by Easter. It's going to be a very Easter-y shawl.

Signs I really need to make to put in front of my desk at work, so I could just knit and people would leave me alone without bringing me any of that "work" stuff:


In the things-on-TV-that-are-nifty-and-I-want-one-department, one of the Entertainment Tonight reporters had a killer chartreuse dress last week. Sadly, I could only get this blurry photo in time, as the A/V system hasn't been finished yet. But it's enough that I'll be able to probably make one for myself. Scary thing? I've already got the chartreuse spandex on hand.

What kind of yarn are you?

You are Cashmere.
You are sophisticated and luxe.
You can often be found in high-end boutiques and hobnobbing with the upper crust.
You are one of the beautiful people
and you don't let anyone forget it!
Take this quiz!



Quizilla | More Quizzes

Okay, it's gonna be a shawl.

Fun Things Found Department: Sanguine Gryphon's Fairy Tale Sock Club. Wheee! This should be fun, indeed! I'm going to sign up after Easter, for certain, if there are still spaces left.

As mentioned earlier in the week ...somewhere (possibly one of the Ravelry forums, since it's clearly not here), I acquired through gift two more balls of Lacette to finish the Travelling Roses Lace Scarf.


More yarn is all well and good, and, okay, I've spent the time this week that wasn't finishing Haeckelbeutel or starting Titania, getting the scarf finished. But is that enough? Nooooooooo! Because I knitted the scarf on size 8 needles, it's almost a shawl. It just needs a pretty, fluffy border. Rather like the scallop lace on the sleeves and bottom of Titania. And gee, that requires an 11-stitch repeat. Which - oh look! 44 rows (add 1 stitch every 3 and that's 66, or every 4 for 55), and gee, 11-stitch repeat border. Sometimes it really *does* all come together without me even trying. Yay, pretty frilly border! I figure five repeats of the scallop should do it (20 rows of border), and *poof*! It's a shawl!!


I've started to pick up the edge stitches already. The scarf is five and a half feet long *before* blocking, and sixteen inches wide. Yikes! It also looks like the EXACT same pattern of a shawl I saw somewhere on the internet this morning (if you've knitted something over and over a bunch of times, you recognize it). I can't find the bloody thing now, of course, but it was yellow, and clearly used the roses-and-diamonds-with-roses-at-intersects that the Travelling Roses Scarf uses. It's not this one ((Ravelry link)), although it's dead-on similar, just it had a scallopy edge (like mine will have). It was a picture of the bottom of the shawl and the wearer's feet. It's not the Shetland Rose Lace Stole ((Ravelry link)) either, but I'm sensing "roses within diamonds" is a popular theme.
Who knew?

More Amanda Goodies

On Friday, I finally ordered my yarn from Sanguine Gryphon. I decided on "The Gorge" colorway (Gaia) over "Moss on Bark" after consultation with my fellow knitters at the office. The hint-of-yellow/orange in "The Gorge" was the clincher. (And yes, I would've gotten "Turks' Cap", but I really, REALLY wanted to be sure I had enough yarn for SotS-II... I was really squeaking the yardage on SotS-I before I found another skein of Claudia Handpainted Silk Lace Pistachio (in the same dye lot!!) out at Knitty-Noddy in Washington.) Even better, I was able to get a Money Order in the main First Thing on Saturday... which means "no credit card involved"!! Yaaaay!!! (I sent it priority mail so (a) I could track it, since I'd really like it to get there so I can get my yarn and (b) so it would get there so I could get my yarn SOON. Very excited about this yarn!!)

Saturday was Doing Errands and Stuff, which somehow turned into buying tons and tons of yarn at A.C. Moore... some cotton I'd been eyeing for some time, some worsted for a sweater for Mom (that she'll be knitting, I know better), some green... and I'm getting a full set of Crystalite circular needles for my birthday, although I'm not supposed to know about those yet. And some Hello Kitty safety scissors. Photos of all the yarn and stuff some time this week... for now, photos of my FINISHED Amanda Scarf and Headband!!

First, the set:

Awww. How cute. It actually *is* really warm and fuzzy!! Here's a close-up of the scarf, so you can actually see there's stockinette sections and the lace-from-the-Amanda-hat section. Ditto on the ear-warmer/headwarmer/not-hat.

See? Little bits of lace with purl rows. This is closer to a true Amanda thing than the Scarf.

I have all of four inches of yarn left; I had to use the long tail scraps from the other three pieces (the Hat, the Neckwarmer and the Scarf) to finish the ear-warmer, but it worked out just fine.

UFO count now down to 59 again, with 5 projects started in 2008, four of which have been finished, with one project from previous years done. Averaging 5 projects finished a month so far in 2008, which isn't bad! And I have four snuggly Amanda knitted things!

Mmmmmm, toasty!!

(Feel free to comment. I don't bite.)

I was looking at my Get Things Done journal, and found my first entry for 2006. It's both sad and scary; I have the same goals, more or less, now, that I did then. All the stuff on the house for that year *did* get finished, and all the stuff on the 2007 also got finished (albeit in early 2008, but it's done now). Finances still scare me (but I'm closer to being completely out of debt than ever), I have started exercising yet again, and the needlework is getting ever more under control-ish.

                        Really.

Hey, I'm at 60 UFOs right now, and that'll change over the weekend for sure. I'm almost done with the "Amanda Scarf", and I'm under 1.5 away (officially now) from the end of the body of the Lilly of the Valley shawl. That shawl is actually starting to look long enough to be a shawl; sometime in the last repeat, it crossed from "this isn't gonna work" to "oooooo, this is gonna be pretty!". Have faith in the shawl; the shawl knows what it's doing.

I should also mention that soon after that first entry in 2006 (she says, jumping between subjects with wild abandon), I discovered I had gallstones. HUNDREDS of them, little tiny rocks filling my gall bladder. I *did* promptly lose 25 pounds, because I couldn't eat anything with even a trace of fat in it without pain. The one time I did, I keeled over in my boss's dad's office (the basis of the "nobody dies on my couch!" rule; that was a good thing, as my other boss keeled over the following week (she's fine), then me again the week after that - we're both fine now). I kinda regret that I didn't keep to the very low fat diet after my surgery that year; instead of gaining back the 25 pounds plus an extra five, I might have lost another 25 by now. I'm trying to go back to a much lower fat eating plan, and it's working - and much cheaper than eating out in the Very Expensive Chi-Chi neighborhood where I work!!

But you're here for pictures of yarn, so here they are for today:



The Amanda Scarf, on last ball of yarn - 2 pattern repeats left.


Close-up. Wow, this yarn doesn't lend well to seeing the pattern in a cameraphone photo.
It looks really good in real life, though.

I really like my size 9 acryllic needles. They're very shiny and happy!

Actually posted *ON THURSDAY*!!

Thursday Report

Naturally, I wanted a scarf with all the extra yarn I got for the Amanda hat, so I'm doing a thing with the crossed-lace pattern, then a block of stockinette, then another block of the crossed-lace. Even with garter-stitch edging, the stockinette makes the scarf curl towards the back a bit, which is wonderful, since the back just doesn't look as cool as the front. It doesn't look *bad*, of course... just more randomly nubby. I think it's going to be a seven or nine panel scarf; I've done four.

The Yarn, of course, kept trying to roll around the floor. Normally, it would sit next to me on the couch, as would my husband. Our couch, however, due to home repairs (see here), is inaccessible at present. We trade sitting in the accessible wing chair and hard metal folding chair. The yarn has nowhere to go... or at least, it didn't.


Let's hear it for (a) good ol' American ingenuity and (b) husbands that will sit still for being used as makeshift yarn minders.

I should add that this worked really well, and I got two more sections of scarf done last night!

Tuesday (posted Wednesday)

Tuesday Report

One of the other wonderful patterns I downloaded was the Travelling Roses Scarf, and during Saturday's Yarn Haul (I did mention I got a Michael's gift certificate for Christmas, right?), I got some lovely fluffy soft pink yarn, one little ball. Here is the first of thirteen repeats for this scarf (although given I'm doing it on size 8 needles, I think seven or eight will suffice).

See the tiny rosebud?

I *really* like the fact that I can see the little rosebuds in the knitting! This is gonna be just beautiful!! (And I'm just at 60 UFOs again now, which isn't bad, since I've started only four things this year and I've already finished two, and another two soon!) Blocking is gonna make this little scarf-thing ROCK.

The pattern repeats over 44 rows, so it's not one I'm going to memorize any time soon. It's a nice time-to-sit-and-concentrate or I-can't-actually-move-so-complicated-knitting-is-okay pattern. Also, watched some TV. Brett Sommers (from Match Game '75 - yep, I watch ancient game shows when I'm sick) had a sweater I just adored, and would wear today, if only I knitted it up. It's the first thing from the 70's I've seen in some time that I really, really like... which probably says something about my taste, but hey, I was sick:Okay, it looks like Candy Corn, but that's actually a plus on my planet.

Amanda Hat!!

Monday Report

Felt pretty awful, and couldn't move much. Unlike last week, however, I could move both arms at once without triggering nausea, so I knitted. During the Much Running Around on Saturday, I'd gotten yarn to make my Amanda Hat. During the games on Sunday, I managed to start *and finish* a hat. It was, unfortunately, too big.

Monday, my mom manage to unpick the intricate and very, VERY secure knotwork that held together the crown of the hat, and I brought the stitching back to the top of the garter stitch rows. I did a couple more rows of garter stitch (to match the bottom)... and viola! I had an Amanda Neckwarmer!!
[KnitStuff/AmandaHat1.jpg]
The Amanda Hat
[KnitStuff/AmandaHat1a.jpg]
Me wearing same

[KnitStuff/AmandaHatPlus1c.jpg]

[KnitStuff/AmandaHatPlus1.jpg]

[KnitStuff/AmandaHatPlus1a.jpg]

Matching Neck Warmer!!
[KnitStuff/AmandahatPlus1-Final.jpg]
Amanda Hat and Amanda Neck Warmer
I still wanted the hat, though, so, given my gauge with Bulky Yarn on the first "hat", I cut the cast-on stitches to 63, and killed one repeat everywhere but the middle garter stitch rows. The result: lovely hat that fits perfectly!! (Plus, I'm halfway done with a matching scarf, too!)