Well that was a bit of a break!

I really don't even know where to start, but it seems that until very recently I'd lost my knitting mojo. Then a co-worker asked me to knit him a hat. And I did. And it really reminded me just how much I enjoy knitting. So after madly digging through my considerable stash, and maybe making a precautionary trip to the LYS, I've started knitting again. In the car, the office, before work, and waaaay too late at night.

And in the meantime, my coworker got his hat today and lived it. I couldn't resist snapping a pic before I gave it to him:

The babymoon isn't over yet

Just after we brought Victoria home from the hospital my mother was visiting and she made the comment, 'you can put her down you know.' To which I replied, 'why?' and I have been loving ever minute I spend with her. Unfortunately, carrying her has impeded my efforts to start knitting again, at least until last night. After carefully engineering a rig of pillows and blankets, I was able to support her properly for nursing and napping, leaving both hands free for knitting. And knit I did. Mind you, it was only 6 or so rows of garter, but it was knitting! Talk about a 'look ma, no hands' moment.

I will admit, the situation was becoming desperate. I was fully prepared to go back to straight pins and stick one in my armpit if this didn't work *g*.

Latest FO

It seems like it's been forever, and I'm exactly a month late in posting about my latest FO:


Victoria Catherine, born December 7th.

She is the reason I have no further FO's since that time. I am completely captivated with her.

Unfortunately, I have to tear myself away from her, as she needs some more soakers! Many longies left to knit, while dad gets some quality time with her.

Broken

I am either in a major funk, or the enormity of cleaning out my craft room, combined with cataloging my stash on Ravelry has overwhelmed my urge to impulse shop. This past Monday was vendors' night at knitting guild. I think there were 10-12 vendors there, and I did not buy a single thing! I mean, there was all sorts of interesting wool - Applelaine, hand dyed Soy Silk, small vendors with hand-dyed, Koigu but nothing enticed me, not even close.

Today the 'wits got together for breakfast, then Heho, Annie and I headed down to Inspirations Needlecraft Show and *AGAIN* nothing! Quilters, and beaders, and fabric stores, and wool vendors and nothing even whispered to me.

To verify I was indeed broken, Heho twisted my arm to stop in at Yarn Forward our LYS and home of the super yarn pimp Lulu - and probably for the first time in history, I left empty-handed.

Excited again

So it turns out doing bunches and bunches of garter stitch is really boring. I've been working on my friend's project for a couple of days now, and the progress was less than stellar. Part of it I'm sure is that I'm completely free-styling the colour changes, but the progress that I made over the past couple of evenings was duplicated in 2 1.5 hour car rides today. No I'm not insane, I have to do two matching sides and I figured this was the best and laziest way of making sure I will have enough yarn all around.

Anyways, the point of the post is that I have found something to get excited about again. I'm testing a new pattern for longies, and I'm doing it in double knitting. They are currently unpatterned, and I think that learning the increases and decreases for gussets etc will be challenging enough, but since I'm working in two colours anyways, I hope to be able to add some embellishments. Also, it appears that the instructions are written for knitting the front in one round and the back in another, so I'll see if I can modify that or if I'll be totally lost.

Now to find the wool for these little pants...

I'm still in my funk, and have done no knitting since I last posted. But here are the items I managed to finish last week:

Another pair of SheepyPants, in Galway Paint, with the Lettuce cuffs:


Another CurlyPurly soaker, in Ella Rae. I was really disappointed with this yarn, balled, it looked like there was bright red throughout, but in reality there were only huge swatches of it mixed with the pink and purple:


And I made up two of Mandy's hats (so adorable). The green one is the same Merino DK I used for the peapod jacket, and the other is Patons Classic Merino:


In the hopes that a change is as good as a rest, I have decided to pick up the Philosopher's Wool Poncho that I'm knitting for Nora. Fall is here and it would be nice if she could wear it. It is interesting in that there is no pattern for the colour changes, you are given 11 skeins of wool and you randomly select to work between one and six rows of any colour in any order. I am keeping track as I'm making a poncho for her, so both sides have to match. Garter stitch means it's easy peasy (I know, I thought I wanted to do something complicated, but I'm hoping big will do instead) so hopefully I'll be back on the baby knitting track next week.

In a rut

While knitting baby items is fun, and provides instant gratification, I really, really need a change. I completed another soaker, a pair of longies and 2 little caps this week (pictures to follow). I know I have more soakers to do, but I need to find something big and/or fun and/or complicated to do. This may also be some sort of denial, where I am absolutely refusing to freak out at the fact that I only have 10 weeks to go in this pregnancy.

I've gone through my naughty corner, and it appears that my house elves are slacking off, nothing has been done! Not only that, but none of the items in the naughty corner are prepared to start behaving, so they are all staying for a bit longer. Which, sadly, means I must start a new project.

I've never been a big fan of shadow knitting, but I think that is because I've never really liked the designs or the garments that I encountered. While I do knit, I don't particularly want to wear hand knit sheep embellished sweaters. Nor do I wish to wear a vest. Some people are vest people, I am not.

Back to the aversion to shadow knitting. I'm not sure why I never looked online for patterns before, but I think I've found my first shadow knitting project. This scarf is appealing to my stash. Loudly.