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.

Here are my latest finished objects, I am having so much fun knitting baby items. And I have the funkiest little drying lines all over my house:

These are the Baby Albert, from Sally Melville's The Knit Stitch and a pair of Sheepy Pants longies knit up in Patons Classic Wool, Blueberry:



And this guy is the Peapod Jacket, which is a freebie pattern on the Knitting Daily website. I think you need to register with them to receive the patterns. The pattern originally called for Debbie Bliss DK Cotton, but I used Luxury Collection Fine Merino DK Superwash instead. It is soooo soft!



The colour in that pic is a bit off - it's actually more like this:



I've currently got some yummy Ella Rae Palermo in colourway #3 working their way to be the next Curly Purly Soakers.

I was going to take a break after the soakers to do some sewing - diapers, washcloths, and receiving blankets, but I have a huge bag of Mission Falls 1824 wool calling to me to be made into a simple garter stitch patchwork binky, and I have this Galway Paint (colour 525):



Begging me to knit it into a pair of very girly ruffle-edged pants.

Better than FOs

Even better than boring pics of my furniture wearing my knitting, my sister just forwarded me this pic of her Lucas wearing the sweater I knit for him this spring. (Smiley guy will be 6 months next week):

Finally! Finished Objects

I'm approximately a week behind in my goal of knitting a garment a week for this pregnancy. I hope to make that up with some pretty simple soakers, since I need 2 or 3 of each size and maybe some longies.

My first project isn't actually finished, but it is off the needles. It now sits and stares at me, awaiting seaming. It is a baby jacket from Paton's Book #767, I used Beehive Baby in Apricot.
Here it is in it's unseamed glory. Look at all those ends. Of course I didn't slip the first stitches, so matching lace is added to the fun:


Next up, I created a soaker from an ancient pattern book I have. I also got to use some stash for this, and I selected Koigu KPPPM:


Then, for a super quick project I completed my first pair of longies. I used the SheepyPants longies. I used Patons Classic Wool Merino in the Good Earth colourway:


And finally, Curly Purly's Soakers. I used leftover PCW in the same colourway for this:


I now have a Baby Albert on the needles, using more Patons Merino, in Blueberry. It's almost tempted me to chuck the baby knitting and start my own coat!