WIP Wednesday April 2, 2014

This is my big secret project.

It's secret in that everybody knows about it except for my six year old, Spike. But what is it you ask? As far as he knows, just a pile of squares.

But when Spike is at school, I get to work.





And today began here:



It's going to be the Granny Square Mario Bedspread, sized down a touch (by making 3-round grannies) and with the updated colors of blue overalls and red shirt. I'm whipstitching the squares together with their own color yarn (and still making the dark brown ones... but I can do that in the evenings). What you see here is most of some overalls and Mario's left shoulder.

Today during school Mario got a hand! But just before the bus gets here I have to roll it up and shove it into a bag, so I'll have to take a before picture tomorrow.

WIP Wednesday, March 5, 2014

The sleeves are on! Wonderful Wallaby is coming along. I'm into the raglan decreases now but my will to go on is waning fast.



The other thing I'm working on is still my ongoing blanket sampler. This has moved so slowly as to look like it's not moving at all over the past few years, but I've picked it up a few times lately.



These are the top two rows all finished.



Back to the Wallaby!

WIP Wednesday on a Thursday, October 17, 2013

Let's do this thing!

I started a spinning project. It's kind of an experiment because I'm using the stopwatch on my phone to time how long it takes me to spin.... oooooooo.

It came home in this crowd, from the Southern Adirondack Fiber Festival in 2011 (click through for notes).



As an aside, I've lately had an interest in looking at my pictures from fiber festivals and thinking about what I've actually used from each photo. In this one, I've spun up the fiber ball on the top right, dyed one of the ones that is white, and I've used the brownish-pinkish laceweight from Llady Llama at the bottom right. I also use the little needles for a million things. Not bad overall, but I feel like I should be more productive.

So my fiber - Wheel Candy from Bittersweet Woolery, merino dyed in a color called Bubble Gum Vampire, looked like this.



I'm 11 hours and 11 minutes in for spinning time so far.



I have about two and a half of these guys to go.




Now as to why my camera is taking pictures that look like they came from a cell phone in 2004, I don't know.

Paper Moon - these socks are still coming along. I'm into the gusset increases, which makes a cool little reverse stockinette triangle on the side of the heel area.



Morticia - I put this down in the middle of a row. Why did I think that was a good idea??



Maluka - Coming along, of course...



Pink stripey socks - I picked these up to take along to the open house at my younger son's preschool. You can't beat a couple hours of presentations in a school gym for getting a sock from most of a toe to most of a foot without looking at it! It keeps me from getting restless so I can actually still pay attention, and I get lots of knitting done. Awesome.




I have some finished objects to talk about later this week! Otherwise known as... tomorrow?

WIP Wednesday, October 9, 2013

It's October! WIP Wednesday is where I take photos of everything I've worked on in the past week, and right now there are a lot of things going!

=== This post contains spoilers for the Morticia mystery knit-a-long.===

Zee's Wallaby - I'm in the hood now and it's mindless stockinette, which means I can work on it while reading or otherwise very engaged. Then I just have to attach the underarms and weave in the ends.




Chewy - He's looking good!! He just needs his satchel and bandolier and he's done. This is the kind of project that looks really bizarre until it's almost done and then it looks like what it's supposed to....




Vlad - I've finished the fifth repeat of the chart. I'm planning on doing eleven repeats to make a nice, big shawl for BrittneyK.




Paper Moon - These are my bus stop project right now, since the pattern is really easy to memorize through the foot! It's slow going though, since I save it for special occasions.




Morticia - The mystery knit-a-long! I love how it's coming out so far. Mystery knits are a risk, and this one was a paid pattern too so I hesitated. In the end I went for it and so far I'm very glad I did!

The beads are two different colors. In my photo, the silver-lined beads show up as white spots.



Maluka - I'm trying out this yarn for The Periwinkle Sheep. It's a fingering weight single yarn and it's 100% very smooshy merino. So far, I LOVE it.



Weaving - Yeah, same pic as the other day, but I started this project last Thursday so the whole thing so far has been made in the past week.



So that's what we're looking at today. I worked on a traveling scarf and will have that out in the mail as soon as I find the packing tape.

WIP Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Been a while since we had one of these, but I have something to show AND it's still Wednesday! At the beginning of September my longsuffering Evenstar WIP looked like this.



Tonight it looks like this! I'm about halfway through the border.



After stalling for almost a year at the "before" picture stage, it's so nice to see progress and it's going really quickly too.

By the way... that's a 60 inch cable that doesn't quite go halfway around this beast.

WIP Wednesday, February 1, 2012

..... February. I thought January would never end and yet I'm surprised to see February here so soon. What's up with that?

This week I have more exciting things to post about for WIP Wednesday. First a stitch marker, one of a pair, that I made to go along with a test knit that I can't show you. It's sparkley and gold and silver and red and very Gryffindor. Plus I used little bitty jump rings and nothing bad happened. This could be the beginning of a beautiful thing.

Waaaaaaay bigger than life sized.

So, the test knit. I can't show you. I can't tell you anything really, except this is fingering weight yarn and a typical sock skein in the 450 yard range should make this when it's published. The beads I bought on Monday, thereby making Spike a little late to preschool (so sorry, education system!) are artfully draped over the top of the yarn cake.  I put special effort into my staging as you can tell by the random crap in the background including my can of seltzer and distinct lack of ability to see the knitted object.

I mean... it's in this picture.....

Shhhhhhhh.....

When my hands need to go and I don't have the mind power for a chart, I'm still picking up my two-color not-noro striped scarf. The yarn is Lion Brand Amazing and I have to say, it's a good name for the yarn because it IS.

Colors are Rainforest and Mesa. It's for my husband to own and for me to steal borrow. I mean, for my husband.

Last weekend we rearranged some furniture and took out the futon that has been in the yarn room for a long time. It went upstairs to the playroom so I could bring in my sewing table!!!!!

It folds up for sleeping as well. Paul found this by the side of the road. It is in excellent condition and I'm really excited to sew. 

Now with TWO screens. You guys. It is made of win.

We also reorganized the stash a little bit.

.... and that's it for today!

WIP Wednesday, January 25, 2012

2012? Can that be right?

What's on the pile this week? Oceanspray is coming along at roughly 6.5% complete based on my adjustments to not run out of yarn.



So far so good....

Locals, read this! and WIP Wednesday, November 9, 2011

My Tour de Sock....er ... tour.... ends tonight, as Stage 4 is ending in a few hours and this is all I have.



Oh well, I stuck it out as long as I could and that was far longer than I expected! And now I'm a sock knitter!!

But, right now, this sock knitter wants to look at lace.



This is a variant of the very popular pattern Ishbel, where the lace is started first thing instead of having a stockinette triangle. The variant is a free supplement to the actual Ishbel pattern, which needs to be purchased to make the shawl. Also,

Meanwhile, I've finished the first bobbin with half of my purple rain batts I started spinning the other day.



Back in August some areas near where I live were hit very hard by flooding from Hurricane Irene. Here in town we were fine, but some of the lower-lying areas of the city near the river were flooded and the nearby Schoharie Valley had historic flooding, destroying homes, farms, and businesses.

This morning I learned about a not-for-profit corporation called Schoharie Recovery, based right in Schoharie and working to match skills, volunteers, and donations with the people who need help.  This weekend there is a fundraising event for Schoharie Recovery from a local spinning guild in conjunction with the Home for the Holidays weekend.  There's more information over here.

As for me, as soon as I got off the phone with the organizer to say I'll be there Sunday for sure and probably part of Saturday too, I started spinning up this corriedale roving so I can donate it to sell.



Every little bit helps, right? Of course I want to help, but sometimes it's hard to figure out how to help. This time it was easy.  Maybe I can get some holiday shopping done too!

WIP Wednesday, November 2, 2011

We're up to Stage 4 of the Tour de Sock, and much to my surprise I'm still in it!! This stage's pattern is Technical.



Now, in case it's not obvious from the picture, I need to get back to work while I have two brain cells to clang together. This one is tricky!!

WIP Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Here's what I've worked on in the past week! Evenstar is the big purple blob (I'm at 61% complete right now, and for full points I need to hit 75% by October 31). The latest Tour de Sock pattern came out today, which is the rainbow and black colorwork sock on top there. And sneaking in just to spice things up, I cast on a Tappan Zee sweater on Sunday for those times when I just need something simple! Like a sweater!! Sigh.

WIP Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Behold, the triumphant return of WIP Wednesday!  Here's a quick look at what I've got going today.



A sweater blocking in pieces while I finish the second sleeve! I'm trying to get it finished by this weekend.

WIP Wednesday, March 9,2011

Here we are at Wednesday again!



The pink furry scarf is done except for hiding the ends.  So is my first pink and brown striped mitt there (Hallowed Hands) and I'm a few inches into the second mitt.  Continuing clockwise, the Celeste Shawl is going by quickly and I've only got 8 and 2/3 rows left to go.... very, very long rows!  I'm at about 80% I think.  Up at the top you can see the toe of a green sock I started for my husband.  Last but not least, the collaborative squares blanket project I'm seaming is still going!  Goinggoinggoing!

Slight Monday madness

We're snowed in today, although the skies are now blue and the plows came through at last.  It's been a good day to catch up with ourselves and I've been busy finally catching up in all the things I like to do on Ravelry and of course a few things around the house.

One thing I missed was WIP Wednesday last week!  I have a good enough reason though - I even took a WIP Wednesday picture and explained it all, but I did it for an interview with the Ravenclaw Aerie!

So, here's my picture anyway....



Quoth myself from the interview:

Upper left, a blanket I'm seaming.  Continuing clockwise around the edge, the pink/green thing is my CoMC OWL that I need to frog back to 50%.  I'm making a crochet square sampler on the right, slowly turning in squares for classes here and there. (Part of that blanket was on a stop sign last weekend for Transfiguration's yarn bombing assignment.) The furry pink scarf is for a charity called Handmade Especially For You, which gets donations of yarn and they send out kits with the fur pre-placed all wound into a ball, and all you do is get to work with some chunky needles.  The pink and brown striped tube is about half of a Hallowed Hands fingerless glove, which is a Deathly Hallows Part 1 inspired pattern by Hufflepuff's Tiggersjp.  Finally, the green blob is a fingering weight version of Lehmus-huivi that is part of a challenge in another Ravelry group.  

And if you'd like, here's my interview!

I've since finished one of the Hallowed Hands mitts and holy monkey there are a kajillion ends to weave in!  I seriously considered not even making the second mitt.  But then I tried it on, and, well.  It's so pretty.  I'll keep chugging along!

Now, in my previous post I promised an avalanche of finished projects. They're still finished and I'm slowly getting my pictures added to posts to document them.  So for real this time..... watch out, here they come!

But first I think it's time for a cup of tea and maybe a little bite of brownie.  It is a snow day after all!

WIP Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Busy day!!



Blanket squares sent from all around the world and I'm making them into a blanket on the left.  On the right, from the top down we have the Mermaidia socks that were finished and then became unfinished and now have since been finished again (grrrrrr), Celeste Shawl (I'm about to insert a lifeline and rip back a repeat (grrrr!!!), and the lehmus-huivi shawl (Leafy Lehmus on the sidebar there) which is my joy right now. :D

Goodnight!

WIP Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Here I am! I'm not even sure that I did work on my Celeste Shawl this past week, but I thought I'd better throw it in just in case.

Other stars of this show are the well-rested Mermaidia Socks in blue-green up at the top, now only a cuff and picot bindoff away from the end.

My other OWL is the sweater masquerading here as green stringy blobs, which are a complete back and about 2/3 of a cardigan front. The pocket lining is worked overlapping with the sweater and the seams are sewn up after, so it looks like a giant hole because right now it is.

In the middle we have my latest obsession, Spillyjane's Camilla Mittens (free pattern). Some bright person pointed out that Spillyjane is having a giveaway, and everyone who knits a pair of Camillas and emails her a picture gets one of her (paid) patterns for free. I've been meaning to give some of her designs a try and this seems like a great opportunity!

I've also been spinning again... (BFL, attempting a laceweight??)

having finally cleared some yellow wool off the bobbins. As soon as I get it washed, the handspun and another finished project will be making an appearance!

WIP Wednesday, February 2, 2011

(actually posted on Thursday....)

For the second week running, all I have worked on in the past week that isn't done yet is right here - my two OWLs. The green sweater back I finished Wednesday night and the Celeste Shawl is now at 59% complete.

After the Swallowtail, I feel like I've been to lace knitting boot camp and can do anything lacy much faster than before. I feel pretty good about hitting 50% on both this month, and may even finish one of these major projects ahead of time. I am no doctor, but I think I might have been abducted by aliens.