Quick, to the fair!

This year getting ready for the Altamont Fair was more stressful than ever before. I had work to do on all of my entries after the deadline and before the drop-off and with one last minute item swap, I made it. But I didn't get good before pictures of all of my items - in fact, some of them aren't even DONE in these. Next year, will be the year that I plan better, and this time I mean it.

Morticia in laceweight merino, with two colors of beads. 

The Sea Speaks to Me in my own laceweight handspun

Blue/purple 2-ply handspun 80% blue-faced leicester 20% silk 

Labyrinthine socks, with their ridiculous (and awesome) 5-color scalloped cast on

Laminaria in laceweight alpaca

Three Sisters Scarf #2 in a self-striping sock yarn. I actually knitted on this last year at the Altamont Fair as part of  a knitting demonstration. The scarf turned out rather long!

I am especially curious to see how the judging comes out on the first two, because they were in a category competing against each other.

So we'll see how it comes out this year. They are using a judging rubric that we get back for the first time so I'm looking forward to more feedback!

I did finish Mario, by the way

Here's Mario.




Here he is on his first outing to Starbucks to visit my knitting group.



And here he is being opened by my 7 year old son - this was his birthday gift, and I made the squares in front of him but did all the seaming and finishing while he was at school. So the blanket was a huge surprise.



He was a little lukewarm at first, because he thought I was giving him a learn-to-knit kit. Oh, honey.... this is crochet. Totally different. He does love and appreciate it, now.

This blanket is one of nine items I entered into the fair this year. I'm curious to find out if the blanket will be up on the wall or skirting a Christmas tree off in the corner, but I won't find out until Saturday (unless my incessant scouring of media for pictures yields a spoiler). Winning ribbons would be great of course, but I'm hoping for some feedback on my handspun yarn. Well, that and of course beginning my quest for world domination at the spinning bee on Saturday.

Monday Mario, Again

Spring Break is over and the birthday is fast approaching, so it's time to get down to business on this blanket. I took Mario to knit night last week for about 3 hours of work in the privacy of a busy coffee shop because he hadn't been out of the back of my closet in a week and I was getting twitchy.

Friday, before:

Friday, after: 

I wasn't there by myself at a huge table, I just avoided people in the first pic and we were all packing to go at closing time for the second. Really.

Today Spike went back to school and so after a celebratory really-big-cup-of-coffee I got to work.


Here goes nothing... a better view of today's start (I did a few squares on the remaining sleeve Friday night very late when Spike was thoroughly asleep).

And then this is how far I got before I had to roll it up and hide it again this afternoon:

That little foot belongs to Zee, Spike's 4 year old brother. This secret is safe with him! (He has a tendency to stick a foot into my photos though and I'm only just realizing it. I wonder why he does that?!?)

It feels like I'm getting somewhere on this guy now, and it really looks like Mario! I'll get a few hours to work on him tomorrow too but Wednesday-Friday this week I'll be reorganizing the yarn stash and using my kid-free hours to have yarn all over the house. Spike is a sound sleeper so maybe I can squeeze in some late night work!

Monday Mario

Mario actually didn't get that far today - after I took this picture I got the rest of the (Mario's) left foot pieces partially attached.



I'm really enjoying seeing Mario come together, but I think I usually do other non-crafting things when the kids are at school because I'm not spending nearly as much school-time on this as I thought I would. Time to reevaluate what I do in the mornings!

The thing that makes it all worth it

The Wonderful Wallaby is a great pattern, don't get me wrong, But there is only so much stockinette a person can handle before they go a little mad, and somewhere in the sleeves I just didn't want to go on anymore.

But I powered through, and here we are - a kid very happy to be wearing a sweater his mom made for him.







He picked out the colors and watched it come together, so he has some idea of the work involved. And now he can match his little brother!



I made the child's size 10 for my 6-almost-7 year old, and it used 804 yards of Encore Worsted (a washable acrylic/wool blend).

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!