Yarn-mail Wednesday

Well, actually it was Monday, but it's squishy yarn mail none-the-less.

I came home from taking Small Boy to school Monday afternoon to find THREE squishy packages on my doorstep. So very exciting.

The first one I opened was my long awaited Kidsilk Haze from Webs. The last I spoke to them there was still one colour backordered and I asked them to please ship what they had. It's so lovely, I hope my Mom will like the Modern Quilt Wrap, she should.



Today I called a fairly local shop and they have the colour that I'm waiting for. They didn't have it 2 weeks ago when I was there, but oh well. So it's going out in the mail tomorrow.

Next was Vintage. This thing has me scared. It's going to marinate for awhile before I tackle it. My SIL is going to help me with leaves (Right?). She just learned to knit in October and recently finished her first socks and got her Ravelry invite yesterday! We got the Claret colourway for my red wine drinking MIL.



Then I opened the February Booty Club package. Yowsa! It will make a scarf for my Girl for next winter. It's called "I Want Candy" and it's the Merino/Tencel yarn. This came only about 2 weeks after the January shipment arrived, and man do I love Kalamata!





Finally, I 1/1 for RSC socks! Serendipity aka Dragon Scales is done. I'm not sure how I feel about the toe, I'll have to wear them a bit to pass judgement. It was a great pattern to knit though. The only thing I changed was to add another 1/2 repeat to the leg, I'm not a fan of short socks.




That's all for now. Still plugging away on the seaming for Avast, I should do that this afternoon, and I have finished the chart for the yoke of Tangled Yoke. I'm a little concerned about fit over the boobage, but we'll see.

Alright, so I started a baby blanket. I know, I know. But they are ALMOST finished.

I'm doing the log cabin baby blanket from Mason Dixon. I've done 4 blocks, one of each colour and I began block 5 this morning, with colour A, the same ball I knit the first block from. It's cut in multiple places. I've pulled out 4 pieces that are about 18-24 inches long, I found another end and started pulling and it was looking good so I started the block. Now, 6 garter ridges in, it's cut again. I don't want to rip out what I've done, so I won't, but I'm using a new ball now. Grrr.

Attention everyone

Attention! Avast is blocking! Yes that's right, I finally finished knitting the giant grey thing. And when it is dry, I will seam the sleeves and the hems, find a zipper and figure out how to attach the darn thing. It looks quite spiffy all pinned out on the floor, if I do say so myself.

Here it is, in it's 62 inch wingspan glory.



Also this weekend, another item checked off the to be finished list, the second pair of Monkeys for SIL. Modelled by my rather slim 7 year old son whose feet are much too small for these socks.



These were made with STR mediumweight in Metamorphic with 2.25mm Knit Picks DPNS. I'll see her next weekend, hopefully she likes them as much as she does the Pink Granite pair.

And, well, because I'm weak and I was happy to have finished knitting Avast, I finished the first sock of the RSC January shipment. I added another 1/2 repeat to the leg and by weight I should have plenty of yarn left for the second sock. I don't like short socks. These are great socks. Again, modelled by big boy, 7, who keeps asking if these are for him "because I REALLLLLLLLY like this colour Mommy."



And, lots of knitting this week, Tangled came out of time out. Turns out all it needed was a few days of sitting in it's basket to find the error of it's ways, and now it's behaving nicely. It still takes about an hour to do one of the cable rows, but I'm getting there. The next row has a 5->1 DECREASE! WOOHOO! Sorry, no pictures yet.

Tomorrow, we celebrate the first ever Family Day holiday. Hopefully this freezing rain will turn to snow and maybe we will go sledding for a bit.

Another one bites the dust

My basket is getting more and more empty!

I did start the Serendipity socks, only to frog what I did because it was too big and knit it again, and I'm just about done with the first pattern repeat. But! I finished Jeremy's slippers! I made him felted clogs a year ago (have I told this story before?) and he loves them, says they have changed his life. He didn't want me to go out and buy more wool to make them as I had enough feltable bits left over from other things that I could make him a non-matching pair. So, he has one purple/white slipper and one green/white slipper. What he wanted was a second pair so he could leave the mismatched pair at his office so he can wear them at the end of the day when he's doing paperwork and returning phone calls (no patients!), and have a pair at home. And being the (somewhat) good knitting wife I am, I made his giant feet another pair.



The problem. They are really wide. Does anyone know how to fix that without making them any shorter? I'm afraid to put them in the washer again because the length is good, but they are really floppy.

Hopefully by Monday I'll have an "all but the zipper" post about Avast. The end is in sight! I need to do the bottom band and a little bit of seaming (hems and sleeves). Then the zipper, even though I'm not quite sure how the zipper is actually going to get attached to the sweater.

Those of you that are getting buried under snow and freezing rain (like we are today) be safe!

Caution: RSC January picture at end of this post

Long time no blog! But do you really want to read about me still working on two cardigans at the same time? I don't know who's brilliant idea that was, but it's getting me down I tell you. Avast aka the Giant Grey Thing, needs it's front bands and bottom band done and I'm almost to the fun part of Tangled Yoke, the cabled yoke.

I did finish something though. Because I just had too, and I knew there was new sock yarn in my future. My Calamity Charades. They make my feet very happy. From the August Yarn Pirate package, "Calamity" BLF. Nice socks, and quick knitting when I actually worked on them. Just over 2 weeks total knitting time, with a 2 week break in between the 2 socks.


Oooo! I almost forgot. I made two cakes this week too. The first was last Saturday for the Baby Girls birthday party (her birthday was the 5th). It's a castle for Ponies and I think she really liked it. The bottom layer is the only edible portion, I used a styrofoam cake dummy for the round on the top because I really didn't need that much cake. We had quite a bit leftover as it was.



I did another cake yesterday for my Dad. He was curling last night and my mom wanted to surprise him there with a cake when everyone was done. He was very surprised.



The little curling rocks are made out of rolled fondant, and are, I think, my favourite part. I tried to get them all about the same size so I used a 1/2 tsp measuring spoon, they're about the size of a quarter in diameter. The whole cake wasn't to scale, so I figured it would be OK if the rocks were a little big. Everyone loved it.

And the reason I'm trying to finish all these things, other than there are too many and it's stressing me out? My first Rockin Sock Club package. It arrived in record time, so much faster than anything I have ordered from them before. Six days. Six. I'm still waiting for my Yarn Pirate, this will be day 15 for that one. Anyhow, it's a snow day today so I'm going to bake with my boys and do something fun. Maybe toss them in the backyard for awhile.
And here, is 'Dragon Dance' So out of my box, but so pretty. And making me think about Project Spectrum.