Pardon me while I ramble...

I signed up for SP4. I am having a great experience. I repeat, no troubles here. I've heard from my SP quite a few times, and I'm doing my darndest to be a good SP to my girlie. Already sent a mini-pkg even. I'll probably shop for her today.

But all across the net I hear the tales. The tales of the bad SP's. The ones who never sent their girly a darn thing. Or the ones who get amazing things but still go all "my SP sucks" on the boards. Also, I'm a little concerned at the amount of "neediness" evidenced. I feel like I should start keeping track of all of the contact I initiate with my girly to make sure I'm not sub-par.

Who knew SP could cause so much angst? Angst I tell ya.

RIP Soleil

I had to frog it. Again. For about the 27th time. I'm gonna start making hashmarks in my arm each time I frog it. Honestly. I'm not gonna pick it up again for awhile. I'm partway into branching out and that's for my mama. I really need to hunker down and finish that up over the weekend.

Isn't she lovely?

My first two repeats of the lace in my soleil. Notice the uniform stitches. Notice the lack of crazy curling edges. I think I'm finally doing this right.

And in the oh my goodness what was I thinking category....



This is the first repeat of the lace for branching out. I think I like lace. I think I completely hate Rowan Kidsilk Haze. But that might just be me. I bought the peace fleece joint venture needles to work on this. Don't repeat my mistake! The tips of those needles are just too blunt. For anything. I tried sharpening and waxing them. Still no luck. So I went back to my LYS and picked up a pair of Lantern moon needles. Oh my goodness. They were so expensive. Anyone know of lace patterns that I can work on these size 8's? I need to get my money's worth out of these.

Denial is the first stage...

I don't have a problem. I'm not addicted to the knittyboard. Not at all. If I was addicted, truly addicted, could I have left the house this morning and spent an entire afternoon at the park having a picnic with my son, my sister and my nephew?? No way!

But now that I'm home.... Well knittyboard is down. And I'm feeling all lost and bereft. But it's NOT an addiction.

a smallish whine

When I created this blog, I signed up to join the knittyheads. I'm decently savvy when it comes to computers/web stuff, so I'm pretty darn sure I did it right. I waited a month. Nothing. The queue over there seems to turn over pretty quickly. I've had the code on here the whole time. So I resubmitted. A little less than a week ago. So I'm waiting. I hate to bother the ringmistress, and I'm trying to be patient. But then I think maybe I'm just denied for some odd reason, like I posted something wrong or I don't know.

If you are a part of the knittyheads, do you happen to remember how long it took her to add you?

Sweet Memories

It was beautiful while it lasted, wasn't it? I frogged it. It being soleil. The whole damn thing. Yes I said damn. I found a hole last night. And then another. And then another. And then I knew about one mistake in the lace I was *choosing* to ignore. But then I found a couple more. Plus I think I cast on too tight and the edges weren't ever gonna "un-curl". *sigh*

So now we have a very misshapen ball of endless summer sonata mauve (which is not really mauve but periwinkle) sitting in my project bag. It's quite depressing.

Also winding up all the frogged yarn made my left wrist hurt something fierce.

What other WIPS do I have?

The striped booga - about 30% done.
Later Gator Mittens - one mitten done, but not connected or decorated. 40%
Thick man's socks - about 20% done. Only down to the heel on the 1st sock.
Man's dress socks - about 5% done. Still working on the cuff for that.

Things I need to do:

Baby present for baby boy S. who will arrive near the end of May. Thinking a big bad blanket in Encore still.

Queen of Hearts bikini for skinny friend D.

And sigh of all sighs, I guess I need to recast on for Soleil.

Grab that WIP!

I know. Everyone has used devo with the whole WIP thing. It's early. Gimme a break.

Soleil is coming along, if slowly. I'm about 2/3 done with the decrease rounds. And then it will be back to increasing. It's just slow going.



So I've been cheating on poor soleil. With another booga bag. This one is made up of leftover orange & hot pink from my meema. It's for the teeny girl who helps out at Sunday school. She's a sweetie. The stripes will be variegated, although you really can't tell at this point.



There is a baby boy coming near the end of May. So I need to get my bootay in gear and make up a baby blanket or somesuch for him. I can't decide what at this point. I was thinking of making up the Big Bad Baby Blanket from SnB. They use two strands though, and I'm leaning towards making it with one strand. Maybe out of plymouth encore.

ahhh sweet relief...

After too many mis-starts to count, soleil is finally progressing. I have finished an entire round of lace. I put stitch markers every ten so that I can't mess up.

Things I've done wrong so far:
1. Cast on so tight it made my fingers hurt.
2. Twisted my join
3. Forgot to knit the first row before the lace
4. Twisted my join again

And other various mistakes.

Here is my gorgeous yarn from Elann. They call it mauve, but it's truly a periwinkle.



And here is the first round of lace.



And a detail of the lace and my nifty drinking straw stitch markers!

Socks and me are unmixy things.

Just so you know. I tried to work some in woolease on 5 dpns for practice. Nope. Not happening. I thought maybe trying them with such a splitty, cheap-ass yarn was the problem. So I sucked it up, bought the opal and the recommended 1's. I cast on, knitted some k2p2 ribbing and frogged I think a total of 5 times. Bad times.

Ugh. My beloved man really wants socks. So I went to the not-so local yarn store and got #2 dpns. I eyed their regia stock, but there were no "manly" colors. I bought a regia simple sock pattern, since regia & opal are supposed to be interchangeable. I also bought the #10.5 dpns that I need to do i-cord.

The not so local yarn store was interesting. They had a wall of hand dyed stuff that ran about $25-35 per skein. Ouchie-wa-wa. They had a massive, and I do mean massive stock of novelty yarns. I remember reading somewhere that rich people like novelty yarns. This is one of the ritzy beach communities aways north. I'm starting to believe that rich people really do only buy novelty yarn. She also had a lot of sirdar, and tons of different suedes and dks. Nothing I was interested in. She carried lamb's pride, but her stock was seriously depleted. I might go back to get the encore colorspun and use it to make the Big Bad Baby Blanket in SnB though.

In other news right outside her store John Travolta was filming a movie. I've always crushed on him. Not enough to stand around and wait for a glimpse, but still. Besides my 3 guys were waiting for me. Sure would have been cool though.

We're S-H-O-P-P-I-N-G, we're shopping!

No one remembers the Pet Shop Boys but me. *sigh*

Lookie, I have pictures!!!

Sophie unfelted, and rather floppy....



A close-up of the prettiness that is peace fleece....



I hope she keeps the nice "raspberry" flecks after she's been felted. This bag is so cute already!

I went to two yarn stores today. Ok, so there's only two in town, but who the heck is counting? Look at what I bought....



I bought the addi turbos at the first shop. They are for my soleil!!!! I was also gonna buy some variegated regia sock yarn, but the girly was kind of strange about it. I felt like she was trying to sell me everything she had in stock. I also had a crochet hook and some 10.5 dpns (cause I think I might be addicted to sophie and booga). After she gave the heebies, I put everything back but the addis. My favorite LYS doesn't sell addis.

So I scootched on down the road to my favorite place and alas, she did not have 10.5 dpns. So I guess patience is a virtue? *sigh* I got a lovely wooden crochet hook for my soleil which is not in the picture. Crap if I didn't leave it in my sister's car! But I got my size 1 dpns to make my beloved man socks. As well as the lovely green opal sock yarn. Wish me luck. The color doesn't look quite right on my monitor to me. It's kind of a cross between olive and forest green. It will match lots of his clothes.

Now I'm off in search of a zippered pillowcase.

cue the pointer sisters...

Singing "I'm so excited!" Stage left please.

After much anticipation, the new Spring knitty is up. I've been on the hunt for a pattern to do for myself. A tank or a summer sweater. And I have found it.

Soleil. Yes, I realize that she named it that probably because it was yellow. I can't wear yellow. Yellow makes me turn funny colors. I have nothing against yellow. But I think in a former life I must have sullied yellow's good name, because yellow does bad things to me. So....

I will be making the beautiful Soleil in the recommended Elann yarn in mauve. My first online yarn order. I almost ordered the needles as well, but I have a pair of the clovers in size 10.5 that I need to return to Jo-Ann's so I'll just exchange me thinks.

This is not gonna get my husband a pair of socks anytime soon.

This is what I get for being cheap.

I found a free pattern for basic socks with a ribbed cuff worked in woolease. So I was happy. Figured it would be a good practice pair, cause my hubby wants some so badly. So I'm practicing right? But now after working 6 inches of the leg part and halfway through the heel flap I realize the directions I am using are seriously flawed. They are unclear and missing important steps. I found some help by referencing a pattern from diynetwork.com. But now I have to frog the stupid thing. Woolease splits awfully easily and I can't seem to get the stitches back on the needle. Grrrrrr.....

Do you wanna knuckle sammich?

My knuckle hurts. The one on my index finger on my right hand. From knitting. Arrgggh!

So I'm still working on Sophie, but it's slow going, cause, yeah, my knuckle hurts. Also it's after 10 and I'm still in my robe. DST is kicking my ass.

My husband is just pining for some socks. So I got to get to work on that. Seriously.

In other news, I was in a craft shop the other day. And I saw a book of patterns that I was flipping through. And one in the bag (a little evening bag) looked strangely familiar. It was a pattern that the teacher at my first (and only) knitting class had passed out in class. Isn't that illegal? It was photocopies. With no note as to where it came from. In fact, she claimed it was her very own pattern. Now the book said otherwise. And her pages came from the book. So unless there is some wierd pattern property rights thing going on where the teacher lady designed it and someone stole it from her, printed it, and said they designed it and the teacher lady is just printing out copies aka stealing it out of principal.... Well you get the gist. My teacher was a big fat liar.

My very first SnB....

...was yesterday. It was supposed to be at a local coffeshop, but it wasn't open yet. So we went to Starbucks. I drank a caramel frapuccino and spent the rest of the day in super hype mode. Coffee and me are unmixy things.

I worked on my sophie bag and talked too much and ended up having to frog like 2 inches of it. Very embarassing.

I can't decide whether to try to knit myself clothes. I'm a big, big girl. Who is trying to not be. I've lost about 15 lbs. on WW so far. But I need to lose oh say about 90 more. Yes, you read that right. 90. So I kinda sorta wanna knit myself a pretty tank for the summer. But then what? If I lose all the weight I want, I'll frog it and use the yarn to make a smaller tank and a matching cardigan (or at least a matching capelet???). I don't know. Garment knitting seems so complicated for something I truly intend to not be able to wear a year from now.

But how many purses can one girl knit?

I've been flashed!

By all the stash flashers! Oh my goodness. It makes me wanna go out and buy things. But I must focus. And not get all crazy with this. Or I'll be lost and in the poorhouse. Do they still have debtor's prison?

One later gator mitten is almost done. All I need to do is the french knot teeth, attach the eyes, and then put it all together. I've made it out of very squeaky acrylic, but I think it will wear well as the puppet it is intended to be. Hopefully the second one will go much faster. I was thinking that if I did the ribbed cuff in Florida colors that it was make cute prezzies for all of the alumni I know. But it didn't work super fast to be honest. All I really need is two. One for each boy-o.

I have finally decided what to make out of my blue peace fleece. I had bought it to make another meema, but I think I'm gonna make a sophie bag instead. It's a beautiful blue that tends to periwinkle and it has hot pink flecks in it. So I think it will be perfect.

Also my husband really wants socks. Badly. He needs to feel the knitted love I think. So if anyone knows of an easy beginner sock pattern that would be nice and manly.... send it my general direction!