Tour de Finishing Part 2

Still working on the blanket. I finished edging two more squares today. I'm running low on my edging color and I really hope I have an extra skein of it floating around somewhere. If not, hopefully Purl still has some in my dye lot. I somehow doubt they will seeing as I bought the other 5 skeins in October or November, but we'll see.

I'm watching Footballers' Wives on DVD and enjoying the sheer trashy wonder of it.

Tour de Finishing

I know the Tour de Fleece is going on right now, but while I have some fleece to spin, I need to finish some other stuff up instead.

I have been crocheting edges on all of Grandpa's blanket squares. They're looking very nice and I think it's going to be the perfect size. I have one strip (5 squares) completely edged and sewn together and about 8 more edged and ready to be sewn together. I'm holding off on sewing them together until I finish all my edging so I can get the blocks lined up in a good way. After I get them all sewn up, I'm going to crochet an edge all around the whole blanket to make a nice neat finish.

I have a History midterm to take before Saturday as well... and a paper to write and a few books to read for class, so I'm working alternately on school stuff and the blanket. It's going to be a busy week!



A photo of my life now... reading and crocheting!

Hey, I knit sometimes...

I just finished a winter set for a wonderful friend in Canada. She needed a wine-grape colored scarf, hat, and mitten set for those cold, cold winters.

I knew immediately what scarf I wanted to make once I finally found the yarn... (That took ages! Everything was too red or too pink.) I ordered 7 balls of Malabrigo Chunky in Velvet Grapes and got to work.*

Here is the hat.

I completely made it up as I went along. I knew I wanted the band around the base to match the stitch pattern from the scarf and just went from there. It turned out so well. I am planning on writing up the pattern over the next week and sharing it with everyone. It was a real pleasure to knit. It's lined with some micro-fleece to be extra-super warm.

And the mittens.


They are also completely made up as I went. I made lots of notes so I could match them perfectly and was very pleasantly surprised at how well I wrote my notes out! They are a little longer than normal mittens. I hate when there is that gap between your mitten and jacket when you reach out your arms. Hopefully, the extra few inches will stop that. They also have a fleece lining for more warmth. I really love these mittens. I might have to make a bunch more. They are so nice and so warm.

Here is a refresher of the scarf. It's my go-to scarf pattern. I love it.



I'm working on the finishing for Grandpa's blanket. I had it about half done and all seamed together and HATED the way it looked. I am not a great crocheter, so I took a bit of time off from it, learned a new stitch, practiced a lot and now it's going much better. I'm hoping to have it done by Tuesday or Wednesday so I can mail it to my Mom and have her deliver it to him. She's really excited about seeing it.


*Sorry if any of this is a repeat, but I'm too lazy to look back and see what I posted about before.

Making a list

I was in a rather boring meeting last week and took the time to make a list of Christmas gifts to be made/bought. I'm trying to use up as much stash as possible and save a bit of money where I can.

Today I signed up for a study abroad trip to IRELAND! Wooooo! It's 10 days in Dublin with tours, museum visits and such. It counts as credit for class too. Could there be any better reason to go? I was wanting to go to Europe next summer anyway and this is the perfect chance. My dad currently lives in Bahrain, teaching at a fancy school and wanted to get together to travel a bit. Now we can meet up before or after my class and go a few more places. I'd really like to go to Wales, Scotland and England.

Anyway, back to the list -- it's pretty long, but nothing too huge. The biggest thing is Grandpa's blanket. I have been a bad knit blogger and completely forgot to take pictures of the gorgeous squares Lauren and Cynthia sent to me.



They are so nice to me!!

The rest of the list is pretty manageable. Lots and lots of hats and dishcloths. I was smart and knit a lot of dishcloths in September to get a jump start. I have 12 done and hope to get at least another 20 done. They go pretty fast and are a good quickie knit.

I printed off some patterns today to get some stuff started and I'm going to get to work on them! I knit a hat on Saturday. It was a quick knit - an earflap hat knit on big needles with chunky yarn from a sweater I recycled. I just sort of freestyled it and knit. It came out a bit large so I felted it a bit and it looks great. I think I'm going to make a flower out of some felt and sew it on.

I need to take a whole big batch of photos sometime this week. I have some finished squares and a few other things in progress that need a photoshoot.

Saturday Night

We just got back from Target. I got my student loan refund check today and we've been wanting a Wii for a while so we decided to go for it. We ended up coming home with an Xbox 360 instead. They were out of Wiis (yet again) and since we both wanted both systems, we got the 360. It's very nice and pretty. We got Call of Duty 4 and Assassin's Creed.

We're not playing now because we are watching the end of the OSU-Wisconsin game. It didn't start showing here until after the USC game was so far gone that they changed it. Apparently, they don't think that people in the West want to watch Big 10 games. Boo. But I'm glad they switched it over because we got to see the last 10 minutes and some great plays.

On the knitting side of things, I'm still churning out dishcloths like there's no tomorrow. I've finished 2 in the last few days. All I really have the time or energy for is mindless, small knitting. I need to print out a few new patterns for blanket squares. I can definitely keep working on those.

I have some yarn from Webs coming Monday to make this.

Since it has such an insanely weird name, I'm calling it Eskimo. I'm really looking forward to knitting it. It should be a quick knit with such chunky yarn. (The name of the yarn I ordered totally escapes me, but it was a steal at $2 a ball!)

And I really need to make some of these little poseable skeletons. They are so frakkin' cute.

Mindless

Between work and school, I've been completely swamped and haven't had much time to focus on knitting. I was working on Vince's scarf and first realized that I had made up my own stitch pattern, then I mis-counted my stitches and am going to have pick out the entire row. It's going to take a long time to do it right because there are YOs every 4 stitches. I honestly just don't have the concentration right now to do it. I really need to finish it up in the next week or two before it gets too chilly here. (This is a old photo, but it's a scarf so it's not going to look all that different...)

My mindless knitting this week has been dishcloths. I have quite a stash of cotton built up so I decided that I should get a jump start on my random gift stash. I might use them as Christmas gifts or whatever. I might end up using some of them myself or listing a few on etsy. So far I've finished 5 and will have another one done tonight. They are good idle knitting for me.

I'm going to use the dishcloth pattern to make a few squares for Grandpa's blanket. I have 9 finished and just need to get a few more done soon. I thought that some easy garter stitch ones would be good.

I have put the laptop case on the back burner for now. I bought a nice bag at Target with a laptop case in it. (I just hunted all over their site for a picture of it and can't find it... Weird.) It's large enough for me to put books for school in there, my laptop, some knitting stuff and my little purse. I really like it. It has a chartreuse inner lining, very cute!

Squares

I finished my 10th square today during lunch. Above are all the ones I've finished and blocked out so far. YAY!

Neeeeeeeew!

I gots a new computer Saturday. I've been busy geeking out on it and trying to move files over from my two desktops. I've spent a lot of time on school work too. I am taking 3 online courses and one at the school.

I finished a lighthouse square and a basketweave square for the blanket and started another one last night. I need to block 6 squares very soon.

I went to the chiropractor today for the first time. I really enjoyed. Some of the massage for my knee and hip really hurt, but I felt better after it was all done.

more animals

Anchors Aweigh

Blue of the Mighty Deep

Gold of God’s Sun

Let these our colors be

Till all time be done

On seven seas we learn

Navy’s stern call

Faith, Courage, Service True

With Honor Over, Honor Over All

I finished my first square last night for Grandpa's blanket. It got a bath and blocked over night. The color of this yarn (my beloved Cascade 220 Heathers) is Sea and it's gorgeous. The yarn has some dark red in it and that really showed up in the photo. I don't think it helps that I took the picture at dusk under a lamp, but whatever...

I used a dishcloth pattern and just cast on a few extra stitches to make it 8 inches wide. I'm working on a plain gold/yellow stockinette square with a garter stitch border now. I should have that one done tomorrow.