Hip in Hemp begins

I've finally begun the Hip in Hemp skirt and I love working on it! This was the one part I really didn't like:sewing in the elastic! It was miserable. Although I did it at 10 at night, which is definitely not the best time for me to concentrate on anything.
It's done now and I'm enjoying the rest of it. I haven't gotten very far but if feels like I'm flying given the amount of time I've actually had to work on it. I'm bringing it to my S&B meeting tonight and I should be able to finish the blue stripe. Then I have to wait for the last color to get in to my LYS for the next stripe.

HEMPATHY!!!!!

I just got my Hempathy yarn from my LYS to start the Hip in Hemp skirt for my niece. I can't believe that I'll only need one more skein to make a whole skirt. Devin's little, but I don't know if she's that little. I have faith in the pattern though!

I assembled everything I need (except the elastic for the waistband and the last skein of yarn). I'm going to spend the rest of the day knitting and playing with the pups!

Half a finished object

I finished half of a project this weekend. . . one sock! It's my first sock ever. I'm not a huge fan of the colors, but these are my practice pair socks and now I can move onto nice sock yarn. But look at what a nice job I did:And just so you can see it actually fits me really nice:

I'm completely hooked on socks now. I understand all those people who knit pair after pair after pair. I really want to try a lace pattern one now. I need to finished the other one of this pair though. This sock is so much more comfortable than I could have imagined. I did a pretty crap job grafting the toe though so I'm not sure how long it will last.

I'm off to my LYS to pick up some of the yarn for Hip in Hemp! Hopefully I can knit all day long!

Oops, my bad!

Well, I have to retract my warning from yesterday's post and post a new warning. There is no problem with the pattern, but. . . if you decide to place your pattern in your yarntainer, make sure you fold it so you can read the whole pattern or take the pattern out of the yarntainer to double check it before just knitting away.

So, my problem was that there was supposed to be a regular knit row between each of my decrease rows. Oh well, too late now!

Another finished object

I finished my angora hat!

Isn't it gorgeous! But, notice how this is not a picture of it sitting on my head? There happens to be a very good reason for it. . . it looks ridiculous. It's too small. It will fit on my head but doesn't make it anywhere near my ears. I'm not about to tear it out since it's angora and I think the yarn would look like crap if I do. So, I'm making a skirt for my niece soon so maybe when that's done I'll send this up there with it as a present for my nephew. It'll probably be way too big though. We'll see.

So, a warning to my sisters who have the same pattern and kit. . . When it says knit until it's 5 inches long, you should really knit until it's 6 or 6.5 inches long!

Cabled sleeves

I have not worked on the sweater for my husband in quite a long time. I also have not been to my knitting group in quite a long time. So I figured what better project to work on when I finally went back to a meeting. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out exactly how the little tick marks I had made on the side of the pattern actually related to the pattern itself. Once I got myself all straightened out, I talked myself into frogging it before I finished a row. I've decided that I just really hate the cable pattern on the sleeves. So, I put it down and worked a little on the angora hat I've been slowly making progress on. I think I managed to put on 1/2 an inch (hey it's a lot when you're catching up with people you haven't seen in over a month!)

I am super excited about my new project. I'm going to make Hip in Hemp from the new knitty for my adorable niece! I called my LYS yesterday and they carry the yarn. They had everything I needed except for one skein. They sent out some sort of listserv e-mail thingy out to the knitting shop community and found what I needed within the hour! Now it's being sent to them and I will get a call as soon as it comes in. I'm busting to start it! I hope to have the yarn in hand by the middle of next week. Hopefully the fact that my niece is growing like a weed will be enough motivation for me to finish it really quick.

A finished project!

I actually finished a project this weekend! I made a baby quilt (almost 2 baby quilts). This is one of them:

The second one looks exactly the same, but I've only got the top pieced for that one. I had a litle problem. The pattern I had has a yellow center for the squares, but I choose a blue pooh fabric. So everything that was blue I switched with a yellow fabric and vice versa. I didn't quite realize that I would wind up with a whole bunch of yellow together. It turned out very girly even though they're both for little boys. But whatever, they're still cute and cuddly!
There was some issue about how to attach a label since it's minkee fabric on the back. I decided to buttonhole stitch it on with the hopes that that would hold a little better than regular applique.

OK, I'm off to finsh the other one, unless chores get in the way, which will probably happen!

Picture pages, picture pages, lots of fun with picture pages

OK, here are a few pictures with no updates from my last post cause I haven't even picked up a set of needles since then.

First of all, here is a picture of my husband's sweater. At least part of it. This is the back.
Here's the beginning of one arm. Yes the arm is supposed to be another color, see! The picture is pretty horrible, but there is a cable running down the arm. It's 3 cables, the ones on either side pass under the middle one making it look like it's just pinched.
And now the hat that I got as a kit when me, my mom, and my sister went to a quilt festival. It was supposed to be solid yellowish, but I was getting bored with it and I added a green stripe. Unfortunately it's getting quite a ladder when I change needles. I seem to have gotten a little lazy about 10 rows ago and didn't realize it until I went to take pictures. Oh, and the yarn is in a yarntainer I got from my mom as part of my birthday present. It's pretty handy already.

This is the yarn I spun all by myself! It's my first attempt so I didn't quite get it even. And there's less then 20 yards so I have no idea what I'll do with it. This is the yarn from my sister that I got as a Christmas/birthday present. I think this will become a hat. I need to spin something that coordinates to have enough for a hat though. If you can't tell, that's an orange and a brown spun together along with a shimmery orange strand. It's really nice and a yarn I can actually use to make MYSELF a hat since it won't clash with the red hair! I can't wait.

That's all for now. More stuff when I get around to it. My husband and I are trying to get our house ready to sell though so there isn't much in the way of free time here. I just spent all day today power washing our deck. It looks gorgeous and I have nothing else to do until 8 tonight, but I just don't seem to have the energy to actually knit. I think I'll lay on the couch and veg out for a few hours!

I swear I still knit

Really I do! But for now you'll just ahve to take my word for it. No FOs in a long time. But that's ok, I've had far too much other stuff going on in my life. My husband finally came home from Iraq, which of course required a week long celebration (read: sat around the house for a week, didn't go to work, didn't knit, didn't read, didn't watch movies, just spent time with him). Then I just had my graduation this weekend. While that doesn't really explain the lack of knitting given that my sister is even more of an obsessive knitter then me. But, we spent one day with the kids being scientists and the other at graduation.

That still doesn't seem to cover all the time since my last post (how many months ago was that?). So, I have been doing some knitting. I'm working on an angora hat, which got stalled for a while when I got so bored with the color and decided it needed a stripe and it took me forever to get to the yarn store. I'm still working on my husband's sweater. I finished the back and started a sleeve, but that also got delayed until I went to the yarn store because I needed some not-so-slippery cable needles.

I've also delved into the world of spinning. Last time I was visiting Long Island, my sister gave me a 5 minute crash course where I found out that I wasn't really drafting the fiber. All problems solved! I finished a skein of 17 feet. I really thought with all the work I put into it it would have to be enough for a hat, but it was a scrawny 17 feet!! Oh well. I started another skein, this time spun quite a bit thinner. It's roving I got when Joshua and I went to Jamestown for a day during our week of celebration. We'll see how much I have and if I can make anything from it.

The rest of my time has been devoted to reading and flyball. Thanks to bookmooch I have more reading material then I could ever want. And flyball is just about the most fun you can have with a psychotic, ball-crazed dog. Trapper is still just learning, but we sure have a blast at class.

So, my birthday/graduation just past and I got some fantastic presents. My little sister didn't get me anything, but she's excused cause she brought me 5 or so Marian Keyes/Helen Fielding books to borrow for a while. My parents got me a double helix necklace and bracelet from Cold Spring Harbor for my birthday. My graduation present is going to be a quilt storage chest! My older sister gave me some hand spun yarn (that matches my Christmas present). I should have enough now to almost make a hat, I'll probably have to do trim in a coordinating color. I really want to spin something to use with it so it's totally hand spun. Then for graduation she gave me (then quickly took back) a half finished shawl. It has a double helix down the center and lace panels on either side. It will be gorgeous when it's finished. I think it was a mustard yellow color but it may have been more green, I can't quite remember.

I'll try to remember to take some pictures tonight and post something a little more fun (but I added hyperlinks this time so you all can play around a little).

Fetch this!

I finally finished the fetching mittens that are supposed to take 2 days to make. Here's a top and bottom view:

Pattern: Fetching

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran

Needles: Size 6 double points

Now Blogger is totally messing up the spacing of this post, I hate it when it does that! Anyway, they turned out great. They don't need to be blocked, but I think I'll block them anyway since the top edge is a little curled and it looks messy when it's supposed to look like a nice picot edge. I'm very happy with them and they'll keep my hands nice and warm while I work in my freezing office. The pattern warns that it uses just under a ball of yarn and many people don't have enough with just one ball. Luckily I bought a second ball cause I ran out with 2 rows left on the thumb! And that's with weaving in my ends and using the scraps to knit the first 2 rows of the thumb. I'm going to attempt a skull cap hat with the rest of the ball and see if I have enough. Probably not, but it's worth a shot. OK, back to Joshua's sweater.