Boston Holiday

It’s spring break this week, and instead of going somewhere like the caribbean for my last spring break, I’m home in Boston, doing wedding things. So I guess I can’t complain much, I get to see my family, plan my wedding, and eat fantastic St. Patrick’s day food like New England boiled dinner and reubens. For the wedding we’ve been working on things like welcome bags for out of town guests, decorations and my dress, which will be ready to pick up on Friday.
I’ve mainly been working on Rosy’s sweater while I’m up here, but I brought some extra projects just in case. Rosy’s sweater looks really good so far, the only things left are the sleeves and the neckline. I’m really excited about finishing this sweater because it will be the first that I’ll have finished that’s fitted to someone else, but I’m nervous too, so hopefully it works out…
Hopefully I’ll have a little bit of time to type up some patterns while I’m on break, I have two typed up already, but I still need pictures and to format them nicely.
Happy knitting!

Sunshine yellow

It’s finally getting a little warm here, but still cool enough for my gorgeous new hat! I literally just finished it in class today, so I haven’t actually sewn in the ends or blocked it, but I think it looks fantastic!! I’m really glad that this turned out so well because I absolutely love this yarn, it’s so beautiful, these pictures don’t do it justice. The yarn is Malabrigo silky merino in Pollen. I will absolutely be writing up a pattern, and trying it out again to sell on Etsy. Hopefully it won’t explode when I block it, but the blocked swatch only expanded a little width-wise and not at all length-wise, so my fingers are crossed.

I did block my lace shawl this weekend, which still needs to be photographed, but that will be forthcoming. I went to one of the larger DC public libraries on Monday to find some lace knitting books, and what I walked out of there with was five lace knitting books, a Cookie A book (cause who doesn’t love her socks!) and a drop spindle spinning book. If I haven’t said it before, public libraries are the best idea ever. Still on my knitting to-d0 list is my other convertible glove, my coworker Rosy’s sweater, which I have an idea for, but must actually start, and of course the three lace shawls. Hopefully sometime soon I will begin typing up all these patterns…

On my Etsy to-do list I’m hoping to rephotograph most of my current items, take down the really old ones (probably donate them) and politely beg Alex to make me a beautiful new banner for my shop. I also stumbled on a great looking tutorial on how to make tags for hand knit items from Grumperina. So that might be happening in the near future.

In wedding news, we finally got the save-the-dates out to most everyone, and we’re planning on having a dinner party this weekend, so we’ll give them to our local friends then.

In the meantime, Happy Knitting!

Progress

I really wish I could find a way to add those lovely Ravelry progress bars to this blog, but I guess I’ll just have to show it with pictures, cause guess what? I’ve actually done stuff recently! Hurrah!

I finally finished (by frogging back halfway and redoing) my hat. It’s so much better than the first try. I still have to block it, cause it looks a little wonky, but the top actually sits flat, which was my goal.

 

I know the picture’s not great, but I think you can see the swirlyness pretty well. I’m hopefully going to type the pattern up and post it here and on ravelry. I might even look into finding some test knitters. I’m not really sure how you go about that, but I was reading something the other day on Yarn Harlot about test knitting or something and it got me thinking. I’m sure there’s a Ravelry forum on it that I can check out.

Also, I finally started my fingerless gloves/mitten things! And I’m nearly finished with one of them, I just have to sew in the ends, and I want to block it before I start the other one, just in case it’s not quite what I want. It looks and feels pretty good so far, but I’m a little worried about the thumb and the cable where the mitten part attaches.

now it's a mitten

now it's a glove!

Again, sorry about the poor image quality, I’m still trying to figure out the easiest way to get pictures to the blog, and my friend has my camera’s memory card, so that doesn’t help the process. Once I finish the gloves I’ll have better pictures, and hopefully a pattern for it as well. But I’m so excited that it actually turned out to be what I want, gloves and mittens in one, warm and dexterous. Now if only I can repeat it for the second one…

My lace shawl is nearly done, just two more repeats and the edging then it’s time for blocking! Which I will dutifully be documenting, might even have Ty help with that part. I’ve been thinking about the bridesmaids shawls and I’ve nearly decided on a light purple color, which is of course only in my mind, finding the actual yarn will be the hard part. In addition to creating and knitting the pattern of course, three times. But that’s the sort of challenge I’m up for. Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be looking through my lace stitchionary and come up with some ideas, just a little bit more variation than is in the shawl I’m doing right now, otherwise there’s no way I’ll be able to complete three of them by June without ripping all of my hair out.

I also have the most beautiful yellow Malabrigo that I need to do something with, for me to actually keep. I’ve been thinking about a hat, but I’m not sure if I want to do cables or lace, or a bit of both. Definitely something slouchy though, not a beanie. Ah well, so many things on the knitting to-do list, never mind my real life to do list…

Happy Knitting, wishing you have the time that I do not…

Resolutions

Well, more like a few hopes and dreams. It’s the last semester of college *gasp* and I’m supposedly not busy, with only one class and all. So I’m hoping to have one final go of it and try to get Stitch ‘n Bitch up and running. There’s a trunk show at Looped in two weeks and I want to get some sort of group together and go. Maybe tomorrow or something we’ll poster around campus, though that would require actually having something to poster…

Also, I’m about halfway done with my first lace shawl and I think it’s going really well. It looks super pretty, I can’t wait to block it. It’s in Knit Picks Shadow lace, color is Pink Posy. I like the pattern, Madli’s Shawl, but I’m not sure that’s what I’m going to do for the wedding shawls. And I have no idea what color I want for them either, especially if all the girls are different colors.  But I guess if this shawl hasn’t take too long, I don’t have to stress about it just yet.  What we really need to get going on is the save-the-dates.

And I have this great Tree Frog yarn that I want to make fingerless gloves, with a mitten top thing, and I even have a cable pattern that I like, but I just haven’t wanted to do math and stuff to figure it out. The cable pattern is pretty cool, and I even found a nice way to close off a cable so that it looks nice, found it on the girl from auntie, though I’m sure that the close off has been around elsewhere and I’m just oblivious.I finally started, and finished, my brother’s hat in this gorgeously soft yarn that I got from Looped a while ago, can’t remember what it was, but it was a light natural color. I thought it would be great for my brother, but after I finished I realized that because of how light it is it looks a little girly. But I’m going to send it to him anyway and he can give it to his girlfriend who it would look adorable on.

Trying to update my Etsy too, hope to sell some stuff, but we’ll see how well that works out.

Happy knitting!

Love and Yarn

There are two things in life worth living for, love, and beautiful, squishy, colorful yarn. A new yarn shop opened up in Dupont last week and I went, twice. We’ve all been wishing for a while that we could have yarn shop a little closer by and now, before school even started, it happened! The yarn shop is called Looped Yarn Works and the two owners are just the nicest women I’ve ever met. I mentioned that I’m from GW and they said they’d been thinking about a student discount. I mentioned that I have a knitting group and we’d like to take a field trip there, they said to contact them so we could arrange something special for it. The yarns are gorgeous, the selection, as far as I can tell, is great, and the prices seem reasonable. Being a knitpicks girl, it’s tough to spend so much on just one skein of yarn, but there’s nothing like being able to see the real color and feel the texture or the yarn before you buy it. The first time I went I bought some yarn that I plan on making into gloves for myself, and some for socks for Ty. The second time I took Alex and Ellie, and gave in and bought the Cascade Eco Duo in the light tan color.

Classes start next week, which should be relatively exciting. It’s been a bit slow at work recently, but I think it’ll pick once I learn some new stuff Steph wants me working on. I’ll be working part-time during the semester because I’m only taking three classes and a lab, so I shouldn’t have too much of load. Boots and Socks have been spayed and neutered, respectively, and now they’re all done for a while with vet visits. They were not to please with us when we went away for four days to Boston. Speaking of which, we’ve booked the caterer for our wedding, and figured out a few other odds and ends, like, Ty’s parents will take care of the bar. I also recently decided that I want to knit shalls for my bridesmaids, as they wont be wearing similar dresses at all. And I definitely think paper flowers would be cute for decorations. Ty and I will be going up to Pittsburgh for labor day weekend, taking the kittens with us this time, I think partly to discuss wedding stuff, and partly to placate Ty’s mom, who I’m pretty sure thinks that Ty likes my mom better than her and need some reassurance. It will be nice to have the cats visit their pets, we’ll see how that goes though.

OH! And biggest thing of alllll: Ty got a job! He started work at the US Green Building Council yesterday and so far he’s loving it (and he’s only done paperwork, who likes paperwork?). We’re both so excited about this, and it’s so lucky that he started before classes start, this way we can trade-off who is stressed out. He’ll be doing a lot of stuff for their big trade show in November, which means that he’s busy right away, no more waiting around like his old GW job.

Any hoo, I should get back to dreaming of patterns and imagining all the yarn I want to buy at Looped.

Happy Knitting…