Jetlag

I am at the mercy of jetlag right now. I got home late Thursday night and after little sleep at all during my travels (and crying babies weren’t the culprit…it was older children this time) I collapsed into bed and slept until mid-afternoon on Friday. I did the right thing by staying up until a usual bedtime (10 or 11 pm) only to be promptly wide awake at 3 am! Repeat this routine for Saturday night as well, except I got up earlier on Saturday morning and went to bed at 10 pm.

So for now, knitting is on the back burner and so is just about anything else. I hope to sort through my photos and post some later this week or next weekend. God knows how I’m going to be ready for work Tuesday morning.

The Year of Sweaters 2012, Part 2

So here we go…part 2 of my Sweater Love. And just because I’m crazy, I signed up for the Ravelry Group “12 Sweaters in 2012″

I bought this pattern last month at Fibre Space. I love its silhouette.

How about some Dark & Stormy?

Something challenging, perhaps?

The Year of Sweaters 2012

Even though I love knitting socks, my sock mojo has been off this past year…but what I’m really coveting is some nice knit sweaters. There have been so many great patterns out there lately that I wish I had a dozen arms so I could knit them all, not to mention infinite time on my hands.

Here is some of the patterns I have my eye on (note, pictures from Ravelry, link provided):

I’m loving Connie Chang Chinchio’s Textured Stitches book – it’s on my wishlist! And for some reason this evening the word “textured” looks weird, as if it’s spelt incorrectly.

Click on the photo to take you to the Ravelry page and check out the back details!

Love it!

And then of course there are some of Hannah Fettig’s patterns!

And this little darling is on my MUST KNIT list:

And the construction is not as difficult as you might be thinking.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of The Year of Sweaters 2012

The Power of Ravelry

Do you remember my Olatz shawl? The one where I ran out of yarn TWO FREAKIN’ ROWS FROM THE END? I went on Ravelry to see if anyone else had just a little bit of this yarn left over from a project and finally struck pay dirt. This lovely Raveler sent me what I needed in the form of a hat she had used as practice for short rows. After spending Tuesday (I was home sick) unraveling (no pun intended!) enough yarn I finished my shawl.

(I couldn’t take a photo of myself without the “deer in headlights” look, sorry.)

Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted in Continental Blue, 2 full skeins+ a little more
Date Started: October 1, 2011
Date Finished: December 13, 2011 (due to running out of yarn)

This was a pretty simple pattern to follow. I’ve worn the shawl, and it’s very warm. I do need to give it another blocking though because I wasn’t really aggressive the first time and it could do with a bit more size-wise.

Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year

I love this time of year..Christmas and the New Year. Christmas is my favorite holiday of all. I didn’t do much decorating this year though because I won’t be here and I’m the one that takes care of all of that. So instead of a Christmas tree and outside lights, I decorated our mantel and the alcove above it:

I also made these wreaths. I got my inspiration from here, and mine look much better in person than they do in the photo.

Anyway, wishing you a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! I’m going to be flying to Australia on Saturday for a much needed, “taken too long to get back”, trip home to see my family. Technically, I’ll miss most of Christmas because I’ll be in the air for 15+hours starting the evening of December 24th and miraculously it will be December 26th when I land in Oz..

(There may be some posts while I’m away…it depends on how many I get done tonight!)

New Toy

I got a new toy the other day – the Kindle Fire. Now, I’m not one of those people who always needs the latest gadget…my cellphone is a pretty regular one, no bells and whistles. But I knew eventually I would have to break into the e-Reader market, especially since I was reading at least a book a week during my commute to work on the train. I have a pretty decent pile of books that still need to be read, but like every reader, I am sometimes drawn to buy something new rather than read something from that pile.

I’ve only had it a few days so I’m still getting used to it, but I love it so far. I’ve watched TV shows, played mindless games (Angry Birds, anyone?) and spent some time on Facebook. I’ve also used it for knitting purposes. I’ve surfed Ravelry and can put .pdf knitting patterns on it as well. If you want to stream a movie/television show or browse the internet, you have to be in a Wi-Fi spot. This is a limitation for me at least because there isn’t really decent Wi-Fi along my train route. If I catch the Amtrak, I can use it since they have Wi-Fi on their trains…or at least the one I ride. But really, as long as I download my movies onto my device from the virtual storage, I can watch whatever I want on the train and it’s a nice way to kill an hour or so.

I’m still getting used to reading without turning actual paper pages, but it’s not as bad as I imagined.

“Blowsey”

I cast on for this project a little while ago…over the Labor Day weekend in September maybe. I needed something to knit and grabbed some stash yarn and looked for a pattern. So far it’s coming along nicely, but I don’t work on it all the time…I’m getting back into having multiple projects on the go. I have progress on another knit that I cast on for last weekend, but that will have to wait…back to “Blowsey”.

The pattern is Blowsey Ruffles. The yarn is incredibly soft – I’m using Marisol Sulka.

Visiting Cypress Hollow

I finally decided to break into the knitting/romance genre with Rachael Herron’s Cypress Hollow Trilogy. Overall, I would give the series a 4 out of 5. ***SPOILER ALERT***

How to Knit A Love Song: This was my least favorite of the three. I’m not sure what it was exactly. Part of it could’ve been my resistence to this genre in the first place…for whatever reason I’ve never really been interested in mixing my love for knitting with my love of romance novels. Despite being told that the knitting wasn’t that signifcant, I have to disagree – there is A LOT of knitting in these books and it makes sense because the plot of this book involves the main character, Abigail, inheriting a little cottage from a knitting friend/legend, Eliza Carpenter and turning it into a yarn shop. The problem? The cottage is on the property being run by Eliza’s great-nephew Cade. It took me until close to the end until I started enjoying this story. I just didn’t like either character in the beginning and I really thought the stalker issue could’ve been developed more. I don’t understand why Abigail didn’t mention her stalker to the police or Cade after there was a mysterious fire, or why Cade just accepted that Abigail was the one to start the fire in the first place.

How to Knit a Heart Back Home: Lucy, owner of the town’s bookstore, is thrown for a loop when her teenage crush, Owen comes back to town. Back then, Owen was a bad-boy from a troubled-home, and the townsfolk have trouble seeing him as the man he is today, making sure his sick mother is comfortable in the nursing home. Owen has issues with trust, and Lucy doesn’t want to risk falling in love…but somehow, the two of them make it. Lucy shows great compassion towards Owen’s mother and her own mother Toots adds some hilarious moments to this story.

Wishes & Stitches: This was my absolute favorite of the three books!! I loved both Naomi and Rig. I really felt their attraction and the conflict. I felt for Naomi as she struggled to fit into the small town and how hurtful the gossip was of the townsfolk. This one gave me the tugging in my chest, clogged throat feeling at the end when the two lovebirds argue and then make up…I’m a sucker for romance and for me, this is my personal sign of a great romance novel. The betrayal and reconciliation have to be eep and heart-wrenching. I really started to enjoy all of the characters from the town more and more…and as much as some of them annoyed me, I have lived in and visited small towns where there are people just like those in Cypress Hollow.

Wool Leaves

Pattern: Wool Leaves
Yarn: Malabrigo Rios, colorway Azul Profundo
Needle: Size 10s – started with 10 1/2s but the fabric created was too loose.
Dimensions: 28 x 30
Notes: I had to block the Sh^$ out of it to get the dimensions above. I added 30 stitches so instead of casting on 71, I cast on 101. Then I also added one extra repeat of the 16 row pattern repeat. The blocking made it a little more “lacey” than I liked, but the recipient loved it. This was a gift for a coworker expecting a baby boy in January, and she told me she plans to wrap the little one in this blanket for his announcement photo.

If you want more inspiration, here’s the project page on Ravelry. This one was my inspiration.

Knitting To-Do List

I write to-do lists for everything. Sometimes I have a running list for the week that I constantly add to, but at the same time, get to check things off. There is something very satisfying for me to check something off. I don’t normally do this for knitting, but I feel like I’ve let a couple of things get away from me that really need to be fixed.

1. Unravel the toe of dad’s sock and knit it a bit longer (somehow one sock ended up being a smidge shorter than the other)
2. Fix Anthony’s scarf – short version of the story, a puppy got hold of it and chewed it. Right.in.the.middle.
3. Undo one of my sleepy hollow sock and fix the ungodly thing that happened to it. What happened to this sock is actually a mystery, but somehow it got cut and a small hole developed. Now I have to undo it and knit from where this horrid hole is.
4. Make pompom for Toorie

Right now I’m using my train knitting time to whip up a baby blanket for a friend who is having a baby shower November 5th. I’ve got to do about 6 repeats of a 16 row pattern and I’m on repeat 3 now so I’m hoping it won’t take me too long, even if I add a couple of repeats.