A Little Yarn On The Side

I was having such a fun time with the striping of the Baby Surprise Jacket that it set me thinking....wouldn't that make a cute baby blanket....???? So, ignoring the 13 WIPS already in progress, I have started this I might get tricky and make it rectangular--or just square--and maybe a crocheted border in blue? I think it's pretty cute. The cats are a little less enthusiastic... I don't know what's wrong with them--they just don't like knitting half as much as they like sewing.....maybe it's because I won't let them play with the yarn.......

It is possible that I just finished a project before even mentioning it on the blog. It's a Baby Surprise Jacket, one of Elizabeth Zimmermann's most popular patterns. We're doing a BSJ knit-a-long in the EZ Fans Yahoo Group and I finished mine this morning. According to my projects page on Ravelry, I started this in January--I believe I did it to have something to knit at stoplights or in the vet clinic. I was really hoping for some cuter buttons, but out of all of these buttons nothing else matched. I had high hopes of these but the pink is just a bit too off for my taste. I always love how the back pattern differs from the front and babies are young enough not to complain about a big wide stripe going right across the rear end. Ah, those were the days..... I seem to be back in my sidekick's good graces today. Calisto is a bit afraid of the noise from the downstairs closet and all the activity, but Theo is fascinated and has been pretty disgruntled about not gett...

--which took an entire day and a great deal of measuring just to locate as the darn thing was actually within the wall where it was merrily leaking vast amounts of water through a big hole every time the outside faucet was turned on--for the general lack of knitting & blogging. Andy was able to replace it, and since it's the pipe for the OUTSIDE faucet, it is now wrapped in INSULATION, which would have probably prevented all of this in the first place. And this is our new house guest which actually has two friends down in the crawl space helping to suck up the water our little pipe problem caused. I realize construction is almost synonymous with cutting corners & doing things as cheaply as possible, but we bought a builder's OWN HOME so I would have thought he might have paid more attention, but as builders aren't actually licensed here in Idaho, maybe he never built a house before he became a builder. I did manage to ge the reversible scarf done and it looks g...

This is, quite possibly, the fastest project I've ever knit. God bless big needles!!! After a couple hours of morning knitting, my trusty sidekick and I were ready to wash the finished scarf Theo is just fascinated by bubbles, though he seems genuinely shocked every time his paws end up wet. At least it isn't kitty water aerobics. We'll see what it looks like when dry, but I think it turned out nicely. You can see the beads better here: but this is a bit more accurate And now I am free to return to the Kauni cardigan! YAY!!!!!

Remember these? I made them for Andy for Valentine's Day this year. Not that they were done by Valentine's Day or anything, but that's what they were for. While I was gone, Andy finished my gift. It's a needle storage box! Complete with a pullout tray. I had him make it really tall because I've never really rounded up all my straight needles and I thought the results might be truly frightening. And they probably would be if there were ever a point in time when I didn't have 15+ WIPS going....See? I have all those WIPS purely for health reasons......

This might lead you to think I have Knitter's ADD....and you'd probably be right, of course...but THIS TIME I do have an excuse! The lovely lady who loaned us her condo last week refused to take any money for it, so I wanted to knit her a scarf, but have frogged the first two attempts. I thought she was in Arizona until sometime in later April, but it turns out she has returned early, and I want to have a gift for her when I return her keys & everything. So, yesterday I dug these out of the stash, and with size 8 needles to speed things along, I've been knitting and beading like a mad woman. The cats seem to have forgiven me and have been lending their moral support Or perhaps they just know that I am the bigger softie on tummy-rubs. And I swear that having the Kauni cardigan bogged down in the gold & orange colors has nothing to do with this.......

There's nothing like a little winter vacation to give your knitting meaning. Surrounded by this: knitting seems almost mandatory. The Kauni cardigan is almost ready for armholes a secret project is 95% done, the stamped cross stitch baby blanket sucked up several hours and looks pretty much like it did in the last picture (am I missing some important information about a stitchery space/time continuum or what?), and because the best thing to do when one has 5 quilts in process already is to start another one..... And I am happy to report that it only took one block with tree-alignment issues to figure out that all the blocks would need to have all the trees GOING THE SAME DIRECTION. I have given up on the possibility of figuring things out ahead of time , and am now just aiming for "Before it becomes necessary to bury it in the back yard." Progress is progress. Someone likes the new quilt, but isn't speaking to me just yet. Apparently he wouldn't even play tape ...