A Little Yarn On The Side

While digging through some older boxes in the sewing room, I ran acrossa sweater that I seem to have abandoned after the back was finished: Is it just me, or does the color pattern just scream 1990s??

You may blame ALL of this weekend's lack of knitting (and sleep) on Mr. Jeffrey Deaver. I was seduced by one of his books-- C old Moon --and while I can normally knit while reading, when I am stressed out about where & when a serial killer is going to strike next my gauge gets so tight that I can no longer get the knitting OFF the needles. There may even be permanent yarn grooves now. Thank heavens I have finished the book and can return to my knitting......and Andy has temporarily approved the use of a nightlight.......

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......