A Little Yarn On The Side

I am working on a knitting WIP!  I started this shawl 2 years ago, and I think I might have set it aside because knitting 28 32-row repeats of edging is incredibly boring.  Frankly, quite understandable if I did.  BUT, I picked it up again this week and have now done SEVEN pattern repeats, so there are only 7 pattern repeats left, and then some sort of join and it will be finished!  Leaving me only 20 WIPs to finish.  ONLY....

This morning I did some tidying, and under normal circumstances I might be canning today, but the record-breaking heat is continuing, so I'm going to wait until it isn't almost 90 degrees--which might be Monday.  So today, I'm working on a new ornament.  I saw these at Art in the Park, and thought they were adorable.   I came home and found a tutorial on YouTube, because I was too lazy to figure them out on my own.  The stick posed a bit of a challenge.  I thought they would be lollipop sticks, but they're too thin.  I found a cookie stick that was the right thickness, but Andy cut them in half for me as apparently when one puts cookies on a stick, it's a long stick.  I didn't know cookies were now a thing-on-a-stick, but they do work well for this. It's a glue gun project, and I (of course) promptly burned myself, and I've already glued one to my cutting mat, but I'm slowly getting the hang of them.  Sort of.  And it's a relatively q...

TWO scarves, washed and blocking: and we're just going to pretend like they're lying flat, okay?  I've been happier with finished projects, but I am really happy they ARE finished projects.  In fact, I was so excited that I cast on a new Begonia Swirl shawl in the yarn I'd put in my birthday box: One thing about trying to work through stash before buying more yarn, I'm hoping that by the time I make it through the 10 skeins of this I started out with (an incident involving the end of my first year of cold sheeping and a discontinued yarn--we try not to talk about it much.....), I'm hoping that I will have learned that variegated lace yarns almost ALWAYS look better in the skein than in the finished project.   But maybe it will look good on THIS scarf.  I'll wear it anyway because I love the colors, but there were probably better choices of yarn to stockpile...... I also spent a little bit of time with the latest colorwork ornament.  Being October,...

The good news:  The grey scarf is done. The bad news:  it rolls BADLY.  I altered the pattern to include 2 rows of seed stitch on the sides and to eliminate the dreaded tubular cast-on, so for a while I was kicking myself that my version had somehow caused the rolling, but I started doing Elizabeth Zimmermann's sewn bind-off on the maroon one, and it is rolling as well, so it's just the pattern.  I'll block them severely, but blocking never stops rolling due to how a pattern is done. But it's too late to do anything about it, so I'll just hope they like tubular scarves.  I bought the yarn because it was a silk blend with lovely drape, but I might add a scrap from my washaway stabilizer (which is starch) to minimize the rolling a bit.  In other project-going-badly news, the top-stitching is looking pretty messy when it crosses over the wales of the corduroy.  I think a second row of top-stitching will even it out, but reinforced stitching wo...

Yes, the wedding for which the scarf is intended is indeed this month, but I'm trying not to stress today.  Tuesday I went to the gym, THEN made and canned 20 pints of chicken soup--plus freezing some--so yesterday I really needed to rest, which involved a mind-numbing amount of knitting.  Or maybe that was the pain medication.  At any rate, I'm almost done with the 4th 24-row pattern repeat (out of 5).  Of course, I still need to fix the first scarf as well, but I am trying to talk myself down from the ceiling here.  After all, one has a year AFTER the wedding to still get a wedding gift to someone without being a complete twit.  Emily Post said so, though maybe not the "twit" part. So this morning,   Theo and I are having coffee in the sewing room while I finish the first batch of top-stitching on the new jacket.  This isn't a very accurate picture of the color, so let me just say that I'm really pleased how the pink thread is looking ag...

When faced with project monotony monogamy, I can apparently be persuaded to do ANYTHING.  While resting my back yesterday, I sorted through my existing sewing patterns, added them to a Pinterest page, and even located a vest pattern I was looking for.  Then, when more mobile, I worked on this: which does indeed look mostly like a wrinkled purple blob, but which is actually another very deep stash fabric.  4.5 yards of a 60-inch wide cotton fine-wale corduroy, probably from 2007?  Definitely something I bought on clearance, because I bought what was left on the bolt.  I'm sure I thought it would make a great shirt for Andy because I've already made him a purple corduroy shirt.  Or maybe this was going to be a skirt and shirt for me?  Of course, it's always possible that I just bought it because I liked it--which isn't a bad reason, probably, considering it's a useful fabric in a useful amount.  I'm still aiming to do Me Made Mondays in 2016, so...

Two identical scarves in light fingering yarn and size 2 & 3 needles with a fairly short deadline to a person with issues with project monogamy.  What could possibly go wrong with this? In spite of a serious case of new project lust,   I have finally completed the first ball of yarn, and after a mishap involving splicing to the tail of my cast on, I am now knitting with the second ball of itty-bitty yarn and am ALMOST one long row into the second half of the scarf.  Almost... Tonight I shall dream of chunky yarn and big, big needles..............