WIP Wednesday

Time to come clean with my WIPs!

I’m making good progress on my Calvert Cardigan. I’ve completed one sleeve and am making headway on the second sleeve.

After that comes the hardest part, the assembly and the bands… I’m not really looking forward to that part. I think I’ve made my life harder by slipping the edge stitches, especially since I’m supposed to pick up stitches all along the edge for the bands. Anyone have any advice as to what will make my life easier?

Also on my needles are no less than 3 socks. I can’t say I’ve knit on 2 of them for a while but one of them at least is progressing. Forgive me the overexposed photo but it’s mighty hard getting good pictures at night!

From left: one sock I just started last weekend, out of Tricoquelicot Laine Claude II in the Spring Forward pattern. The middle sock is sock #2 of the Rococo socks. The one on the right is my Herringbone sock, which has the hardest pattern for me to remember if I’ve put it down for more than a few days. I’m really hoping to get at least the heel done by the weekend, and maybe after that I can pick up one of the other Rococo again. As it is, I wont have a finished pair in January!

So that’s what i have on the needles currently, but that’s not counting all the single socks still waiting for a mate.

Before / After

I’m really lucky to have a craft room/studio all to myself. It’s really a small extension to the living room, an unheated three-season room. But it’s my own and has enough room for all my crafty stuff.

On one side of the room I have a closet with my yarn stash and most of my fabrics and a dresser with more fabrics. On the other side of the room I have a large table where you’ll find my sewing machine, a cutting mat and my sewing project in some type of order or disorder.

I took a couple pictures of the mess about a week ago and was determined to work on it to make it tidier.

If you click on each picture you’ll see the notes I’ve added.

There pants that need to be hemmed, fabrics that need to be pre-washed, quilts in various stages, box bags in progress and other projects as well.

Since I took these pictures I made an effort to get some of these projects done and over with. I’ve hemmed my  2 pairs of pants, pre-washed all my fabrics and made some progress on my box bags.

As of this afternoon all that is left on my sewing tables are 14 box bags that need to be finished and my quilts in progress. Those will get their turn once I’m done with my current batch of box bags.

What does your craft / yarn room look like? Is it messy like mine, or nice and tidy like I wish mine was?

Variation on Toasty

or my first FO of 2009!

In my last post I showed you the beginning of a Toasty/Toast mitt. Now I can show you a finished pair of mitts, not really Toasty nor Toast.

As you might have noticed I decided to go with the gussets, I’d never made one before and thought that maybe they’d fit better that way. I also added a ribbing at the top.

These changes were brought about by the Raspberry Mitts pattern I found on someone’s blog, [Ravelry Link]. I followed the instructions for the gusset as well as for the top of the mitt adjusting the numbers for my stitch count and gauge.

I only knit for 5.5″ before starting the thumb gusset as opposed the the 7.5″ in the Toasty pattern, the bottom of the mitt wouldn’t have made it quite that far up my forearm. As it is it’s a bit tight if pulled all the way up on the arm.

I have quite a bit of yarn left and I’m thinking I might knit a matching headband, although I’d prefer a matching cowl but I don’t think I have quite enough yarn for that.

It took me really little time to knit the pair and I could easily imagine knitting a pair in every color imaginable! Maybe I’ll knit a plain Toast next time.

Now I can get back to my sweater and my bags!

NaKniMitMo

Have you heard about the NaKnitMitMo KAL yet?  The group was created off of a crazy idea my friend Carol had. She wanted to knit mittens in January and get other people to do the same. It started on her blog and before she knew it it grew into a Ravelry group with over 300 members. If you haven’t checked it out yet, make sure to do so!

I’ve been wanting to knit mittens and mitts and thought this would be the perfect excuse to knit distract myself with from my current projects with a pair of mitts. I picked something really easy, so as not to require too much attention. The pattern is Toast/ Toasty from A Friend to Knit With. It’s a plain tube with a thumb in the Toasty version. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to do a thumb yet, although I probably will. I really like Dogged Knits’ version with a gusset thumb, so I’ll probably do it like that if I do a thumbed version.

I picked a slightly thinner yarn than the recommended yarn, Madelinetosh Tosh Worsted in Tern. It’s a beautiful silver gray that is coming out beautiful in plain stockinette.

I wanted to cast on so badly that I hand wound the yarn in the car on my way to Webs over the weekend. After a false start I ended up casting on 40 stitches and now it is smooth sailing. At least until I reach the thumb!

I’m halfway done the first one already, although I would be further along if I had been able to knit even a stitch yesterday or today. But I have a long weekend coming up so maybe I’ll be able to finish one mitt : )

Oh yeah, you might be curious to know what I bought at  Webs. I hope you won’t be too disappointed but I was very, very good.  I was going to buy a skein of this yarn I’ve been wanting to get my hands on; Rio de la Plata Merino sock and a pattern. I thought the particular skein (sp38) I wanted was on sale but when I got to the registers I found out it wasn’t, so I put it back and ended up buying only this pattern:

It’s really a beautiful blanket and I hope to knit it one day!

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For all my friends who’ve helped by knitting a sock yarn square, please click here to see what we made with it! Thank you again to all of you who’ve knitted a square, Michele was really, really happy and she loves it!

A good mail week

Last week was a very good week for me regarding what came in the mail. I received quite a few packages with things I’d bought and things I’d traded for.

With some money I’d received at Christmas I placed an Amazon order for some books I wanted:

The “Gnomes” book DH got for me for Christmas but the other two were Amazon purchases. “Rotary Magic” is an awesome book for quilters and the other one, well, I just had to have it!

I also received this really cute camera strap that I bought from splityarn to go with my new camera. I just loved that mushroom print!

I received some fabrics and some really cute wooden buttons from The HeyDay Shop on Etsy. It came really fast all the way from Taiwan!

Last but not least, an awesome package from Keri. A few weeks ago she decided to trade away some of her knits that she wasn’t going to use. It seems she’s more of a process knitter than a product knitter. In exchange for some yarn, she sent me this beautiful blanket and lace scarf.

I am a really lucky girl! Keri still has two other beautiful lace scarves up for trade, make sure to check them out!

It really makes me happy to have such wonderful packages, even if I did purchase almost all of them! I wish you all a wonderful mail week too!

WIP Wednesday

I’ve got 2 big WIPs that are battling for my attention. I would like to have both finished by the end of the month, hopefully I will succeed!

My first WIP is a knitting WIP, my Calvert cardigan.

I’ve knitted the fronts and both back pieces, you can see them below blocking on my new blocking board.

I’ve also started working on sleeve #1. I’ve only 12″ to go before the sleeve cap so it shouldn’t take too long.

After knitting the second sleeve I will have to assemble the pieces together and then knit a band around the fronts and the neck. I’ve already tried fitting the existing pieces together and it looks like it should fit, so I have high hopes for a nice cardigan.

My second major WIP is sewing WIP and made of 23 parts.

12 small box bags

and 11 large box bags

I try to do at least one step a day and I definitely see progress being made.

Tonight I have to decide: will I sew or will I knit?

Let’s not forget all the sewing I did

In my last post I did a quick recap on what I knit in 2008 but I forgot to show all that I sewed during that year. As you will see, I have a lot more finished sewing projects than I had knitting projects.

I sewed 32 box bags, 8 pillow covers, 3 quilts, 2 bags, 1 apron and a few more little pouches and coasters. I feel  more and more comfortable with my sewing machine and I hope that I will learn many more skills in this new year, including making buttonholes!

I made 2 sets of coasters since the beginning of the new year as well, and I finished my pinwheel quilt yesterday. On Friday, I finally decided to tarry no longer and start hand stitching the binding. I worked many hours but by the end of yesterday it was all done! I took the quilt outside this afternoon and got a few pictures.

The first photo I took out in the snow, the colors are a little washed out but you can see it in full. It’s not quite big enough to cover our queen size bed but I think it would fit nicely on a twin size bed.

This one shows truer colors, even if you can’t see the entire quilt.

I’m really happy with this quilt. It will make a nice lap blanket in the spring!

Time for a little recap

• On January 3rd 2008, I set myself a few goals for 2008. You can see full post here if interested.

I wanted to:

• spin more, I ended up selling my spinning wheel  and spinning fiber in September because I just didn’t have enough time to spin.

• become more proficient with my sewing machine and sew more, I bought myself a even nicer sewing machine in March and haven’t stopped sewing since. Which is probably why I didn’t have time to spin anymore.

• knit 20 pairs of socks, I ended up knitting 12 pairs of socks, plus an additional 5 single socks and 2 other started.

• finish at least 2 big projects (finish the Tree Jacket and the Comfort Shawl) and a few non-sock smaller projects, Tree Jacket was frogged and the Comfort Shawl is probably going to be frogged as well. I am working on one big project, Calvert and knit myself the Celtic Vest. I also knit a few smaller items.

• do more fair-isle and more lace, none of that happened.

• spread my time more evenly between knitting, sewing and spinning and still spend time doing other things like cooking, reading and exercising. I’m not sure about that.

For 2009 I will revisit some of these goals.

I would like to:

• Try to finish one pair of socks a month, or maybe finish at least one sock per month.
• Finish Calvert (hopefully it fits well) and cast one for another sweater. I have a few sweater projects in mind, but that will be for another post.
• Knit myself a Clapotis. Yeah, I know, a Clapotis. I’ve never knit one, yet, although I’ve had the yarn since the first year I started knitting.
• Knit fair-isle mittens and socks
• Knit one lace shawl, just one!
• Try out weaving. For that I have a good head-start. I am starting a weaving class once a week from January till the end of March. I’ll let you know how that goes!

Let’s get started!

Goodbye 2008, Welcome 2009

I can’t believe it’s been almost 2 weeks since I last posted. It got a bit crazy around Christmas time and after that I enjoyed my days off quite a bit. But now I’m back!

Christmas went really well. We ended up celebrating on Christmas Eve at our house. It was never planned that way but my in-laws, where we were supposed to have Christmas, had lost power for 10 days until a couple days prior to Christmas and I offered to have it at our place. It was only confirmed 2 days before the actual date so I it was a bit crazy trying to get everything ready on time!

I made my first lasagna, a slightly modified version of this. And by slightly modified I mean adding about one pound of cheese, way more spinach and by adding mushrooms and olives to the vegetable mix. I also made one of my signature desserts, a pavlova.  Everything was yummy and everyone was happy!

After supper we exchanged presents and I got some really nice toys! A new digital camera; a point and shoot to carry with me when I don’t feel like carrying my big DSLR, a super awesome new phone, the T-Mobile G1. That thing is awesome! My only knitting related gift was from my sister-in-law. She got me these awesome blocking tiles by CocoKnits.

I will be using them really soon as my Calvert is closer to being done than not. I’ve got the lower back and both fronts done and I’m halfway done with the back yoke. All that will be left after that are the sleeves and the finishing.

On the 26th we had a wedding uniting one of DH’s aunt with the awesomest person a knitter could be related to. My new uncle is a shepherd! He owns a 600 sheep flock in Montana, in the same valley as Mountain Colors. His sheep are Targhee and Targhee Merino with extra fine fleeces.  I’m really looking forward to visiting there sometime in the future!

Things were pretty quiet since then. We spent time with family and I enjoyed knitting, sewing and reading.  Due to quite a big snowfall yesterday DH and I ended up staying home for New Year’s Eve. At 11:55pm I couldn’t stay awake anymore and went to bed.  And now it is 2009, time for a recap of what went well and what went bad in 2008 and time to set goals for the new year. But that will be in another post!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas/Holiday time and I wish you all a wonderfully blessed and happy new year.