Prayer Shawls continued

I don't have any pictures this week, but my progress has not been great. I have been looking for another skein of Forest Floor to finish off the prayer shawl I got stuck on last weekend and finally found it in one place today. Buy.caron.com. That's the good news. The bad news is that while it is only $4.49 for a 6 oz skein, which is awesome, it is $6.95 for shipping so my 1 ball of yarn is now $12.50. Iam either going to have to put in a larger order (oh darn, lol) or hold off on the prayer shawl. I didn't want to do that since the Sandy Hook tragedy is already a month past, but it may end up waiting a bit.
The other shawl in Celestial is about twice as long as last week's picture and I'm a little over halfway done, but I have had a pinched nerve in my shoulder blade for the past several days and it makes knitting extremely painful. I'm starting to panic because of the deadline, but I'm confident it will all work out.
I also decided to make one more prayer shawl in February for a coworker who had surgery on her foot last week. She does not know I am making it so that will be a nice surprise. I organized a bag of my yarn stash tonight and found a pretty teal color in a 'soft' Red Heart yarn so I may use that. Pictures on my final decision and all projects to come next week!

Prayer Shawls

For the last week I have been working on two prayer shawls that I am trying to finish by the end of the month. Both are being knit up on Size 13 needles with two strands of Caron's Simply Soft. The one in Forest Floor is for the survivors of the Sandy Hook tragedy (a project I am working on through my church, St. Mark's) and the other is in Celestial and is a birthday present. They are knitting up quite fast, which is a relief with such a tight deadline. The official prayer shawl pattern is at www.shawlministry.net, but I finagled it because of the double stranding. I cast on 39 stitches and am knitting the k3, p3 pattern. I also finished a large prayer shawl last night in Lion Brand's Homespun in Edwardian. I still need to sew in the ends and the satin shawl tag. I will try to remember to take a picture before I turn it in next weekend. :)

Mobius Scarf in Homespun

I was a slacker last week and did not post, but I DID get a picture of the other Christmas present I made that I gave away. It is a mobius scarf in Lion Brand's Homespun. I'm not sure of the color because I used leftover yarn from another project to make it, but my best guess is either Colonial or Montana Sky.

New Year, New Knitting

You may have thought I dropped off the face of the planet last year. That is because I spent the entire year working on one project. It is a lovely afghan from Red Heart's blog, but I am still not finished with it. I have made a Resolution that in 2013 I will post regularly. Hopefully that means at least weekly. I did make a couple of projects at the end of the year for Christmas presents. One that I gave away already is shown here: 

The link I got the pattern from is: http://www.craftown.com/Viking-Beard-Hat.html. The other I have not given away yet and will post once that happens. In the meantime, I am still working on finishing that afghan and then will return to the peacock shawlette I attempted a couple of years ago. My goal is to post pictures of my current status on a project rather than waiting for it to be complete, which is new (and a bit uncomfortable) for task-oriented me. Hope you like what you see so far!

Stadium Throw

Made two of these. One black/red/white at Christmastime for Mike's brother's family. (The kids' high school colors are black/red/white.) The other I made in yellow/green/white for my stepdad's birthday - Green Bay Packers colors. This is a blanket you can make in a weekend! I used Hometown USA and the Stadium Throw pattern from www.lionbrand.com.

Sweet Shrug

As usual, I took the summer off from knitting except for the errant cat blanket, but I got back into the swing of things with this shrug I made for my niece. She was recently baptized and my sister had a heck of a time finding a white dress for her (that wasn't outrageously priced to boot.) The one she did find was sleeveless. Brr in October. So here is the color coordinated shrug I knitted as a birthday present for her. The purple ribbon in the sleeves matched the sash on the dress.

Simply Soft Gauntlets 4/18/11

Here is the final product! Cozy!

Simply Soft Gauntlets (con't)

Barely worked on the gauntlets this week, but did make a little progress last night. The needles I'm using are really long aluminum ones so they are heavy. :( I need to do some cleaning in my yarn room and recover some abandoned bamboo needles. I'm sure they are tied up with a cat blanket or scarf or something. I did start a new cat blanket today too in the diagonal knit pattern. It is one of my favorites as it knits up so quickly and is easy to memorize. It should also be the last of this giant ball of dark red yarn I've been using that came from the IHS donation box. Hooray! Looking forward to a new color.

New Project

So, true to my New Year's Resolution (one of them,) I am sticking to my yarn diet. This was particularly difficult on my recent business trip to Rapid City, SD where there was a yarn shop directly across the street from the branch I was visiting! Luckily, I was working late every night so I didn't get to go in and tempt myself with some new yarn. I have been sticking with cat blankets to use up my acrylic stash, however I finally started the first new project of the year: a pair of Simply Soft gauntlets in Pistachio (a pretty spring green color) as a gift for my boss' birthday in a few weeks. http://www.caron.com/projects/ss/ss_SS12_fingerless_gloves.html

Aleta's Birthday Blanket

From Lion Brand's library, Catch the Wave Afghan, http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/60684.html?noImages=, here is a ripple blanket in Homespun: barley, cream, and prairie. Fairly quick to knit up, I used stitch markers to help keep myself on track. Enjoy!

Summer Projects

I can't believe it's almost September and time for Christmas Run already! I have been scouting some projects and have a few in mind, but mostly I'm winding down the few items I have been working on this summer. My knitting workload always decreases in the summertime, but I did manage to come up with a few things. Currently, I am using Lion Brand Homespun to make a prayer shawl for a friend going thru a hard time and also to make a sweater from lionbrand.com for myself. It is a bolero style with an awkward construction. I am almost done with it, but have been procrastinating b/c I think the sleeves are going to be too small and I don't want to fuss with it after the fact. Thirdly, I have been teaching a knitting class (in which one student came to one class - thanx, Mom!). We are on the 4th week for the pattern "Bob" from knitty.com which some of you may recognize from an early post on this blog. I made it in Caron's Simply Soft back then as well. Now I am using a color called Lavender Blue which is quite pretty. I probably won't finish all of them in the next two weeks, but I will post some pictures once I'm done.

Cutie pink camo yarn

Here are a few of the items I have been working on with Red Heart's Super Saver yarn in Pink Camo: The hats are the seamless skullcap pattern from www.youcanmakethis.com.

Flower Power

This is the first item I have made since craft weekend. I will be experimenting in flowers for the next couple of weeks using Red Heart Super Saver in Pink Camo. This pattern is from Lion Brand: http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/60020.html?noImages=.

All Quiet on the Knitting Front

I'm afraid I have not been avoiding my blog b/c of laziness or lack of pictures, but rather that I have not been very motivated to knit this year so far. Usually this ambivalent period comes during the summer when I don't want pounds of wool covering my lap, but I have been doing almost nothing but cat blankets. Even those have been simple stockinette with a garter stitch border. The two projects that I HAVE done this year are a wedding washcloth http://gimpykatkpatterns.blogspot.com/2007/11/wedding-cloth-with-names.html and a baby blanket http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/cpl-bafg.html?noImages=. Both were gifts. Now I am supposed to be working on a couple of hats and some flowers that I traded for jewelry. Hopefully I will find inspiration soon!

A Unicorn hat, aka "the devil hat".

This is the unicorn hat I made for my niece who is really into My Little Ponies right now. It didn't turn out exactly like I wanted, but it was one of the longest projects I had. And let me just say for the record how much I hate fringe. If you have received a knitted gift from me, it most likely did not have fringe. I once heard that, "Fringe is a waste of yarn." Although I am inclined to agree, I more hate it b/c it is so difficult to work with (hello fun fur) and time consuming. Anyway, I hope she likes it.

The other project I finished this week was a drop stitch scarf in copper mohair. It is not the softest yarn ever, but it is so beautiful to look at!

The picture really does not do it justice. It has a shiny luster to it that does not come across on film that well. Six more days till Christmas!

Baby Sweater

Here is a crocheted baby sweater that I also started this summer and did the finishing work on tonight. It is for a co-worker. She has a thing for black and had a girl in October so I made it pink and black. Hopefully she likes it!

Ship Pillow

So this is a pillow I started in July 2009 and did the finishing work on last night. It is a present for the bookshop I go to, http://www.rediscoveredbookshop.com/. Mike helped me download their logo and convert to knitter's graph paper. The edges were really blurry so I had to make it up a bit as I went along, but it turned out really well. (This was the first project I did where I used a picture and converted it to a graph. Now I use the transparencies and Vis-a-vis markers-so much easier!)

You may recall the 1st pillow I did for them was in the same color motif. It matches the couch in the bookclub area (navy w/yellow pinstripes.)

The book we read for December is called Rosemary and

Rue by Seanan McGuire. It was excellent! I read it in three days (that may be a record.) It's an urban fantasy

where a half-blood fairy tries to straddle the human

world and the fairy world while solving crimes for both

sides. It is a quick read and I highly recommend it. (It must be good b/c I didn't knit for three days during the crunch time that is Christmas run!)

Birthday Post 2.0

Here is the other gift I made for last week. It is the drop stitch scarf from Vogue Knitting made with Caron's Simply Soft. I have also made this scarf with a mohair yarn and it turned out equally well. I may make some more of these. They knit up very quickly and I think they work well for both genders. It is rare for me to use the same pattern more than once (except for my beanies) so it is really saying something that I already have two down and am not sick of it yet.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, my Stephanie Pearl-McPhee calendar had one of the "You Know You Knit Too Much When...." quotes that continued on as something like"there are only 25 days left of Christmas and instead of this fact striking fear into your heart, you cast on two more sweaters and three more scarves because you know you have time to finish them." That is so me. When I realized a few of the presents I had planned were not going to work out, I added five new projects to complete in addition to the two I had left for December. I now have a total of six projects to finish (and 3 that need adjusting or finishing up.) I can do it!
The annual Christmas card session is commencing this evening so I will be occupied for a while, but we did a bunch of prep work last night so hopefully it will be quick and I can get back to my knitting!

Birthday Post 1.0

Pictured at right is one of the birthday presents I made for November. It is a cabled wristwarmer pattern that was on the ballband for Caron's Simply Soft, which may be my favorite yarn since Red Heart Symphony was discontinued. I like these so much, I may make a pair in a different color (probably black) for myself.
I also have another picture of a drop stitch scarf I made (in a pattern I am loving from Vogue Knitting), but it is on my phone and I am technically challenged at the moment in downloading to the computer. I'm sure once I figure it out, it will seem oh so easy.
Tonight I started a lace scarf in a silk/bamboo yarn. It is only 102 yards. I got it for a Christmas project and then ended up finding something that worked better so now I have one of those stray one skein projects going. I may end up ripping it all out like I did with my chenille hat Saturday, but we'll see. I will try to post the other birthday project later this week.

Cat Blanket Mama

Ha ha! Mondays are my new blog day apparently. I have been successful three weeks in a row now in updating my blog. Awesome. Since I have still been mostly sick, I have been relegated to cat blankets. The Idaho Humane Society has to wash and dry them all before they get used, so I figured I could get my knitting fix in without making anyone else sick. (I even took my knitting to the New Moon midnight premier and worked on it while waiting for the show to start.) According to the doctor, I will be coughing for another week or two still. Ugh.
This week I have a few last minute things to finish up (read sewing the ends in and wrapping them) for various birthdays in November/December. I often forget about these until the last minute and it interferes with my Christmas schedule. I guess it's a good thing I am such a fast knitter. The good news is, I will finally have some pictures to post next week! Hooray! I will try to be good and remember to actually take the pictures before I wrap them and give them away this time. I swear.
My one new project that I have been working on is a felted hat. I could not find any merino wool at Joann's (blast!) so I have been wearing those one-size-fits-all midget gloves to knit. Otherwise my hands get all itchy and scratchy since I am allergic to the one yarn they had (Paton's) that fit my instructions. All I can say is, this project had better work out! It is knitting up pretty fast since I am using size 11 needles (my those dpn's were expensive for such short work. I hope I can use them on another project some day.) The part I am sketchy about is the actual felting. I have never done it before and I sure don't want to have wasted all that time knitting such a large item to have it not turn out in the end. I ought to be finished with it by next week so hopefully I will have something positive to report about the fo (finished object.) Until then....