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!