Well the sweater is still coming along. I started one of the sleeves the other day. I'm a little nervous as I peeked ahead at the directions and its quite confusing when you get to attaching the sleeves to the body. But I'm not going to worry until I get there, and I decided NOT to take the sweater on our road trip. I'm going to rip out that sock I've been doing {sigh} and start it again with a different pattern and take that. A sock is a much better travel project anyways. It hurts to frog, but it would hurt worse to give my mom socks I wasn't proud of!!

I'm nearly done the main body part of the sweater. I've got 10inches, of the 11 needed before I start the arms. I wonder if I will finish this before my trip this weekend!! It's doubtfull, but If I get close I don't really want to take the stitching together portion on the road with me. I may start those socks over as a project to take instead. Mama Kate said she used Wendy's Generic Toe-up" pattern for her socks, and they look much better in shape than the one I did so far. The toe of mine is so pointy, and the pattern I'm using has lame heel instructions. I may just frog the one I'm working on and start over. Socks make good travel projects.........

I missed my stamp club meeting last week, just wasn' feeling crafty, but I need to go tonight. I have two wedding cards to make, one for the wedding this weekend, and another for a friend who got married a week or so ago. I don't have a lot of "wedding" theme stamps, hopefully someone else will bring a nice rose stamp....I have an idea in mind.

I'm up to about 5.5" done on the ribbed sweater! That's pretty good especially since it is done in the round, that's like having 11" done on a flat pattern ;) I love how its turning out, the colour will be great with my dark jeans (it's burgundy) and it's just so "ME"! I hope the pattern will be suitable for my sister too.

We're driving to a wedding in Kootenay Bay next weekend. It's a place in South Eastern BC, near Nelson, if that helps. It's apparently an 8hr drive AFTER the ferry to the mainland (which is over an hour and a half, plus driving time to the ferry on our end). Sooo....we're splitting the trip up to make it manageable. We're leaving friday night right after work, getting reserved tickets for the ferry and hoping to make it to Hope that night. Then we'll only (only??) have about a 6 hour drive on saturday. It should be fun though, it's a really casual affair, and I like driving trips with my husband. Does anyone know any good knitting shops along the Highway 3 route in southern BC????

My sweater is coming along nicely. It's so nice knitting it in the round so I can start and stop anywhere. Makes it a perfect "take along" project. (if only it wasn't a supersize skein of cotton - almost 10 by 5 inches!!) I really like how the ribs look, its going to be a great smart-looking but casual top. I think when I make the one for my sister I will use a fancier fibre for sure, I just haven't decided what yet. Even using a nice mercerized cotton might give it enough sheen to dress it up a bit.

I had been wanting to try making thos Fruit baby hats I keep hearing about, but didn't want to splurge on the kit at the LYS. Imagine my surprise when an old Family Circle magazine I picked up at a garage sale on the weekend had the pattern in it!!! So now I can try the pattern out, it looks fairly easy. I need to make a "baby item" for the raffle here at work, so a fruit hat and booties might be just the thing.

I'm not happy with my socks. They have this silly pointed toe! (If you look down to last friday's post you can see a photo) I'd been ignoring that pointy toe, because I was so enamoured with the jaquard pattern as it emerged, and enjoying the tiny needles. But I am getting to the heel point on the pattern I'm following and the pattern sort of disintigrates for me. I'm doing the pattern from http://home.earthlink.net/~jeffnstasia/sox.htm and it does NOT explain the heel very well at all! I don't have a clue what to do. So I am contemplating ripping the whole damn thing out and starting over on a new pattern. This one looks good, but is done on 2 circulars. I spent a few bucks on getting these nice 2.25mm DPNs so I don't really want to have to buy more needles. What's a gal to do? Does anyone have a suggestion for me? A toe-up pattern with better heel instructions? A different toe-up pattern I can use? HELP?!?!?

I found it! I found THE pattern I was dreaming of for my sister's christmas sweater!!! I finally got The Knitter's Stash from the Library, where I'd reserved it way back in April. It must be popular, I only get to have it for 2 weeks!

Anyways, there, as like the second project in the book, is the sweater. (if you have access to that book, take a peek and tell me what you think, and if you've made this sweater, let me know!!) It's done in a k4 p2 rib, with I-cord cast offs for trim, and it looks perfect. It's casual, but smart looking, and looks very comfortable. Even better, it's done in the round! The pattern calls for a 100% cotton yarn, too, so I am going to start myself one with some burgundy cotton yarn I had already. It's totally something I would wear, and I want to see how it knits up for size and stuff. I might want to try a "nicer" fibre for the one I make my sister, or I might just splurge and get "good" cotton yarn.

My sock is coming along nicely. It seems to fit pretty nicely now. I took my sock to the Dr's office on Monday since I was early, and my doc was teasing me about it. "Ooooh, aren't you getting all domestic!" but he was impressed with the sock thus far.

I'm thinking more about getting started on the sweater for my sister. (christmas present) I'm thinking more and more that this Berroco pattern might just do it:



But I don't like the fuzzy cuffs. Well, I do like them, but this is for my sister and I think she would hate them. Do you think I can just leave them off, and knit the sleeves and body a little longer in the pattern stitch? I'm worried about it looking funny or rolling up is all, but since the whole sweater is a sort of rib, it might be okay. OR, does anyone else have a good pattern for a ribbed, fitted sweater along these lines?

I also need to pick a yarn. I want her to really like this top, so i want to make it out of something nice, but it has to be machine washable. "Lay flat to dry" is fine, but I don't want to give her something she'll never wear since it's too hard to care for! Does anyone have suggestions for a nice yarn, something that feels really nice, but will have a little drape to it so it fits nice? The pattern suggests "Sensu-wool" but its hard to care for.........

I ripped back the sock and got rid of a couple of increases and it seems to be fitting a bit better now. I've got about 4 inches done now, it looks really neat! It goes a lot faster than I thought it would on 2.25mm needles and this tiny yarn.

And now for something different, photos of my "garden":




It's not much, but it's something! I only planted the beans a short while ago, jealous of my neighbour's carrots and herbs. My mom gave me the tomato plant. The beans are doing much better than I expected....I used some old seed I found, probably at least 2 years old, and planted some morning glory seeds with them too, thinking I'd only get a few plants and needed to fill them out! Now I see I am going to have to thin them out and move a couple of the plants to another pot. I love growing things! Next year I am going to plan early and have all sorts of things growing on my balcony.

I'm working on a pair of toe-up socks for my mom. This is my first ever toe-up pair (and only my second ever attempt at socks) and I'm having a little trouble. The instructions say to do increases each side (4 stitches total) every other row until it fits the widest part of hte ball of your foot. Then stop increasing and just knit. I did that, but where I am "just knitting" seems to still be growing! The sock is getting too wide. I don't THINK my guage is increasing, so what am I doing wrong? I think I am going to have to rip back and get rid of a few of the increasing rows and try again.

In happier news I LOVE this jaquard print yarn! It's so fun to watch the pattern appearing, and wait to see what will come next! I also like how small a sock project is, so much nicer to tote to work with me! Here's a picture of the sock and yarn showing progress as of a few days ago. If you look closely, I stopped increasing at the beginning of the black row, but its still getting bigger and bigger....



I need to rip back and get organized this afternoon. We have plans to go to the neighbours house and rent The Sopranos for tonight, so I'd like to have the sock back to "straight knitting" mode to work on it.

YAY I fixed my blog! from now on I will TRIPLE check my HTML code before publishing. Anyways, go check out my photos!

Today I have a special treat.....PHOTOS! My husband had to pick up a digital camera last night for his workplace, and we figured we'd best test it out before he took it in to work today ;) I took a bunch of photos, but I'm going to space them out a bit. I'm no whiz with Photoshop, so I'm just going to toss them up on websites to share I think. So if you want to check out pics of my boatneck shell, the failed shell, my sleeveless turtleneck and the cap sleeved top, CLICK HERE (there are even photos of my pretty face!)


I have a couple more photos I can add tomorrow. Sorry the photo quality isn't great, I had maybe 5 minutes to snap some quick shots this morning before the camera had to go. Still, I'm glad to actually have some knitting photos to share!

I've left the knitting be for today, may pick it up again this weekend, and moved my focus back to beading!! I found another nifty pattern to try: Sweetheart Necklace. So far its turning out very nicely. I'm using dark blue beadsfor the hearts, and pearly-clear beads for the rest of it. I'm almost halfway done already, and I brought it to work with me since it looks like another slow day. (yet again I am happy to have my own office in a remote place where no one comes in!)

I have questions for all you beaders though. When you are doing a project like this, where you are doing more than just stringing beads on, and need to make a starting point, how do you not run out of thread?? I mean, I can't very well work with 4 yards of thread on my needle, but if I use a manageable amount, I run out when the necklace is about 5 inches long! What I did so far on this heart necklace is start and have as much thread as I could manage, but didn't cut it from the spool, so the spool is still attached at the end I started from. Then when I ran out of thread, I unrolled a pile more and started working from the other end. It's working well so far but I still don't know if I will have enough thread to finish the necklace. I'm super bad at joining too, I don't know how I would join in more thread. Ideas?

Knitting has taught me that:

• Sometimes it is the journey, not the destination, sometimes it's the actual knitting, more than the completed item, that is enjoyable
  
• Mindless (stockingknit, especially in the round) knitting can be a wonderful thing
  
• Sometimes it's good to splurge on luxurious materials/Sometimes you don't need to splurge on luxurious materials
  
• Knitter are fun, friendly, helpful people
  
• Knit clothing can be really hip and stylish!
  
• I look better in something I made myself - it fits just right and my pride shines through and makes me smile ;)
  
• A complete flop of a project isn't a complete flop if you learned something from it. (the importance of swatching!)
  

Okay, it's official, Boatneck Shell #2 is a flop. I finished it last night, and it turned out horribly. The sleeves are a little small (and I didn't do the finishing on them even), it's way too wide, and way too short. Oh and the neck is snug too. [cry] That yarn was not fun to work with and I SO wanted the top to turn out. There really is no way to salvage it, the yarn will not stand up to another frogging, not that I would even have the heart to try. I'm going to try shrinking it in the wash, to see if I can bring in the width some, make it a crop top or something. (not that I would wear one)

So now I need a new project, and I need to work with a more "normal" yarn for a change. All these novelty ones are driving me crazy!