I found some very cool yarn at Michael's. I was there yesterday armed with a 40% coupon so I couldn't leave empty handed. I need to make a mess of baby booties for the many gals on my sports teams who are expecting, so I checked out the baby yarns. Nothing looked fabulous..........until I saw this:

Isn't it awesome yarn?? It's so bright and fun, I can't wait to make baby things from it. It's a touch softer than it looks in the picture, but still wonderfully bright and loud!

Still working away on secret project #1, more than half way done now though. Still planning for secret project #2....gosh I have to get some non-secret stuff to work on or this will be a VERY boring blog.

Had a friend over yesterday (for a pizza and survivor party) and she wants to learn to knit! She's quite eager, so I will have to set up a time for us to get together, and grab a set of needles at a thrift store soon. I don't have any multiples of needles around 5mm to give her and I think that would be a good size for learning on. I do have a spare skein of veregated cotton though, so she can do a dishcloth to start. Dishcloths are great starter projects. You can do them in plain old garter stitch if you want, and they work fine even if you make a bunch of mistakes. And they aren't big and intimidating, instant gratification is a good thing

Okay, as pennance for being SO DARN SMUG about enjoying frogging a bit, I discovered a major mistake that led to my having to frog the whole darned thing! *sigh* Oh well, it's probably for the best, I tried something different at the beginning this time that is working out much better. And I still maintain that I enjoyed the first bit of frogging!!!

How to make frogging (ALMOST) exciting and fun!

A while back I read about a nifty way to go about ripping a number of rows at once, in Vogue Knitting I think. Basically, you decide where you will be ripping to, then at that row, insert your needle into the right half of each "V" all the way along. (This only works for stockingknit, you'd have to do it a little different for garter stitch) once all the stitches are picked up on the row you are ripping to, rip away, and the stitches all magically land on your needle, ready for you to start knitting again!

This is really quite cool to do, I always hate struggling to pick up stitches after ripping, not twisting them, not dropping any, this makes it so much easier. The excitment of this new technique made ripping out about 8 rows of my secret project nearly painless!

Yet another ripping session at the D&D game last night. I'm happier with how it's going though, so I'm glad I ripped it out. I'm up to 4 inches now too, so I'm making some good progress.

I have another project in mind that would be quite ambitious. I fell in love with a photo of some knitting I saw online, and asked the creater for some info. Turns out the item was made on a machine, but I think it would be do-able by hand. I'm a little afraid of attempting to create the pattern myself though, the actual project would be a challenge, let alone creating the pattern! Must think on it for a bit.

Ripped out what I'd done on my secret project. The gal in our building that just started knitting was quite upset at this! She couldn't imagine ripping out that much work! Ripping out work can be traumatic, but I do enjoy the process too so it's not so bad when I really want the end result to be correct. I got started again last night and hope to make some progress today........

A little more KIPing (knitting in public) yesterday waiting for tests at the medical lab. I got a couple glances, but no one outright stared or asked questions. It's fun to pull out my knitting and go at it. I find I get the most looks from older woman, surprised a young woman is knitting away I guess. I'm one of those people that doesn't want to be the center of attention, but likes a little bit, know what I mean? So the sideways glances I get for KIPing are just about right.

Sadly I think I'm going to have to rip out what I've done so far on my secret project. The edging I was trying (purl rows and YOs) is rolling up which is just what I didn't want. I don't want to do k2p2 ribbing either, so I'm not sure what will work to prevent the rolling. I've done plain garter stitch on a sweater at christmas and it rolled, so I guess that isn't an option either.......

The burgundy sweater is DONE! It feels like I have been working on that thing forever. I guess I started it around September, so that is a little while.....I wore it to a friend's place and got lots of compliments. I like the design of the sweater, but now that I can put it on and see it's fit, I would have preferred it be a little narrower in the chest and shoulders, and an inch or so longer. I do like it though, and can see myself wearing it a lot!

I'm trying to get another woman in our building knitting. She's friends with my pal/neighbour who I got knitting, and mentioned she'd tried to knit a little years ago. She said she couldn't "Start" (cast on) so I started a cotton dishcloth for her, knit 2 rows to get her going and packaged it with a printout showing the knit stitch in pictures to help her. I stuck the package on her apt doorknob on my way to work this morning. My friend ICQ'd me that this woman had gotten the package and was pretty happy about it, which was great! (I was worried she was just talking knitting to be polite, but it sounds like she's really interested in getting going with us) Now we can all get together and knit while we watch those silly reality tv shows our husbands hate!!

Cast on for my secret design project. It's pretty exciting and scarey to be making this up myself. I'm excited to see how it ends up!

I've almost finished the project I can't mention, due to who reads this blog. I tweaked the pattern a little, both in size and construction. It's quite a good feeling, adjusting patterns. At first it was a frightening though, I mean, what if I totally messed the thing up? But now it builds my confidence, if I can think of a better way to do something, than what is written in the pattern, that's pretty cool!

I'm scribbling away at plans for the item I want to design. Too much time pressure to try for the Feb 1st knitty deadline so I let it sit for a while. It's a summery thing anyways so I can see how I do for the next issue. There is a lot to think about when designing a pattern. you have to think of the pattern you want, how to work in shaping, guage and the type of yarn you want to use, and edges/ribbing. I have pages of sketches and scrawlings already and I haven't even picked up the needles and yarn yet! I'm stuck on ribbing ideas now. Does anyone have any nifty resources for ribbing ideas? I don't like the plain old k2,p2 thing, but I don't want the edges to curl up like they do on plain stockingknit edges. Thoughts? Suggestions??

Does plain garter stitch ribbing roll up like stockingknit does?

I'm finally back at work today after being off sick since Wednesday afternoon. I almost never get sick, and certainly not for this long! I'm still sniffling and coughing today but feeling much better, plus I have a private, secluded office so I'm not sharing germs or anything. You'd think will all this at home time I would have gotten lots of knitting done, but I didn't. My brain was so foggy that I knit, ripped, reknit and reripped the same 5 rows of my ribbed sweater over and over all night on sunday. That's all I managed in all that time. Damn.

I tried felting some of the mohair my mom keeps finding for me but it didn't seem to do anything. I was doing it by hand but I figure if it didn't felt AT ALL by hand, its not likely to do much more by machine. I really had hoped that it would work because everyone is doing the Fuzzy Feet Felt Along now and I feel so left out! All the wool I have is plain old beige that needs dying so that is no good. Hubby could USE some slippers for work too. Perhaps a visit to Michael's on the way home is in order....

No more takers on the Rubber stamp chain letter thingy? It's pretty cool, send one card, get up to 36 back!!