June Goals

Reminiscing on my May goals momentarily, the success rate was pretty poor.

1. Knit three dishcloths. I might have to start changing this goal altogether from three to possibly two, because I have yet to accomplish this goal in two months. I did manage to knit 2 baby bibs and two dishcloths. The basic dishcloth is sort of my favorite, with a basic eyelet pattern in garter stitch. One was actually finished this month and the other in May. For these, I like to use the leftover scraps from other dishcloths, bibs, etc. They are pretty eclectic, but I like to call them rag cloths and they are easy to knit and good for using up the odd bits of cotton.






2. Finish the Caribou Cherub Thujas. I'm actually pretty close with finishing this pair of socks, but it looks like the first sock is a bit short. I'll have to go back and rip out the toe and reknit a bit longer.



Heh, no ripping, I say. I finally finished the second sock, but honestly it was not as pleasurable as other knits. I was merrily knitting away on the second sock, when I ran out of yarn. What I mean is that, of the yarn I purchased, each skein is 200 yards. Since the yarn is sportweight, I cast on fewer stitches than normal and used less yarn on the first sock. I was able to knit the second sock down to the heel flap before changing to the second skein of yarn. When that happened, the two skeins were markedly different, although it didn't appear to be so when I moved to the second skein. I looked down on the foot of the second sock and it appeared much darker than the first. That was really a bummer, especially as I really liked the first sock, but these socks are a bit heavier to wear with regular shoes, so they will be house socks or with clogs. Since I'm behind in blogging projects, this will serve as my FO report as well.

3. Start a Barn Raising square. All of my friends are doing it, why shouldn't I? Heehee. Nope, didn't happen. I do need to start at least one for June.

4. Pick up either the Hanami stole or the Enchanting Juno stole. Or perhaps start something new? :-) Hmm, I did pickup the Hanami stole again, but promptly put it down after a couple of rows because I realized I was reading the pattern wrong and need to rip back. Haven't gotten to that yet. But I did start a new lace project and decided to rip Enchanting Juno. Perhaps I'll start it again at another time or not.

June goals

1. Start a Barn Raising square. Since members of my knitting group are knitting squares for each other to put in our individual blankets, I need to have one completed by the end of the month to pass on to a special friend.

I won't even mention dishcloth cotton this month. The dishcloth cotton stash is getting low. I think I'm down to five actual skeins and I have scraps to knit two additional dishcloths, but that's fine.

2. Finish M's second sock. I finally kitchenered in the first sock and after more than a month, cast on the second sock yesterday. Since school is back in session starting last week, I managed to make some headway on the first sock with a mega-reading session tonite at a local cafe. I'm going out on a limb to finish the pair by Father's Day. I think I can, I think I can!



3. Continue working on my Flutter Sleeve Cardi (oops, haven't mentioned that one, getting stuck at the short rows currently).

That's about it for now. Life has been busy and blogging has been taking a back seat. My theory is life to be lived. I'll catch you all on the flip side.

Dishcloth Cotton Jag

Hey all,
Thanks to anyone who was able to help out my dear friend Mary-Kayand her yarn sale. I am sure she's thankful and glad there was demand for her yarns. I think she such a talented dyer and her colors are swoon-worthy.

As for me, I was in a bit of slump for a week where I didn't touch any knitting. Part of that was just that I spent my evenings either blogsurfing, spending time on Ravelry, or doing nothing. I didn't even feel compelled to cook or any other home duties. Now that my "break" from classes is coming to end, I'm starting to feel more refreshed. Also, hanging out with my girls tends to rejuvenate and fuel more knitting desires.

The weekend before Memorial Day weekend, I remembered that we were having a baby shower for a co-worker who's having a girl. I rustled up a couple of baby bibs and even managed to sew on buttons too. It must have been the short tie frame and I knew I wanted to finish them on time. Once the deadline passes, my enthusiasm for a pattern or project tends to wane, so it's best to strike while the iron's hot and all that.

Both bibs are from Mason-Dixon Knitting girls.

1st baby bib=knit in Peaches & Creme Country Garden colorway


Second bib knit in Bernat Cottontos


Both together now, say aww! :-)


And last in the cotton jag, for the moment, is another dishcloth. I found it on the Harvest Moon Designs blog quite awhile ago, and it was a free pattern. Now, I am not able to locate the actual pattern. This was also knit in Peaches & Creme in the Desert Sunset colorway. I really liked the pattern and how it turned out.



I also recently cast on for a simple dishcloth pattern. I like to use these especially for the leftovers from dishcloths and I just knit 2 or 3 leftover skeins into a dishcloth. As they are for my kitchen, I don't mind if it's not a fancy pattern. Nobody in the house seems to care one way or the other as to a fancy pattern or plain garter stitch. I figure I might as well do brainless knitting on those dishcloths.

I cast on for a new sweater, a summer cardigan too, but I keep forgetting to take pics. I will have to do that soon, as I have finished the back of the cardigan and have cast on for a front now

That's all for now. Must dash to work!

April Goals revisited

In a follow-up to April's goals, let's see how I fared for April.

1) Finish the Everyday Tweed sweater. Done

2) Finish Jaybird hoodie. Yep! Even finally got that button added. Sweet.




3.Add fringe to sideways garter stitch scarf. Now that puppy is done. It's been patiently waiting for over a month.



4 & 5) April, sadly, has not been the month of socks. I finished the first sock of M's pair, but I have hardly touched my Cherub Thujas. I really do want them done. Must focus on this for May. No pictures, sorry.

6) My goal for knitting many dish cloths, well, three for this month, was not quite met. But I did knit one dish cloth, and a handknit kitchen towel (with a button tab closure), which used up 2 skeins of dishcloth cotton.






I'll cover all the specifications of the FOs in a post, soon to follow. The April goals were quite challenging and even though they weren't all met, I'm pretty happy with myself for staying focused on my goals. Now to see what May will bring. :-)

April Goals

Hmm, there were no March goals. It just seemed like life was way too busy to make any challenging goals for myself for this month.

For April, I will try to push myself a little bit, but not too much. School is still busy, but good.

1) Finish Everday Tweed. I'd like to see this done and perhaps get a wear or two out of it.

2) Finish the Jaybird hoodie. Actually all the ends are woven in, just need to sew a final button on it and call it good.



3)Add fringe to sideways garter stitch scarf.

4)Finish Caribou Cherub Thujas. I finally picked them back up again and have been working on them, slowly. They are knit on size 3s, so they go a bit faster than regular sock yarn.



5) Knit at least 3 dish cloths. We're getting low on the dishcloth supply. Actually we have dishcloths, but the Sugar 'N Cream and Peaches 'N Cream cotton yarns are not colorfast. Some of them are worn out and it's time for new ones.

6) Finish the 1st sock of M's pair.

I guess that's about it. I'm tempted to list more, but I don't know if that's a good idea or not. Hee.

And We're Off!

I don't recall if I mentioned it that I signed up for Dish Rag Tag hosted by Emily of Yarn Miracle. I signed up for it in June, a bit of competitive knitting, if you will.

We're all on teams and and each team captain (that's me) receives a box from Emily with a dish rag, two skeins of dish cloth cotton and a little goodie. We take one or both skeins and knit a dish cloth, put in a new goodie, two new skeins of yarn and the new knitted dish cloth and mail it to the next participant. Earlier in the summer, I was having a dish cloth affair and was really into knitting my dish cloth cotton. Since my last dish cloth bender, I'm actually down to just 5 skeins, but now I want to buy more. Anyhow, enough of my "addiction" talk.

I received my box on Friday evening. M and I had planned to enjoy an outdoor music concert, but the weather looked shaky and M2 had all four wisdom teeth removed that day and wasn't feeling too well that evening, so we skipped it. I checked my mailbox and I had a package, yay! On the left is the dish cloth I received from Emily, a 4 Corners dish cloth. On the right is my finished Violets dishcloth (warning pdf!)



Then a finished dish cloth all by itself in Sugar 'N Creme Denim Blue. After I finished it, I was sad to see it go. I'll be needing to pick up some more yarn in this colorway (umm, yeah, back to that "addiction" talk).



And the box is on its way to the next contestant on the "Running Ragged" Team:



I really love the dish cloth pattern, Violets. The only problem is that when I see it, I think it's so pretty, I might have a hard time actually using it. I think that's why most of my dishcloths are plain, just garter stitch.


Ooops, gotta go check on a fully submerged DFS. Later all, hope you're all having a good weekend!

FOs to share

I kept meaning to post sooner, but was thwarted at every turn. I took pictures and then my camera battery died on me while downloading photos. Of course, it was before work, so I didn't have time to wait for the batteries to charge up again. And yesterday, I really wanted to post, but this pesky last minute packing slowed me down.

Yes, I said packing. I am in Atlanta visiting my mom, sister and nephew and I'm excited to be here. Even though, of course, I am missing Estes, *sigh*. The sacrifices one makes.

Anyhow, I finally finished seaming those two baby raglan sweaters. If you can believe it, I knit both sweaters in a period of 4 days. The pattern knits up very quickly and I think it's quite cute, but all of the ends it provides, that and the fact that I added a stripe on the sleeves and the body, just means more ends to weave in. Once I sat down and made myself work on it on Saturday evening and Sunday, it was done. Well, both of them are done. The smaller one in blue was made for a co-worker whose baby was just born (in early April), but now I fear it is too small, so I gifted that coworker with the baby burp cloths.





Baby Raglan sweater from Debbie Bliss' The Baby Knits Book
completion: started mid April '07, finished seaming mid-June (very sad I know)
Yarn used: Cotton-Ease in Cherry Red & Licorice, Candy Blue and Licorice
Size needle: US 7 (4.5 mm)
Modifications: adding striping. In the future, I will have my friend Susan help me modify this pattern to a bottom-up raglan, so I can eliminate some ends. I don't mind seaming a sweater, but on this pattern, it really seems unnecessary to have quite so many seams and so much bulk created by all those ends. I love using Cotton-Ease for baby knits, especially when it comes from my stash too!

Lately I've been on a bit of a dishcloth bender. Some of you may recall that in February, I mentioned that I had a bit o' dishcloth cotton stash. I also mentioned starting a goal of knitting one dishcloth a week. Well that goal never really worked out, but I have still been knitting with the dishcloth cotton as time permits. I love knitting up the variegated ones and watching the colors emerge. After stressful days at work, it's nice to me to knit up a simple garter stitch diagonal eyelet dishcloth. I also love to see a stack of them in my linen closet and know that I made those for our home. Mostly I don't see a need to put up tons of the same type of dishcloth over and over again on the blog, but I found a blogger who has some great dishcloth patterns. She has a series of dishcloth patterns that she called Geometric Lace, with parallelograms, squares, circles and triangle patterns. For some reason, I felt the need to save all of these patterns and I knit the parallelogram dishcloth. Although I do have plans to knit the triangles and squares too. They are fun.



Of the cotton stash I acquired last year (16 skeins), I'm down now to 2. Of course 2 weeks ago, I picked up about 3 or 4 more, but overall, my dishcloth cotton stash is way down. And I do have plans to make more baby burp cloths too. I even knit dishcloths out of my many yards of scraps! I think these are great stress relievers for me to knit and we do use them in our house.

Enough with the dishcloth talk. Not much is going on. I'm in ATL for a week, so I'm going to try to post a couple more times, we'll see how it goes. Have a Happy Weekend and oh, go wish my friend, Stacey a Happy Birthday!

Dejected Lace

I might have left you with a bit of a cliffhanger in the last post. My lace shawl and I have not been getting along. But not for the reasons you would assume. The lace and I aren't getting along, things are tough at home, it's a rocky road, not feeling the love for it anymore. No, no, no. It's sadly that the yarn I chose for this project and I are simply not getting along. It's really too bad.



As you can see, the color is absolutely beautiful and I couldn't be happier with it. One small problem is that I keep feeling a burning sensation and getting headaches when I knit with this yarn. Hmm, sounds familiar? Sad but true. I appear to also be allergic to Garnstudio Angora Tweed. I really should have known better. I kept hoping that the angora wouldn't cause me any issues, but after the mohair debacle, I'm not sure why. No way to know of course if it would bother me but to try to knit with it. I did go into this project knowing that it could fail, but if it was successful, I would have a most beautiful shawl that would be warm and cuddly. I was really looking forward to using this yarn and having the shawl. I will definitely still make the Wool Peddler's Shawl and I will need to search for new yarn.

When I return the yarn I bought for friend's baby gift last week, I may use that credit to get some different yarn for the shawl. Still not buying new yarn, but unfortunately my friend lost her baby and I learned that difficult news last week. I feel horrible and that I cannot keep the yarn I slotted for her baby.

Also, something I never mentioned on the blog last summer was when the Mason-Dixon knitting book came out, I went wild for it and bought tons of Sugar 'N Cream cotton yarn. I never did anything with it until I made the baby bibs last month. Now, I've decided to knit dishcloths with the yarn as I feel if it's there, it needs to be used up. I have a goal now of knitting one dishcloth a week. Since the inception of my once a week dischloths last week, I've knit two.





The dishcloths are fun and quick to knit. I think they will be more useful in the kitchen than the sponges we currently use and easier to clean and nuke them to kill any germs.

That's all from the knitside today.