Saturday, April 29, 2006

Another weekend of Ripping.

I just must have these random weekends where I want to rip everything.

The sock got to me. Yes, the orange one that I said I was going to try to finish in yesterday's entry. It's going to go back into the stash in a moment. I like the color but I shouldn't have done a generic sock in a solid color. Solids are meant for cool patterns so I'm going to wait and start a cool patterned sock soon. Maybe I'll go rush off and start one now. I'd much rather spin though...

So I drove up to Avon today, or at least my mom drove. I rode along. Went to French Creek Fiber Arts (which by the way is a really cool store) and got my niddy noddy.

Then... I looked at the roving. It's definitely a store I could go completely broke in. This is what I ended up with. Cherry Tree Hill roving. 8 oz in a color known as Earth. Quite pretty and I can imagine wearing something made out of it once I'm finished.
The colors in the photo are pretty true to real life. Definitely some nice stuff. I would have loved to buy more, but I think I'm going to wait and see what the Fiber Festival next month has to offer.

So on the way home I did several rows of my blanket square for charity. Then I got mad because it seems to be shrinking in width the longer it gets, so I ripped it. I'll start it over and make it a few stitches wider. I'll be happier that way.

Friday, April 28, 2006

Am I crazy?

So I'm going to go to the fiber store in Avon tomorrow to track down the elusive niddy-noddy. Of course I'm thrilled, but when I tell people about it I get the weirdest reactions. "You're driving over an hour to get yarn. Why?" It's just hard to explain to non-knitters. We have the occasional small yarn shop around where I live. Several, but I don't know any of them that carry spinning supplies. If they do they don't have the information online anywhere. Who really cares though. I have a fascination for gardening supplies too so it's bound to be a fun trip. I'm not so much a huge fan of gardening, but I like flowers as long as I don't have to take care of them. :-D
I've got a decent bit done on my sock lately, for as little as I've worked on it. The thought crossed my mind sometime earlier this week, "I wonder if I can finish them before the end of April. Hmm... It's highly possible. I have two days and no homework for the next four months. (Did I mention I'm on summer break?) I'm going to go for it and see how far I get. You never know, it could happen.

Edited to Add: There are yarn shops closer that advertise that they sell spinning supplies. They're still a decent drive though. Lol. It's okay. I like road trips.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Some endings.

Well, the roving did finally dry (in case anyone was wondering), and it has been rolled back into little roving balls. So exciting I know.

What (sorta) amazes me is the fact that there are so many different colors in the roving. The grape has bits of blue, the pink has some obvious changes. You can just see it in the wool. Not complaining though, because I LOVE varigated yarn. Varigated wool is just as fun.

Now I have options when it comes to spinning it. Spin each color separately and ply them together? Or, I've toyed with the idea of grabbing a handful of each color and making myself a varigated yarn. I think that would look pretty cool, but I don't know if I would like it in a finished product, let alone how it would look when I ply it. Then again, that could look completley awesome and would fix any varigated finished object issues. Any ideas? Suggestions? I love other peoples ideas, often times they state the complete obvious.

I guess in the end I just have no idea what to make.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

It just won't dry!

I'm starting to think that the worst part about the whole dying process is the drying.

It doesn't want to dry. I'm sure I could be squeezing it more, or who knows what, but I don't know.

The rovings have been moved to the shower rod. The black cherry is hanging from the shower thing itself. My mom seems to think the lot will be dry by morning. I really hope she's right. It took all night for that little half oz roving to dry yesterday, I can't predict that much to be completely dry.

Went to the new charity knitting group thing tonight. Overall it was fun. I win being youngest person there by at least 20 years. I guess that's pretty typical though. The thing I like the most is that they seem to have a huge focus on crochet which is something I don't do quite as much as I would like. They want us to bring one item to donate each month which really shouldn't be a problem. Any colors of things are accepted. Any item will be accepted. And, they want us to make at least one afgahn a year. One. And it's not nearly as big as the one I made for my boyfriend. It's a giant granny square. Never made one of those, but I've wanted too. Can't beat mindless projects.

more roving...

I have this problem where people will ask me questions in the comments they leave me. They all get forwarded to my email so I turn around, write them a big long email in return, then I send it out. Back to noreply at blogger. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've done it. So now I'm going to answer questions from ages ago (there aren't very many) don't worry. In fact, there's just one!

kdk wanted to know what the pattern was that I was using for the blue lacy scarf that I haven't worked on in a little while. It's from one of my favorite book series ever, the Knit! ones. Specifically it's from Knit Scarves!

So this morning I took the big white ball from yesterday and turned it into four smaller balls. Then guess what I did. Yup. I love Kool-aid.

From left to right we have Black Cherry (I used 4 packs for 2 oz), Pink Lemonade (4 packs, 2 oz), Grape (4 packs, 2 oz), and Cherry (5 packs, for 2 oz).

After all's said and done, I like the colors. I would have liked them to be a little darker but it was a learning experience. Maybe next time I'll use 3 packets per oz of roving. Or maybe 4! They'll really think I've gone nuts at the store.

When I went through check out I decided to do the automated one. I bought 20 kool-aid packets and everytime I scanned one it yelled 21 cents! Then a worker came over and bagged my kool-aid for me. It was an experience. The store had tons of kool-aid too.

Oh, and in other exciting news flipflopgirlgave me a store that sells spinning supplies, so I called them up and they have my niddy noddy too. ROAD TRIP! Yay... I love road trips. :-D And the shop is cute, and it's in a cute area making it even better. I love little shops.

The website says they're open Sundays, so maybe I'll do that this weekend. I'll call first though, wouldn't want to drive up and have it be closed.

Going to a new knitting group thing after work tonight. I'll probably post more on that later.

Monday, April 24, 2006

niddy-noddy

I neeeeeeeeeeeeeed a niddy-noddy. Don't know where to get one though. The store I bought my wheel from is since out of business. I was hoping to get one at the upcoming fiber festival, but that's a looooong way away (a month) and I'm afraid I'll go all the way up there, and they won't have one.

I'm going to check local stores, but I have a feeling none of them really carry spinning things. I know the one closest to me doesn't. I might bother them anyways though. I think I'll try calling a store up by Akron to see what they carry because I don't want to drive there if they don't have them.

Maybe I'll go on a mad search tomorrow.

Anyone have any online suggestions where I could buy them? Ebay scares me.

I found this site, anyone bought anything off them before?
http://spinningwheelyarnshop.com/home

They do seem relatively safe.

Yes, I do spin.

I warn you in advance of the many pictures I loaded into this update.

If you have dial up, I appologize.

I say I spin, but you've never actually seen proof, so it may be hard for some of you to actually belive it.

I bought this roving about a year ago and have yet to touch the white. Now the purple/blue/white/grey stuff? I've been messing with that for the past year and don't have tons to show for it. In fact the last bobbin was done just this past month, that's how lazy I've been with spinning. Pretty isn't it? I love it. It's funny how many colors are in it, they all can't be seen in this photo so I guess you'll have to take my word for it.

Well... Tonight I died some roving, because white roving is just no fun. I don't like white clothes, because they show dirt and I tend to be a messy person. The entire reason I bought this roving in the first place was so I could kool-aid dye it.

Don't know why I decided to do it tonight, but I figured a test swatch can't hurt, and I'm home all day tomorrow to do the real stuff if everything works out.


WARNING! I have no freaking clue what I'm doing so if you're going to be stupid like me, do so at your own risk. Thank you!


And so my adventure begins. I peeled off a decent sized section of roving and "washed it." Then I made my kool-aid mix. Water and kool-aid (it was really difficult). Then, I put my roving into the kool-aid mix and added more water so the roving was covered. Then I microwaved. Yup, microwaved. 2 minutes on high... let it sit as long as my impatient personality would let me, 2 more minutes, let it sit a little longer, and put it in for another minute and a half cause it was almost done. Then it was just perfect.

Now was the task of rinsing and washing again. So I stuck my finger in the water to see if it was cool enough. I burned myself. (don't be impatient like me)


So I got out the spinning wheel and finished up another bobbin. I still have a decent bit of roving left so I'll probably get another bobbin out of it. Then there's the horrible issue of plying. I've never worked with this much yarn before. So I have a feeling once I start plying It'll be too big for one bobbin. That's my dillemma. Maybe I'll just make a bunch of mini skeins. But that leads to more crisises... How do I know how many yards I have! I have no clue how to find out. Guess?!?! How do this spinning people know?! There must be a biiig secret no one tells me.

Okay, back to the dying story. After I let it cool down, I rinsed it and washed it, as I'm sure you would have guessed. Then I threw it in the bathtub to dry.

It's official. I'm pretty sure my family thinks I'm nuts.

To me it looks like it's worked well. I like bright colors, and I'm a bit sad it wasn't bright like I wanted it to be, then again, it was black cherry Kool-aid, it would be as bright as regular cherry.

I think I'm going to go pick up more Kool-aid tomorrow and dye up the rest of it. I have the rest of the one ball plus a whole other ball. Or maybe I should just work with one ball. I don't know I have no idea how much yarn I'm going to get from 8oz of roving. I think I'll just finish up the 8oz ball I've started and leave the other one till I see what happens with this.

Maybe I should get that one skein book everyone's talking about. It would probably be perfect for hand spun yarn since I always feel like I'll never have enough.

Knitted motorcycle.

I think this motorcycle would definitely kick the tank cozy's butt.

Definitely check it out, it's awesome... and pink. Everyone makes these extreme things in pink. Must have been project spectrum projects. haha.

Knitted motorcycle

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Weekend Knitting

Did some knitting this weekend. I would have liked to get much more done but with exams this week I had a few things I had to get done first. First I had a project to do for Calculus II. Worked my butt off and managed to finish it on Friday night. It was supposed to be due on Monday, but someone spoke to our professor about getting an extension and he gave us until this coming Friday. This was great, but I figured I should probably get mine done because I knew I wouldn't study for my other exams because "I needed to work on my project".

Also in class last Friday, the same Calc professor announced our the first half of the exam would be multiple choice and the second half would be problems, which is how all of his exams are. Then he said we would be taking the second half home for a take home exa due Monday. The class couldn't have been more thrilled. So he made fun of us, saying how he was shocked to see us so excited after he just ruined our weekend. Well I decided I'd spend all day Sunday working on the take home exam. I had a banquet Saturday, and I hang out with some friends on Saturday night, so Saturday was pretty much out of the question. Turns out this take home exam was much easier than I anticipated. Quite a plesant surprise.

I did get a decent bit of knitting done. Over three hours of working on the charity scarf while at my friends apartment. They're still making fun of me for my socks I was working on before (the Jaywalkers). They claim that if I made socks that were round rather than square they would fit me. The double pointed needles are the reason the socks are "square". I've also been teased about my "square" preemie hat because babies don't have square heads. Fun times definitely.

I also worked on my new orange sock a bit.

The wider toe will definitely work. It's a bit wider than I wanted, but at least my toes won't be cramped. That and I have a feeling the extra space will disappear some when the socks get longer and stretch over my feet.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Here kitty kitty kitty.

My cat was being cute yesterday, so I took pictures.

I haven't had much chance to do much knitting. I do have the toe of a sock on the needles, but no pictures yet, I don't want to bore you too much.

Right now, here is my cat.


For all of you who hate acrylic, my cat seems to love it. As I've said before, that's the first crocheted thing I've actually finished. I actually used that blanket to re-teach myself crochet a few years back. The only stitch I knew before was chain and single crochet. It was also one of my first attempts at reading patterns. Quite the experience that was.

Hopefully I'll have more knitting to show after this weekend; however, with finals next week there are no guarantees.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

HAHA!

This really made my day. It's a pink tank cozy. Why a tank would need a cozy I do not know, but it's pink. Gotta love pink.

I think everyone should go look at it too.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Stupid Car.

In one of my many posts yesterday I mentioned that the heat must be making my car handle stick. Turns out that was a lie. Apparently everytime I lifted it up and it stuck a little I was really just jamming it more. Found that out this morning when I couldn't get into my car. So I jumped in the passenger side and crawled over to the driver's side. This proved very difficult seeing as how I drive a teeny tiny car. I have a 3-door coupe. There isn't tons of room.

Look at picture. Of course this isn't my car. Mine has a third door on the drivers side, but other than that it's identical to mine. Same color and everything. Another thing that made life difficult was the fact that I had the seat up all the way which didn't leave me much jumping room. Fortunately I was smart enough to push my seat all the way back when I got out for school and work; however, I forgot to do this when I got home from work which will mean an interesting dive over the seat in the morning.

Well after school we took it to our favorite car place to get an estimate for getting it fixed, and the estimate we got was quite reasonable assuming we buy the parts. So then we hopped over to the Saturn Dealership to have them get the parts. Turns out the parts are more expensive than the labor itself if we go to the auto place to have them fix it. So the parts have been ordered, now we'll jusdt wait.

The good news: I can get out of my driver's side door no problem! :-D

Hope everyone's having a good day.

edited to add: apparently the car in the picture does have 3 doors! Mine doesn't have anti-lock brakes though. I've never driven a car with anti-lock breaks though so I'm used to it.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Ready go!


Ok... Ripping complete. It's amazing how quick I ripped back to a nice point.

I think I'm going to follow the pattern for a little bit, then I'll branch out when I need to. Beauty of it is, it's toe-up. I'm also not doing fancy stitches until I figure out how my feet work with knitted socks.

I envy all you people with normal feet!

*Note to self. Record changes!

Orange Sock!


Rip!

Ok. So today I decided I needed to make an orange sock that would be convienient to travel with. Found a toe-up pattern and got ready to begin. Now this is one of those generic patterns that tells you find your gauge, mulitply this and this and add/subtract other random stuff to find out how many stitches you need. Great. I can handle that, yup Calc. I can do the whole addition thing.

So I started and was off to a great start. I can't tell you how excited I was. Then I started decresing the short row things. First off I did it wrong but that wasn't really my problem. I took a good look at the sock, and then my foot. Now I've come to the conclusion that my problem with socks is that my feet are deformed. Deformed! First off, I don't have "pointy" feet. All my toes are pretty much the same length. I have what my mom refers to as "boxy feet".

Fortunately the sock pattern I have allows for fixes like this, and for my short, fat, boxy little feet, I have a feeling I'll be doing quite the alterations.

I'm looking at the good side though. I've always wanted to learn how to "change" patterns so that I could change the shaping in sweaters because I don't have the best figure. Socks will be perfect practice.

My mom told me to just make socks for other people, but that's sad. I bought pretty yarn for me, and I want socks for me. :-( I will not give up yet!

Enjoy the orange for April, it might not be back till after finals week. ;-)

Car

My car's acting up now. It's a funny little problem.

First off the handle sticks. I'll pry the door open, get in, shut the door, and then the door goes bouncing back open. It took me six times to realize that the handle on the outside of the door wasn't going back down after I opened the door. Apparently the handle is going to stick more when it's hot outside, because it worked much better yesterday.

Then, I turn my car on, put it in reverse, and it doesn't move. Tried putting the car back in park, then back in reverse, and still got nothing. Then I turned the car off and back on and it worked perfectly.

So I labled myself as dumb and thought I was just too stupid to realized I didn't turn the car on all the way the first time. But then it happened again.

It's sitting in the garage cooling down right now. My dad's going to check the fluids on it later. He has a feeling though that the bump yesterday knocked something off on the inside which is causing my problems.

My poor car.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Quite the thrilling day.

So I rolled out of bed much later than usual this morning and headed off to the Y with my sister. Worked out for an hour or so.

Came home, go the mail, and guess what came. A prize! A few weeks ago I entered a contest on Jenn's blog. Shockingly enough, I won. I never expected it to get here this quick, but it definitely made my day.

After all this excitement I decided to run over to the yarn shop which is a good 15-20 minutes from my home. I love this store. They are my supplier of cheap acrylic. So I arrived with hopes of tracking down dark purple and red Red Heart. That was amazingly easy. That's just how much I love this store. So then I went off in search of circular needles and other things with which to make socks. Didn't find the 0s I was hoping they would have, but I did walk of with some 1s, 2s and 3s. I also grabbed a pair of 4s to make baby hats because my wood needles slow me down. Day couldn't get better.


Went to my car, and there were these long black scraps up the side. ARH! I hate when people scratch my car. It annoys the daylights out of me. So I stood there for a whole 15 seconds and scratched at the spots to see if maybe they would just come off. No such luck. Unlocked my door and reached for the handle. It didn't budge. Handle was jammed. But wait, how would that happen? Apparently the giant scratches were there from when some moron backed into the side of my car. That's what we're guessing at least. No one saw it happened.

My day took a definite plunge.

So I went back into the store to see if I could borrow their phone (I managed to leave my cell at home!). Called my mom. The lady at the store came out to look because there was no one in there. After talking we concluded either a SUV, a pick up or a semi got me. The marks were up too high for it to have been a car. She went back inside and called around back to see if they were free to come check out my car. There's a mechanic/welding shop around the back which is owned by the Yarn Shop lady's husband. Someone came around, played with the handle to get the door open and told me to pull the car around back. I pulled the car around and wandered around petting the dog and cat while they worked on my handle. Ta da! Car looks good as new. Handle looks fine, but if you try to lift it up you can tell it jams a little. Still. Much better. Didn't get charged either. Well the owner of the mechanic shop took my name address and phone number just in case, and as he was writing down my street name he comment on the area I lived in. This shocked me a bit because most people don't assosciate my street with the area I live. He proceeded to tell me his grandson used to live back there. His grandson was my neighbor, before he got married and moved. Shocking. My old neighbor's grandmother owns the knitting shop, his grandfather runs the mechanic/welding place. Small world. So we stood and talked about my neighbor for awhile and what he's been doing lately. Life is definitely funny sometimes.

I've come to the conclusion cars just don't like me. Last Wednesday the car I was traveling in lost it's wheel. If the car would have gone another 6 inches to the right the whole thing would have flipped. Today my car took a lovely little blow. The only reason there isn't a dent in my driver's side door, is because I have a plastic car. Three cheers for my plastic car.

Hope everyone had a great Easter.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Another FO

Another FO down for charity. I really wish I could get these done faster. I have a feeling the reason they take so long is because I have to many things going on at once.

I sewed them all up this morning, and added the laces to the booties. They're so cute.

Then we had family over for Easter. We had our Easter lunch, and then we all just kinda crashed in the living room. I drug my spinning wheel out of the corner and worked on the never ending ball of roving. It's getting closer to the end! Finally! In reality I haven't gotten that much yarn from it. It's a considerable amount, but I have no clue what I'll ever make from it. That's the problem I have with spinning. I don't know what to make once I've spun the yarn! Ah! I'm the type of person who buys yarn with a project in mind and I look at spinning the same way. I have to have an end goal. I don't know what I'll do after I make the yarn. Stash it? Seems like that is what's going to happen.

Oh well.

April's almost over and the only orange project spectrum related thing I've done is frog the only piece I was working on that was orange. I want to cast on for something orange, but I also want to get all my current projects off the needles.

Maybe I'll wander around the house tomorrow and take pictures of orange things. I have the day off school (three cheers for Easter!) so I think I'll be going to the gym with my sister and possibly to the yarn shop. My sister wants to buy yarn for her second official project, a sweater thing. She thinks she can just jump from a garter stitch scarf to a sweater. I'm the type of person who can and I only hope she has the same ability. I also have to try to explain the concept of gauge to her.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Remember the Penguins?

A week or so ago I linked an article that was about knitting sweaters for penguins and I thought it was the cutest thing. My bid disappointment was that there wasn't a picture.

I found this article today with a picture! They are so cute!

Friday, April 14, 2006

What I've been working on.

If you haven't noticed I recently added percentage bars in my sidebar. They make me happy and give me something to update when I have no exciting new knitting going on.

My school work has been a bit much lately and it's been hard to get a lot of knitting done. I currently have four projects on the needles. I used to have three in the sidebar, but I'm adding a fourth that I had forgotten about. This is a scarf I started awhile ago out of cheap acrylic. Walmart acrylic to be exact. Can we say pooling? I love pooling. It's like a pattern, and the beauty of it is, the whole scarf looks the same! Ah! It's great. This project's been hiding under my bed for awhile so I decided to bring it back out. I love me the charity projects.
There's also another scarf I've been working on lately. It's a lace pattern and in order to show you the lace I put a white piece of paper behind the scarf. It's cool. Not horribly complicated but fun. I love the process of it and I feel like I learn so much with all the different decreases. I've found myself altering beginner patterns to make them "prettier" in my standards. I'm dying to jump into a horrifically hard lace project; however I don't think that will be happening anytime soon.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip

So I ripped the sock on Saturday and it haunted me all weekend. I just wanted to finish it and have my perfect sock. I spent all that time knitting this weekend and got almost nowhere.

Then I got out my orange/green/yellow scarf to work on. After working for a few minutes that nagging feeling that it was going to be too long came back to me, so I just figured why not. Rip. Turns out I was right about it. It was definitely huge. With it around my neck both ends touched the floor, which is over 10 feet of scarf.


Image hosting by Photobucket

After all the ripping I did manage to complete something. My green scarf also from way back when. It's made out of cotton and on one small corner the stitch definition is practically non-existant. I'll blame the yarn and it's incredible softness. It's a basic giant seed stitch thing. (Sorry, don't know the fancy names)

It's nice to know I accomplished something.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Goodbye Jaywalker

The Jaywalker has been reduced back to a small ball of yarn. It's my own fault though. When I read the sizes on the pattern and measured my foot, I found that my foot was a good half inch wider than the largest size. But I thought to myself, my gauge is usually big, so maybe if I just knit normally with the needles called for, I'll get a bigger sock. Nope. It fit somewhat. But the seems looked ready to burst. After doing some searching online tonight, I found bigger sizes for the Jaywalker. Bigger sizes which I didn't know existed. So disappointing. Especially since the next size up was exactly the width of my foot. So I'm going to test my gauge, make sure it's on and go by circulars. I'll knit this one on two circulars due to the fact that all my stitches barely stayed on my baby needles. That and they just seem so friendly. This will be a summer project of mine, along with getting my large number of UFO's off the needles.

3 weeks left till Summer. I'm overjoyed. My knitting time is going to grow like no other.

Dilemma

Tried my Jaywalker on today. Last time I tried it on I found it hard to fit my heel through the leg of the sock. Today when I tried to put it on I had to pull on the sock to get it over my heel. This worries me. It looks as if the heel gusset is just going to blow at any minute. Do you think I should rip and re-knit? On bigger needles perhaps or maybe I could just change the patter to make the whole thing a size bigger. I imagine it wouldn't be hard to adjust the pattern.

Either way, I think I'm going to have to rip. It's amazing yarn, and I refuse to give the sock to anyone but me. Maybe I'll do my new ones on circulars, and I think I saw a toe up pattern for jaywalkers somewhere in cyberspace. Or maybe I'll just rip in and put the yarn away till I get some of these UFO's I have lying around finished.

Advice is appreciated.

Friday, April 07, 2006

I want to knit for penguins

Knitting for Penguins

I read that article and thought it was great. I'm a sucker for charity projects though. Speaking of charity projects, I have so many of them. I'm making squares, preemie hats/booties, and I've recently joined a new group in our area that's going to knit miscelaneous items for charity. I also decided I wanted to make sweaters to donate after reading an article in a magazine a few weeks ago. Oh well. I've always been to much of a multi-project person and I doubt I'll be able to change that.

Sorry about all the uneventful entries lately. I know it's incredibly boring.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

One of those Days


I'm having one of those days. One where I just want to eat and eat and eat and eat. I'm just not full. It drives me nuts. Apparently my sister's going through the same thing today. I think this is why my diets aren't very sucessful.

In other words, I went to my friends house tonight to hang out. It was lots of fun. While there I got knitting done too. Another preemie bootie has been knitted and I've started the hat. I really love charity knitting. I really hate the needles I'm knitting them on though. Maybe it's me, but I just don't like wood needles. All I've ever heard is amazing things about bamboo and brittany needles. I've never worked with bamboo, but I feel like these brittany needles are slowing me down. That and my needles are long, which makes it difficult to make small items. Maybe I should just stick to knitting them flat. I think they got done much faster that way.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

SnB

Had a pretty busy day Tuesday. School was the usual, and after school was work. Had stitch 'n bitch later that night, and by the time I got home, watched a TV show, my night was gone. I had so many good intentions, things I wanted to get done, and none of it got done. Miracilously though things managed to work out. I love when that happens.

Image hosting by Photobucket



So, I turned the heel yesterday, and last night while watching Nashville Star I picked up and knitted the stitches along the side. After that I did a round or so and noticed a hole. Not sure why it's there but it is. I have a feeling it's from picking up stitches. I think where I picked up the stitches is fine, so I must not have pulled a string tight enough when working. The reason I say this is because the other side is perfect, well at least it has no obvious holes. The hole isn't bothering me too much though. I plan on going back at the end and closing it up, weaving in the ends, and my hole will magically disappear. I had this same probelm with my first glove I ever made. There were little holes around one of the fingers. It was fixable, and the mistake wasn't noticeable. So I'm going to use that experience and hope it works out here as well. I'm pretty sure though, when reading through blogs, I've come across others who've said they had holes in around the same place on their Jaywalkers. So maybe I'm not totally alone.

Monday, April 03, 2006

What I'm Knitting

Here's what I've been working on lately. Nothing too exciting. First off there's the charity projects. Which brings me to a point I forgot to mention. It has been discussed at our Circle K meetings that it would me cool to start a knitting group or something. Then at district convention we found out our goal for this year was to fulfill those basic needs, which if you think about it, knitting provides. You knit scarves, hats, mittens, blankets, and you keep people warm.

So we're meeting later tonight were we're going to teach the club how to knit, or at least I'll be teaching the club how to knit. It should get interesting. I've taught several people how to knit but not in that large group setting. We'll see how it goes.

Then last weekend we went to our Spring Officers training were we had a meeting with the rest of our Division. Our division is made up of two other clubs and another club that is trying to charter. Well we were having a division meeting with one of the other clubs in our division (the third club doesn't come to many events) and we were talking about service projects we could do together. A girl in our club leaned over to me and mentioned knitting, but not loud enough where it could be overheard. Five minutes later the girl leading the meeting, who was from he other school, asked if any of us knew how to knit or crochet. I raised my hand and informed them all that I was obsessed. So we decided that we were going to knit squares and combine them to make blankets to donate. Fun fun. I'm pretty sure we decided on 8 inch squares. I can't remember for the life of me now whether it was 6 inches or 8. I think it's 8 though so I casted on for a square tonight in left over Red Heart from my boyfriends Christmas present. It was an intarsia type pattern so I bought an 8 oz skein and barely used any of it. I don't mind buying mass amounts of yarn, because more scrap means more stuff to make for charity. Perhaps that's why my stash is so big.

I'll try to post a picture of my stash later. I'm dying to see how much I really have, but taking it all out of hiding and putting it back is a hassle.

Here's the square I started, and more preemie booties that have been cast on.

And also, the beloved Jaywalker! I love this sock... And look! A HEEL FLAP! Not quite finished with the heel flap, but I'm getting closer.





Grey's Anatomy

So I was watching Grey's Anatomy last night, and they were knitting (to an obsessive point) thoughout the entire show. Nothing better than that. I knew I loved that show!

Sunday, April 02, 2006

No knitting... :-(

Didn't get much done with knitting this weekend. I went to some 4H camp in Columbus this weekend for Circle K officers training. I did make slight progress on the Jaywalkers during the drive there. Don't worry, I wasn't driving. I'm so close to starting the heel yet I'm still afraid I'm going to run out of yarn. I probably won't, but I'm still afraid.

I want to do SP8. I've always read about SP7 on peoples blogs and thought it was cool. Of course, If I start buying cool yarn and things and sending it out in the mail, my mom would wonder. So I ran the idea by her and she didn't understand it. I'm going to show her the website later so she understands... I think she'll be okay with it. I hope so at least.

I just tried to explain it to my dad in hopes of gaining his approval.. he doesn't get it either.

I understand though, the whole knitting blog world is a bit confusing at times.