V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N

I'm back. No yarn either... Funny story about that actually. Before leaving I searched yarn shops in the area, and when I searched Hershey it came up with two one of which was on a Derry St. I really couldn't remember which was where but I didn't worry about it too much I was simply focused on yarn... I would look for yarn.

Then I saw Derry St. near Hershey and I whined about stopping at the yarn store evertime we passed it. So on our third and last day in Hershey we had this nice little break in the day so I begged to go yarn store searching. We went, couldn't find the store on Derry. We gave up and went to an antique mall. I looked for teapots, found tons of them, and didn't buy a single one. I was good. My mom said something to one of the employees about the so called yarn shop and she had no clue; however, she came back 10 minutes later and said another employee knew exactly where it was and gave me directions. We went off again in search of yarn shop which apparently was not on Derry. Still couldn't find shop, so we stopped in a quilt shop which was where we thought the yarn store should be. Figured crafty people would know about other crafty stores, they were under the impression it went out of business. hm.... but it's in the phone book! Then again there wasn't an address in the phone book which was unusual. So we gave up and went back to the Bed and Breakfast. I sat around and worked on my red sock.

We left again for dinner and went to this little diner in Hummelstown, ordered our food... waited. They had those paper placemats with advertisements on them, and it was the Ks that caught my attention. I tend to associate every letter K I see with knitting and this ad with the letter K also had a yarn ball and knitting needles. AH! Knitting store, and it was on Derry. It was on Derry in Harrisburg, not Hershey. Oops. That would explain why there was no knitting store on Derry in Hershey, it was sad to find this ad at 6 pm when most yarn shops are closed. I called and got an answering machine.... closed. Of course. Harrisburg was somewhat flooded though so I'm not sure if that's why it was closed, or if it was closed simply because it was closed for the day.

Oh well... I tried. Good news though, I finished a red socks! Now I have two finished socks, neither of them have partners though. It's definitely improvement though. hehe.

Here is a picture, pretend like you can't see my messy desk in the background. I have lots of red things. Red/pink mug. Red candy, and now a red sock.

Even better news, I started the second one!

I still need size 8 DPNS. My mom searched the craft stores for me last Sunday but nobody had size 8 or 2. Looks like I'll need to make a trip to the Yarn Shop, or maybe I'll just go to the LYS in North Canton. Who knows... I think I'm going to try to do some more charity knitting/crochet. I've been a bit lazy with it lately.

More Red Sock

Got a decent bit more done on my red sock. Yay!

It's going quite slow on the size 1 needles but I really like the way the Regia knits up on 1s. I was planning on buying another set of size 2s so I would have them on vacation but I don't think I'm going to have a chance to get to the stores before they close tonight so I may just have to see which yarn works with size 1s and drag that on vacation. I like this pattern. It's mindless, and I have it memorized. Great for the car and because it's on size 1s, it takes forever.

My big issue tonight will be what knitting to take. Possibly the baby sweater, but I need size 8 DPNs for that, and if I don't get to a store the sweater won't be going. If I do get the size 8s I might take another baby sweater along. Hmm... tough decisions.

I'm off to lunch with my family and then to a CK meeting. Hopefully the meeting won't last all afternoon and I'll be able to drop by Pat Catans or JoAnns.. I wonder if Walmart has my DPNs... As much as I hate Walmart their hours are convienient.

MapMuse

Ever been to MapMuse.com? If not... go now. It's amazing. First good sign, on the homepage, the most viewed page of the day was the knitting/crocheting/yarn shops... YES!

Oh.. it's definitely great.

So I'm going on vacation next week. Not to far, but it's out of state. Being the obsessed knitter/crocheter that I am... I want yarn. My mom seems to think that I have enough yarn, but it doesn't hurt to look for shops in the area right? I had no real plan going into this trip. I was hoping I could just keep my eyes open and begg if I actually managed to find one. I tried consulting my boyfriend being that he has lots of family in the Pittsburgh area. He was no help at all. He did notice a knitting mill though on his drive to South Carolina so he does get some points there.

Ok... back to MapMuse. I searched Hershey, because that is our first destination. They have a yarn store! Nice! We're not actually staying in Hershey though, we're staying in some other city about 30 minutes outside of Hershey. I'm waiting to figure out what city that is so I can search the yarn shops there. Our second stop is Pittsburgh because my sister has to see the Andy Warhol Museum. MapMuse came up with 8 different yarn shops in Pittsburgh. Cross my fingers and I'll get to at least one while I'm on vacation.

Now to actually knitting. I made a heel in my red sock! I know... shocking. Unfortunatley I started the heel half an inch early thinking it would turn out perfect since my last sock was a little big. Wrong. It was exactly half an inch too small, because I did try it on. So I ripped back, knit half an inch and started the heel. So far I'm half done. I hope to take it to my friends house and finish some more of this sock tonight.

Update!

I've been working on my baby sweater. Most of the progress on this was done after SNB and yesterday before work. It's starting to look like a real sweater and leads me to believe I'm almost done.
Started the ankle Jaywalkers today. I'm using size 2s and I went down tons of sizes in the pattern until I got to one that looked like it'll fit the 10 year old. I've just barely started the heel flap so once I finish the heel flap I'm not working on it until I see her again and measure it on her foot. Or I guess I could just keep knitting through the gusset and try it on her then to see how everything's going. I don't know. She has such little feet!

Don't have a car today... It's getting fixed! Yay! I will finally be able to get into my car via the driver side door! HURRAY! I don't want to know how expensive it's going to be. I have a feeling it's going to be bad. We will see.

I won't be around until Saturday, hopefully I'll have tons of knitting progress to show you.

SNB

Had our little knitting group last night. 4 people were there! It was amazing! Usually it's somewhere around 3 people. I can only remember one other time (that I've been there) where there's been 4 people.

I got some stuff done on my sweater.

Denise pointed out that I'm a liar because my sock wasn't really finished (the ends haven't been woven in yet). Oops...

Came home, worked on the sweater even more and found another mistake in the pattern so I'm doing the math to work around that one right now. I think a lot of the numbers in the pattern are based off the number of stitches that were casted on, and we know that one was wrong. It's not so much that the pattern is wrong, I have a feeling it's just bad pattern writing. I have the right number of stitches on my needles, but I'm supposed to do another increse row, which if I do that I'll have too many stitches.

Who knows, no real big deal.

Hope everyone's having a great day so far. I hope this rain doesn't last long because I volunteered at Orientation again this weekend and that's where I'll be for the next few days.

Frogged.

The baby sweater has been frogged. After unknitting 1 1/2 rows I decided I was better off ripping the whole thing and knitting four rows, than unknitting 11 rows. In the end it'll be faster.

Hopefully I will have lots of baby sweater to show after it goes to SNB tonight, most likely I won't have tons to knit. I usually do more eating and talking and not so much knitting.

;-D

My Summer is half over in 10 days and I'm not half way to my 8 inch square goal. Oh well.. I can do it! I can I can!

1/2 Pomatomus

Ta DA! Knew I just should have waited to post. Looks great in that picture. In real life it looks huge. That of course is my opinion. Someone who has never before completed a sock and isn't exactly sure how it should fit.

Pomatomus has quite the pointy toes, my toes aren't so pointy. My red socks are pretty pointy too though. Speaking of red socks I think I might pick those up again. I've come to the conclusion that my bizzare lines can be blocked out. I was mad at them last night though (the red socks), so mad that I stuck it on my boyfriends foot to prove to him that my feet were screwed up and his were normal. Red Socks fit him perfectly. AH! I guess that's good news though. If socks fit me, they'll fit him too as far as width is concerned, meaning I only have to worry about length. Maybe I'll start his socks soon. I'm going to try to kick out Christmas presents early this year.

Pomatomus

Because everyone's just dying to see my sock... Here's a picture.

That sweater I started a few days ago is not going so well. It started off with the wrong cast on number, which was discovered after the ribbing was completed. So I ripped... started over with the correct number. The second time I forgot to switch from size 6 to 8 when I finished my ribbing, so out came about 3 rows. This time (since I was using my Denise Interchangable Needles) I switched over one of the needles so I was knitting with an 8 off of a 6. Except when I got to the end of the row I forgot to switch the other needle over to a 8. I noticed 3 rows later... ripped again. Continued on, everything going great, when I realized I forgot all about the button holes. Oops. I was supposed to put the first one in row 4. I'm somewhere around 17. It needs to be ripped back, but I haven't had the will to do it lately. I'm going to make a push to get Pomatomus sock #1 off the needles (2 1/2 inches left!) then I think I'll take the baby sweater to Panera tomorrow for our little knitting group. I think I'll start the second Pomatomus once the ankle Jaywalkers are finished. I have a feeling I'll need the needles for the Jaywalkers.

Quite the Progress

I'm coming along on Pomatomus. I turned the heel and am now working on the gusset. WOo! It's just beautiful... brings a tear to my eye...

Anyways, the beautiful Pomatomus is trying to convince me to rip my red sock that was bothering me. I did find out what was making my lovely lines, I was pulling too tight where the needles joined. My fear of ladders got the best of me I guess. So... I think I'm going to rip. Maybe I'll start the red Jaywalkers I've always dreamed of.

Speaking of Jaywalkers, we have a lovely little thing going with my tutoring job where if they behave/do their work/not give me headaches, they get points. After they get so many points we can have things knitted for us. One of the girls decided she wanted ankle socks. But she wanted slipper socks, not real socks, just ones to wear at home with fun fur kinda stuff around the cuff. Easy enough, slipper socks and red heart would work well, and wouldn't blow my budget at the same time. And as far as fuzzy yarn, it can't be hard to find some of that. It's everywhere and I hate the stuff! It's fun to knit with, and looks cute with kid's clothing, but I personally don't see myself wearing it unless I weave it into a purse or something. Well lately I've been dragging my Pomatomus to tutoring with me to entertain myself when the girls are actually working. They were quite fascinated with that sock and the pattern on it. So the girl who wanted socks decided she wanted a pattern on her sock, so she took to the internet in search of patterns. I directed her towards magknits and told her they had some cool patterns there. Guess what she found. Jaywalkers. "I like that one." She also decided she wanted real socks instead of slippers, but she likes the ankle ones which will cut the knitting time in half. Sounds great to me. Her sister decided she wanted a headband with the same blue yarn that I have already made into a scarf and legwarmers, except she wanted a pattern on her headband. She like Pomatomus. So looks like I'll have a Pomatomus headband in my future as well.

This means... an excuse to buy more yarn! So I drove out to the yarn shop, because I had several projects I needed yarn for, and there was good news and bad news. Good news: they had the yarn for the headband, and yarn for the baby sweaters I want to make. Bad news: they're out of the yarn I'm using for Pomatomus which is what the girl wanted for her socks. I got her some lovely pink yarn though that I hope she'll like.

I also started another baby sweater today. I have three more that I have to make (we found out my cousin was pregnant a few weeks ago. apparently we were the only ones who didn't know about the whole thing) They're all having boys too! So I bought some nice "kinda boys" colors at the Yarn shop and decided that the citrus TLC I had would make a nice little sweater for any baby gender. It's getting knit up first.

I even swatched! Aren't you all proud of me! My stitch count was right on, my row count not so much. It shouldn't matter though.

I've also casted on for the sweater but it's not very far yet.

ah!

Blogger ate my post. I hate when it does that.

My Secret Pal sent me cool things that arrived in the mail today! I apologize for the blurry picture and the fact that I really couldn't find a cool way to arrange the cute little things they gave me.
First off, the cute little items were wrapped in the coolest paper ever. It has duckies with devil horns. Also I was gifted with more fiber, a 66% wool, 34% angora rabbit blend. Also I got cute little school supplies! I love school supplies and colorful school supplies are even better. I also got little notebooks and bright little notecard things which are just fun. I love cute little school supply things.

Haha.. so much fun. This really did make my day though. My mom told me my sister should be getting a package in the mail today, so when the mailman rang the doorbell I was shocked to see two packages sitting there. Fun fun. I've become too addicted to this SP thing.

Oh, in Pomatomus news, it's pooling. If you didn't notice in the last post (I didn't), go back and look, it really shows it. I love it though. The stripes continue all the way around the sock so it has almost that candy-cane look too it. It's just great.

Pomatomus

It's been forever since I've posted. I've done lots of knitting, just nothing exciting I could show you.

I've been gone since Thursday helping with a Freshman Orientation at the college. That went okay. I did take my sock along in case I should have down time. Turns out I had quite a lot the first night.

Did a few more rows tonight, a couple of them done in the dark at a friend's house.
Pomatomus is growing, bit by bit. It was going quite slow, but it's starting to pick up a bit now.

I was hoping to finish Adamas for Knit the Classics but the deadline's today and it's definitely not done.

I bought yarn for another shawl though. It's gorgeous. The picture on the website doesn't do it justice. I'll post some pictures whenever I get around to casting on. The bad news is I'm already drooling over other colors of laceweight yarn. For future shawls. I think I've convinced myself I need a shawl for every season. It's all just so pretty.

I think I need some sleep. This weekend has really worn me out so far. I hope to have exciting future posts with many finished objects.

Baby Sweater

Finished sewing up the baby sweater last night while playing computer games. Went quite well. Knitted the collar this morning, and went button shopping.

I'm glad to say it's done.

It has its share of flaws, but it's my first sweater so I guess I can't complain. I'm sure it could have been much, much worse.

Mittens

I decided I wanted to make loads of these little mittens when I first started this project. After making one pair I don't even want to consider another.

I don't like the thumbs... they just don't look natural to me. I have other mitten patterns that I really love so maybe I'll try one of those out.

Oh! And I've decided I'm going to try to make 50 squares for charity before school starts again in the Fall. I have three months now, and I have a feeling I could do it.

I'll post that up on the side somewhere next to my charity squares percent bar thing.

Pomatomus

Oh... I did finally ship my pal for SP8 the first package. Technically I shipped it earlier in the week... now we wait until it arrives... muhahahaha.

I'm working on my Pomatomus sock.. out of acrylic! WOO!