Long time no see

It has been a long time…  But I have been getting used to 3 little ones running around my house.  Yes, the littlest one is also crawling, making nothing safe, and no time peaceful.  But in the evenings I have been managing to do some knitting here and there.  And I have gotten over the problem that I mentioned last time.  Do you even remember?  Can’t blame you if you don’t.  I was having some issues with not wanting to finish my current projects.  I stop working on them, just so they won’t get finished.  It really is something like  saying goodbye to a dear friend, even though, since these projects stay with me, I won’t actually have to miss them.  I know, it is complicated.   But all of this, just to say that I actually did finish some projects.  As we speak, Hippo Gnu Deer designed by MMario is blocking on my floor upstairs, and the 22 leaves shawlette, designed by Lankakomero is drying on the blocking frame at the other side of the house.    I don’t have pictures of those two yet, but I do have a picture of this:

Yep, Wingspan is truly finished.  It was a fun, simple pattern, pretty well written, though if I made it again I would probably wrap the short rows.  I just think it provides a slightly neater look, even though most people don’t really see the difference.  I made it 9 wedges, instead of 8, as I wanted to use up as much of the yarn as I could.  Poem works really well for this pattern.  The yarn has some thicker and thinner parts (though not like a novelty thick/thin yarn, much more irregular), which would have really bugged me if I had continued to use it for the socks I had initially intended for.  Some people might really like it, but I could do without the thicker/thinner parts.  The colors are absolutely gorgeous, and as wingspan it works really, really wel.

 

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Three months later

As you might have figured, not too long after the last blog post, more then 3 months ago, my family was increased with a darling, absolutely lovely daughter. And of course that is when my leisure life had to be put on hold for a while. Hardly surprising, but babies really do take all the time you give them, especially the first 3 months. What? You want a picture? Alright. This was a day after she was born.

She really is a wonderful baby, sleeps a lot, doesn’t cry much, and grows very, very well.  At this point she has found her thumb, and finally gives me a little more time for…. Me.  So, I have a chance to catch up with all my crafting friends, and even get a little knitting done here and there.

What have I been working on?  Oh this and that…  Wait, you actually want to know?  Hmm, let’s see.  One of my favorite things to work on are shawls.  And I have about 3 active on my needles at this point.  Two came from one of my favorite designers, Mmario.  The first one, that is currently furthest, is called Hippo Gnu Deer.  I am currently a little further then this picture, but I don’t believe I have shown you this yet, and the current one would not be all that much more interesting.

I am also working on Caroling, Caroling, the latest Mmystery Kal that was organized by Mmario.  The Kal was of course finished a couple of months ago, but I am no where near finished on it yet:

And the third one is a brand new start:

Yep, you have seen that right, it is the Poem sock yarn of the socks that I took out because my gauge had changed QUITE significantly over time.  I think it is actually much happier as a shawl.  I will probably have an update on that next time.  I also have some other things on my needles, as well as a couple of things that came off the needles, and I promise, I will tell you about all in due time.

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A year in review

Alright, here is the promised review post. 😀 I am going to try to list all the things that I finished last year. Mind you, a lot of the year was spend knitting Oregon Shawl, and I think the rest of it was primarily smaller projects? We will see.

In January, I started and in February I finished the Limberlost Luna shawl, designed by MMario. It was a great KAL to participate in. MMario is a very generous and prolific designer, the link above will take you to his Yahoo group, where he posts all his designs, most of which are untested, and where we get to play with them, ask questions to MMario himself, and have a lot of fun with the other knitters in the group. MMario is very good at responding to questions, and will come up with most corrections quite quickly. When the patterns have been tested they are often listed on Ravelry, but they also stay available for naught on this Yahoo group. If you like to knit lace, this is definitely a group to join. But they are chatty, be forewarned. Of course you don’t have to receive individual e-mails, MMario will be the first to suggest to go web access only if the avalanche of e-mail is too much for you.

Next, in March, I finished a very cute hoodie for my oldest son, it had been in the works since October. It is officially called Sweater with hood and pockets in Eskimo, a pattern from Drops. I made some adjustments, like no pockets, and a little less long, as well as different closure. I was going to add a zipper, but my son decided at the last moment that he wanted buttons after all. So I added crocheted button hole loops. I am not entirely pleased with those, but c’est la vie.
Next were a couple of dishcloths/afghan squares. The first one is called Columns of Greece. It apparently took me about a year to finish, but I swear it seemed longer then that. It was not the pattern’s fault, it was a pretty simple pattern, and easy to remember. But I used it as my take along knitting, but with 2 little children I just didn’t have much time to actually go somewhere and knit. Before you ask, if you have to wait somewhere and you have 2 little children, knitting is almost impossible.
And then a square I designed for a baby blanket. There is a yahoo group I belong to, called Lone Star State Knitters, and they knit a blanket worth of squares for each member who is about to have their first child or grand child. Someone asked for a 1,2,3 square, as we already have an A,B,C square, and since I couldn’t find one, I offered to design one. It was fun, and maybe I will actually offer the pattern sometime…
I believe then we reached the summer, and I started knitting on Oregon in earnest, I was determined to finish it in 2010. But in August I did design this little thing, after a friend of mine asked for a napkin ring and I discovered that one can hardly find any that are not knitted flat.
Which in turn lead to designing this coaster and place mat to match, and I am very proud to say that the pattern for this set of three has been used as one of the patterns for the Holiday Mystery Gifts group on Ravelry.
In September the designing bug bit once more, and I adapted this cute little guy from a crochet pattern.
In October, Oregon was finally finished, it took me 2 and a half years, which is really not bad if you realize how much I have done in the mean time.

After I finished Oregon, I started 2 more projects, but they were not finished in 2010, and therefore do not belong in this post. 😀 If you managed to read all the way to the end of this post, I greatly appreciate it. I love sharing my love for my hobbies, and appreciate any comments you might wish to leave.

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March, what happened to February???

It has been a long time since you have heard from me, dear reader. Last year I had a good reason for the silence around this same time, because I had just given birth to my second son. However, he is now a year old, and I have no good reason for this silence. Maybe it is just that January and February get me down, and there just seems so much to do. I don’t know. In any case, my apologies.

It is not even true that I have not done anything worth writing about. I hope to share some of my projects, fo’s and yes, disasters from the last two months with you over the next few days/weeks. But to start this party, I want to show you the project I was talking about last time. The Mystery Kal from Mmario. The group is now closed for new members, as the KAL is over, but you could still join his regular group, which is where any future KAL’s will be announced. There are also TONS of original patterns available for free once you join. Yup, I think I am a Mmario groupy, or as he likes to call us muse/enablers. 😉 Well, I finished the pattern, which is called Limberlost Luna, and here is the end result:

It was a lovely knit, and the resulting shawl looks great. It did not get to stay with me for too long, as a dear friend of mine bribed me with cashmere and sock yarn to get it. 😀 The suggestion with the original KAL was to use fingering yarn. I used an apricot colored lace weight Zephyr, as that is what I had in my stash, and as a result my shawl turned out on the small side. The next time I make this (and there will be a next time, even though I don’t say that very often) I will use fingering or even sport weight. But as it was, with the lace weight yarn, it is still a very nice shoulder cover, and fits just right to keep the chill off the shoulders/neck. I used only about 400 yards, and it took me about 6 or 7 weeks to do. But I did have to admit that I spend every spare minute knitting on it. Not that I have that much spare time….. A wonderful and quick knit, none the less.

Just to give you a taste, next I will reveal a disaster, another finished project, and progress pictures of some other project I am working on. But not until next time. See you then!

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One step at a time

I have something new to play with. It is a new KAL. And I am so far actually keeping up. You have no idea how exciting that is! 😀 I have participated in some KAL’s in the past, but I have never been able to keep up for long. One is now finished, it was Mystery Stole 3, also known as Swan Lake Stole. It was a lot of fun, but I quickly got behind, and it actually took me almost a year to get it finished. But it did get finished:

This time I am participating in the MMKKMMystery. It is a KAL that is hosted on Yahoo groups by one of my favorite lace designers, Mmario. It started on january 1st, and I immediately had to catch up because I did not have the yarn in the Netherlands, so I could not get started right away. Thankfully Mmario had taken these kind of start up problems into account, and kept the first 2 clues pretty small. I caught up before the third clue was posted. Here are my first and second clue:

And I could start clue 3 immediately when it was published, last Thursday night. Today I finished it:

I am so excited! One of the things I like about doing a mystery KAL is that you don’t know what the pattern is going to look like. There is always a wild guessing game as to the theme of the project. And you have to blindly trust the designer. After having been burned once because I trusted an unknown designer who did not actually deliver, I won’t easily do that again, except that I have been a member of MMarioKKnits for I think a year and a half now. I am certain that this shawl is going to be gorgeous, and that we will get all the clues required to finish the shawl.

I am very much looking forward to clue 4, which is due to come out sometime on Friday somewhere in the world. Yes, that means anywhere from Thursday night to Saturday morning. 😀

So in the meantime I will get back to the cardigan for Dear Son #1 and Oregon, which are both coming along splendidly.

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One chart down, how many more to go?

Okay, that was really sad. My last blog entry I was being all proud about having finished my spinning, and then it was quiet for more then a month. I promise I will do better! If I had any readers checking regularly, they are probably gone by now. But if anyone is still around, I will promise to blog more frequently. I do have some rather nice progress pictures tho. I finally finished Clue 3 for Casablanca,

with yet again a couple of extra beads. 😉

I added the beads where the “Windows” had an series of 3 knit stitches, on the middle knit stitch. I like how this shawl is turning out.
I also finally finished the last round and a half of Chart 2 for A’tuin. And I promised pictures of that as well.

And a closer look:

I am also very much enjoying working on this pattern. I am getting to part of the pattern where there are currently some problems, and MMario is trying his best to sort them out. I will either be patient, or try to discover what the problem is for my self. 🙂 I am currently not knitting very quick, since Dear Son (21Mos) has decided that making lace is more interesting for him to watch. Maybe I will so so of that the next time I blog. But it means that when he is awake, and I have a little time to sit down and do something fun, then he asks me to look at the lace pillow, not the lace knitting. Combine that with house hunting, and my spare time is pretty well used up. 🙂 So, I am going to end this post, hopefully hit publish rather then save, so I don’t have to wonder next time why it is not showing up, and get back to knitting. Happy Labor Day!

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