I have new projects! Remember that list of six things I was excited to start working on? I've started knitting away at it.

Shrug This is done.

The Bed and Breakfast Pullover is swatched and cast on for the second time. The first time, I made a really stupid mistake with the set up row.



The Baby Cobblestone is swatched and cast on and I'm working my way up the body. Not in any big hurry, because it's not going to take long and it's good mindless TV knitting, at least until I get to the yoke and have to figure out the decreases.



The Candleflame Skirt is about three inches long and, as long as I don't run out of the unidentified yarn I'm using, it's going to be a fun project. The lace pattern is an extremely easy 10 stitch repeat and the rows stack up in a way that makes sense. I'm not sure why the designer recommends putting a stitch marker after ever single repeat. Of course, now that I've typed that, I'm jinxed and will do something so stupid that I have to frog the whole thing.

I was going to start the striped garter stitch sweater yesterday, but put the magazine someplace safe while I was in that housekeeping frenzy. sigh

And I keep making new excuses not to cast on the Reversible Rib Shrug, even though I'd like to have it done so I can wear it. I don't think I know where the yarn is... I'm using the needles I want to swatch with for something else...that provisional cast on makes me nervous...

It's been the kind of week when your husband wakes you up at 4:30am to point out that the water bed is leaking and you're lying in a puddle of water, and the satellite dish (or the receiver, they weren't sure but they'd send me a new receiver as long as I committed to subscribe for another year) goes belly up, and there's been too much housework getting done and not enough knitting.

But I did finish Shrug This --



Pattern -- Shrug This
Yarn -- Caron Simply Soft Heathers (1 skein Truffle)

I was trying to copy the modifications that sparklingscraps had made to the one I saw on Ravelry, but when it came time to cast on I went from memory and changed the changes. I put the cables in the wrong place, but did keep the ribbed sleeves which were what drew me to the pattern in the first place. Even if they aren't in the pattern as written. I also changed the gauge and the measurements.

I want to knit. Yes, I just about always want to knit, but right now I really want to knit. I want to start a bunch of new projects all at once and get them all done and then cast on for more. My hands don't seem quite as excited about this as the rest of me, which kind of stinks, but I've got patterns and yarn, most of it stuff that's been aging quietly in my stash, and I think I'm going to spend the afternoon pulling things together and swatching and casting on so that when I do have time for some serious knitting it's ready to go.

So far, the ever-changing list of things I've gotta start now is:

Bed & Breakfast Pullover
Reversible Lace Rib Shrug with Swing Shaping from Elann
The Luna Flickering Flames Skirt from Elann
The Garter Stitch Stripes Sweater from Winter 2003 IK
Shrug This
a toddler-sized Cobblestone Pullover

Sometimes, it takes me an awfully long time to figure out the obvious.

After I finished Heath's latest sweater and pulled it over my own head to make sure that the neck was big enough, it hit me that with not too much more time and effort that I was spending on his over sized sweaters, I could've made one for myself. The Cobblestone actually fits me -- like a second skin with five inches of negative ease - but the point is that if I'd cast on 30 or 40 more stitches, I could've been making a sweater for me.

Then, when I was rooting around in my sewing room for those wooden needles that I still can't find, I had to move the copy of Interweave Knits which has been lying open to the Bed & Breakfast Pullover for I don't know how long. And it hit me that I can knit that. I've been wanting to knit that. I bought yarn to knit that a very long time ago. I did think seriously about casting on at some point since Leif was born, but took one serious look at the pattern and backed away in terror.

Now, I can't figure out what I was so scared of. It's a sweater. With lots of ribbing. And a big panel of cables. I can knit cables. I can definitely knit ribbing. Hopefully, I can get gauge.

"You knit it!"
"It has holes!"
"I need to take it off now."



I can't say that I disagree with the little guy's evaluation of Presto Chango. Except for part about the holes. There are no holes that aren't supposed to be there. But if you stretch the knitting hard enough, you can sure make it look like there are holes.

Maybe it'll grow on us. I could improve it by making the front panel longer, but I'm not that motivated. I'm not even motivated enough to go out and buy a set of buttons. This neckline just isn't going to work for Quinn, who insists on tugging the sweater down as far as it'll go.

Now that I've got the front of my Knitting Needle Knitting Bag done, I'm more desperate than ever to find those old wooden needles. This bag is going to need a great looking set of needles. I love the way the yarn looks in seed stitch, and it's coming out bigger than I'd expected.

There's a set of size 15 Clovers at Joann's that I could get with a 40% off coupon. And that'd be the perfect solution, if I wasn't halfway sure I had two better sets already. But they're not in the drawers of the steamer trunk, or on the fireplace mantel, or in the box with the zillion pairs of old aluminum needles Mom picked up dirt cheap at an estate sale...

I'm about out of places to look. So do I buy a new set, or stick the bag on a pair of aluminum needles and wait?

Falling leaves are "eeewww!"

I like watching leaves fall past the big picture windows, but this afternoon Leif was pointing at them and saying "eeeewww!" That's one of his favorite words, right up there with "ow!" and "bite?"

Bill's theory is that since the leaves have fallen onto the ground, Leif thinks they're garbage. I don't know what's going through his little head, but it's sure cute.

Today's been a good day. We drove to the feed store and bought huge pumpkins, then stopped at Costco to pick up a pumpkin pie on the way home. The little guys didn't nap, so it's almost bedtime and I rented a couple of movies to watch while I knit. Maybe I can make some more progress on Presto Chango.

Now that Cobblestone is done, the Knitting Needle Knitting Bag is going to take its place as my mindless TV knitting. At least until I cast on something new.

Cobblestone Pullover

Cobblestone Pullover from Interweave Knits Fall 2007

It took three skeins of Sierra Pacific Accord, which I picked up for $1 a skein at Craft Warehouse last Christmas. Cheaper than Red Heart Super Saver, and about as much fun to work with. Not saying that's a bad thing, just that the two yarns are in about the same league.

I like this sweater. It could've been better if I'd used nicer yarn and actually adjusted the numbers instead of just working at a tighter gauge, but I'm not starting over at this point. And Heath loves this sweater, which is what matters.

The pattern is easy and was fun to knit, but it did convince me that I'm not a huge fan of knitting garter stitch in the round. I'll do it if I like the pattern enough, which in this case, I did.



It's also occurred to me that with the same amount of energy I'm spending to make Heath these over sized sweaters, I could just about make one for myself.

I actually got out of the house by myself last night to go scrapbooking with my mom and a couple of friends. Quinn's birthday is coming up, so I left home at 2pm to do some shopping first, and didn't get back here until almost 1am. I should've been back around midnight, but we dawdled and talked on the way out to the cars, then there was a line at the drive thru when I stopped to get my diet Coke, then the onramp to I-5 that had been open earlier was shut down for construction so I had to double back through town to use one farther North....luckily Bill was already in bed and not waiting up for me!

I found a couple of presents for Quinn (how am I going to Christmas shop for two toddlers, 15 months apart?!) and stopped at the LYS to see if she still had copies of the Summer IK. Those are all long gone, but I got the Holiday issue. And I stopped at Costco for a couple of Christmas presents I'd been meaning to buy if I could get there without kids before they sold out -- and the Knitting Pattern a Day Calendar is finally in -- yippee! I've spent the past couple of weeks darting into Costco at every possible opportunity to see if they had it yet.

And I stopped in one of the antique shops in Lebanon to see if they still had the crochet booklets I spotted when Bill and the kids and I were there last week. I couldn't really look at them with a baby in my arms and I hadn't been able to get them out of my mind. I was going to pick out one or two, but then I got sucked in by all of that pretty lace and they all had to come live with me.



No, I still haven't made a serious attempt at learning to crochet, but at a dollar a piece, I spent the same on the whole stack than I did on the Holiday IK issue. Even if it turns out that I can't crochet to save my life, they're wonderful eye candy.

And, despite all of this wonderful stuff that I haven't even really looked through yet, I've spent a good chunk of my morning on Ravelry printing and queueing patterns for cabled hats. I don't wear hats.

Smariek Knits has some great hats and scarves, which I'd seen before but forgotten. And Knititude is making me absolutely drool. I want the Sorelle Lace Edged Pullover. And the Chinese Lace Pullover. This is the same designer who did that Wisteria dress I was considering for Alex a while back, then forgot about.

I love this whole Ravelry queue/favorites thing!

While I've been fantasizing about lace and cheap pretty acrylic, I've been slogging along on Heath's Cobblestone Pullover.



Last night, I finished the second sleeve and got the pieces knit together on one circular so I could start the yoke. So now I guess I'm on the home stretch. Those alternating knit and purl rounds, with short rows thrown in to keep it from being too easy and mindless, are looking kind of ominous. I know I need to make the yoke shorter, but I'm not sure how to do it and still get the short rows and decrease rows to work out right.

My enthusiasm for the Sierra Pacific Accord is fading fast, especially after I've been knitting with it for a while and then switch to something softer like the Wool-Ease I'm using for Presto Chango. But I'm this close to having the sweater done, Heath is really excited about it, and I'm just happy to be knitting.

Why I'm happy knitting this and not something nicer, I'll probably never figure out.

It seems like we always wind up taking Bill's vacation time in October. We get home in time for the kids to trick or treat on Halloween, but I miss most of the scary movies on television and never quite manage to get my act together enough to decorate the house or carve pumpkins or any of the rest of it.

But we're home this year, with no plans to go anywhere, and no vacation time left if the urge did strike. I've got cheap paper mache tombstones in my kitchen window, and drippy red blood that won't quite stick to the window.



And while we were at Walmart looking for costumes and cheesecloth to use, I took my first trip down the yarn aisle in months and my heart sank a bit because the shelves were so empty. There's an ugly rumor that they're going to close the whole section, and the manager tells me it's true, they just don't know when.

But the end must not be here quite yet. They've got new colors of Bernat Softee Chunky and a new-to-me yarn, Caron Simply Soft Heathers. The colors are gorgeous and it's almost as cheap as the regular Simply Soft -- $2.07 for a 250 yard skein.

I'll be buying enough for a Mommy-size sweater on the way to scrapbooking Friday night, when there aren't any little witnesses.

It's cold in here. I'm bundled up in flannel pajama pants and an old sweat shirt I bought at a thrift shop while I was pregnant with Alex ten years ago, fantasizing about this and that.

I found great-grandma's hairpin lace loom while Bill was tearing off the roof and I was moving boxes from one end of the attic to the other, trying to get the whole thing done before I ran out of daylight or it started to rain. And I printed out the tutorial from the Stitch Diva Studios site. Now I apparently need to find a crochet hook.

Assuming I can figure out how to actually do hairpin lace, I'll order the pattern and some yarn. Drapy dk weight, according to the pattern description. Sounds like Callista to me!

The Driftwood Victorian Shoulder Shawl is even more tempting. I already know how to knit lace, I've got the perfect yarn, and the pattern isn't too expensive (assuming I can find a place that won't charge $4.95 to ship it.

I'm resisting that temptation because I have plenty of other shawl patterns I'm not knitting and I know darn well I wouldn't cast on for this one as soon as the pattern got here. It could happen, like it did with the Callista shawl, but it's not very likely.

Ravelry and my dial up connection are playing nicely today, so I stumbled across this. I've been meaning to knit a squid hat since I stumbled across the pattern on Knitttingpatterncentral. But the felted squid is much cuter. And then I found this one. The big kids are just a tiny bit fixated on giant squids. And any stuffed animal that will eat someone's head is guaranteed to be a huge hit around our house.

I'm having a bad night

My Hemlock Ring Blanket is all scrunchy. The receipt I need for a stupid rebate on the stupid washing machine isn't in the drawer where I know I put it. I can't get Ravelry to work, or get through to the library's website to renew our books...

Tonight has not been a whole lot of fun.

Hopefully the blanket will look better if I block it again. It looked almost great until I used it -- maybe it wasn't dry enough when I moved it? Hopefully Lowes can send me a copy of the receipt, but I won't be able to find out until morning.

I did get a couple more inches done on the Cobblestone Pullover while we watched a DVD this afternoon. And somehow I wound up knitting this on Sunday night --



I swear, I made it from casting on to binding off almost without it sinking in that I had a new WIP. Calorimetry, knit up with a partial skein of Encore Colorspun that I don't quite remember getting, so it must be more auction yarn from Grandma. I absolutely love the colors and wish I'd had more of it.

Oh, and I started Presto Chango.

Rumplestiltskin! Rumplestiltskin!

Knitter's Stash is the book that made me need to knit. I'd already made a garter stitch hat from a Learn to Knit Kit that I got at Craft Warehouse for 75% of the lowest marked price. I'd knit a couple of dishcloths with holes that weren't supposed to be there, and a huge rectangular garter stitch thing that must've had some intended purpose when I cast on for it. (Several years later, we realized that if you folded the thing in half it was just the right size to line the bottom of Quinn's cradle, so it did get more use than most of my projects.)

I was having fun, but the yarn and needles hadn't taken over my life.

Then I brought home Knitter's Stash from the library and found the patterns for Rumplestiltskin's Toddler's Jacket and the linen washcloths. It was late at night and I waited very impatiently for morning so I could haul the book and two kids down the street to the LYS and buy the yarn.

They didn't carry chenille (or the Euroflax for the washcloths) and the owner told me it was too expensive, that I didn't want to knit with it, and that I should substitute two strands of whatever worsted weight I liked. So I wound up going to Walmart and letting Heath pick out Red Heart Supersaver in an extremely vivid combination of purple and teal.

The sweater had horrible gauge problems and didn't fit. I wound up hiding it at my Mom's house because poor Heath wanted to wear the sweater his mommy'd made him and it just wasn't possible. I had enough leftover yarn to make a second sweater with problems of its own, but at least he did get to wear that one.

Fast forward to last week and I had these three skeins of pink chenille and no desire to use it for a hat, a scarf or a bag. Then I remembered this little jacket and decided to check out the book again and try it in the chenille.



This one's a little better, but I won't be trying it a third time.

This isn't meant to be a complaint about the pattern. I think it's been a mix of bad luck, yarn choice, gauge and maybe the alignment of the planets or something squirrely like that.

Daddy's not on the roof anymore

My babies seem confused and a little bit sad. After almost two weeks of vacation time, Daddy is done fixing the roof and has gone back at work. Even though there's no more thumping and banging and bits of exciting stuff falling down past the kitchen window, they keep pointing up at the ceiling, saying "Daddy?"

I've been celebrating the new roof section and our return to a normal life by knitting like crazy.

The Hemlock Ring Blanket has a couple dozen more stitches to bind off, then I get to try blocking it.

The little chenille sweater I was thinking of casting on is done except for the back and a whole scary lot of finishing.

Knittingparents is doing a KAL for the Knitting Needle Knitting Bag and somewhere I've got a pair of beautiful old wooden needles with impossibly blunt tips that would make the perfect handles. I did my lifetime quota of berry stitch on that pineapple baby hat for Leif a while back and the yarn I'm determined to use looks horrible in berry stitch, so I'm doing seed stitch which so far looks pretty darn good. If I can remember wher I put those needles, and handle that much seed stitch, this may be a wonderful bag someday.

I found some green Wool-Ease for Presto Chango, but the two skeins are different dye lots. I'm determined to make a green one, so I guess I'll alternate between both skeins to make sure any color difference blends. Or something like that.

There's a free Showtime preview this weekend, so I've got the sattelite receiver set to auto tune some movies I never got around to renting. And I'm going to play with my yarn.

What big teeth you have, Grandma!

When I was little, I couldn't sleep at night unless this doll was put away, with Grandma's bonnet covering the wolf's face, and Red Riding Hood's dress covering them both.



My Great-Grandma Walters made it. Red's and Grandma's faces are painted on, and the wolf's features are felt. I remember being nervous about those teeth and that red mouth, but didn't really think much about those dead, sharklike eyes until I was taking his picture yesterday.

No wonder the thing creeped me out as a kid!



And while I was looking for something else in the sewing room a while back, I stumbled upon a handwritten copy of the pattern, the same one that Grandma used.




Visit Kelli's House to find more great Show and Tell Friday posts.

This feels like fall knitting

I pulled out the Hemlock Ring Blanket last night and sat up with it for a little while, knitting just a few rounds. It's almost time to start binding off, but I made myself go to bed at eleven. There's no such thing as staying up just long enough to finish that last round and bind off a few stitches. It either would have been so much fun I'd have sat up and done the whole thing, or so miserable I'd have spent hours lying awake and dreading the rest of it.

So I went to bed and tossed and turned and thought about yarn and patterns and how I want to cast on for a new pair of socks from the Socken-Kreativ-Liste that both intrigues and terrifies me, and debated whether or not I want to use that chenille to make that toddler jacket now that I've confirmed it's possible and found a girl toddler who happens to be the right size and who I really should knit something for, and worried about the wooden needles with the blunt tips that I suddenly need but might've gotten rid of...

So I didn't get up before the kids and start binding off the blanket this morning like I'd hoped to.



The Cobblestone Pullover has been a happy knit so far, a good project to pick up and work on while I've got to keep my attention on other things. I've got about four more inches of mindless knitting before it'll be time to do some math and start the sleeves.

I'm sizing it down for Heath by kntting at a tighter gauge. Hopefully that means I can knit the yoke part as written and have it turn out okay. If not, I'll figure out how to fix the problems as they crop up. How bad can it get?

The Sierra Pacific Accord has been a bit of a mystery yarn. I've only found a couple of mentions of it online -- both of those knitters absolutely hated it. I don't think it's that horrible. It's cheap acrylic, along the lines of Red Heart Super Saver, but even cheaper. I bought a bunch on sale for $1 a skein last Christmas.

I did actually knit and wash a swatch, and it seemed to come out just the same as it went in. Okay, it was a baby hat, but that's as close to knitting and washing a swatch as I'm likely to get.

Quilting has taught me valuable skills!

Last night, Bill said it would save him a whole bunch of time if I cut the shingles for the top edge of the roof. After he's spent the past I don't know how many days up on the roof from the time he got out of bed until it got to dark to work, I wasn't going to complain that I didn't want to do it.

But I sure wasn't looking forward to the job. At the very least, I was afraid it'd be hard on my hands, which are already twinging a bit lately. I was very good last night and put down the Cobblestone Pullover at the first little ache.

Turns out, cutting shingles into thirds is an awful lot like cutting quilt squares. Except the shingles are already slit halfway, so there's no measuring. And the cuts don't have to be anywhere near as straight to be good enough. And I think it's faster, maybe because you don't have to iron anything first...

I was adding new yarn to my Ravelry stash earlier and having trouble with some of the links, so I went looking through the forums to see if it was my computer or a Ravelry thing and stumbled across a discussion about the massive yarn stash.

What is with some of these people? What makes them think they have the right to decide how big a complete stranger's stash should be? Why would they even care how much yarn a stranger has, let alone make public statements about what she should or shouldn't do with it?

That's why I was hesitant to put my stash information on Ravelry. I wasn't sure I dared to admit how much yarn I've got.

I've added a lot more this month. There was the Elann order and the cheap acrylic sale at Michaels. And then while my house was at its most chaotic yesterday, Dad called from his cell phone to tell me that Mom wanted to know if I knew about a yarn called "Paintbox" and if it was worth a dollar a skein. She was at a yard sale buying quilt fabric and the lady had some yarn. We had half a conversation, I hung up and got things settled, then called back to see if she'd bought me the yarn and what exactly it was.

Six skeins of Knit One Crochet Too Paintbox in different colors. And the lady had some other stuff, along with a bunch of Homespun. Dad turned the car around and drove back to get me two matching skeins of Homespun I've been after for a project. Have I mentioned what a wonderful enabler he is? The lady wound up selling them all of her yarn for fifty cents a skein, so along with the Paintbox, I wound up with four skeins of Berroco Suede in different colors, two skeins of Softwist, and five skeins of Homespun.

I have no clue what I'm going to make with it. And that doesn't bug me one bit.

Why haven't I had a knitting bag lately?

Once upon a time, my knitting projects were ready to go. I could pick up a bag on the way out the door. During that eternity in the hospital a couple of years ago, I could call home and tell my oldest exactly where to find the yarn and patterns I wanted her to bring me.

Then, somehow, the knitting got loose. It literally escaped. Projects -- big, half finished projects -- are missing. I have no stitch markers, even though I know I've bought at least three packs of jump rings so far this year. I even managed to lose track of the big three ring binder with my patterns in it. The past four month or so have been hectic, but not enough to explain that. How could I forget the whole concept of knitting bags?

Last night, it finally hit me that instead of carrying the Hemlock Ring into the dining room and hiding it on top of my sewing machine, I could put it in a bag, the one that even says "Knitting" on the front. Along with the Cobblestone Pullover. And their patterns. I'll still have to hide the bag, but at least things will be together.



As for other projects, we're still working on the roof. That means Bill works on the roof while I stay in the house with the kids and listen for him to bang for my attention, then find whatever it is that he needs and hand it through from the attic.

What kind of person uses flattened beer cans instead of flashing? (Probably the same jerk who "forgots" to load up the cat when they moved and then told us to just take her to the pound if she got in our way.) If he'd done the roof right, we wouldn't be losing the wonderful old tongue and groove boards that give the attic so much character.

We knew the house was a fixer-upper with hidden problems, but someone went way out of his way to hide a few of them.

And, just to put everyone's minds at ease, BooBoo still has the run of the place and although she seems older than dirt and I expect her to keel over any day, she's doing just fine. We're saving as much of the tongue and groove as we can in hopes of keeping the other half of the attic intact, and it's my new mission in life to make sure that nothing that could be of use to anyone goes on the burn pile.

Cheap acrylic!

I think I might've mentioned that cheap acrylic makes my heart go pitty-pat. I've developed some standards (at least when it comes to overpriced estate sale stuff), but Simply Soft for two bucks a skein? I've been dancing around the house with anticipation since I saw the Michaels flyer Sunday. And wishing there was one just a bit closer to home.

The new Michaels, which is even farther from home and less convenient than the one they closed down, but does have a lot more yarn, is next to the new Lowes...Bill's using a week of vacation to reroof the house...

So he sat in the van with the kids while I did some quick stash enhancement and then the whole family shopped for shingles and nails and roofing felt and I don't know what all else.

I got a bunch of the Simply Soft and some Bernat Satin Sport, which I hadn't seen before, and some wool to make myself cabled mittens. I'm sooo in the mood to knit sweaters right now, as soon as I finish the Hemlock Ring.