Fancy Fulness

Yup, I'm still giddy about my pink lace. I absolutely love this shawl! The pattern, the yarn, the needles -- it all worked together just right.



The pattern was relatively easy to keep track of. With the wide edging and whatever that pretty pattern in the middle is (at first I thought the chart looked like hearts, but now I don't see those at all), it was quickly obvious if my stitches weren't lining up the way they should.

The wide border is gorgeous and I have a feeling I may use it again on something else.



Knitpicks Shadow is my absolute favorite lace weight yarn. I'm sure I spent more on the diet Coke I drank while knitting this than on the yarn. It took just a couple of yards from the second skein to finish the last rows.

I definitely need more Harmony circulars.

I checked this book out from the elementary school library over and over and over. It was full of fascinating things I just knew I could never try -- projects involving plaster and sharp knives and dead fish!



Out of the blue, I thought about it the other day, just a passing wisp of memory that couldn't go anywhere because I didn't know any actual details about the book, just that it had instructions for making prints with paint and dead fish and punching holes in empty tin cans to make lanterns.

I wasn't looking for it this afternoon. I was trying to hurry the kids out of the library so we could go meet Grandma across town and Alex needed a book with directions for braiding hemp bracelets and I was out of patience and bypassed the computers and helpful librarians to see if something would jump off the shelves at us. I wasn't even looking at the shelf this book was on, but the familiar spine jumped out at me.

While Alex was in karate, I flipped through it. The text is all handwritten, and I remember struggling to read it. I don't remember actually trying to make any of the projects, although I'm sure I would've tried some of the little paper ones.

Now that I'm all grown up and can buy plaster and risk my own fingers playing with tin cans, there are other things to be inspired and intimidated by. Like a whole stack of Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazines that I got off of Freecycle this morning.

I've been seduced by that magazine since I first saw it at the grocery store, but $8 an issue is a lot and there were always a couple of quilting or knitting magazines that I wanted more. I actually know how to quilt and knit. There's the possibility that I'll do more than drool over those.

I'm seriously loving Freecycle. It even found a happy home for our old love seat and chair, which weren't quite ready for the landfill yet.

Can I just stay home and knit?

Our new furniture was delivered four days ago and I'm still a bit giddy -- and also terrified that the kids are going to do something destructive to it. I could just sit here and knit forever. Especially in the recliner. I'd rather look at the pretty flowered couches, but I'd rather knit in the recliner.



I'm on clue six of Fancy Fulness and had to cheat just a bit to fix a mistake I couldn't find -- but I think everything is okay now.



After a couple of days of sorting and cutting, I can't decide whether I like the new scrap quilt or hate it. I love the picture in the magazine and mine has potential. But I don't know if I should tear apart the blocks I've got done and replace the bright fabrics that are nagging at me, or have faith that it'll all work out and use more of those colors.

Today has been gorgeous. The kids ran wild outside for hours and I spent time in the sewing room sorting fabric to find the right colors for two new quilts I'd like to start soon. And for the three scrap quilts I'm already working on. Then the mountain of fabric got overwhelming and I sat and flipped through old quilting magazines and found another five or six projects to fall in love with.

I will work my way through these scraps!

Now that the binding for the shaded nine-patch is mostly on, I'm feeling motivated to finish more quilt tops. Binding had intimidated me, to the point that I thought I'd probably never manage to do it right. I was just going to make a bunch of unfinished quilt tops to hand down to my future grandchildren.

Turns out that binding isn't like seaming sweaters. You cut it and iron it and sew it on and although my hand sewing leaves a lot to be desired, it's on the back. And these aren't heirlooms.

Pink Lace!

Things have finally settled down enough for me to pull out Fancy Fulness and finish clues three and four. I'm not sure why I'm so excited about knitting pink lace, but it seems like the neatest thing ever and once I get going I have a hard time putting it back down.

When I first downloaded the chart, I had a strong feeling that my Fancy Fulness should be be pink. I didn't have any, so the pattern sat for a while until I remembered the reddish pink lace weight Bill bought me for my birthday last year. Maybe I'd been thinking of that yarn the whole time and that was where the odd pink urge came from.

Turns out I absolutely hate that yarn. Then I remembered some pink fingering weight that was given to me a while back and was all set to cast on with that when I saw the new Shadows colors.

This is the right pink.

The Tribbles are multiplying quickly. I finished #5 in the drive thru while waiting for my dinner. When did tomatoes become a source of terror? And why can't I have cilantro or onions on my burrito either? I don't want the tomatoes if they're going to kill me, but the other trimmings would have been nice.

I might be getting a bit crabby. It's not helping that I've been going to bed hours earlier than usual and feeling just as exhausted as I do when I stay up knitting until 2am. So why have I been sacrificing my best knitting time?

Probably because I'm too tired to do anything but tribbles.

What I want to do is figure out Noviembre. I almost knew a little Spanish once.

It's a tribble!



The yarn and needles and first six rows of this have been riding around in my purse for months now. I dug it out this afternoon while Bill was comparison shopping for tires and I was in the car with my napping babies.

As soon as we got home, I headed to the sewing room to see what other scraps of kitchen cotton I could dig out. I need more of these!

That's such a great idea!

Too many of my knitting and quilting projects start with that thought and turn out not to be much fun at all.

And then there was last night's little adventure. The kids from our church had the chance to sleep with the sharks at the aquarium. Doesn't that just sound like the coolest thing ever? When we found out about the trip a couple of months ago, I got my kids signed up and got myself signed up as a chaperone. We scheduled our vacation around it.

I couldn't manage a decent picture of where we slept without getting anyone else in the shot, but I found a picture of the tunnel. We were in the tube with the sharks. I spent most of the night lying awake and watching leopard sharks and bat rays drift past, sandwiched between my two littlest guys.

We were supposed to get up at a quarter to seven. I don't know what time Quinn and Leif started taking turns waking up and immediately going back to sleep, but it was a lot earlier than that. If I'd had my knitting with me, it would've been fine, but were weren't supposed to have anything in the tunnel but bedding and I thought smuggling in a sock and dpns would have been a bit ridiculous.

It would have been smart. Those sharks were absolutely fascinating for the first few hours, but I sure could've used something to keep my hands busy.

It was a once in a childhood opportunity that I'm sure the big kids will remember forever, and I'm glad we went. But I am ready to collapse from exhaustion.

Diamonds and Pearls

pattern from The Knitter's Book of Yarn
yarn from a 49 cent thrift store sweater
size 8 Denise needles



I really like this little shawl. It's the kind of pattern I hoped to find in all of those one-skein books.

Because I was using the sleeves of a thrift store sweater, I doubt my gauge was anywhere near the pattern's. I added a few repeats at the end to make it longer and, because I couldn't get the knitted edging to work out right, dug out a crochet hook and tried to do it that way.

I'm now officially in love with crocheted edgings and won't shy away from them in the future.



This is the first batch of quilted postcards for a swap I'm in. I spent hours and hours dreaming up appliqued cards, then realized that what I really wanted to do was piece them. So I'm making flying geese. And pinwheels, but I don't like the way they're coming out nearly as well.

It's thirty degrees cooler. It's raining. Apparently I'm the only one happy about this.



Pattern: Citrus Yoke Pullover (Interweave Knits - Winter 2007)
Size: 45"
Yarn: Bernat Softee Chunky Twists, taupe, 7 skeins
Needles: Denise size 10

Four years ago, I knit Alex a sweater out of Softee Chunky. I hated the yarn while I was knitting with it, but after repeated washings it softened and became her absolute favorite sweater. I wish I'd made it a couple of inches longer so she didn't have to give it up now that it's getting a bit too cropped.

I've been wanting to knit myself a sweater out of the same stuff and actually did start the Bed & Breakfast Pullover a while back, but that one is going to take forever, so when I saw the Citrus Yoke Pullover pattern and Michaels had all yarn 25% off, I bought yarn for this one.

It only took about two weeks to knit and even the patterned yoke didn't require a whole lot of concentration.

It fits! And I had enough yarn! This is only the second "real" sweater I've knit for myself, so I was holding my breath a lot of the time.

I only repeated the zigzag lace once before starting the increases and the neck is still higher than I'd like. If I was going to knit this one again, I'd start the repeats immediately. And add some shaping to the sleeves.



Fancy Fulness is a lot more fun now that I'm not struggling with the cobwebby yarn. I made it through the first two clues on Sunday night and as soon as the house is quiet, I'll be starting clue 3.

The yarn is Pink Posy, one of the new Knit Picks Shadows colors. When they released the newest batch of colors and announced that the prices were going up, I splurged. Now I've got almost more pretty lace weight than I know what to do with.

It's too hot.

Four or five weeks ago, we missed Sunday School because it was snowing hard enough that the plow came by three times. It's not supposed to snow at all in April, let alone snow hard enough that they break out the snow plows.

And it's not supposed to top ninety degrees in the middle of May! My babies are miserable, and so am I.

We spent Friday morning at a Civil War reenactment. Alex, who's been up to her ears in the Civil War lately, watched the demonstrations while the little guys and I tried to find nearby bits of shade to hide in. We made it through to the battle, but by the time we got home, I was sunburned and completely done in. No one but Mom gets sunburned at our house. It's some kind of rule.



I couldn't skip the war, and I wasn't going to skip my trip up to town on Saturday to quilt with Mom's fun toy. She'd invited me up to do the monkey quilt, but I don't really like the monkey quilt. I absolutely adore the offset diamond quilt I finished piecing last week, so I used the batting I'd bought for the monkey quilt and did mine instead. I thought I was going to use some polyester batting and tie the monkey quilt, but now that I know how much fun the longarm is, I'll probably reconsider that plan.

That was two full days out and about in the heat. I planned to come straight home after church and spend the rest of the day under the ceiling fans. Nope. The car wash to raise money for the aquarium trip was today.

I really want to stay out of the sun and out of the car for the next couple of days before it's back to karate and quilting at the church and whatever else there is that I either have to do or want to do.

There's a thread over on Ravelry asking whether cheap yarn detracts from the knitting. Why on earth would it?

I'm almost done with the Diamonds and Pearls Shawl, knit with the unravelled arms of a 49 cent cotton thrift store sweater. I love the color, the drape, the wonderful squooshiness of it...

This is yarn I would've bought in actual skeins.

And it's not the only time I've done this. Ester started life as a couple of sweater sleeves from the same thrift store. The felted firefighter hat was ugly blue auction wool that took a swim in some red Kool Aid.

I've had a disaster or two, but I've also had problems with LYS yarn. I've got more patience with the cheap stuff, just because I know that when I'm using it I'm taking my knitting into my own hands.

Still busy here. I've been on the elliptical first thing every morning, worked my way down through the yoke of the Citrus Yoke Pullover and started on the body, cut more two inch squares, and got this put together --



This is those 729 three inch squares that I started playing with a couple of months ago. For way too long, it's been sitting in piles on my sewing machine and ironing board and I've been avoiding it because I was afraid I might have lost some of the pieces. And I'd returned the library book with the layout I was using.

I tried to do it from memory, got nowhere with that, then remembered the picture I'd taken and posted to the blog a while back. That did the trick and after the kids were in bed I laid it out on the living room floor and got the blocks pinned into rows. The next day, I got all of the blocks sewn together.

I'm anxious to get this quilted so I can snuggle up under it, but I'm not sure if I should wait until I can use Mom's long arm machine or try to do it on my regular machine here at home.

I somehow got really busy really fast.

It started with the wire mesh shelves I bought at Costco a month ago. They made it up to the sewing room and sat, then last week the kids were playing outside and it seemed like a good idea to put them together. I don't care what the instructions say, it wasn't easy and there was no "really fun part." I actually bled. But the thing does hold a ton of yarn and look pretty nice, even if I don't have room to set it up with all eight blocks.

A couple of days later, I talked Bill into finally putting together the eliptical he bought me for Christmas. That thing should have been marketed as a kit -- I've never seen so many little loose pieces. But there were no injuries, unless you want to count the sore muscles I've had since I started using the thing.



I started and finished the Soft Baby Cardigan from Knitter's Book of Yarn for a friend at church who isn't sure yet if she's having a boy or a girl. I had to get one girly thing done before the ultrasound limited my options. I could've used a neutral color, but the raspberry skein has been sitting in my stash forever and I feel good about using it up. I also love the way it looks in the box stitch pattern.



Last night, I cast on for the Diamonds and Pearls Shawl from the same book, which I really want, but hadn't started before now because there's no chart. People on Ravelry claim to have knit it in two or three evenings -- I can put up with the written instructions for that long. Maybe longer, because I really like the way this yarn is working up and might make mine bigger.



And I cast on for the Citrus Yoke Pullover this morning. I've got my fingers tightly crossed that it'll fit and that I have enough yarn. Mostly that it'll fit -- I can buy more yarn.

I solved the mystery!

Those green lace socks don't fit because instead of purling the wrong side of the heel flap, I slipped every other stitch. If I'd read the pattern carefully, I probably would have a sock that came out the right size.

That's one pair out of four that didn't work out, so I guess I'm happy enough. My socky enthusiasm has started to fade, but so far nothing more exciting is screaming for me to knit it.

Maybe because I keep starting so darn many quilts. Now it's a 21st Century Bullseye. I did about six blocks last night and can't really decide if it's what I want to do with my big florals or not. I've got to make 48 blocks and then cut each of those into quarters and sew them back other with pieces from the other blocks, and the raw edge applique won't do its thing until the whole thing is quilted and washed, so I won't know until the end if it works. I'm not sure I can handle that much suspense.

My mother doesn't appreciate my taste in fabric, at least not when it comes to the skulls. But these have to be the most wonderful skull fabric I've ever seen. Now I'm determined to find the perfect red floral and make myself a tote bag.



The church group met this morning and started our new project - a mariner's compass quilt. I love the pattern, but after working hard to match plaid stripes and learn a new technique, I feel like doing something really mindless tonight. Not sure if that'll be knitting or quilting -- or maybe a little of both.

.


The Smores Socks are done and they aren't quite as snug as I feared they'd be. Maybe my feet were swollen when I tried on the first one.

The Ivy Lace socks, though, will not fit. I was sure I had it right, but nope. The one I've finished fits my eleven year old daughter's foot just fine. The foot fits me, but the leg is too narrow. I'm missing some important knitting concept here, but I can't figure out what it is.

And since she wants them and she's the only one in the house I haven't made a pair of socks for, I'm going to finish the pair and give them to her.

I Want This Quilt!

This is the quilt I'm suddenly so motivated to work on -- Scrappy Squares by Carol Clark, pattern in Traditional Quiltworks #70. I've had the magazine turned open to the black and white pattern page for so long I almost forgot what the finished quilt was supposed to look like. I've been focusing on the part where I cut tons and tons of little squares and eventually join them into units. I was picking up yesterday and turned to the picture and it hit me again that I really want to have this quilt.

If I actually follow the pattern as written, it'll be big enough to cover my bed. Which got me worrying. Maybe I should be sticking to some kind of color scheme. Maybe I should be making the shaded nine-patch quilt bigger. Maybe putting on those pieced borders will be too much for me.

Maybe I should stop worrying and go cut more squares.

I'm loving my personal sock club -- so far I've opened up two little brown bags and cast on two pairs that I probably wouldn't have started without it. Add those to the two pairs I'd started already and that's more sock knitting in a couple of weeks than I've done in the past two years.

I didn't match up patterns with the yarn in advance, but I've got ideas for most if not all of the skeins I bagged up.



The green pair is Ivy Lace from Socks Socks Socks and whatever the problem was in the beginning, I think I've got it beat now as long as I pay attention. I've already mentioned how excited I am about that heel flap and gusset, even though it's nothing special. I almost always substitute short row heels, so for me these are kind of fancy.

The pink multi-colored pair is a pattern I'm making up myself as I go along. I'd had a particular stitch pattern in mind for this yarn, but once I found the book and looked at the looooong written directions, so I almost chickened out. Turns out that once you get going it's a really easy pattern to follow. Which makes me wonder why more patterns don't just say to knit the knits and purl the purls or "continue as established."

My big passion right now is the new scrap quilt. I cut another 250 little squares yesterday and would have done more except the blade in my rotary cutter is so dull I was killing my wrist. Blades have been on sale at Joann's, which means both stores I checked were totally sold out of them. And I can't remember where the rest of the blades I actually own are. Out of reach of the kids, apparently.

I would have inflicted more pain on myself and cut more squares during nap time this afternoon, but the new Stephen King book is due back at the library tomorrow and no way was I going to take it back without finding out how it ended. It kept picking up speed and getting eerier and now I'm in that weird slightly sad haze that hits when you've been sucked into a book and there's suddenly no more to read.

I've still got a whole stack of core four readers to plow through if I'm going to keep ahead of Alex and most of those are pretty good, but it won't be the same.

While I was typing this, I thought of another out of reach place I might've put those blades and went to check. No luck there, either, but I did run up to the sewing room to get the rotary blade sharpener Mom bought me for Christmas.

I'd put off trying it because I'm afraid of cutting off my own fingers, and I didn't want to mess up the only blade in the house. But my desire to cut more squares overrode my instinct for self preservation and I was really careful and it looks like now I've got a blade that will actually cut fabric!

What I don't have is the time to set up the iron and cutting mat for more than enough minutes. I'm about out of afternoon and need to cook some veggies to go with the roast that's been doing its thing in the crock pot.

I cast on for another lace shawl last week and it was a nightmare. The chart was great, but the yarn and needles weren't working and I couldn't understand why things were going so completely wrong. I was using lace weight and size 3's and everything was impossibly loose, even though the pattern actually called for size 8 needles. I knit Frozen Lake with lace weight on 6s and (not counting my inability to increase lace in pattern) it worked .... It wasn't making sense and I really want to try that pattern, so I decided to cast on again with Palette but if I gave up on lace weight, what would happen to my Bayou Shimmer and the rest of my lace weight stash?

That's the kind of thing that makes me lie awake at night and worry.

By the light of day, I figured it out. The yarn I was fighting with had 1300 yards in a 100 gram skein, which makes it a lot finer than anything else I've ever tackled. I hate it. And guess what -- it's LYS yarn. Because if I'm going to hate a yarn this much, it's going to be something I bought at a "real" yarn store and spent more than usual on.

So I'm going to bury that yarn in the darkest recesses of my stash and pull out one of my single skeins of Gloss lace weight and see if I can't make it work. Turns out that the pattern I'd planned to use doesn't have charts and I'm not in the mood for miles of written instructions, so I searched Ravelry and found some possibilities.

I'm pretty sure I want these --

Anya
Laminaria
Shetland Shimmer Scarf
Bear Claw Scarfette

And I also like these --

Enchanting
A Scarf for Ally
Traveling Roses Lace Scarf
Lucy's Diamonds

Sorta Swirly O Socks

Edited on 2/21/13 so I can link up to Show Us Your Socks at Patchwork Times.

I really liked the texture of the yarn I used for these, Knitpicks Dancing. That one's long discontinued, but according to my Ravelry stash, I should have a few different colorways of it up in the sewing room. If I can't lay my hands on that, I have some Paton's Stretch, which is similar.

I need to cast on some new socks!

---

The Sorta Swirly O Socks are done and on my feet. The stitch pattern isn't obvious unless you're looking at them up close, but it served its purpose and kept the knitting more entertaining than plain stockinette would have been.



Pattern -- kind of loosely based on the Swirly O Socks from the Knitters Book of Yarn. Mine are in a different gauge, toe up instead of cuff down, and minus the picot border.

Yarn -- Knitpicks Dancing

This is the second pair of socks I've made with Dancing. The colors do some funky things, like perfect striping within the pools, but I love the texture and was sad to see it discontinued. Risata seems to have a similar texture and I've got a couple of skeins stashed, so I'll have to experiment with it soon.

The new socks aren't going as well. I got the ribbing and first eight rounds of lace done in one sitting, then picked them up a day later and couldn't get the next round to come out right. I always had two stitches left over. Convinced I'd lost track of where the round started, I frogged and started over. And had two extra stitches at the end of the 9th round.

I counted stitches. I went over the whole round, comparing it to the chart. I'm sure I said some unladylike things as I tinked back to the knit row and counted those stitches. And when I reknit it, that round came out just fine.

I have no clue what I did wrong -- twice.

This should be an easy lace pattern, but now it's got me a little spooked.