Welcome to My Pity Party

I am happy to report that I am feeling about ten times better this morning than I was at the end of last week. That said, I still haven't tested negative yet, so I'm still isolating from the Mister -- and it meant that I missed family dinners and services for Rosh Hashanah. I did, however, manage to make challah, and as promised, here's a photo:

The braid/weave looked a lot clearer before it was baked, but I'm still pretty happy with how this turned out, given it was the first time I'd ever tried a round loaf. I sent it to dinner with Mo and the Mister on Friday night and then had my sad little dinner alone with no challah. I didn't want to replicate that particular pity party on Saturday, so I baked some more and tried a different method of shaping:

One of these loaves went into the freezer, but I just had a couple of slices of the other for breakfast. Yum!

I spent a lot of the weekend crocheting and watching TV, but yesterday I was feeling well enough to tackle some cleaning (bathrooms), laundry, and a walk. Today it's back to work, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a negative test later today.

It wasn't all doom and gloom over the weekend, though. Thanks to all the extra crocheting time, I finished the blanket -- which I'd only just started last Thursday!

I did not use a pattern for this blanket, but I can try to explain how I did it. First, I'd learned this method of crochet using a free tutorial that I found on Ravelry (there are a ton of tutorials out there, on blogs and YouTube). Then, I did a little swatch. I crocheted a small square using the variegated skein that came with this set and weighed and measured it to determine how much yarn I used per square inch. Then I used that information to figure out how large a blanket I could make with the yarn I had and what dimensions it could be (I knew I wanted a rectangle, so that made the math a little more challenging). Once I had my numbers, the rest was straightforward. 

I based my calculations on having 500 grams of yarn (five 100 g skeins), but all of mine were a bit more than that, and so I ended up with a bit left of the last skein -- I used a total of 479 grams. I didn't want to cut it too close and risk running out, so I'm happy with that. The finished blanket is about 25 inches wide and 40 inches long, but the yarn is superwash, so I may try to stretch it out a bit larger when I block it. As is, though, it's the perfect size to cover my legs. Perhaps more importantly, it used up a bit more than 1,100 yards of yarn from my stash! It was really the perfect thing to work on while I was sick because it's pretty darn mindless, and now I'm a bit sad that it's done because I won't have it to work on. I suppose I will just need to start another one!

A Diagnosis

As soon as I read the comments on my last post, I realized exactly what's wrong with me: I have a classic case of Startitis. It's not a condition I've suffered from much in the past, because I always tend to have multiple projects going and thus don't often feel a need to cast on something new and exciting (because usually one of my projects always fits the bill). I guess my current projects just aren't fulfilling enough, hence the desire to KNIT ALL THE THINGS.

The good news is that I'll be able to cast on for yet another sweater next Saturday, when the Fall for Tosh knitalong kicks off, but until then, I'm afraid it has to be all blanket, all the time (well, except for my lunch breaks, when I can work a bit on the Goodale).

We're getting into that time of year when the only good light to photograph things is during the day when I'm at work, so apologies for the flash photo, but at least you can get a good idea of how this is growing. I'm on the seventh stripe and the stitches are finally getting pretty comfortable on the 40" needle. The skeins of yarn are also starting to look slightly smaller, so I'm clearly making progress. The original intent was to knit until my yarn runs out, ideally completing a three-stripe sequence, so we'll see how far that gets me. The mom-to-be is at 39 weeks and counting, so I don't want this baby to have to wait for his blanket!

21 Is the Magic Number

I know I've been complaining about this blanket for a while, but now I can say with certainty that my kvetching is over -- the blanket is complete!

Pattern: Rainbow Chain Carriage Blanket (Raverlry link) by Erika Flory, Knotions spring 2009
Yarn: Berroco Vintage (50% nylon, 40% wool, 10% nylon), in Mochi (1.5 skeins) and Dark Denim, Bilberry, and Misty (0.5 skeins each)
Needles: US 7 (4.5 mm)
Started/Completed: August 13/October 27
Dimensions: 25" wide x 28.5" long
Mods: followed Courtney's changes (see below)

I didn't realize how involved this blanket was when I bought the yarn and cast on. I wasn't a good knitter and didn't read through the pattern before I started, and so I didn't realize right away that it involved intarsia. Now, I hadn't done any intarsia in years because the first (and last!) time I tried it, it seemed way too fiddly. I realize now that the instructions I was using then were way more involved than they needed to be and that all that was needed was a simple twisting of the yarns. The difficulty lies in keeping an even tension, and really, with all the stranded colorwork I've done since then, tension issues aren't really an issue anymore. So I'm no longer afraid of intarsia. Go me!

If you click over to the pattern, you'll notice that my blanket doesn't look that much like the original, and that's because I pretty much copied Courtney's blanket -- to the point of asking her for her mods -- with the exception of the colors I used. Instead of the double chain in each stripe, there is one chain that is centered in the stripe. I actually like this version better. I think it's a little cleaner and the stripes of the background color are a little easier to see. I also opted for only three colors for the stripes, rather than a rainbow. The recipient specifically requested a blanket in blue(s), and I thought a few shades would add a little more interest than just one. Changing colors so frequently did mean a lot of ends to weave in, but I did that as I went, which was a huge relief when I bound off and had only a couple of yarn tails left to weave in.

I picked this project up and put it down over the course of many weeks, so the start-to-finish time isn't really an accurate representation of the time it took to complete. I'd say that each stripe took an hour, more or less, to complete, including the time I spent detangling my skeins. When I started, I knew that I wanted it to be rectangular but didn't have an exact number of stripes in my head; I figured I'd just keep knitting until it looked long enough. In the end, 21 turned out to be the magic number. A little bit of blocking magic helped to make it just a bit bigger, and now it's a size that should still be good through the toddler years.

Yarn selection for this blanket was also heavily influenced by Courtney's version. I wanted something washable with at least some wool in it, and the Vintage certainly fit the bill. I am usually not a fan of acrylic, but this yarn feels more like a superwash wool -- soft and bouncy without the telltale acrylic "squeak." I enjoyed knitting with it, and it was certainly economical and produced a baby-friendly blanket. I have enough leftover that I can probably make a small sweater or some accessories with it, too.

Because I've been complaining about this project so much, I feel I should tell you a little bit about the recipient. The mom-to-be is the older sister of my childhood best friend, so in a way she's been like a big sister to me my whole life. To be perfectly honest, she's also someone I never quite expected to settle down; she's always someone I thought of as living the glamorous life. But she is now married and expecting a baby boy right around Christmas, and I couldn't be happier for her. We have spent Christmas with her family every year for at least the last decade, and we have been told by the mom-to-be that everything will be as per usual this year, whether or not the baby has arrived!

Finishing this blanket seems to have kick-started my knitting mojo, so expect to see a slew of other finished projects in the near future!

Just About

Come hell or high water, the striped baby blanket will be done tonight! I sat down with it and an episode of Masterpiece Mystery last night and managed to get through a couple more stripes, so at this point I have about a stripe and a half and the end border to go. Now that the end is in sight, I am very glad that I've been weaving in ends as I go, because I think it would be very disheartening to bind off and discover I had another evening's worth of work to do before it was really and truly finished. I'll have just a handful of ends to weave in when I bind off, and then all this blanket will need is a nice bath in some Soak before it's laid out on some drying racks to dry. I'm rather excited by the fact that I will have finished it almost two months before it's needed, but there is still at least one other thing to knit for this baby before I'm done, so I'm not crossing the recipient off my list just yet.

Once the blanket is done, I will finally sit down and swatch for my Effortless Cardigan, though I'll have to be patient with that as well while I wait for the swatch to dry. Assuming I can get gauge and don't have to reswatch too much (or at all), I should be able to cast on this weekend.

More immediately, I need to get going on some cold weather accessories for Rainbow, as the temperature has been dropping here and the kids are still going outside to play during the day when the weather is cooperative. She finally consented to wearing the handspun Aviatrix hat I made her last year on Tuesday (and was apparently quite excited to put it on again when the group went outside in the afternoon), but the novelty seems to have worn off because she would not let me fasten the strap this morning.

So I need to some up with some other alternatives. I have a couple of skeins of yarn leftover from her purple sweater that I think would be perfect for a hat and/or mittens; considering purple is her color of the moment, there's actually a chance she might choose to wear a purple hat if I made one. Last year, she absolutely loved a fleece-lined earflap hat from the Gap, so I'm thinking of doing something with a similar look. This one that I found on Ravelry seems like it will work, though I'll be leaving the spikes off and perhaps using pompoms rather than the ties. This is, of course, subject to the toddler's approval, so we shall see if I will actually be knitting it.

Still Striping

With much cooler weather in the forecast (I even heard the S word mentioned for the weekend), I am just itching to start my Effortless Cardigan. I'm being a good knitter, though, and focusing on my obligation knitting before I start another big project for myself -- specifically, the striped blanket for the December baby.

Were it not for the fact that this blanket has three balls of yarn attached to it at any given time and ends to weave in every 10 rows or so, I have no doubt that I'd have been done with it long ago. But, because of all those details, I can only work on it when I can spread the yarn around me, which means the knitting is not getting done in fits and starts but rather in occasional bursts of sustained knitting time. I can do a stripe in about an hour, so I'm managing to get in about two stripes in a good evening's worth of knitting time.

So what's taking so long? It seems that I'm going to need a lot more stripes than I thought I would at the outset; I'm in the middle of my 18th stripe now and probably need 21 (maybe even 24) before I feel it's long enough to do the end border. The blanket is about 24 inches wide, so I'd like it to be a little longer than that. I am hopeful that I can have it done by the weekend, provided I can focus enough to work on it and only it in the evenings. (I'll readily admit that some pretty fiber and my spinning wheel might seduce me for an evening or two, though.)

All Spun Up Polwarth/Silk

A Happy Blanket

I've been waiting to share this with you for a bit. It was completed a while ago, just before we moved out while the floors were being done. I blocked it during our brief visit home between polyurethane coats and then had to wait until we were back in the house to unpin it. This morning I finally got some good sunlight for the photo shoot.

Pattern: Baby Chalice Blanket (Ravelry link) by Lykkefanten
Yarn: Dream in Color Classy (100% superwash Australian merino), colorway Happy Forest, less than two skeins
Needles: US 8 (5.0 mm) Knit Picks Options
Started/Completed: September 9/October 1
Dimensions: approximately 2' by 3'
Mods: none to the knitting, but I charted the pattern from the written directions to complete it

I'm quite happy with how this turned out. The lace pattern reminds me of thistles or asparagus spears (the latter no doubt because of the color I chose). I followed the pattern as written and blocked it somewhat aggressively to open up the lace, with the resulting finished product measuring just slightly larger than specified in the pattern. This will make a nice stroller blanket for Rainbow, although it's a little lighter than I thought it would be. If I were to do this over again, I'd either use smaller needles (and perhaps add repeats to keep it the same width) or a heavier yarn for a thicker fabric. But that's not to say I'm disappointed with my yarn choice -- DIC Classy remains my favorite worsted weight yarn when I'm up for a bit of a splurge.

As long as we're looking at green things, here's the beginning of another sweater for Rainbow -- Helena -- that I cast on for yesterday at Natural Stitches. I'm through the raglan increases and should be getting to the fun lace part soon. I'm not in too much of a hurry on this one, though, as I'm making the six-month size.

And, it is Sunday, after all, so to keep spinning in the mix, take a look at what finally arrived earlier this week (after I waited only about five months):

Approaching Blankie-ness

Several of you have asked questions about the baby blanket I'm knitting, so I thought I'd answer them all at once.

Here's the blanket as of this afternoon, halfway through the fourth color.

I'm following the basic log cabin "rules" for this blanket, but I'm sort of making it up as I go along. The one rule I'm following is that I keep each of the four stripes of each color consistent in width. For example, on the section I'm working on now, each side has six garter ridges. The width/number of garter ridges isn't determined by any special formula or pattern, I'm just judging how much yarn I have in each color and planning accordingly! So far it's working out, but you can tell that my current color isn't as abundant as others.

It's been fun to use these scraps and remember the socks I knit with each colorway of yarn. First there was my Hederas and my mom's Pomatomus socks; the two most recent colors came from socks I knit for my mother-in-law and my own Pomatomus socks.

I have more of the pink yarn in the middle square that I'm planning on using for the edging, but I'm quickly running out of scraps, assuming I keep the entire blanket in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock. I have one more color (purple, left over from these socks) to use after my current color and then it will be a matter of digging through the stash. I do have a lone skein of LLSS that I may sacrifice for this blanket. It would certainly work with the color scheme, don't you think?