Hey Hey It's my Birthday!

... and it really is!


I've been trying to make this post for two days, but my ISP just wasn't living up to what I pay it for, so I had to wait until today. I guess that's not such a bad thing, because it gives me more than one row to show on some of these projects.


I've got a little stash to lead off with. I'm hoping that this cotton will be good to make a nice light summer sock. I can't wait to see how the colors spread in the process of knitting it up. It reminds me of deep waters in the sunlight. I don't know what it is lately, but I'm into things that remind me of water in some way or another. The label says sport weight, but it seems lighter than that. I guess I'll just have to swatch it up and see.


Speaking of socks, I have a pair on the needles in Bernat's Sox. I'm not liking the way the colors end up, but I'm hoping that once I move out of the ribbing and get into the stockinette in the larger needle size, it'll either pool in a way that I can live with or stripe itself out. My goal is to start knitting one pair of socks per month, but I'm not sure how well that's going to work out.


I also have this faux silk / mohair lace wrap thing on the needles. I had bought some Yarn Bee Featherwisp that I really liked, but it just didn't look right all by its lonesome no matter what needle size I used. In fact, it looked like I'd just gone behind a shedding cat and cleaned up. So I started double stranding it with several things I had laying around in my stash. After doing several inches of stockinette with Caron's Simply Soft light blue and the Featherwisp in Seasprite, I noticed the watery type pooling of color. The two yarns together also cool very quickly after your hands move off of it, so it's very cool to the touch as well as very soft. It immediately made me think of clear water (more water!) so I frogged the stockinette and began to work this ripple pattern. Once it's washed, blocked and dryed, the stitch pattern should become much more apparent. The ripple here is a simple fourteen stitch repeat of

RS rows: k2tog, k4, yo, k2, yo, k4, SSK
and WS rows: purl across.

I've repeated the pattern 3 times here to get a width of about sixteen inches unblocked.


Also done in a Caron - Yarn Bee combo is this start of a rounded end scarf. This one is Caron's off white and Featherwisp's creamcicle. I love the victorian type coloring the Featherwisp adds to the Caron, and the little bit of shimmer. The stitch pattern is nice too... it makes the rows multi-directional without having to go and learn MD knitting. This one can be made to fit any number of stitches (minimum eight) and is done by

RS rows: k1, k1inc1 (knit into front and back of stitch), k to 2 stitches before the center, SSK, k2tog, k to last 2 stitches, k1inc1, k1
and WS rows: purl across.

I haven't repeated the pattern at all here, but I suppose you could if you wanted to make a softer ripple or a wave type pattern..


Then there's this thing, which really has no purpose other than to let me practice doing small diameter projects on two circulars rather than double pointed needles. I'm also trying to work out how to best minimize the gaps that come with each color change before I get into the next Harry Potter scarf that I'll be doing. Still, it looks pretty cool. Maybe it'll become a skinny scarf or something. It never ceases to amaze me how things start out as just screwing around and then either get frogged to become something much better or become something you never expected.

On the note of expected or never expected, as it can be taken both ways, I couldn't just sit still and wait for everything to get started (although it seems it started without waiting for me!), so I went and bought yarn to make something for baby number three, who should arrive on December 16th of this year. Yes, I am well aware that I'm crazy having three babies in three years. That having been said, I'd like to try to design and knit the one thing I always wanted, but no one seems to make, especially since this will be a winter baby and it'll be pretty cold when we bring her / him home. So, stayed tuned to this channel and if I'm successful in making a baby blanket that allows you to both wrap baby up all snuggly and buckle them in, then the pattern will be posted here. I'm sure I'm not the only mom out there who just didn't see her needs filled by the carrier cover-ups, buntings and smaller blankets out there.

Technorati tags: knit pattern project yarn colorway on-the-needles work-in-progress socks scarf wrap blanket