One Way

DSC00021, originally uploaded by a-chan.

I don't ever show my religious side on the blog, but I thought this was too funny!

On the knitting front, I finished one baby tube sock last night. Most of it was knit at Cubespace. It was my first time going and I rather enjoyed myself. I'll probably go back since it's on my way home from work (for the most part). It's a cute little space, from what I saw of it. The people seemed to to be more my age-ish and more my style than a lot of knitting groups I've been to.... (No offense to any of you, I value knitting time with anyone, no matter who you are).

No baby updates until Monday when I have my 6th ultrasound. That sounds like a lot, but they're just monitoring to be on the safe side. So far, so good.

Crappy pictures

DSC00020, originally uploaded by a-chan.

You would think that having a dslr camera would mean better pictures... and it should. However, sometimes I'm taken by the moment and snap shots with my handy camera phone. I hope that explains the horridness of this picture.

What you're looking at is the left overs from the pinwheel blanket. I did run out of yarn and while on a search for a fitting yarn to use for the last 5 inches, I found two little balls of my yarn... THE yarn. Who knows why I had wound off two balls, but I did. I was able to finish the blanket with the same yarn in the same color. Interesting. I'm still perplexed over this. Now I even have a little extra, though, not enough to make anything with.

Old pinwheel

I had been daydreaming about doing a garter stitch border on my Log cabin for a bind off. I thought that if I just sat down and tried it, I could figure it out. Before I got that far, I was browsing through blogs and came upon Jared's post about his The Pi Shawl (Blanket). BTW, it's gorgeous! Anyways, he did what he called an "attached (9-stitch) garter side-to-side edging." That sounded similar to what I was thinking and I commented asking for more information.... Low and behold, he found me on Ravelry (another reason I love that site!) and pointed me towards Elizabeth Zimmermann's book Knitter's Almanac, which I already have (BONUS!)

But then I decided I wanted to do an i-cord bind-off on the log cabin... I really wanted to try this new garter stitch edging, so I thought and I thought and finally I remembered this blaket:



I started it a long time ago during a baby-boom in the family, but everyone had boys (except one girl, but her daddy likes red, so her blanket is red). I've bound off of this thing at least twice and it still didn't like it.



I have to say that this edging is not something to take on lightly, it sure does take awhile. I'm doing a 10 stitch border. I should be doing an 8 stitch border since I'm going to run out of yarn.

I don't really care much for this blanket because I knit it before I corrected my twisted stitch. It's not perfect, but I'm not willing to start over on it. I should have used a size 8 for the border. I use an 8 for the main part, but my gauge was tight with the twisted stitch so I thought I could get away with the 7. It's folding onto itself, which is really no different than it rolling (like pinwheel blankets tend to do). Eh. What's one more blanket for baby banana? Since it's not a gift, I don't really care for perfection. When I run out of yarn, I'll just use a different color. I know I have a dark green in the same yarn, but I also know I have another light yellow and another light teal color that may work.

Oh, did I mention that Baby Banana is going to be a GIRL!! YAY!

Another log cabin!

DSC00011, originally uploaded by a-chan.

With Richard challenging me to use 85% of my stash by the end of this year, I decided to knit a few more log cabin blankets. This one is a twin to the one I knit last spring for my cousin's baby. This one is for my baby banana, cuz you know all the babies are sporting college colors these days! I think I'm about half done, but I'm going to try to go as far as I can before I run out of yarn (which I planned for the first one, but I had so much green and yellow that I had to stop before it became a tent).

I have enough pinks/reds and blues that I'm going to knit another log cabin for my 10 year old niece. I have never knit her a blanket! I'm going to aim for a big enough size that she can actually use, but we'll see how it goes. I really am liking these giant log cabins with the two color themes. I'm drawn to them. Every time I think I'm going to do log cabin squares and sew them together, I just can't do it.

No new updates on baby banana, but we're going in on the 17th for a follow up ultrasound to make sure everything is okay. Maybe they will be able to tell the gender this time. The banana is definitely moving around, though. Sometimes I feel like the Space Balls scene where the alien bursts out of the guys stomach and starts singing "Hello my baby, hello my darling..."

Mid-day workout and late gifts

sock yarn, originally uploaded by a-chan.

I decided to walk to knit/purl on my lunch hour. I had never knit with Malabrigo and it's the yarn called for in the scarf I want to knit: the mabel's scarf. I looked at the knit/purl website and they had some! yay! But it turns out I didn't like the colors once I saw them in person. I'll have to find them at another store, I guess. I don't normally knit a pattern in the called for yarn. But this one seemed to call out to me. Instead of starting the scarf tonight, I'll do something less productive, like play video games and eat pizza.

Anyways, I have this skein of Fleece Artist Sea Wool that's just been hanging around and I've decided to knit a chevron scarf with it. I just needed to pick the right colorway. I think one of the three skeins above will work. The Sea Wool is more a more muted green and blue (plus brown).

I'm also hoping to make my way to Fabric Depot this weekend to pick up some Lion Brand Cotton-ease for a blanket. I've decided I'm going to start knitting for baby banana even if I don't know if it's a boy or a girl. I'm thinking a dark gray can go either way. I love Fabric Depot's 30% off everything sales!

I have a question. When you knit a hat for yourself, do you also knit a scarf or mittens to match? Now, before I would have said that is silly. But I'm finding myself more and more wearing non-matching hats/scarves/mittens. Wouldn't it look better if I would just knit matching sets? Not even using same stitch patterns, but just the same colorway.

So I was thinking I should be buying more yarn.... wow, that's not where I thought this was going! Maybe instead of one or two skeins, I buy 3 or 4 or maybe 5. My husband will like that. He's already said I need to knit or get rid of 85% of my stash this year. That doesn't mean I can't buy yarn, I just need to only buy what I'm using... and then knit from my stash.

I guess this is a stash busting year. I'll come up with something for it all. I wonder if I have enough Lion Brand Homespun for an afghan... probably. I probably also have enough old acrylic to do an afghan.