Pinwheel blanket panic!

Pinwheel blanket panic!
Originally uploaded by a-chan.

This is an old story now because the blanket has already been gifted. But I need to tell it.

At what point do you frog a couple of lines?? I passed over a couple of mistakes, mainly just yarn overs I forgot to do. Easily fixed.

Then I got the great idea to do an eyelet row. I didn't really know what I was doing, so I made the mistake of thinking I could just do a yarn over every other stitch and then knit two together the next row... Sad to say that I was wrong. It was a mess. 400 stitches that had to be frogged and then picked back up again.

To make this worse, I picked the worst time to do the ripping... In the car, when there was only 10 minutes till our destination. I took this picture when we stopped. I folded the darn thing up and shoved it in my too small knitting bag (yeah, that ugly plaid thing in the picture).

Then, I chose another bad time to pick up the stitches... on the Max on the way to work in the morning.

I'm happy to say that I did recover all the stitches and went on to successfully do two eyelet rows. I'm very proud of myself. What makes it better is that the gift was appreciated.

Now, I found out that another cousin is having another child, so that's 3 maybe 4 blankets I have to knit, instead of 2 maybe 3. Then again, I'm not sure if I want to be around 3 pregnant women.... but I'm a little jealous....

Pinwheel, Pinwheel spinning around*

pinwheelblanket
Originally uploaded by a-chan.

I love this pattern. I'm too lazy to get the link for you, but it's so much fun to knit. I was getting a bit bored with it, so I threw in some eyelet rows. I'm going to knit this again, but in different colors. I might use the same yarn.. It's just Red Heart Soft yarn... and darn, it's soft compared to regular Red Heart. It also washed decently, so I dont' have to worry about how well it wears.

I'm planning a red and white blanket for my cousin's baby (that might or might not be twins..) So then I'd have to knit a second one.. maybe blue and white or red and black or just different stripe patterns between the two? hmm... Plus, my sis-in-law might be expecting again... so I'd do one for her. Exciting stuff!

*Title for this post is taken from an old little kid's show. All I can remember is the opening song and that there was this pinwheel spining on the screen that always made me sick..

Bunny

bunny
Originally uploaded by a-chan.

I knit this little guy for a friend's baby. It's been a couple of months since the baby shower, but my sis-in-law kindly gave me this picture recently so I could post it. The eyes are a little lopsided, but I guess that's okay. The body of the bunny is actually a really cute green that didn't turn out well in the picture. I was going to knit some more of these guys with this yarn, but I can't seem to find it anymore. He's really soft!

Who knew blocking could be so much fun??*

Grr. I don't like blocking all that much.

Okay, I guess before I can really get into what I was blocking, I should write about the Knitting Olympics. I signed up to knit the Blackberry from knitty. I started knitting it two days late. Then, once I found my groove, I thought, "Oh, this will be so easy to finish!" Wrong! I came upon bobbles. Let me tell you, I hate them more than I hate blocking. So after three or four false starts on the first sleeve, I threw them out the window and said, "To hell with bobbles, I didn't like them that much in the first place!" Then, since I had originally wanted thumb holes in the sleeves, I had to figure out the best thumb hole method. I found one I liked.

So I finished the first sleeve with like 3 days left. I figured it would be no problem doing one sleeve and the ribbing in just 3 days. Wrong! I got up to my elbow with two days left. Saturday I needed to go to my cousin's good-bye party because he's going to Afghanistan for over a year. I totally planned on knitting at the party and getting that sleeve done. Wrong! I started getting a migrane and it's hard to knit during serious times (at least for me), and I kept losing my way.

Sunday, the last day, I just couldn't knit with my migrane. I'm sure that if I was just doing St st or garter stitch I could have done it. But cables were just too much for me.

I know this sounds like a bunch of excuses.. However, at the two day mark, I decided I couldn't stress myself out about it because, well, it's just knitting. Nobody would die if I didn't finish. Nobody would even probably be upset that I didn't finish. So, that said: I took a full week off from my Greenberry (so named because I knit it in green). Now I'm almost done with the second sleeve. I pulled apart the sections that I hastily sewed together and now I'm properly blocking them (with the scuncii steamer none the less). I should finish the second sleeve while that is drying.. No pictures yet, but I do plan on taking them. I totally forgot about this window in the basement (where I'm blocking the Greenberry), so I should be able to get some alright pictures from there.

I feel totally ambitious now. As soon as I'm finished with the Greenberry, I'm going to finish Alivia's dress (add a couple of inches, change the straps to I-cord), then I need to finish the Pikmin hat. That's for this week.

Oh, and I can't forget Team Portland. Even if only some of us finished, it was cool to knit along with other Portlanders.




*Please note the sarcasm

I need to prioritize!

My last post was just a rambling of what I'd like to get done and stuff. I need to make a better list because the stuff that needs to get done, won't get done... And the stuff that doesn't need to be done, will be done. So here it goes:

Projects that need to be finished before the end of this month:
* Alivia's dress (knitting done, just need to "finish")
* Pikmin hat, I need to design it so Valeska and Katie and finish theirs before March 24th (Sakuracon)

Projects that need to be done before the end of Feb:
* Richard's Hufflepuff hat (started)
* Prayer shawl (3/4 of the knitting is finished)
* My anime hat
* Alexandria's baby blanket (that's been on hold a full year!)

Projects with no finish date:
* Arm warmers for myself
* Fingerless gloves for paintball
* afghan made from the knifty knitter
* amigurumi (little knit/crocheted animals/monsters/things)

Of course I'm not going to work on my top two items tonight. That would just be silly!! *Rolling eyes* I think I'm working on the Hufflepuff hat. I'm using a variation of THIS PATTERN from the blue blog

And some time in the next month, I'd like to put a list of the blogs I visit regularly in my sidebar... and maybe make a new layout, I get a little weirded out when I go to other knitting blogs that have the exact same layout. I also need to organize my stash and stuff.

Sorry, no pictures tonight... I need to find my camera.