Well, time HAS passed. I'm ashamed. No I'm not.

I'm not so busy I can't spend 10 minutes throwing in an entry.
I've got half an hour and here's an entry.
I'm still working an the black shawl - for all my bleating about how important it was to be finished, that didn't happen. I'm 60% finished though, and hopefully I'll be done with it this year - we'll see.
The blanket squares are being worked on - still - and I'm 85% done. got less than 150 to do and they SHOULD be done by the end of September.

I'm off to a knitting group meeting in about 2 hours, so I'm off. . .
Well - that took less than 10 minutes.

Later.

The 2 Main projects for April

Are the "Cotton Squares Blanket" and the "Silk Scroll Wrap".

They'll probably be the main projects for May, as well.
The reason for this is
1) because I'm 77% finished with the squares (only 203 left to do for the blanket!!! Whee!!!!
and
2)I need the shawl for a choir concert happening mid-May in Bakewell parish church.

Other than that, there's thought of frogging and re-starting my Debbie Bliss Rialto "Sophia" Sweater I've started twice now. I have been looking over most sweaters knit by people and have discovered with sweaters including cabling, unless the look is deliberately sloppy, like Aran cardigans, then it's preferable to have it a bit "snug". Not skin tight, but you want to know it's on you. So I'm having a bit of a think. I'd actually not be upset to frog it, but I'd be a bit ticked-off to find that I'm just going to re-start with the same size I'm knitting now. So it's in hibernation for a couple weeks while I do some maths.

Before I forget, while I said I'd started the "Secret of the Stole II" pattern, I had. But unfortunately, I decided I just didin't want to work on it. I completed 35 rows and put it into hibernation. It's lovely so far, I've seen photos of the finished project and it's beautiful.
The thing is, I'm just not in the mood for it. Maybe sometime in the future. I don't know.

Anyway, on another note, I really must go and read. I got a couple pairs of glasses last month (got to love Tesco opticians - free eye test and £20 for a pair including lenses - Yahoo!). I found out I'm getting on a bit and the finer lens muscles are getting weak, so I need reading glasses now (+1.50 and plano something (can't read it right now) in the left eye as well *sigh*), but according to the optometrist, everything else is perfect. At least I'm back up to my original reading speed again. Before the glasses, I was getting a teeny bit depressed there for a while. I'm fine now.
Got a lot of books to catch up on.

Later.

*Sigh*

Forgot yesterday - meant to make an entry.

Been knitting hats. In three weeks, I've finished 3 hats and started on a 4th. Not got photos yet, but I'm planning on purchasing a styrofoam/polystyrene wig head so I can do that.

I'm still with the mountain of projects.

Just to mention a few off the top of my head:

Two prayer shawls (both hibernating)
Two sweaters (one hibernating, one in danger of being frogged and re-started)
The ever growing Blanket Squares (now over 70% finished - Whee!)
A "Tickled Pink" scarf (pattern from an issue of Knitter's Universe)
Pair of basic socks (hibernating)
A lace leaf scarf (hibernating)
A pair of "Endpaper Mitts" (hibernating due to imminent frogging on just started 2nd mitt - I'm not happy with the tension)
2 knitted kitties in grey eyelash yarn (just got a head and a tail left to do, then got to sew and stuff them)
The hat mentioned at the start - it's due to be a gift, so I'm not divulging anything other than "it's pink and fuzzy".
2 finished projects that have needed the ends sewing in for three months (a Shawl and a mesh shopping bag) - don't know why I haven't yet done this, but I just keep forgetting them.
A Lace Skirt ("Flickering Flames" pattern off Elann.com) - I'm nibbling at this every week. I expect I'll have it finished for next summer.

I need to take photos of all the above things so I can document them on Ravelry. Sometime this month *cross fingers*.

There's other things, but I've got to go study.

Later.

News long awaited

Well. I've missed another month. I made a post in another journal (Wordpress), thinking that - somehow - it was this one. Silly me.

Basically, what I said in the othe one was that I had put most of my long-term projects to the side to work on a few small projects.
They were:
2 pairs of gloves (Maine Morning Mitts)out of two balls of Noro Kureyon.
3 scarves (two versions of the Noro Striped Scarf from the "Brooklyn Tweed" blog) using again, Noro Kureyon.) and a re-knit of a Christmas present I was given (store-bought scarf).

They're all done and washed now. I just have to take and post photos in Ravelry.

I've just today started the Secret of the Stole II knit-a-long. I've got 4 sets of clues to catch up on. I should be all caught up by (and waiting for) clue 7 (hopefully).

Back to the knitting.

My First Post of 2008

Well. It's 4:30am. I'm in the middle of insomnia. It's fine. No big thing.

In fact, I'm so used to its erratic nature, I do things to kill the time - in fact, I've been knitting blanket squares for that very thing. I'm in the middle of the 6th square since Midnight.

But on the other knitting front, Here's a general overview of 2007:

Knitting projects completed this year: I don't know (Really. I didn't keep track).

Knitting Projects on needles as of 31st of Dec.: 15 (I think - I just did a rough tally)
I do know I've not done as much as I wanted to, but on the other hand, I know that I've accomplished more learning curves in knitting that I expected to.

I did/worked on -
Knit-purl patterns
Lace - that of right-side patterning and each-side patterns.
Cables (easy and difficult at the same time - but immensely satisfying.)
Stranded knitting (NOT fair-isle - that's a big beastie I might never get to)
Intarsia - a.k.a. "the other type of stranded knitting that's not fair isle"
Horizontal striping (even did a small tutorial about it in this journal)
A knit-a-long
A sweater (and I plan to make (ok, begin) at least 2 more in 2008)
Adjusting other patterns
and
I made up my own pattern (that's not as easy as it seems, as an untaught flying-by-seat-of-pants skill - but I did it.)

I had hair-tearing-out moments and very satisfying "I-did-that" moments - as to be expected for 2008 as well.

I also expect to complete the knitting for the cotton squares blanket and also to make baby clothes (new thing) in this year. I might even get brave enough to learn "the dreaded" fair-isle.

Other than that, I'm fine with completing present projects and starting new ones within the year - I might even keep track of what I've done . . .*chuckle*

I'm off to knit some more - got time to kill before 8am.

Later.

Hello Again!

Well, this morning, I've finished the "Secret of the Stole" pattern. The pictures are in the slideshow to the side. Blocking the stole will be happening in about a week. More photos after it dries.

I liked this knit-a-long. Even though I had a bit of aggriviation with using moth-eaten wool/silk (my fault) and now I've got what feels like 10,000 ends to weave in, I'd do it again.

In fact, I am. I've signed up for "Secret of the Stole II", and it starts in January. Go me!

Anyway. I'm off to do some work on the scroll wrap. Wish me luck. It's been fighting me the last couple weeks. I think it's been jealous. *snicker*.

Later.

Oops

Well. The last month ran away.
If I hadn't decided to see when I'd made the last entry here, then I'd probably have let November skid by without an entry as well.

Problem is that Ravelry's addictive. Lots of features that are easy to fill in and tweak, and before you know it, there's pages and pages of your own knittig things from stash to projects (in all stages from planned to finished to frogged)

I's decidedly evil (and satisfying) that one "small" community can cause so much havoc - and you feel motivated to work on knitting projects that are neglected or long forgotten.

So, what have I been knitting?

One old project and one "new".
I've been crawling along on the Black Silk Scroll Wrap.
and
I'm almost half-way on the "Secret of the Stole" knit-a-long.



this is the last photo I took of the Stole. It does have beads, but they happen to be frosted ones, so they don't show - and yes, it is crumpled on one side - it's my fault for being in a hurry to take the photo.

Anyway, I'm feeling a bit blah, so I'm off to bed.

Night.

Bought some stuff.

On Saturday (the 13th) My Dad and I went to a Gem and Mineral show in Bakewell at Lady Manners School.

It's the only show I get to go to now, having no car. But I had a lovely time looking at bits of rocks.

Got a few mineral samples and a couple fern fossils that came from a coal mine in France.

The prettiest thing though, is a 16" string of bronze freshwater pearls (5mm) that only cost me £5.
I now have to figure out how to string them to their best advantage. I've a few ideas - including the standard knotting on silk thread (I'm thinking a soft brown or soft pink).

I'm off to look at the few photos that were taken at the show. Maybe I'll upload a couple.

Later.

Yee-Hah!!!!!

I've been waiting and waiting. . .and waiting.

I ordered 18 balls of Sirdar's Snuggly Baby Bamboo yarn from Texere Mill for a sweater - they didn't have enough balls - so Texere sent off to Sirdar to get more yarn for me (18 balls so I'd have all the dye lot the same). Sirdar didn't come through. So Texere tried again. . .and again.

Finally. Today, after waiting about a month, I've got my yarn!

Whee!!!!

Now all I've got to do is finish a project (any project on the needles), start the shawl knit-a-long and get through the first clue set and then I can cast on this sweater.

Squee!

Night!

Quickie.

Urg. Too much to do now (not really). Busy on ravelry. Knitting black wrap. Started working on second set of endpaper mitts (fingerless mittens)again since I've finally sewn in all the ends on the first pair. . .
Got the first clue for the "Secret of the stole" knitalong and I've still not figured out how to put the button for it on the side - never mind about that. Not cast on the knit-a-long yet. I will in a couple weeks.

*pulls hair out*.

I'll be back at the end of the month. Got entries to type up for another journal.

*sigh*.

Bye. I'm off to do a couple rows on a mitten later.

Shame on me. . .kind of.

I'm smug. Smug, happy and frightened.

I've finally gotten my invite from Ravelry and started my account.

Now I have to fill all those pages with info and facts about my knitting (and crochet bits).

It's going to be fun.
I hope. *grin*.

I'm off to type.

Night.

Well, well, well. . .

I've been knitting every day so far this month.
Knitting little cotton squares in lace or using inartasia (sp?). For the past couple days it's only been one or two, but so far this month, I've managed to knit over 75 little squares of different patterns and colours.

I've also gone and signed up for my first internet knit-a-long group. I think it was because I kept reading journals where the writers were knitting these wonderful things and I wanted to know what it was like.
Anyway, the knit-a-long is "The Secret of the Stole" based at Yahoo groups.
I've got needles, the beads and the yarn.

I'm out of my mind.

I'll either fail, sputtering by the side of the road, my knitting sitting forlornly in a heap, beads scattered underneath, or, I'll be at the end of it squealing, with a blocked stole proudly pictured prettily on this journal.

Let's see what happens.

I'm off to knit a square.

Night.

Just sticking some words in as a light-hearted relaxation from Evolution homework - the last of the semester. Exam at the beginning of October.
Been knitting a few squares for the blanket and taken a brief break from the silk wrap in order to concentrate on the purple wool wrap.

Brain hurts. Since I rarely get headaches, I think I need to go to bed.

Night.

Working on projects

Update on two projects: The black silk wrap and the purple wool serape thing (I forget the name of the garment).
Photos are primarily of the black silk.



I'm 4 skeins into the black silk, with 6 more to go. Whew.
It's knitting with better "milage" to the skein than I thought it would.
On the first skein I got 7", but I'm not even half-way into the 4th and I've got a 26" length. Yes, of course, I should account for the cast-on, but I used a simple lace cast on, so that was minimum usage of yarn. I don't know. Maybe I just had an underweight skein for the first one.


The Purple wrap is now on the penultimate side.







Only one photo for this.

I did attempt taking the cable pattern and running it diagonally across the corner of the left front, but it looks odd (it's that funny puckering). If I had been feeling particularly energetic at the time I discovered the lack of continuous travelling, I'd have ripped it and re-worked it, but I re-thought about what I was doing and I've ended up looking on it as a "living" example of how to really look at the way cables are worked into a garment. *shrug* It's only going to be worn indoors anyway, so I'm not quite that concerned.

So. The other projects are on hold. I want to get both these finished as soon as possible and I'm in the mood to do so.
I'm off to knit.
Later.

Black Silk Scroll Wrap - part 1

Well, after three tries, I've finally started a new project. It's a wrap in black silk (Debbie Bliss pure silk yarn) I've done the swatches in scroll stitch in the previous entry. I thought about it for a few days and finally caved in.

I said three tries? Yes, three. I'm glad I'd decided to work this on bamboo needles beforehand, because this stuff would be slinking off anything else. The first try, I'd cast on too many stitches, so I had to rip. The second try I made a mistake I couldn't fix, so I ripped it again. The third try, I. . .I. . .
I pushed it off the needles thinking I was pushing it on and before I knew it, a third of it was lying in my lap, happily unravelling. So I'm on the fourth attempt and in two days (I knit slow) now just onto the second ball.

One thing I will say about this yarn - it's not consistantly smooth. There are thick and thin sections, albeit short ones, but if you want to use it, try not to use it in stocking stitch. The uneven sections aren't regular enough to make it a design feature. If it wasn't for the fact I like that the pattern hides most of the "funky bits", I LOVE silk and I got this yarn at a 50% discount, I wouldn't use it on a regular basis. Oh - and there is at least one knot per skein. *grr*.

So, here's a couple pictures - oh, before I forget. The yarn is very soft and nicely shiny. In fact, these are scans of the wrap, since I couldn't get a photo. This was due to the gloss. Yes, on here, it does look like plain old wool. It's most emphatically NOT.




















I can't keep from stroking it between rows - then again, like I said before, I'm a silk junkie.
I love wool, hemp, rayon (aka - viscose) and all other natural fibres, but, If it wasn't for the fact I've got a plethora of projects lined up, I'd go out and buy this yarn and knit for the feel of it. I'm glad it's normally £6.50 a skein, which makes it a bit out of my self-imposed price limit.

I'm off to knit my silk. Mmmm.

And another 2 new projects

So, I've now got these 10 skeins of Debbie Bliss' Pure Silk in Black.

Therefore, since I did buy the yarn with a view to making a wrap for choir performances, about a week after I got the yarn, I start making swatches from this blue acrylic I found in a bag (forgotten stash of my Mother's).
I'm really looking for a stitch pattern that looks semi-sophisticated (so to speak), so I'm rationalising that if it looks nice in a mottled soft blue squeaky acrylic yarn, then it'll look good in a lovely black silk yarn *crossing fingers*. I work up and discard half-a-dozen samples (there's 2 that have potential, but I'm not sure. . .).

Then, I go onto the Knitting fool website (http://www.knittingfool.com/) and peruse the stitch patterns on there. I come to "Scroll". I work it up and. . . whee! I like it. I like it so much, I'm now knitting a scarf in it, out of that squeaky blue acrylic.

Here, see what it looks like on both sides.:


I'll see how far I get on this scarf, since I've only got the one ball as seen in the upper photo.


I am, however, planning to knit up a swatch of this stitch with the black silk on smaller needles, and check out definition.

If needed, I'll tweak the stitch pattern and take out a row and stitch in order to make the "blocks" smaller.


I'll post pictures when I get to the silk. Since I need the wrap before November, I'll be starting work on it as soon as I finish the scarf.
Later.

Knitting!

Went and took advantage of the John Lewis sale at Trafford park and bought 10 skeins of some lovely silk yarn. Spent too much money, but it was much too nice to resist - and a VERY good price for the quality. I'm thinking of going back before the 22nd (last day of the sale) and seeing if there's some other yarn I can spend money on.
Yes, there's a new project I'd like to start, but I don't have the yarn for it - it's a lovely sweater by Debbie Bliss in her new "Rialto" pattern book for the wool of the same name. The sweater is called "Sophia" and the main reason I want to knit it can be looked at here:
http://www.kangaroo.uk.com/catalogue/page_detail.php?pId=971&tId=18&stId=1369
The problem is that I do not want to spend the money on the rialto yarn, strictly because I don't like the colours it comes in to use on THIS sweater, so I'm trying to find a substitute that will hopefully be cheaper, as well as in the colour I want
(which I'm having trouble deciding - either a duck-egg blue or a clear soft blue-green. Yes, I know there's not much difference, but I'm picky.).

Recently I worked on a few of the blanket squares and a bit on the fingerless mittens (got some more yarn for a couple more pairs of those as well).
The problem with the knitting at the moment is that my OU homework is now needing more time delegating to it, and that makes my time for knitting suffer.
Not that I've got the wherewithal to knit, since right now (and for now, until the end of October) I'm primarily thinking about harmonising music, brain development and psychology and evolution. *sigh*.

It doesn't help that I've started two journals on Wordpress. Go look if you want to. One'll be found under "The Periodical Mumblings of a Crafter" - it's sort of an experiment. I read enough comments saying how Wordpress is fantastic, so I'm seeing if that's true.

Until such time as I'm in my right mind - or left one.
Bye.

Books

Ok, a couple of days ago, I ran across two sites for collating books. Mainly, the ones that have been read.
The sites were Goodreads and Shelfari. No, I've not linked to them as I'm being lazy - you can easily find them via Google.

I've signed up for both and I MUCH prefer Goodreads. Shelfari is slow and relies on the fact that every single book you input/select is going to recieve a review. That isn't me.

Goodreads is much faster and allows for three categories - read, to read and currently reading. You can input books into your list a few ways, but the quickest is to click upon the star rating system near each title and voila! It's in.

I'd post a button for the goodreads site and my read page, but it requires I know about widget placement and HTML. I'm not there yet and it'll become abundently clear when I am.

Now I just need to find a comparable site for my music.

Later.

Still knitting. . .

Finally, here are a couple pictures.
Sorry about the delay. Just couldn't do it before now. I have got a few pictures of finshed things, but I had no real inclination to wrestle "Hello" to get them into entries.
But, a recent finished project had me a bit more excited than usual, so . . .


The pictures are nothing special. Just a couple photos of green and cream yarn - one, a shot of a nice lace pattern.














But a bit in the future, after I've written it up, I'll explain the thing I'm excited about. The problem is explaining it without letting loose what is knitted. The object is a future Christmas present, so I'd like to keep it a teeny bit of a secret.


By the way, I thought of sharing the results of a non-knitted experiment.
To understand it, you need to know a couple things; one, I don't have a bath - just a shower. - so, I have quite a selection of shower gels to wash with.
The other thing is that usually, in cold weather, or when I've been washing my hands a lot, my hands go dry and I have to put on hand creme (my favourite being Vaseline's Intensive Care - yellow bottle). Now, if I'm washing my hands a lot, putting on hand creme is a bit of a waste. so, the skin on my hands tends to crack and bleed, especially around the knuckles. It takes a few days for that to heal.

Then some time passed. . . So here I was in the bathroom, with this almost empty pump bottle of liquid hand soap, all these shower gel bottles with tiny amounts in them and the idea hit me - why not use shower gel like liquid hand soap? It's concentrated, so you don't need to use a great deal (not a full push on the pump like you would for regular liquid hand soap) some shower gels come in moisturising formulas - which I have some of - and you'd be saving money.
So I tried it.
I decanted all of those little leftover bits of shower gel into the liquid soap container. It made for an interesting smell, but not too bad (I had a small amount of a lemon gel that was a one-off and it made the overall scent slightly weird). There were moisturising elements to some of them, not to mention some of shower gels I had contained essential oils, so there was my anti-bacterial cover.
(most, if not all essential oils have anti-bacterial properties. Especially lavender, patchouli, tea tree, geranium and sandalwood).
I washed my hands with the resulting dark amber-ish goo for about a week.
My skin was lovely. The next week, I had a day where I was washing my hands every 15 minutes. My hands were fine. In the last 6 months of doing this, I've only had to use my hand creme once and that was when I came back from being at a friends for a few days.
My hands are soft and lovely. Scented nicely, too. No cracking skin, my nails are supple, I'm saving money on liquid hand soap and, best of all, I don't have all these mostly empty bottles of shower gel cluttering up my bathroom.
Try it for yourself.

Until then. . .

Another quickie . . .

Frogged the shawl started in the last post and put the yarn and needles for it away for a bit - maybe a week, maybe two - I knitted and re-knitted it and finally realised that I was knitting it wrong.
The corner stitches weren't right, and once I'd fixed those with help of a crochet hook, then other glaring errors came to light. . .

So.

A deep breath and back to my regularly scheduled knitting.

. . .and out.