Monthly Archives: January 2011

January

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This has been just a crazy month. I haven’t had any computer time lately and it is impossible to blog from my iPod (trust me, I tried it), so here’s a wrap-up for the month.

Rose Window BeretA sweater



This month I knit a hat and a sweater. The sweater, Loppem, has been blocked and is just waiting for buttons and pictures, neither of which I’ve had time to do. The hat will be worn this spring.

I had some crappy things happen. We had some setbacks getting my car registered but that’s all taken care of, my computer broke and I lost a bunch of money at the casino (but I had a ton of fun doing it) and my grandma is back in the hospital but she’s doing good.

Project365- January 2011

1. Close up, 2. Waiting, 3. Nap time, 4. Me, 5. Gnome, 6. My messy desk, 7. My short hair, 8. Moon & Clouds, 9. Peanut, 10. It’s snowing!, 11. Snowy, 12. Snow in the yard, 13. Snowy trees, 14. Sally & Me, 15. Sally, 16. Cashew, 17. Cashew, with laser, 18. Peanut, 19. Knitting Swatches, 20. Snowing Again, 21. Still snowy, 22. What I’m doing today, 23. Getting ready for a birthday party, 24. Extreme kitty close up, 25. My car, 26. Stripes!, 27. Spinning thin yarn, 28. You can’t tell but she just burped in my face., 29. Sunny day, 30. Another beautiful day, 31. Looking dreary


I’ve started Project365 again and this time I’m taking almost all of my pictures with my iPod Touch and that is making the process of taking and uploading my photos so much easier. It only takes a few seconds to snap the photo and then upload it to flickr. This is just a snapshot of the moth. You can tell I’ve spent a lot of time at home. It’s snowed a couple times, I cut off all my hair and I’ve been enjoying bugging the dog and cats while I take their pictures.

Blizzard Warning?

And this is what we have to look forward to tomorrow. I live in Springfield. We are supposed to get between 12 and 20 inches of snow. We also have our first blizzard warning since 1912 (my great grandma used to tell me about the blizzard they had that year, she was 16). So, I guess I’m going to be snowed in again. I hate to admit it, but I’m kind of looking forward to a big snow storm. As long as our power stays on we’ll be fine. Expect a ton of pictures.

And that was January. I’m hoping February goes much better.

An Almost Finished Sweater

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A sweater

So, I’ve managed to find a computer I can use but I’ve lost the cord to my camera, so you’re going to have to deal with crappy iPod pictures. Why Apple can’t put the same camera on the iPod that they have on the iPhone, I have no idea, but this thing sucks.

Anyway, since I’ve been gone I’ve knit a sweater. This is Loppem by Norah Gaughan and the yarn is my handspun Shetland that is a neutral gray/brown color. I bought the roving a couple years ago at the Marshfield Fiber Fair here in Missouri and spun it last Fall, I think. The yarn is a thick and thin worsted weight that is very soft and light and lofty and has a ton of texture and it looks much better in this sweater than I thought it would. I haven’t blocked the sweater yet, so I’m sure it will look even better when I do. I’m going to try to block it later this week when the weather warms up a little and I will get some pictures of it (with a real camera) when I do.

I should be able to return to a more normal blogging schedule now but I just started a new project for KnitPicks so I won’t have any bloggable knitting. What I think I’ll do instead is catch up my Project365 postings and I’ve been itching to weave, so maybe I’ll warp the loom, too. We’ll see.

Well, this sucks

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Just thought I would pop by and say hi.  My computer died last week and I can’t afford to buy a replacement so I’m not going to be blogging much, if at all for the foreseeable future. I’m posting my daily photos on Flickr and I’m occasionally updating on Ravelry and Twitter or Facebook (if I don’t know you in real life, I won’t add you on FB, though). I’ll try to post a bit when I can. Bye!

A Couple Finished Items

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Color and Weave Sampler

I actually have a couple FOs today. First up is my woven color and weave sampler that I finished back in October or November when I bought The Weaver’s Idea Book. I finished it and left it on the loom because I really didn’t know what to do with it, I had a lot more warp left and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to just cut it off and save the rest of the warp or finish the warp and try to make something out of the cloth. I decided today to save the warp, cut this off the loom and to, hopefully, start something else soon. What that something else will be I have no idea, but it will be something that isn’t this. I’m actually thinking about doing another small sampler or a sampler scarf or shawl or something, I don’t want to end up with a bunch of small pieces of fabric.

Rose Window Beret

How about some knitting? This is the Rose Window Beret from the Spring 2010 Interweave Knits and was knit out of less than one skein of NaturallyCaron.com Spa. The yarn is a silky soft acrylic/bamboo blend that makes a shiny, smooth fabric. The yarn itself is made of, I think, six strands (I could be wrong about that, I don’t have a piece nearby to check) of two-ply yarn that is about a lace weight. It makes a DK weight yarn that is totally non-elastic and very splitty. It’s not the nicest yarn to knit with but the resulting fabric is silky smooth and soft and has a nice drape and some stretch. I really like the way the yarn looks knit up, this picture doesn’t do it justice, but I would really like to try to weave with it, I think if you wove it a little loose and open it would make a good Spring or Summer scarf. The beret itself will be nice this Spring but I don’t think it’s warm enough to wear right now. Pretty, though.

10 Shawls in 2010

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10 Shawls in 2010

I meant to post about this last week but I forgot, so here it is. Last year, on a whim, I decided to try the 10 Shawls in 2010 knit a long and I actually finished. At the end, while I was knitting the last shawl, I really thought I wasn’t going to make it. I was bored with my shawl, I wasn’t happy with how it looked and I wished I had just followed a pattern instead of just making up my own but I kept at it and finished just before the deadline. And it looks pretty good, too.

Here’s the shawls, in the order I knit them with links to their Ravelry page (the links are public), from the top row, left to right:

  1. Citron, Handspun Shawl, Miralda’s Triangular Shawl
  2. Bitterroot, Madli’s Shawl, Lilac Leaf Shawl
  3. Half Pi Shawl, Damson, Revontuli
  4. Half Leaf Shawl

All in all, I knit 2 shawls from Knitty, 3 from Knitted Lace of Estonia, 3 from my handspun yarn, 3 from wool/silk blends, and 2 that I designed myself. My personal favorites are Miralda’s Shawl and Bitterrot and I put the most work into Bitterroot (between the spinning and knitting).

I really liked the challenge of knitting that many shawls in one year though I have to admit it got a little old after a while which is why I’m not doing 11 Shawls in 2011. Instead I’m going to just knit like normal and try to cram in too much of one thing. I already have two FOs this year, a second Betiko and a beret and I’ll show them off sometime this week.