Stacked. Yarn Along - Feb. 27

This week I worked on five different projects! Two are finished - one of which will have a post of its own and the other was the green sample sweater that was mailed home.  On top of the books I have a cabled figerless mitt, a blanket and a crochet cowl (I'm trying out the Miss Adler design). And as you can see, I have yarn wound and ready to start several new projects as well.  In the stack of yarn cakes there is a skein of Malabrigo Rios ready for a Malabrigo March project, a skein of Good Karma Farm yarn ready for swatching for the Morning Joe KAL, and a skein of yarn my parents bought for me in Chile when they were visiting my brother & his girlfriend.  The Chile yarn does not have a project yet, but it's been at my desk waiting for inspiration to strike.  I believe it is 100% wool, fingering weight (though I'm not sure), and I have ~90g.  In my search for a project, I've also been accumulating other patterns that I am just itching to start - for me, for others, for babies due this year!


Reading wise, I'm halfway through Case Histories and still enjoying it! I have also been reading a chapter of Nancy Clancy: Super Sleuth with the Lorax each night.  We are big Fancy Nancy fans and I thought that this might be a good next step for us, but I think it might be a little too "old" for my girl.  I think a lot of it goes over her head - and there's not much of the "that's a fancy word for..." like in the Fancy Nancy books.  A book is a book.  I have a stack of crochet books from the library as well as Knit Local and I am enjoying them enough to consider buying them at some point in the future. 

And how about you? 

FO Friday

Last weekend I finished knitting my Fumior arm-warmers and I seamed them up while waiting on my computer to resolve some issues.  I love this yarn, Manos Maxima; the colorway Prince, and the pattern. For my actual FO there is a little love lost.  I blocked them to make the seaming easier and it grew more than I expected (my own fault, I didn't bother to swatch first!). I also managed to misread the directions, so one arm-warmer has ribbing at the finger side and the other does not.  I am a better knitter than that! I'm choosing to keep that design element as a reminder to read the directions!The Lorax helped to take these photos - it is quite tricky to take a self portrait of arm-warmers.The color is more accurate in the second photo, and you can see they are true arm-warmers. 

I also worked up another amigurumi friend for a swap package. This little guy is on his way to my downstream swap pal, I hope she likes him.  He is another Fresh Stitches pattern, Nasser the Baby Penguin. I have plans to do finish up another Fresh Stitches pattern over the weekend, for another swap; this has been a great way to really push me to try a few new techniques.  The whole reason I wanted to learn how to crochet was to make the amigurumi creatures! I'm looking at my stash with fresh eyes now. Much of my leftovers and acrylic is great for these fun friends!

 Linking up to fo fridays!

Yarn Along - February 20

I finished reading "The Kitchen Help" over the weekend. I decided to pick up Case Histories for my next read. So far I am finding it interesting and am curious to see where it goes. Right now a lot of my knitting is not for show. The green stripey blob in the picture is a sample knit that just needs one more piece to be complete. The white garter stitch blob is a new project in progress that I can't share much about right now. I finished two projects recently, but I am going to save those for a post on Friday.

Blah blah blah. What a boring blog post; that's the state of things right now. Between the snow storm last week, school vacation this week, little projects not getting done, mistakes being made on others, I feel like I can't win. Do you have those weeks?

Still digging out, now with more amigurumis!

On Monday, I looked out the window to see this. A pay loader on our street to clear a path down the street.  It then got stuck at the top of our street and had to be rescued by a plow. Crazy. My husband and I worked in shifts and made steady progress to clear our driveway. Yesterday, his brother came over to help with the rest. It's clear enough to get one car in / out, but it's tight. I'm hoping that our usual plow guy can come by and help widen things a bit. And maybe clear whatever we're forecast to get tonight.


Good thing we cleared it, as our mailbox is still inaccessible. The mail-person had some guts and drove their truck down our driveway to deliver the mail. There was not much considering we haven't gotten mail since Friday! There was a swap box for me - I received an adorable baby unicorn & an "OctoPaul" & "OctoPolly" for my little ones! As soon as I started to open the box, Lorelai piped up, "Can I have that?".  They are adorable! Thank you very much to Cindy, my swap pal!

After I finished my slug, Lorelai requested a princess one.  A bit of stash diving and voila! Princess, the tiara-less, slug! I used one skein of bulky for the body and double up on other stash yarn for the eyes, foot & antennae.  It's maybe 6 inches tall and 10 inches long! I left it outside her bedroom door last night to surprise her.  Success! 

Bug Eyed & Sluggish

The Blizzard of 2013 has come and gone but we're going to be dealing with this mess for a while. We measured 26" outside our front door, and CT effectively shut down this weekend. My husband and I worked shoveling our driveway yesterday and today and we're maybe 1/3 of the way done. We haven't seen a plow truck since 4pm Saturday and that was on the next road over - our road has not been touched. It's going to be several days until we can get out of here. I've never seen this much snow come from one event  and there's no place to put it! It is very pretty and very striking. These once in a lifetime events seem to be happening more often!  On the plus side we have power and we are ok with food and stuff. I've been working on my sample sweater for Plymouth, have started my second Fumior, and have wound yarn for swatching.

I've also tried to give my wrists a break by crocheting - they are sore from shoveling and crochet doesn't seem to add to the ache. I worked up this chill slug, fulfilling my participation in the Fresh Stitches Slug-A-long. He was very quick and fun to make - the Fresh Stitches patterns are very well written, and the blog posts were really helpful - I found the post about crocheting antennae particularly helpful! I'm naming him Nemo in honor of the storm.  I've had a request to make a princess one next. When asked for more details that means a tiara & ribbons. I'm hoping a pink and purple version will satisfy.

"Stawm's Brewin'" (Yarn Along, a day late!)

The weather reports have been crazy this week. They have all hinted at some weather event for Friday, my usual guy wasn't even giving numbers because the models were all over the place. Last night we started hearing numbers. Big numbers. This morning everyone is in blizzard prep mode. So something big is coming and all I keep hearing in my head is "Winter is coming" a la Game of Thrones and my subject line, said in a New Englandy-Boston-Maine accent. We're ready. We've dealt with snow before. My bigger concern is power. Especially as I work from home. On top of that, my husband will be working from home and I'm pretty sure the Lorax will have no school. Throws a kink in my usual work-day operation. I do wish I could just settle in on the couch with a big mug of coffee and my knitting for the whole day!



When I get the chance, I will be working a bit more on my Fumior armwarmers, a sample knit, and am thinking about casting on a few projects, because, why not? I need to get moving on a few projects that are for swaps. I will also be reading a bit more of "The Kitchen Help" - I'm completely sucked in to this story, though it is a bit intense. I think I have to stop reading it before I go to bed. There are some rather tragic incidents (deaths of children) and intense moments (interactions between plantation owners and the slaves who work there; there is hinting at child abuse as well).

Stay safe if you are in the storm's path! Make sure you have your knitting prepped!

Mittens!

The weekends should not be for catching up, but this weekend that is what I will be doing.  After a wind / rain storm on Wednesday night, we lost power and did not get it back until late Friday afternoon! UGH.  It was such a ridiculous thing too, not a huge storm, but it did knock a huge tree onto power lines around the corner from me.  I had finished my NaKnitMittMo mittens for January on Thursday morning while waiting to see if the Lorax would have school (she didn't) and if the power would come back on (it didn't).  Oh yes, and it was 50 degrees! January, you're so crazy!
This is leftover Lorna's Laces yarn from one of my first sample knitting jobs. The yarn cake was more than my little scale could handle, so I know I started with at least 100g (probably more). I have 46 g left! The pattern is Thames Street Mittens and I love how they turned out! I am really pleased that I was able to finish them in January, currently they are in the running for the Viewer's Choice part of the KAL - if they caught your eye, would you click my love button? Check out all the other gorgeous mittens people have made! My queue is growing, again! I have started on a pair of fingerless mitts for February already and I hope to continue with the same momentum.

While I was trying to take photos of my mittens (which is not easy), the temptation of the viewscreen was too much for one little person and I was photobombed!!


Have a great weekend!