I was so excited about starting hats for the Dulaan Project after seeking advice from the folks in the Livejournal Knitting community about double knitting technique that I went right home and cast on a basic hat. Green and white worsted weight yarn... size 11 Denises... no real pattern to follow. Five rows in, my arm was cramping up and I couldn't ball my hand into a fist. Evidently my double knitting technique needs some serious revision- perhaps to learn to hold the yarn continental style since it appears to flow better in the knitting help video. This also means I am going to scrap the double knitting for the Dulaan Project hats since it will probably take me a while to grasp something new, and that won't leave me much time to finish anything. My tentative goal is to complete 5 hats... probably a mix of knit and crochet. Ideally, I would be able to pop out about 10 since I have about 10 skeins of yarn earmarked for the project.

It's amazing how much I notice colors now that I've started Lolly's Project Spectrum. I've also discovered how drawn I am to colors I never really thought about using. Does anyone have any orange-based colorway Superwash sock yarn recommendations? I do plan on trying to dye some of my own, but would also be interested in possibly purchasing some already dyed stuff.

And since I have no knitting or crochet pictures to show you (I figured my frogged pile of double knitting wouldn't be worth photographing), here is a picture of me, Cory and the kidlets before we went out for Maine Maple Sunday. Look how colorful we all are in comparison to the boring dead grass and trees behind us.



*edit* If anyone has problems reading all of my posts or scrolling down, can you leave me a comment? Blogger is somehow removing my scrollbars, and despite going over my HTML coding a gazillion times, I cannot figure out why. Thanks!

So I noticed that I was dropped by a few bloglines folks. *sigh* What do I have to do to entertain y'all? Make knitted underwear? Stop posting so many crochet projects? Stop talking about my grandmother's afgan? Am I really that boring?

I'm kidding... I know I am rather dull to read at times.

Next month is yellow and orange for Project Spectrum and I am itching to try dying yarn for my first pair of handdyed socks. I think the yellow and orange together would be bright and peppy, or I could just do shades of orange and call them creamsicle socks. I also have half a skein of orange fun fur-ish type yarn that my brother picked for his afgan square... I'm thinking of making something out of the World of Knitted Toys. A striped cat maybe.

For the most part, though, my April will be for charity crafting- an idea by the lovely Kate. Since I've rediscovered how much faster I crochet than knit, I'm thinking of crocheting a bunch of hats for kidlets. Does Project Dulaan accept crocheted items? Hmm... maybe I should just knit things after all.

We're not in Kansas anymore!

And almost hitting the wire for the end of March...

I finished my Project Spectrum ruby slippers!







I love them! I used Wool of the Andes... about 1.5 skeins... and an "h" hook. I need to recrochet the straps since they are too long, but I've temporarily sewed the buttons on so I can wear them. The pattern was found on Craftster... but I don't have the link bookmarked on this computer, so I will try to remember to link it on Monday when I am at work.

Gayer's afgan is pretty much done... all that remains is a few ends to be woven in and some of the names re-embroidered in white (they all started out in black, and it didn't show on all of the squares). What a relief. I'm incredibly pleased with how it came out, especially once I completed the edging so that it is very lacy looking... like little mini picots all along the sides.

For anyone that isn't familiar with this project, here is a quick background:

I wanted to make my grandmother a family afgan since I know that she gets lonely sometimes and would love to have something from the family to wrap up in. I asked each person on that side of my family to choose a skein of yarn that they felt represented him/her. They then gave the skeins to me to create afgan squares. I started the project before Christmas, and after a couple of months of reminding (harassing) relatives that they needed to give me their (flipping) yarn, I managed to get yarn from all of my relatives except one.





I am going to finish the embroidery this weekend and give the afgan to Gayer on her birthday on March 29th.

Remember the red WOTA that I had planned on using to make a bag for Project Spectrum? Yeah... it finally told me that it didn't want to be a bag. I'm in the process of creating some Mary Jane slippers with it instead. Now that Gayer's afgan isn't the source of all my concentration, I should actually finish this project before the end of March and red/pink.

Happy St. Patrick's Day my friends! May your day be filled with sunshine, pots o gold, exciting knitting and good Murphy's Stout.

It's above freezing again this morning, folks... about 38 degrees outside. It's almost sandal weather!

As I mentioned in my last post, knitting hasn't been very fruitful lately due to my grandmother's afgan, but I have been scoping things out in my bloglines list for future projects. I am totally adoring Lolly's Strawberry Swirl socks... the colorway is faboo! There is something just exciting to me about stripey socks.

And inspired by Lee Ann's Olympic Knitting Deadhead hat and this picture I took of Seth and Sebastian,

I want to knit some Dead bear gear. My friend Jenna's new baby Josie could totally use a Dancing Bear baby blanket, I'm sure. *I* could use a Dancing Bear blanket!

I still plan on doing my cabled handbag... the downside I discovered last night was that I had planned on doubling the yarn to make it thick enough (it's light worsted weight), but am pretty sure I would not have enough to finish it. I'm going to google at lunchtime, but if anyone has any cabled worsted weight handbag patterns bookmarked, I would love to check them out!

Here's the story...

of a girl named Cory...



who is knitting up her first knitted purse...

but the yarn came in hanks and she had to ball it...

and the knots got worse...



She's on the right track now and it's looking nifty...

even though she's only five rows done...



but she now knows how to do both knit and purl...

knots= zero and cory= one.


I have really been a slacker for Project Spectrum, and it sucks. I want to do my red cabled handbag! Thanks to Adelle, I have discovered this snazzy pattern for a knitted uterus. Now y'all are probably wondering what in the hell I am going to do with a knitted uterus, so I will give you a little background.

Whenever I see a cute baby I have always said, "oh, my uterus." Not sure where I picked it up. One of the women in my office brought in her grandchild one day and I did "my uterus" thing. Another woman in my office, who happens to not be my favorite person (thus I am leaving her nameless on here) snapped that the word "uterus" is inappropriate and a bad word. God forbid a person uses the technical term for a part of a woman's anatomy.

So I want to knit up a uterus and bring it into work. All while saying the word "uterus" a million times. It's childish, I know, but whatever. It will be amusing to me.

I have been mad busy still with Gayer's afgan... I am on the downhill slide, though, and that makes me feel somewhat relieved. At this point, all of the squares but mine and Gayer's are done, and the majority have been ringed in black and are ready to be crocheted together.



I am considering crocheting the squares together alphabetically, but haven't decided on that definitely yet. Some of the squares are slightly bigger than others due to the weight of the yarn, too, so that will play a part on how they will actually be rearranged in the end. It will be nice to be done.

March is all about Red and Pink!

It's Project Spectrum time, folks!

I've been looking forward to starting my red cabled handbag for a couple of months, so one would think that I would cast on as soon as March started. Alas, I've moved the yarn from the bin in the closet to a basket on my knitting shelf, but it hasn't gotten any closer. I've been working like mad on other things- first was a baby blanket for my friend Jenna who had her little girl this past Tuesday. I'd planned on sewing the blanket binding on with my handy dandy Singer, but somehow the casing that holds the bobbin is loose, and everytime I turned the machine on the bobbin would vibrate under the needle and bend the needle in half. I went through 2 needles in the course of 1/2 hour, and ended up having to rip out everything that I had managed to sew. That meant sewing the binding on by hand, which is not an easy feat when I am down to the wire and have three kids dancing around my chair everytime I would make a stitch. Perhaps the biggest bummer, though, is the fact that the pictures I had taken of said blanket have disappeared from my camera. The other project I've been frantically working on is the crochet lap afgan for my grandmother since her birthday is at the end of the month. And since my extended family is sometimes a little... off... I still haven't even received yarn from a bunch of family members. I know that Gayer is going to be so grateful to receive this blanket, but a part of me wishes that I would never have undertaken this project simply because of the emotional stress involved.

So now for Project Spectrum stuff!

Since I haven't actually crafted anything, I decided to start by wandering through our house and photographing stuff with red and pink that caught my eye. The problem is that my house really lacks red, so I stretched things a bit.

First up... the magenta beanie bear that sits on the window sill above my kitchen sink:


Second... my Care Bear socks that I am sporting on my toe-toes today:


Third... my fuzzy muppet slippers I am wearing over said socks:


Fourth... one of my knitting bags:


Fifth... the bindings on Seth's snowboard:


Sixth... the sweet annie wreath I bought at last year's Commonground Fair:


and Seventh... I decided to throw in a couple of pictures of my Clapotis in progress since there is a lot of pink and magenta-ish shades within. The pictures do not honestly bring out the colors very well, though... it makes it appear more blue than anything, and that is completely not right.




As I am walking around snapping pictures, Camilla and Kita are watching me as though I have a few screws loose. Camilla decided to be camera shy this evening, but here is lovely Kita staring at me from the stairs:


Happy Reds and Pinks fellow Project Spectrum-ites!