Major Knitter

Flying Off the Needles

Whoa!  I don't think I could slow down if I wanted to.  These Rainbow Felici socks are simply flying off the needles.

I'm loving them.  

Oops! I Did It Again

I grabbed the next bit of Felici yarn in the rainbow color way and cast on for another pair of socks.

How to Fix Those Sore Aching Knitting Muscles

It's all coming back to me.  I have slowed down on my constant sock knitting this past year.  I thought I had just lost that lovin' feeling.  But now it's all coming back to me.  I knit on US Size 1 needles.  I knit a lot.  I knit quickly.  I knit until I'm done.  Put that all together and whenever I knit socks, I end up with a huge knot in the back of my shoulders.  I have such a knot this week.  It's mostly likely due to the fact that I knit not one, but two pairs of socks.  So I did what any sane knitter would do.  I went for a manicure/pedicure.

How does that make sense?  Well, I get a free massage with my mani/pedi.  And I needed some TLC on my toes... so it made sense to do both for the price of one.  Don't you love how my mind works?  

P.S.  Instead of giving it a rest, my logic continues that the faster I can finish these socks, the faster I can give my aching muscles a break.

While the Children Play

We're at Six Flags New England for opening weekend. Secundogeniture and his friend are having fun despite the cold. I found a booth and a cup of hot coffee to sit, knit, and listen to my book while they're having fun.

I might finish these socks today. Not a bad use of my time. Not bad at all.

Progress

I've gotten bored with my knitting.  In fact, not even the cute little bunny rabbits are calling to me this week.  So I decided to show some dedication and pick up one of my barely begun sweaters from my queue.  But which one to chose?

Finally, I settled on Breckenridge by Fiona Ellis.

But let me tell you the problems this one gave me at the start.  To be fair, I disobeyed the cardinal rule of starting a cardigan sweater in the round.  

Thou shall create the set up rows in complete silence and utter peace and quiet.

This is not the sweater to take to your weekly knitting group and try to count more than 300 sts while chatting away.  I swear you'd think I was splitting at atom with the amount of difficulty I had counting.  In the end, I ripped everything out, went home in the same spot I was before the knitting group, made a spread sheet for the cables in Excel, and counted, placed markers, counted again, and again, and again.  Finally, after much patience, silence, solitude, and concentration, my set up row was complete and I was off to the races.

Don't get too excited.  With so many stitches and cables, this will be a very slow race.  It's not even a marathon... more like a walk-a-thon.  But I like cables.  I find them interesting.  So I hope this will keep my attention.

I'm Bored!

I know.  It sounds whiny.  But it happens from time to time in my knitting world.  In fact, about once a year, I lose my knitting mojo.  At the end of the summer I had whittled my list down to less than five WIPs and UFOs.  Somehow this queue grew and grew over the past few months and is currently sitting at twelve and I have little-to-no desire to knit any of them.  Sigh.  Here's a look at the queue.

 

1.  Purple Stockinette Socks - unlabeled yarn which was a gift.  Anyone have any idea what it is?

 

2.  Owl Hat #4

 

3.  Let It Snowmen 2013 - these just need the eyes and bells and final sewing.  They are *almost* done.

4.  A Hug from Marienne blanket - in black, white and gray

 

6.  A Hug from Marienne - pinks and orange

7.  Lindaly's Blanket

8.  The Sampler Blanket in forest green.

9.  Penguin Popper ornaments

10.  Breckenridge - a sweater for moi???

11.  Cabled Raglan Cardigan for Secundogeniture... snoozing since for-evah!

12.  The Floral Jacket - which you remember I picked up in late July deteremined to finish it only to discover a few attacks by winged evil critters.  I didn't have the courage to work on it and it went back into hiding.

So there you have it.  I've got twelve pretty amazing, interesting projects of all types - socks, epic, quick and easy to challenging.  And I'm bored?  What's up with that?  Maybe I should stop playing that stupid solitaire on my phone and instead focus my time and energy into finishing up these projects.  I don't know which will be first.  I know most of you want to see the Floral Jacket... but I'm just not sure I have the energy to fix what the moths attacked.  I'll probably start with one of the quick and easy projects for some instant gratification.  You know how I love instant gratification.  So I'm off to find my knitting mojo.  Wish me luck.  

 

 

The Beginning of Another Beautiful Thing

Immediately after finishing the last two Sampler Blankets, I cast on for a new one.  I like having this project on the needles.  It's like an old friend who tells the same stories over and over but never gets boring.  About the time you're ready to be done with it, there's another story to tell.  Thirty stories to be exact.  That's what I like about this blanket.

None of the thirty swatches are too hard or too boring.  They're just the right mix of interesting and challenging to keep me focused - yet just enough variety to ensure I don't get bored and put the whole thing away.  Also, I've gotten pretty good at finishing this puppy - so I'm confident I can actually create a FO in a relatively short amount of time.

I've calculated that each strip of six swatches takes me nine hours to knit.  9x5=45 hours of knitting.  Plus the soaking, blocking, drying, joining, weaving in of loose ends, and crocheting of the border puts the entire blanket at about 50-55 hours.

Ingredients for success:

• 4 skeins of Cascade Eco+ yarns
• US Size 10.5 needles (I like my Lantern Moons for this project)
• A favorite Netflix series to watch while knitting

How about you?  What's your favorite go to knitting?

 

Starting the New Year with a Clean Slate

Sort of.

I was looking for a knitting project to finish, so I went into the Harry Potter closet under the stairs and started pulling out long forgotten bags.  One thing turned into another and I was embarassed to discover a dozen knitting bags with abandoned projects in them.  If I do nothing else but reclaim the yarn and needles, I will have accomplished a great deal.

By the way, this doesn't even include the WIPs, UFOs and ZZZ'd projects I have on my Ravelry project page.  Sigh.

Here are just a few of the treasures I plan to finish:

There's a whole gaggle of eyeless, beakless chickens ready to be finished.  I made these over a few nights of watching TV with BF.  I could finish all of these in 1-2 days.

And speaking of finishing projects... I found this.  Since I've been on such a blanket kick, I was actually happy to find this Warm Up America blanket from 2005 that I never finished - even after I knit up some "linking swatches" to tie the whole blanket together and give it a little less randomness.  I didn't know how to join the swatches before - but now I am experienced in crocheting the swatches together.  So I'm definitely putting this one high on my list.

The rest... I'm a bit afraid to show you.  I don't know how I feel about them.  Lots of tossed projects.  Lots of charity projects.  Lots of yarn to be restocked in the Knit Nook to become a future loved object.  

There you have it.  New Year's Resolution #1 - clean out my UFOs and stash.  This doesn't mean I won't buy new yarn... but I seriously need to clean up some of the things I already have.

Happy New Year!  Do you have any fiber related resolutions?

Let Me Call You Sweetheart

It only took 1,460 days or exactly four years, but I finally resurrected this Forgotten Object and turned it into a Finished Object.

It's my Sweetheart Baby Blanket which was knit using the following

• 5 skeins of Plymouth Encore worsted weight yarn in a lovely purple Color 2426
• US size 7 needles
• My own pattern - which is really only a graph
• Lots of seed stitch hearts and borders.
• Finished measurements = 

Here it is draped over a chaise longue.

A close up of the seed stitch hearts.

This was a lazy weekend and yesterday at the diner for a very late brunch, Secundogeniture asked some questions about this epic blanket:

Secundogeniture:  Who's the blanket for?

Major Knitter:  I don't know.  Maybe I'll just put it away and it can be for your child someday.

Secundogeniture:  That's a little creepy.  Here's a blanket I knit for you fifty years ago for a child you didn't even have.

Alrighty then.  I guess it won't be going into Secundogeniture's baby hope chest any time soon...  Maybe Primogeniture's hope chest?  He probably doesn't read this blog and would never know.  Bwahahahaha.

Press On

So I managed to bandage my damaged digits and somehow was able to figure out a way to knit the purple sweetheart blanket with a certain level of success.

Thank goodness for Flexible Fabric Band-aids.  I might even have a FO to show you before the weekend's end.