A finished Holden

The name of this shawl has made me smile since I started it, because I have a nephew named Holden, and he's what I've been thinking about while I've knit this.

So yesterday I got home and had exactly 30 minutes before having to head out to the symphony (side note, my husband knows the assistant conductor, but didn't realize that until he was introduced, pretty wicked cool!). So with that I decided to block out my Holden Shawlette (which I would almost call a shawl because it's big) and my Grandpa's socks.

The socks gave me a bit of a heart attack because when I pulled them out of the water it felt like they'd grown 10 times, but they seem to be fine this morning.

These are just regular toe up socks with a heel flap, the pattern can be found on wendyknits.net under her free patterns. I was expecting the water to have a lot more blue than it had, but at least I know they're mostly rinsed out. I can honestly say I probably won't use Sockittome again. It's lovely and soft, but it's a single ply loose spun yarn, and it split all over the place while I was knitting. The worst part was during the bind off of the second sock when I all of a sudden had the yarn completely separate. Luckily I was able to spit splice it back together, but still, it was a big moment of panic. 

This is very unfortunate because I love the colours in this yarn. I really don't think these would wear well on feet that walked around a lot, which is why they're perfect for Grandpa.

Anyway, on to the real reason you're here. Holden.

Here he is having a nice rest on the futon after he'd had his bath.

(I had to stand on a chest/coffee table we have in order to take this picture.)

And here he is on his first trip out of the house.

This was made out of Noro Kureyon Sock, which is another yarn that I love to hate. I love the colours, so long as there aren't any knots in it.

This would have been done quicker if I hadn't made so many rookie mistakes on the feather and fan area. I really enjoyed making this, and the long area of stocking stitch was perfect to show off the rainbow colours of the yarn, and the lace area was just enough to give a bit of interest without being muddled by the variegation.

It's nice and warm, and after a dip in the wool wash, it's softened up nicely and I think it will be a wonderful scarf/shawl for winter.

Almost done

Good morning, I hope you had a lovely weekend. I'm currently fighting a headache from bending over the Holden Shawl for 2 hours yesterday finishing the picot bind off.

All told I had a lovely weekend. Worked like crazy on Holden, in the company of my kitty and a book on the computer as seen here.

It's much more difficult to knit with a cat on your lap when they are very interested in what you're doing and want to see what the yarn tastes like, and help you with unraveling the ball, and generally getting in the way. Yet letter her sit on my lap was the lesser of two evils when considering what she was doing when she wasn't settled.

Yesterday we went to the local hobby shop and I was able to get all of the edging done, but it did take me over 2 hours from start to finish, after which I had the start of a killer headache. Getting down to the wire I was somewhat worried about the amount of yarn I had left. I though I had the yardage for it, but it was becoming a rather small ball as I was getting to the end. In fact, this is all I had left at the end of it all.

I think my sweat and fears were justified, especially since I was adding two stitches to every two that came off the needles.

Now I just have to block this baby and she'll be done. I'm working on my Grandpa's socks right now because they're simple and don't need much concentration.

Do you ever get that Sinking Feeling?

Yesterday I was searching through my house, I had a skirt that I wanted to wear and I was determined to find it. I never did.

But I did find all my embroidery floss! No Aida fabric yet, but at least I have the floss.

In my search I came across a large bag filled with unfinished knitting projects. Ones that I had been working on prior to a baby shower I held in May, some of which, I don't even remember what they were.

That's when I got my sinking feeling, because that's when I started tallying up the UFO's I know I have and adding the ones I forgot about.

I think my next little while is going to be going through all my UFO's and either finishing them up, or frogging them.

I have my Holden Shawlette which is getting closer to being done, but still boring knitting to show you, I have the Spring Thaw Shawl that I'm letting sit for a bit because it needs some first aid, and I've decided to grab these socks that I had on the needles for my Grandpa.

This is Sockittome from Estelle Yarns in colour 52606. I really love this yarn, it is so soft and the colour transitions are beautiful and long. I don't know how well it will wear, but my Grandpa doesn't do a lot of walking.

Grandpa is diabetic and he has heart problems so his circulation isn't the greatest. He loves my knit wool socks though! I usually have a pair on the needles for him. These would have been done months ago if they hadn't ended up in a bag stuffed in a room so that my house looked somewhat presentable for family.

I'm going to keep these in my bag as simple knitting, stuff that doesn't need a pattern. They're easy toe up socks based off of Wendyknits standard pattern with a heel flap worked in reverse. I love this pattern because I don't have to worry about stitching up the toe, and I can just knit until I'm done my yarn on the cuffs.

This weekend I'm hoping to go through my house and round up all my yarn, projects, and the like and bring them down to my living room. Then I'm going to sort them out and get everything put neatly into my new crafting wardrobe. I'll probably have a section for UFO's which I'll be drawing from for the next while.

I'm hoping to have a bunch of finished knitted stuff to show you in the near future, so stay tuned.

Not much to show

So I've got past the stocking stitch part of the Holden Shawl, I'm now starting the lace section and I'm very excited. However, miles of stocking stitch doesn't really catch the attention. The colours are pretty though.

This is a full repeat of the Noro colourway. So far so good, usually when I use regular Noro I have problems with the colourway, in that I'll buy it because it has the most beautiful blue, only for it to only actually have 2 rows worth of that blue in it, and then a knot in the middle of the ball that keeps you in the ugly brown filler colour. Yes I'm still bitter about that scarf!

I'm really really looking forward to doing the lace portion of this, but it's the kind of lace that needs the pattern in front of you, at least while you're starting it, so that's coffee shop, podcast listening knitting.

I will be going back to the Spring Thaw shawl after this, I'd like to have both of these shawls done before the snow flies.

I've also been going through my Ravelry notebook and trying to update all my projects, and put pictures up for everything, so I was lucky enough to grab this shot of the project that made me stop knitting for 2 years.

These are the itty bitty socks, and I kind of wish I'd grabbed a picture of them when I had all 110 done. They were handed out to all the guests at my wedding. They had a few hard candies in them, and were clothes pinned with some tiny scrapbooking clothes pins to little fanned out napkins. We also gave little white boxes with heart chocolates for those who didn't care for knitting. 

At least everyone now has something I knit them and can't say I'm always leaving them out.

Each sock took 45 minutes, and I completed all 110 in 2 months, by myself. Oh the joys of a bus ride that takes 2 hours each way for work.

After that marathon I only picked up the needles for a few pairs of socks for my Grandfather.

Now that I've started picking up the needles again, I'm working very hard to knit from my stash. I have some nice stuff in there, but after three years of ignoring it, I think I can fall in love with my stuff enough to knit with it now.

I may have to do an "airing of the stash" post next week, if I have time to dump it all out and figure what I have on the weekend.

Where my focus currently is

And by "focus" I mean what projects currently have my attention.

So to start off, let's check out my finished Fisherman's Rib Scarf thing.

This is so cushy! It isn't symmetrical because I wasn't sure how much grey I had left and ended up just using up all the yarn I had left. Oh and thank goodness for spit splicing! I was 6 stitches short on the grey for the last row, but managed to spit splice in just enough from where I originally added in the grey.

The other nice thing for this super warm scarf, is that I can fold it in half and wrap it around my neck like a short scarf like this:

Or put it's full width around my shoulders like shawl, or use it as a small lap blanket.

Full FO Details can be found on Ravelry. This is made with approximately 1.5 balls of blue, and a .5 ball of grey Lamb's Pride Worsted yarn that I bought in Toronto years ago for my husband's sweater of insanity. This isn't an actual pattern, though I did use Wendy Knits Fisherman Rib scarf from her book as reference. With this I just cast on as many stitches as I wanted for the width and did the rib until I ran out of yarn. The stripes were done on the fly, there really wasn't a rhyme or reason to it except that I messed up and did 4 rows of the grey instead of 3, so I just started dropping it down to 1 row, and it ended up working.

Knitting with Lamb's Pride was nice, it's a soft yarn, but the mohair ended up EVERYWHERE, so I did sneeze a fair amount as it got in my nose. I enjoyed this knit, and may use a pattern similar to use up other left overs because it knit pretty quick. I started this just before the long weekend, and finished it up this past Sunday morning, so just over a week.

A part of me kind of wishes I had made it thinner so the scarf would be longer, but I think this will work well as it is. I kind of want to get a nice big shawl pin to hold it on, especially since I've been making a lot of shawls lately.

And with that let's look at my other two projects, both shawls.

First up is the Spring Thaw Shawl that I'm working on in Socks That Rock yarn that I got in the 2004 sock club. I've found that STR doesn't wear as well as I like it to and I find myself darning them fairly often. Don't get me wrong, it's very comfy as socks, but more like slipper socks than what I like to wear on a daily basis. So the beautiful yarn has slowly been being turned into scarfs, hats, and shawls.

I lost the ball band for this one so I can't tell you the colour, but it is a bunch of shades of blues and greys.

I do very much like this pattern. The over all design is lovely, and the yarn is fabulous to knit with.

I very much look forward to getting this off the needles and blocking it out, however:

I only have this much yarn left, and I'm only the 5th row of the edging. It's not that big of a deal, I just need to put out one full repeat of the pattern. This is actually a good thing because the pattern prefers it if you end on an even number of repeats width wise, and I originally ended on an odd number. So I just need to take the time to weave in some spare yarn to make sure I don't pull out too far, and then rip it out to that point and start the edging again.

So while that waits, I of course started something else (but this is IT, no new starts until I finish one of these shawls and get them blocked).

This is all Ravelry's fault. I was looking in the "Your Nicest FO's" thread and saw a gorgeous completed Holden Shawlette in a Raveler's homespun. I loved what it did to the colours, and how it showed off the long transitions. 

It was perfect for another ball of sock yarn, that I had started to turn into socks but then found out the yarn doesn't wear well, and it also didn't feel like anything I wanted on my feet. It was Noro Kureyon Sock, that I purchased from The Loopy Ewe ages ago. I love the colours of it, in fact, Noro is probably one of my favourite yarns in terms of colours and transitions. However I decided to set the yarn aside until I found a project that would do it justice.

I love the colourway, though the little peach parts aren't my favourite, they seem to be pretty small though, so hopefully they won't be the main thing you see.

Here's all the colours up to where I've paused in my knitting, the pink isn't as bright, and the green isn't as dull as it looks here, hopefully I can get a better picture that shows the colours properly.

So far I am very much enjoying how the simple stockinette stitch is showing off the colours. The only thing I'm worried about is the thick and thin areas of the yarn, it has a very different drape in sections due to this. 

I don't know if you can see at the top of the brown section where it gets thicker. I'm hoping that when I wash and block this once it's done it will bloom and not cause too much of a problem.

So that's what I currently have on the needles. Tomorrow I'll be telling you why I may be in trouble. See you then!