The August Bandwagon - Westknits KAL

Finished off the Westknits Shawl and blocked it - the pashmina is so soft, and the large size is a nice shawl/wrap size. It's being modelled by a colleague of mine who has short hair (nope, didn't cut it just yet). My battery was drained and my camera hot - having inadvertently left my camera on in "take picture mode" for 3 hours in my purse just prior to taking the pics - I had to be quick.





9 of 12.

Another photo courtesy of Bonny:- Taken at sunset early September 2011.

Copper Daybreak Finished in 5 days

This lovely photo taken by Bonny:

Lovely Pashmina...tosh, that is.

Last weekend a friend of mine blew into town..and delivered some yarn from Sock Summit

Fathom, Stovepipe, and Oceanos (L to R) :-

(Ooooooooh....Ahhhhhhhhh)

Lepidoptra, Steam Age, and Nebula (L to R):-


(Mmmmmmmm...lovely)

Steam Age is a light gray with bits of pink and green to match the 2 other colors..
Is it any wonder that I had a hard time deciding between colour combos for the Westknits KAL Shawl ? These were the runners up.

Copper Daybreak

Received these in trade for other yarn in my stash -



the Coppery wanted to be the top of a Daybreak shawl -



and the Green, Frau Totenkinder, matched beautifully.
Finished section 2, and now knitting the border in Section 3.

Fritzi - Lovely frills

The numbers

Never again will I sign up for a yearly challenge for projects..seems like I was doing just fine churning out projects until I signed up for the "12 in 2011" - the challenge to knit 1 a month. Adding the requirement has somehow made me knit slower and raised my standards for knitting so that I've been fussier instead of just knitting and churning the projects out.

I also tried to knit more complex projects this year I think, and be more sweater focused to use up the yarn.

Here were my previous numbers:
2010 - 21 projects
2009 - 18 projects
2008 - 17 projects (counted from April onwards only)

This year, for 2011, I'm barely keeping up - seems like I've been knitting less, or worrying more ?

Current status for projects -
6 of 12 finished
4 that I'm actively working on to finish;
3 on the needles that I haven't worked on in months, and
2 being swatched
About 5 or 6 in my mind that are queued next..and I don't think any of them were on my original queue planned for 2011 with the challenge in mind. Most of the patterns I picked ended up having "issues" of some kind - requiring heavy mods, or where other ravelers decided they weren't happy with the end product, so I ditched them.

7 projects hibernating that are knit mid-stream UFOs - stalled for some reason - misplaced pattern, halfway through and not getting gauge, overknit and need to rip back and determine if I can continue.

One thing I noticed was that this year with the challenge for 12, I tried to focus on finishing more, rather than just casting on projects when I felt like it, and knitting multiple projects.

Heed my words SELF, next year, I'm just knitting on my own without trying to reach some artifical "challenge".

A little vacation

went away 1.5 weeks ago for a little mini-vacation. Five days away..for a bit of sun, and revisiting some old haunts. For the first time ever I said, "Victoria has a great Greek Festival - the food is much better than this." By "this", I meant, the tougher lamb meat from the local "Glendi" Greek Festival in Beaverton, Oregon where Linda suggested we meet. They did have Loukamades which reminded me of...Victoria. Sadly, though Portland was my home for many years, it's starting to tarnish a little.

Mostly this time I noticed -
- Americans are mostly poor - lots of people around, and lots of sales in the shops; but not many people buying...
- Borders stores are closing - the end of an era; even with sales, not many people are buying physical books these days.
- the selection in the stores has become narrower - fewer products available
- Prices for items are generally higher than I've seen - $3.63/gallon of gas; it was $2.50 or so when I left in 2007. Still not as high as Victoria, where a $25 tank of gas (10 gallons) just cost me $53.00, I think it was; most of the difference being tax on tax. On average, it seemed like many products are just as expensive as Victoria, looking only nominally at the numbers, and not including the additional tax we add on here.
- Service at some of my favorite restaurants has slid down down hill and the portions have gotten smaller, the service a little less than what had been.

The US Debt was big news when I was there. Interestingly enough I had always thought that the proportion of expenditure on defense and support of defense was a much larger proportion as compared with the slice for education or health care. Looks like wikipedia has that as 20% of the "budget" for defense, but this figure is DoD only. Interesting reading...

In lighter thoughts..I attended 2011 Sock Summit...a convention for knitting socks.
I took 2 courses - one called the Knitting Sleuth taught by Cat Bordhi. I say taught rather loosely here, as we mostly met and looked at Value Village sweater swatches and tried to reverse engineer them. This was a disappointing class for me because I expected to have some a-ha moments, and mostly, the only a-ha was a reinforcement that I'm not very spatial so I had trouble switching the swatches over in mind to reverse engineer them. Additionally, in hindsight discussion with others who attended her sock class, it sounds like she has lost her sock knitting mojo and her heart wasn't in teaching the classes anymore which is too bad as I had quite enjoyed her previous class.

The second class I attended was much better - Painted Toes by Janel Laidman. It seemed to be quite intimidating to knit fairisle, but I ended up having a thorougly relaxing class applying the fairisle hold-in-both-hands knitting that I've done in the past. The 3-hours passed without incident, and I felt that was a tremendously helpful class, mostly just to be in such a relaxing environment, and to be able to accomplish the formation and knitting of a tiny elfin sock in a short time span.

Ahhh...shopping. I had planned to buy a few skeins of yarn..and I did. A couple of gorgeous skeins from Stricken Smitten like this BFL-Silk Fingering weight called Tealfeathers (Ooooh..Ahhhh...)



and a close-up here..(Mmmmmm...)


and a bit of Serendipity Shimmer Glimmer...



I have a previous skein of the Shimmer Glimmer that I was a lovely green - but this is- even more so.

Also some madtosh Pashmina for my WestKnits Earth and Sky Shawl Knit-along (KAL) in Tart, Saffron and Fig (L to R, respectively), colors A, C, and B.



The Madtosh Pashmina, I picked up at Happy Knits - this was the Sock Summit gift they were handing out - a cool little graph paper booklet, tiny sample of happiness madtosh yarn, tape measure, and a fun little Happy Knits bag.



In addition to getting out in the sun, I also met with old friends for lunch and dinner. It was fun. unfortunately, the time passed quickly. The one thing I did that made me truly homesick for Portland came almost right at the end. I went to the International Rose Test Garden at Washington Park. The roses were still in full bloom (having also had a late late summer), and smelled very sweet. It was wonderful. I wish I was close enough to visit every day.

I took a couple of extra days off to catch up on some sleep, and to visit Butchart's where the roses are still blooming also. I returned to work Thursday to a divisional day which was interactive yet somehow sapped the day's energies. I did get out on a couple of nice walks though. Today was friday, and I'm apparently at training Monday, Tuesday..so extending the mini vacation a little longer before going back to work with bells on wednesday.

Summer Sun

Lovely. Apparently the weather is supposed to turn hot next week - can hardly wait.
We've returned to the gray days..and the AC at work is working overtime to keep us cool like a popsicle inside. someone even came around today to seal up all our windows so they can analyze airflow. nice. purposefully cool. wish it were sunny enough to warrant all of the cold.

I'm back to knitting my opulence cardi. Knit a good portion of the second sleeve tonight and need to orient and knit the cable on the 2nd sleeve, then bind-off. so close. hopefully, this weekend, I'll be done...and just in time for the hot weather.

Calling it good -

I'm tired and not sleeping well these days - I'm calling it good



6 of 12 done, so far.

Come on summer - time to bring the sun back out again.

Black hole for needles and socks

I seem to have a black hole nearby that munches on knitting needles and socks.
I've been keeping a large pillowcase full of single socks, and reunited about 20 pairs of socks two months ago..still have about 10 singles looking thoughtfully for their pairs. these are store-bought socks, mind you, so it's not like they hopped back onto needles and hid someplace, although I do seem to have quite a few missing-in-action needles as well.

According to my rav needle inventory (which I updated in May 2011), I supposedly have quite a few metal circulars in circulation - some I've identified as being assigned to ufos or works in progress. The others, I've simply recorded as"out-unknown", as the only remnants I have is the hang bag it came in.

After taking the weekend to just do things for me..I dug happily into a new project using the regal silk and knit 5", this including a hem and a pleat which was finicky and fussy. Finally, it's sitting flat and it looks beyoo-ti-ful.
Then, today, i tried it on.

WHOA there - too big..even after having swatched and predicted that I was doing ok, somehow, my gauge is off, and it's too big at my hips, and I'm not sure I can fudge it. Somehow when I looked at while I was knitting, it seemed like it would be ok. now, i'm not so sure. So, i'm going to swatch again with a US5.

According to my needle inventory, I am supposed to have 3 or 4 of these needles. guess what ? they're all out, either "out-unknown" or "out on a project". Two that are out and known are: 1. On the Dover Castle Shawl - status: currently stalled because i'm a beginner lace knitter and the pattern is too complex for my tiny brain, so it requires attention, and i'm generally only getting knitting time at knit night, which is not good for good attention.

and 2. is the sweet jazz scarf project which was supposed to be an easy knit, but ended up being super boring between the short rows and the rough-feeling yarn. not inspiring. first time i'm knitting with wm and my attention span is waning.sad.

Since the dover castle shawl could do to go down a needle, and I have plenty of 4s - at least, so my needle inventory says (heh, heh). I'll try that again on a US4, and take back the US5 to swatch the regal silk top again.

Yay a domino effect- Maybe it'll convince some needles to come out of hiding.

July

Canada Post is back on track; hopefully, some good things are coming my way. Not the least of which a prezzy for Andi (who had her birthday last weekend), caught in the mail. I did receive mail on Thursday for the first time - a free FOCUS magazine, and 2 junk mail ads promptly recycled. Still on the look out for my HST ballot which I hope is on its way.

Also, I set aside all the projects needing attention, to focus on knitting something soft - this regal silk I've been saving for some time. The swatch I made blends a deep chocolate brown and a oh so hot fuchsia. Hopefully, the finished top won't be too stripey. I'm loving knitting with this.



Donated some very old unloved yarn to Beehive last weekend for their destash for cash fundraiser for Canada Comforts, and put the $12.40 towards a new skein of Sweet Georgia Tough Love Sock in Pomegranate. Hopefully, with the other one I'll find something to knit in future.

Also, continuing destashing on rav and locally and crossing my fingers to take a vacation in July in Portland. oh, i miss you so. The roses of june, and going to the Japanese Garden. .