I'm not being great at keeping up with this blogging stuff...so see my

Ravelry Page

for my knitting projects. Happy knitting!

Every time lately that I've been posting it's been at least a month or more, but at least now I can share with you all where my knitting/blogging mojo has gone...

...into growing a baby!

I still can't quite believe it, but I'm about 18 weeks along now. It's crazy how tired growing a tiny person can make you. It also sapped most of my creativity clean gone until recently. And I've even had a pretty easy pregnancy so far. Since it's my first I have no real inclination toward whether it's a boy or a girl based on how the pregnancy is going, but we'll find out soon!

My mom gave me a bunch of baby knitting books for my birthday and I think that has restored a bit of my mojo. I've plunged right in with something from Debbie Bliss' Essential Baby:



It's the hooded carrying bag in Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in black. Love the yarn, love the pattern, and can't wait to have the first something made for my baby when he/she arrives!

I have been doing some other things (besides sleeping) in the meantime. I finally finished those socks for my husband. They turned out really adorable (I mean...ruggedly handsome) and he loves them. They're his house socks...mostly because I threatened that if he sweated all over them and got them all gross I'd be horribly offended.



Design: Twisted Rib Socks (ravelry link), Knit Picks Free patterns (which they have since taken off their website)

Yarn: Knit Picks Essential Sock in S'mores

Needles: US 3s

Size made: one size fits all men's

Begun: March, 2007

Finished: November, 2007

Notes: The pattern is really straight forward, a very simple sock pattern but with a twist (yuck, yuck). They turned out wonderfully!



I also finished a hat for myself.



Design: Knitty's Foliage

Yarn: Knit Picks Elegance in Lilac

Needles: US 6s

Size made: one size fits all

Begun: November, 2007

Finished: December, 2007

Notes: This Knit Picks yarn is SO nice. And especially nice is the price and that for this pattern you really only need 1 ball. The pattern is great, a wonderful and really fast lace pattern. I've had more compliments on this hat and a couple people even want me to make them one!


Now that I've got some of the mojo back, I'll hopefully be able to get around blogland a little more often and post much more often. I say hope, you never know what life is going to throw at you next!

I feel like every time I post nowadays it’s to apologize that I haven’t posted in months and months nor have I stopped by anyone’s blog to say hi. Well, this time I have a really good excuse, which involves various personal wars with Comcast, some biological happenings, and good ol’ family holiday time. There are SO many things I want to post about (and I will shortly – I promise this time, cross my heart), but I wanted to just pop up real quick and say how excited I am that the book is out!

(I guess it’s been out since late November, but I’m somewhat behind the ball here). This is my design:



This definitely was a LOT of hard work and an eye opening experience. My yarn arrived really late in the process and I was just knitting my fingers to the bone for like a week straight to get this finished by the deadline. That is a feat in and of itself but then all those cables! Man oh man, was I beat. But I’m so happy with the result and I’m going to make another one for myself one of these days (the sample size was for tiny little models, I am not so much that small these days). And if you can at all get away with it, try out some of the Pear Tree Merino that is available through Yahaira’s yarn store at Pure Knits. It is one of the most divine yarns that I have worked with (besides a pure cashmere) and the color variations come out exquisitely in the finished product.

So all in all, I am thrilled to be published and thrilled to have a design that I adore out there with my name on it. And I can’t wait to knit some of the other patterns in the book! The cover design is one of my favorites and that is going on my list, for sure.

I’ll be back soon with more information about what’s keeping me away from the blog so much and I hope to get by your blog soon. Miss you all!

Sandy Wiseheart of Knitting Daily fame just had a discussion on her emails and via a poll on why a UFO becomes a UFO. Interesting topic, I thinks to myself, as most WIPs become UFOs for a variety of reasons. My current lack of progress on anything knitting related has more to do with moving than any particular knitting related reason, but I do have several things that are on the needles in a basket or box somewhere and were put there long before moving entered my mind.

Take exhibit a for example: Phildar Zip Cardigan. Absolutely adored this sweater when I started it. Plugged away at it for a long while. Something, or some things , came up in the meantime which I just HAD TO KNIT. Then this got put completely on the backburner and has not really come out since. I still love the cardigan and think it would be totally versatile. I just need to pump myself up enough to get the size 1’s a-clackin.

And then here we have exhibit b: gloves for my sister. I started work on these sometime last summer (that would be summer of ’06). I got an entire glove done but then pooped out on the second. So maybe this is a case of second glove syndrome. I really want these to get done for Christmas this year, but we’ll see how that goes. I make no promises any more.

On to exhibit c: Salina from Rowan Vintage Knits. I tried this one with some Debbie Bliss merino. And not until I was finished did I realize that even though I had the same dye lot, the sleeves were a different color than the rest of the body (!!!). I tried a bunch of things that I had looked up online to fix the problem and decided I might just need to dye it another color completely. That just ended in me being totally overwhelmed and no even sure where to begin, so it went to the closet! In the meantime, I might just move onto doing another rowan pattern, possibly Cherie I in the same magazine.

Finally, we come to the Knit Picks Telemark Ski Sweater, which I still adore. I tried to start it (the directions involve a lot of math to calculate your “perfect” size) but somehow ended up with a GIANT waist band. I think I need to recalculate and re-swatch all in the same day and do some more precise measurements. But not right now, hence the UFO. It was all very bizarre, to say the least.

So right now, I’m plugging away at my mom’s penguin sweater (photos to come when I find my camera in a box somewhere…). By the way, unpacking is going well, slowly but surely and our new house is amazing! I love it so much. God was faithful in a situation that I was just bummed about to provide a wonderful new home where my husband and I can entertain abundantly. Maybe I can put up some pictures, again, when I find my camera.

Whew.

This summer has been oh so busy. I finished up my master’s program coursework and have now begun my internship, which in and of itself is full of business, excitement, and a good deal of nervousness. Summer school is always a more intensive time that fall or spring because the courses are shortened and compacted. I submitted a design to Yahaira’s new book, got accepted, knitted like a fiend, mailed it in, and busted out the pattern all within about a month. My husband and I have been going to wedding, baby showers, traveling to see family, and dealing with family issues. And in the meantime, we’ve been trying to go to our day jobs, find a new place to live and pack up our stuff (another long story, but in short, our landlord sold the duplex we were living in and the buyers is remodeling it back into a single family home. Ergo, we have to move. We did find a new place which I am extremely excited about though. Makes the whole moving thing a little less horrible), and do humdrum things like keep the house clean. And when have I had time to do some knitting for fun you ask? I’ll tell you the answer to that question: I haven’t! My husband and I rented a totally cheesy action movie last night (D.O.A.) and I worked some on some socks I’m making for him.

I started these back in April sometime. They’re from a Knit Picks free pattern, but they took the pattern off their website and of course I cannot find the file I thought I saved to my computer or the printout of the pattern, so now I’m more or less making them up as I go along. The hub is awfully excited about them and he gets jazzed whenever I pull them out.

Another item on my docket is shifting this blog over to the url I purchases a few months back. I started the process of having a new blog designed for me with another blogger who does design, but for some reason I have not heard back from her in about 3 months and not for lack of trying on my part. So if any of you know any good designers out there, I’d love some referrals because I really want to get my new site up and running.

All my summer business has also meant that I have been unable to check in with blogland. I’m setting aside some hours this weekend to get re-acquainted with all of your projects, musings, photos, and life happenings. It makes me sad when life gets in the way of toodling around the blogs, but sometimes that’s just the facts, ma’am.

On the plan for the knitting right now is as follows (and by the way, packing is a great time to get all the knitting organized. Gotta love that):

1. finish up the socks for the hub before cold-feets weather arrives
2. finish up some finger-less gloves that I modified from the … pattern for my sister. She wanted some finger-less gloves with covers and after I couldn’t find a pattern she liked I decided to meld a few together.
3. start a sweater for my mom. The dry cleaner ruined her favorite sweater and so she asked me to make a fresh new copy for her. It shouldn’t be too complicated as its mostly straight lines but it does have a pretty fabulous penguin motif.
4. start planning for a sweater I’ve been dying to work up. It’s a ribby, fold-over cardigan with big buttons and hopefully fun details worked in.

That’s quite a bit! In between packing up and moving, I’ll hopefully get some more knitting time in and also some more blogging time too. Hope to see you all around the neighborhood soon!