Hungry??

It is finished. All finished. All the knit food is DONE! I made it all for a few friends of mine that thought it would make great play food for their kids. I'm going to make some more for my kids, but not right now, I'm kinda knit food-ed out. anyway, here is the completed stuff:

Watermelon, my own design. I might post the pattern for free if anyone is interested. PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT if you want it posted. Thanks :-)

Strawberries, although the flash was too bright and they don't look as good as they do in real life.

fruits and veggies. I put them in my fruit basket to keep them out of reach of my kids, and I really like how it looks. When I get around to working on more knit food I will make a bunch for my fruit basket as well as some for my kids.

sushi! Minus the wasabi, it was a choking hazard and they all have little ones the same age as my kids.

pizza pizza pizza.
In looking at them together, I think I may have used 2 different sized needles. I know the smaller one was on size 5s, I must have used 6's for the larger one. Same pattern, just different sizes. They both came out looking yummy though. I crocheted and embroidered the toppings instead of knitting them, I found it easier.

Now that the food is DONE, I'm going to work on some "selfish" knitting--knitting just for me! Although I do want to make a monogram pillow for some friends of ours, but that is not a big deal. :-) besides, I have to have at least 34 projects going at once, right?

This is the vest I am working on. Simply Soft in the heather grey color. The photo below I did without flash so you could see the pattern better. Once it is 16 inches I will separate the front and back to do the armholes and neckline etc. Right now I think its about 6-7 inches so I have a ways to go. It is a good mindless project, just the one cable section. 6 row repeat, 3 of the rows have the cable action. I should start taking this in the car, maybe put the pattern on a post it to put on the dashboard! the rest is a k2/p2 checkerboard in a 3 row repeat. k2/p2 for 3 rounds, then p2/k2 for 3 rounds. Almost makes me think of medeval chain mail or something.



And my latest socks. Finished up the top part tonight, ready to start the heel flap. This yarn I got at the barnes and nobles knitting night I go to sometimes, one of the gals had a friend who had an online yarn shoppe that was going out of business. It is a hand dyed machine washable yarn, I've had it for months and the label is long gone so I can't remember what is in it, but I think it is some sort of cotton blend. I love the subtle color changes that happen in hand dyeing.

close up of the pattern, a mock rib. I can't wait until they are done, I love wearing my green socks that I made and am excited to have another pair made by ME! Plus once the orange ones are off the needles I can start either my pink beaded pair or my purple lace pair. Decisions, decisions, decisions. . .

thanks for reading!! Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or, well, comments! :-)

do not knit lace while watching new episodes of Chuck!

FINALLY some new TV. Ugh. I support the writers, really I do, and I think they deserve their cut of the profits but I'm so tired of reruns and retarted reality shows. (WOW that's a mouthfull!) I mean, seriously, hooking someone up to a lie detector and asking them in front of their spouse and the nation if they'd cheat on their wife if there was no chance of being caught? Who thinks this crap up?? Anyway, there were some new episodes of Chuck on tonight. I guess ones they had stored away for a rainy day or a writers strike or something. The second clue for Secret of the Stole ii comes out tomorrow which meant to be eligible for the prize drawing you had to have photos of your completed first clue uploaded to the yahoo group tonight. I was fevereshly trying to finish the last 10 rows while watching Chuck. BAD IDEA. Intricate lace, tiny size 2 needles, pattern that requires a lot of attention, yeah. LOTS of tinking tonight! (to tink: to reverse knitting stitch by stitch until you find where you goofed up). UGh. I think I got 2 lace rows done. This is a project for when I am concentrating on nothing but my knitting.

Still OTN: knit food---UGH. I gotta get this done!!! I have 1.5 pieces of sushi left then all I have left to do is 8 pieces of pizza for one of my friends. Not hard, not too time consuming but I'm getting tired of knitting food LOL. I'm ready to move on. I just need to buck up and freaking finish it already! I've told myself I couldn't start another big project until it is done!! No new socks (not counting the orange ones OTN now), no really elegant looking sweater from most recent magazine purchase (well, I have to order the yarn anyway. . . ) and no starting dd's bedspread (she's going to be in the crib for months yet but I still want to start it!). I have issues, can you tell? I think it is knitting ADD. I have to have multiple projects going so when I get bored I can move to something else. for example, I made a Barbie dress today. Another cute pattern from my knitting magazine althought I changed it quite a bit (made it longer, made it sleeveless, used different needles, made it a v-neck with a ribbed neckline instead of crew neck, etc.) so I will probably post my version when I take a photo of it. I needed something different, kwim? Something that was a quick knit. Of course, I also needed a Barbie doll. My dd is only 21 months old so she didn't have any yet. She got her first one today :-) I'm not going to mention that the only reason she got it was so I could perfect my Barbie dress LOL. By the time she's old enough to really get into Barbies, maybe I'll have a whole slew of clothes for her! I had a lot of handmade Barbie clothes when I was little and I loved them! I should ask Mom who made them. I also picked up another size 2 addi lace turbo needle, since mine are attatched to socks right now and my Boye interchangables just weren't working for the stole--the join was bigger than the needle which made sliding stitches very difficult. I love my knit store. So friendly and inviting, they know me, they ask what I'm working on, how projects are coming etc. I want to work there LOL. They get to sit and knit in between customers. I told Scott when the kids go to school full time I want to work at my LYS part time :-)

my orange socks are coming along nicely, they're really cute. Mock eyelet cable, 5 rows, multiple of 4 sts. Round 1 k2 p2 around. round 2 k1, yo, k1, p2. round 3 and 4 is k3 p2. round 4 k3, lift first k st over last 2, p2. Looks really cute! I'm about 2 repeats away from starting the heel flap. I'm converting the pattern from a dpn to a 2 circ pattern so hopefully I don't screw it up, but it looks pretty easy.

Well, its late and my son has preschool in the morning. That is, if it isn't a cold day. I don't call them snow days, half an inch does not qualify as snow. These Texans don't know what snow is! (I grew up in Michigan where you didn't get a snow day unless there was over 8 inches!). The temps are supposed to dip below freezing toinight and its been raining for days, so we'll see. If he does have school I'm hoping I can get Scott to take him so I don't have to drive in it :-)

Happy knitting!

doin' the happy sock dance!

I finished my second pair of socks tonight. I must say they are 1000X better than my first pair! For one, they actually fit LOL. They're not wonky (I just love that word!) and there are no holes or ladders in them! They were done on #5 needles with cascade 220 worsted weight. Not my favorite color, they're a dark green which doesn't match anything I own but it was stash yarn so I'm happy. They are great house socks. I did knit them a little too tight, the gauge was off from the swatch (OK, I admit I didn't swatch before I started but I did a small swatch after they were halfway done to see how it compared) but I pulled too tightly after the beginning of each needle I think. I don't care though because they fit! Here's a couple photos, sorry they're such low quality but the camera was dead so had to use hubbys cell phone.

See! they fit!!!! Yayyyyy!!

already have plans for 3 more pairs LOL. A beaded one in a light pink, a lacy one in a lilac, and I fund some hand dyed orange that I got a while ago so I may do some cabled socks with that. I kinda want to try another lace pattern with it but it is more advanced so I may not. I'll probably start with the orange socks because the pink and purple are on order arriving sometime later this week and I can't possibly wait that long to cast on something else LOL.

Almost done with all the knit food. Still have half the pizza and some of the sushi to do but that's all. All the fruits and veggies are done and half the pizza is done and sewn together and everything. I put it all in my fruit basket for now to keep it away from the kids before I mail it, and it looks cute there. I'm going to have to knit some for myself as decoration. :-)

on my needles

Ok, so here's what I'm up to as of today:

1. still working on the knit food for my friends. needed to make 16 slices of pizza, have 8 knit and 5 or 6 of them sewn together. fruit and veggies almost done, still need to make corn (waiting on my yarn from knitpicks, should be here early next week) and carrot. need to finish 3 sets of sushi but those are quick, started working on them today. I think I overcommitted myself but luckily none of my friends were/are in a rush. I'm getting there, I promise gals! My goal was to have it done by the 15th but ha ha ha, its not. So we'll move that deadline to the end of the month!

2. Secret of the Stole 2 started today, it is my first knit along. It looks like the first "Clue" is pretty quick and easy, a few people already have theirs done. I'm happy if I have it done by next Friday when the next clue is released. I have WONDERFUL yarn for this, mom got me a few skeins of knitpicks alpaca cloud for Christmas in "mist heather", a very very light purple. SOOOOOOOO soft and yummy to work with! I did the swatch for the knit along a few weeks ago when they released it and its been sitting on my desk since then so I could pet it LOL. I can't wait until the whole thing is done, but as they're only releasing a segment of the pattern each week it won't be done until at least March. But that's OK, its a no pressure project that is just for me. I need to do more knitting for myself :-)

3. speaking of knitting for myself, my second pair of socks are coming along, although slowly but that is intentional. They have become a fallback project for when I want to do some mindless knitting, I still have a few inches of stockinette to go before decreasing for the toe. Great news though---THEY FIT! LOL. They are a tiny bit snug, I've noticed that I've been knitting tighter than normal on these and I figured out why. The first few stitches you HAVE to pull tight so you don't get ladders in between needles. Well, I've been pulling a bit toooooo tight, then continuing to pull across the row. But all in all they fit, and the heels turned out nicely so I'm thrilled to death. no holes in the corners of the heels, no ladders thus far, what more could I ask for? for my next pair of socks I'm going to do either a beaded pair or a lace pair, both patterns are in "knitting circles around socks" For Christmas my mom also got me the pallette sampler from knitpicks, so I ordered 2 more skeins of it in a purple and a light pink so I could do socks with them, since it looks like one ball won't be enough for a whole pair. I'm not going to do that with the whole pack though, I'm thinking of doing striped socks with a lot of it.

4. Like I need another project--I started a placemat for Brendan today. it is the first pattern I've paid to download, I usually either get pattern books or freebies. It is cute though, here it is:http://www.knitsbyrachel.com/page55.html I kinda wish it was charted but I'm using a magnet board to keep track of where I am so it is working.

once I finish something, maybe after I finish the knit food I'm going to start a bedding set for my daughter. I took the angel preemie hat pattern and transposed the angel part of it to a flat pattern and figured out how to toggle it in staggered rows of angels for a blanket, I'm going to do a twin sized one. Included in my order from knitpicks that is arriving next week is several more balls of their twist in cotton candy. GEORGEOUS yarn. I was going to do the blanket out of just that, but it isn't super soft and it was working up to be a small-ish guage and I wanted a quicker project. I double stranded it with the lilac color of Caron's simply soft and swatched it on size 11s instead of 6s, and I liked it much better. Still get the shine and sparkle from the twist but the softness of the caron. It will make a great comforter for a twin sized bed, and I will post the pattern along with photos when i start it. I will also make a lace pillow inlay (from the book "weekend knitting") with just the twist and maybe a curtain or vallence of some sort. I have plenty of time for all of this since her 2nd birthday is at the end of april and she's still in her crib. I'm thinking it needs to be done by the time we move in August. So yeah, plenty of time.

OK, so that's whats on my needles. What are you working on?

decorating your home in knitting?

We signed on a contract today to build a new home. This will be our home for many years, God willing. I'm freaking tired of moving!! It has an island with space for barstools, a breakfast nook and a formal dining room. There's only 4 of us and we dont entertain that often, but I want the dining room to look nice. I love how in the model they have fake food on the table, so it looks like it is set. of course that got my creative brain thinking. hmmmmm, what can I make?

Then the lightbulb (allbeit a dull one) flashed above my head. KNIT FOOD! Duh, I'm already doing that, right? But seriously. I'm thinking set the table with plates and silverwear like they do in the models, then knit, say, pie. Since I have munchkins loose in the house (who are currently playing with bubble wrap and laughing hysterically) I want to attatch the food to plates so they don't run off with it constantly, and just get spare plates that we won't use for dinner. So I'm thinking, get some white plates cheap at Target or something, knit some great pie, (• ° pieKnits.com ° • Piece o' Cherry Pie knitting pattern see I'm not crazy!) then use some shiny puffy paint in a chocolate or cherry color so it matches and "drizzle" it over the pie and the plate so that it looks like real syrup and holds the pie to the plate. It will certainly be a conversation piece! Plus by decorating the table we're less likely to just dump stuff on it when we come in. :-) I'm also thinking of filling our fruit basket with knit fruits. instead of the junk that is currently residing in it.

Have any of you knit items for decorating your homes? Pillows, cushions, whatever? This house also has a window seat, a long one, so I will probably knit some pillows for that. I'm not going to knit the cushion itself, I'm not a sucker for punishment, but I may make matching cushions for the chairs. The window seat is in the breakfast nook. hmmmm. Oh the possibilities!! I think I saw a pattern once for a knit lace curtain. That would look good in my daughter's room.

So tell me what you've knit for your home? I want my home to say "a talented, kwirky knitter lives here" but not too loudly LOL.

Charity Coordinator

I have been made charity coordinator for my online knitting group :-) I'm organizing a drive of preemie hats, an ongoing drive that will hopefully last for a long time. Other preemie items such as blankets etc are welcome too, but as a mom of a preemie I can tell you the hats are one of the most useful items. I'm going to be donating them on behalf of our group to Stitches From The Heart (http://www.stitchesfromtheheart.org/) which is a wonderful organization. I'm really looking forward to this! I've got a shoebox full of preemie hats and hopefully will be recieving lots more to send in.

Thanks everyone who told me my socks weren't that bad. Several people told me that if I just fix the bind off they will be wearable, even if not perfect. Once I get the courage to attempt to unravel that onto the 2 circs without unravelling the whole darned sock, I will hopefully have a pair of socks that I can wear.

Signing off to go knit some more play food. :-) Hugs!

world's worst socks

want to see the world's worst socks? baahaaahaaa. I just have to laugh b/c if I don't, I'll cry :-) These are my first pair of socks, finished tonight. They are a knit picks free pattern, knit from the toe up on 2 circs. I bound off too tight and they don't fit over my heel, they are wonky and won't lay flat, and there are ladders where the circs met and holes in the corners of the heel (it was an afterthought heel, where you knit 2 rows of the heel on waste yarn then go back to it once the sock is done.) Funny enough, the mis-matched stripe pattern was actually done on purpose. I pulled from the center of the ball for one sock and the outside of the ball for the other. LOL not sure what I will ever do with these, maybe save them for posterity so that in a few years when I am a sock master I can look back and see how far I've come :-D

here they are:

the good news is that I got a bunch of knit food done for my friends, and I cast on my second pair of socks (you fall off the horse, you have to get right back on!) and have much higher hopes for these. They are knit from the top down instead of toe up, and already the cuff is much more loose since I used a double needle cast on. It is a pattern from the book I got with my christmas money from Grandma, and the pattern called for Cascade 220. I almost never use the yarn suggested in the pattern, I try to stick to the same weight but that's it. I rarely even use the material suggested, substituting cotton for wool etc. I'm fearless that way!anyway, I know a lot of knitters swear by Cascade 220, I myself am not a wool fan and tend to lean more toward cotton or cotton blends, butI've been meaning to look at cascade to see what all the fuss was about. Imagine my surprise when I found 2 balls of it in my stash!! I got it to start a blanket a long time ago, just trying out a pattern, and decided it would take too long then moved on to a different project. I didn't even look at the label LOL, just the yardage and price. :-) It is a dark green so hopefully it will help hide any mistakes I make! This is the first patten in the book, it is on #5 needles instead of the #2s I used for the wonky socks, and being the first pattern in a book that is working on teaching you a specific technique it has a LOT of helpful hints and step-by-step instructions. Hopefully they help, I'mnervous about the heel but I will prevail!! I'm taking them to my knitting group on wednesday so if anyone sees me doing something wrong PLEASE TELL ME! :-D

DOIN' THE HAPPY DANCE!

ITS FINISHED!! ITS FINISHED!!!!! Mom's shawl is FINALLY DONE! WOW what an ordeal it was too LOL. After I frogged the diamond pattern one like 4 times I told myself it was too complicated of a pattern for a mother of 2 little ones to work on during the day and chose a more simple, yet still beautiful pattern. (I think it is called SImple Triangle shawl on Lion Brand's website). It is BLOCKED, ends are WOVEN, and it is READY TO WEAR!!! Happy dance happy dance happy dance. MOM STOP READING NOW, I'm gonna show photos and your birthday isn't until Tuesday.

Here it is finished and blocked and ready to go!

a close up, the bind off was a crochet bind off that led to this beautiful scalloped edge.

These are the georgeous yarns I got in AZ

My stash closet. I need more space, probably should clear out the boxes in the back (especially since we haven't unpacked those since we moved in 6 months ago!)

my finished scarf, although I don't like how it is stretching as I wear it, I may pick up the sts on the side or frog the bind off and add more width to it.

the rest of the yarn from the scarf, I still have quite a bit left. Each yarn does approx 2 rows on the scarf, and there are at least 5 yarns left. maybe more. GEORGEOUS yarn, but then again it was expensive. Looks pretty though!

Now I need to finish all the knit food for my friends, probably will make some at the same time for my kids since Santa brought them a pretend kitchen for Christmas. knit food won't bounce off their heads (or mine!) when they throw it like the plastic stuff does LOL.

happy knitting!

back to knitting

I'm back from a very long vacation and already have been knitting up a storm. I only took one (well, 2, but only one ended up coming out of the bag) knitting project with me on vacation, a garter stitch 35-square blanket that was easy mindless knitting. I think I got 12 squares done, maybe more. maybe 14. I took my vest with me too but didn't end up knitting any of that. I did however get to a FANTASTIC yarn shop in Scottsdale AZ, got some wonderful yarns. It killed me not to be able to do anything with them until I got home! I got some stuff to make a couple hats or maybe a poncho or something for Meg including a funky pink yarn with ribbon knots on it, another of that yarn in a purple/green colorway, some yarn with sequins already on it a la that expensive tillie tomas yarn but this stuff was only $8 a skein. Mind you it is a carrying yarn and not georgeous silk, but it's just for meg so she'll be happy with it. I got a purple one and a white one with multi colored sequins. then I got 2 skeins of a really pretty shiny cotton in pink and purple, to go with the other yarns, a pastel-y funky yarn and the best of all was a skein of this wonderful stuff, it's like 12 different yarns, all about 10 yards long, so that if you do a scarf lenghtwise you have long stripes of each yarn. I debated and debated with myself about it, I wouldn't have looked twice at it except they had samples of the scarves up, one in a solid pink colorway and one in a multicolored purple/blue/green colorway. OMG I fell in love. It was $34 a skein which is at least double the most I've ever spent, but I figured I was making it for myself so I could spend a bit more than I would on say, something for the kids that they'd outgrow or lose, or somethign for the bazaar that I'd need to keep costs down on. Plus I only needed one skein for the scarf. I couldn't decide which color to get, but I finally chose a white/cream/silver/gold colorway that will contrast beautifullyw ith my black wool coat.

On my needles now is my mom's shawl, which I have restarted 3 more times since my last post and ended up giving up on the diamond pattern as my children kept distracting me or clicking my counter and making me lose my place, and it was not a forgiving pattern for that sort of thing. I'm doing a more simple yet very pretty eyelet triangle shawl, also from the lion brand website. Its a lot easier than the diamond one to work on with the kids around, you put markers before the main changes in the pattern so if I'm paying attention to them the marker reminds me to do the YO. I've done 4 reps of the pattern and already have it memorized which is handy since my daughter likes to run off with my patterns. I also have my scarf on my needles, since I have to have at least 2 projects going at all times, but that is just a simple garter stitch that requires no thinking for when I don't have any attention span. Mom's birthday is the 8th and I want to have the shawl finished by then, my scarf will probably be done by then too, and then I have to get all the knit food done for my friends. I WILL have that done by the end of the month, I WILL I WILL I WILL.

My new years resolutions are:
1. be more picky about which patterns I make: only make ones that will be USED, by either a family member or a friend since I am not doing the bazaar this year. Yes, those knit cupcakes are adorable but what the hell am I going to do with them??

2. splurge once in a while. Not go crazy, but not feel guilty about, say, a $35 skein for a scarf :-)

3. LEARN TO MAKE SOCKS! I started a pair before I left and they're already a disaster. I'm not going to finish them until I finish the knit food for my friends. Then I'm diving into socks. I have a great book and new needles thanks to my Grandma and the Christmas money she sent me :-)

4. not stretch myself too thin or take on too much. I did that with the knit food, I really wanted to have it all done by Christmas but wasn't able to. I should have realized that ahead of time.

5. branch out, make a sweater for someone who is bigger than a toddler. Make something complicated, even if it takes a while. That's what I'm doing with the vest for myself. I can't let the original mom shawl debaucle prevent me from trying long projects.

6. keep up with the secret of the stole 2 that I joined ( my first knit along). The swatch came out beautifully with the georgeous yarn mom got me for Christmas, so now I need to make sure to keep up with it. I think they said the first part of the pattern will be released Jan 18th so hopefully I will have the knit food done by then, or mostly at least.

OK thats all I can think of for now. If anyone wants I will look up the names of the yarn I bought (its all downstairs and of course I'm not) and take pics of it. Leave a comment and let me know if you want me to. I will take pics of the projects I'm working on as well soon, I promise. Hugs! Happy knitting!