BIG news

After living in Texas for almost 10 years, my family and I are moving back to Michigan.  Hubby's company has several great job prospects for him all in the midwest, and we're homesick so after a lot of debate and discussion on it, we decided to go for it.  It is going to suck in some ways, my parents and brother are still going to be here, as are a lot of great friends, but overall it will be a good thing.  We haven't told my inlaws yet but most likely they'd move back up there too, and we still have a ton of friends up there.  Plus we can take the kids to all the places we went as children.  I'm already planning a vacation to Ludington, my favorite place on Earth.  Hubby is excited about seeing snow again, which is one of the cons in my book, but opposites attract, right?  We told the kids this morning and while I'm sure it hasn't sunk in completely, they're excited.  We're looking at a few houses on lakes, which is a dream of mine.  That's one good thing about a bad economy--houses in MI are CHEAP.  We can get a house right on the water for what we're paying now.  He'll have a dock for his boat and can fish as often as he likes, and I can sit by the water and knit peacefully.  I'm really looking forward to that!  I'm a water person, I can just sit and stare at the water all day and it just brings such a wonderful sense of peace to me. 

It's stressful and there's a lot of planning involved, and most likely we're going to have to pull our son out of school before the year is out, but it will all work out in the end.  I keep telling myself that.  He's a gregarious kid and adapts easily so I think he'll be fine. 

Knitting wise, this is good and bad.  My LYS here is closing (BOOOHOOOO!!!!) and the nearest one will be quite a distance away, so I'm losing that anyway.  Up there there's a lot more LYS's at least from what I can tell.  I'll also be able to make useful hats and scarves and mittens since it is cold a lot more.  Hubby actually said I could make him a hat and he'd wear it!  However, even though my LYS here is closing, all my knitting friends are still here and still planning on meeting, so I'm going to miss all of them horribly.  I'm hoping I can find a knitting group up there that is even half as good as my group down here. 

I will have to start knitting warm things to use.  I'm going to start a couple of shawls/stoles to use during the late spring/summer for chilly nights.  It will be nice to be able to go outside during the day without baking after 20 minutes, that's for sure.  We might be moving as soon as April, so I'll have to hurry up so I can get something done in time.  I have a couple stoles planned already, just have to get cracking.  :-)

Anyway, I will be keeping up my blog (I promise, CJ!) and I'm on facebook so I will be able to keep in touch with all my friends.  And of course when I come down to visit my folks I will have to get together with everyone. 

On other news, for Lent I decided to give up FB games (I'm hopelessly addicted to Farmville and Island Paradise!) and instead use the time for Charity knitting.  Actually I'm doing a lot of charity crochet, the newest Simply Knitting had an easy pattern for a granny square blanket so I'm using yarn scraps from my friend Dawn, who makes a ton of charity blankets on her knitting machine, and she's been combining the scraps into magic yarn balls.  They are perfect for preemie granny square blankets!  I've also been helping her finish the machine knit blankets with crocheted edging and weaving in ends.  (Dawn, if you're reading this, I have one of the big blankets completed for you already and should have a preemie blanket finished maybe today.)  in between those I'm working on my new mini mochi socks, just simple stockinette stitch.  VERY warm and soft, perfect for MI.  :-)

Hugs
Jen

dyeing is so much fun!

Hello my dear readers, whoever you may be.  :-)  Last week I had about 3 times as many hits on my blog as I normally do, but still no comments so I really don't know why. Well, a couple of comments, but they were spam.  Unfortunately I've been getting a lot of those lately so I had to enable that weird "type this word out" security feature.  If they want you to decipher and type that word, why do they make it darn near impossible to read??  Anyway, sorry about that, but I hope it doesn't deter people from posting comments! 

I have been knitting quite a bit but not finishing much because I've had startitis lately. All the lovely yarns in my stash have been calling out to me!  I haven't made much progress on my Michigan socks, they're about halfway thru the instep.  The striping is turning out wonderfully though, they are beginning to switch to the opposite color but the color switch is going across in a diagonal pattern.  Very interesting looking.  Of course I don't have a photo, but I will take one for the next time I blog!  :-) 

These are the mittens I made for my daughter Meg.  I didn't follow a pattern, just made them like toe up socks and increased a bit for the palm.  Once I got to the point where the thumb starts I knit 2 sts, knit 7 sts onto scrap yarn, slipped them back and knit them again on the regular yarn and kept going.  I did the same for the other mitten but I started the thumb 9 sts before the end of the mitten and knit the last 2 sts.  Then I decreased the top when I got to that point the same way I do socks.  I picked up the thumb sts plus a stich on either side so that each thumb was 16 sts.  Since there is no thumb gusset, they don't fit perfectly but they're good enough for her since she rarely wears them and will outgrow them (or lose them!) by next winter.  :0)  She loves them, as you can see.  I think the yarn was berocco metalics.  A little itchy but not too bad.  Very sparkly!  Perfect for a little princess.

Now these are photos of some yummy yarn that I dyed.  My friend Kim is learning how to spin yarn and spun some very soft undyed wool.  She gave it to me so I measured it with a meter counter thingy (that I overpaid for, according to my husband.  He said it is a fishing line gauge and costs 1/4 of what I paid for it if you buy it at a sporting goods store.  However, mine came with a neat wooden thing to hold it to the table, so I don't care.  :-D ) 

Anyway, I used a mix of red and blue jaquard dyes and then added a bit more red to the mix halfway thru the dye process.  I think I used a bit too much dye because it didn't all absorb into the yarn, but it did create a very deep indigo color that I'm completely thrilled with.  There were also a couple spots on the hank that turned out more mauve than indigo, and it added a lovely effect.  Plus the 2 plys took the dye differently so you get a lot of verigation.

It is a bit darker here than in real life because it is still wet in the photograph.  In the last ohoto you can see the pink-y part in the middle of the hank near where it is gathered.  I've already started knitting this and it is turning into a very lovely, simple ribbed scarf.

You're never too young to start knitting!  Erin is 9 months old in this photo.  :-)  Of course, right after the photo was taken, she tried to eat the needles and I had to rescue my scarf before she pulled it off the needles.  LOL.

Do you see the needles?  My husband decided a few weeks ago that he wanted to start building custom electric guitars.  He loves to play and he is always tinkering with his own guitars, changing pickups etc, but he wanted to start his own from scratch.  He was talking about ways to test different wood finishes, using scrap boards etc, and I suggested knitting needles.  This developed into a whole brainstorm about ways to make knitting needles, should we sell them, how to combine knitting supplies and guitars etc.  Then I mentioned how much I love dyeing yarn, and how I wanted to make stitch markers, so now he's working on a website for me to sell hand dyed yarn and handmade stitch markers and needles.  The needles in the above photo are a prototype.  I also gave a pair, along with some stitch markers, to my friend Dawn as a birthday present and for her to test and review for me.  :-)  If it ever warms up and stops raining here, we will be able to make more needles.  He buit a spray booth out in the garage and now has all the tools etc to do different paint finishes, and he really wants to work on a paint dipping technique, but if he does them now the paint won't ever dry.  In the meantime I've been working on dyeing some more yarn (I have a lovely colorway done that I named "marigold", it is yellows and pinky-oranges, very pretty!) and making stitch markers.  I also made labels for the yarn and markers that turned out very nicely I think.  Once he gets my site up I'll put them there as well as post the link here.  I'm going to order more yarn to dye too, it is a lot of fun.  Messy, and time consuming, but a lot of fun!

OK off to do mommy stuff.  Happy knitting!

The things kids do and say make me shake my head

Sometimes I just don't understand my 3 year old. Sometimes I think she's crazy. Or possessed. Today she was hitting something with a toy, so I turned around to see what she was hitting, and it was our 8 year old golden retriever. The dog (who is a bit too passive agressive if you ask me!) was just laying there letting her. I freaked out, gave my daughter a spanking and sent her to her room until dinner is ready. Considering it hasn't even been started yet, that will be a while. She kept asking me if she could come out and I told her no the first couple times, then just started ignoring her. So she switched tactics and tried asking her older brother to ask me if she could come out. He replied "Brendan is not here right now. Please leave a message after the beep. BEEP!"



He is a hoot and a half I tell you. This morning I was driving him to school and he asked me to look at him. I said "I'm sorry sweetie, I can't right now. I'm driving." and he said "But Momma, I thought you said you have eyes in the back of your head!" Damn, he caught me! I stammered "Uh, well, I need all my eyes to drive." Nice save, huh?

So anyway, back to knitting.  Here's some recent projects of mine.  I'm making it my goal this year to get through as much of my sock yarn as possible.  So far I'm making good headway, and since my LYS hasn't gotten in any new sock yarn (that I didn't already have!) lately, I've been using up more than I've added, so that's good.

These are the Pyroclastic socks from the latest issue of knitty.  Very pretty pattern, but pretty difficult IMO.  I usually do two at a time on magic loop, had to do these on 2 circs then had to switch to one at a time once I started the decreases on the feet because I couldn't move the stitches between needles very easily.  I was a little unhappy with the final result too.  The cables for some reason made the pattern look slanted (they don't go straight up the socks without some tugging, they go off at an angle), if I did this pattern over I would do an inch of 1x1 ribbing at the top because the ribbing they use isn't tight enough, and the arch shaping doesn't fit my foot very well.  They ended up pretty, but very snug so I sent them to my Grandma as a late Christmas gift.  I think she'll like them.  I used Pagewood Farms Chugiak (sp?) in Plum.  Nice yarn, nice to work with, VERY soft after washing, but the colors bled like crazy so be careful the first couple times you wash them.

Here is what the arch shaping looks like. It is pretty, it just is too snug for my chubby feet :-)

This is the top of the foot.  I also would start the chart one stitch over so the pattern is more centered.  Right now it has 2 purls on the right side and none on the left.  But all in all, very pretty.  It is a little more purple than the photo shows.

I finished these up Wednesday night at my knitting group.  Panda Silk, I don't remember the colorway but it is LOVELY.  The yarn is soooooo soft.  Works up like a dream, and isn't too terribly hot on my feet.  This is an easy slip stitch pattern, I used these as an inspiration: http://knittingsuna.blogspot.com/2009/09/pretty-slip-stitch-socks.html

That is my friend Suna's blog, and those are some of her lovely socks.  I did a different heel, my favorite standard gusset/heel flap on a toe up sock. 

As I was getting close to finishing these up I started planning my next project, and got thinking about how this pattern worked up.  I have 2 balls of U of Michigan sock yarn left, waiting for a pattern that wouldn't make me dizzy knitting them.  The stripes are very short on that yarn, so the color changes from blue to gold each row. With this pattern, the slip stitches are every other row. . do you see where i'm going with this?  Well, I changed up the pattern a bit, did knit stitches instead of purls so that it worked better with the color changes of the U of M yarn, and did 60 sts instead of 66 since they aren't ribbed.  Then I put the starting slip knot halfway thru a blue stripe on one sock and a yellow on the other sock so that I ended up with one sock with blue vertical stripes and one with yellow.  Amazingly enough, it WORKED!

See, don't these look fun?? And no, I don't knit while driving, I was waiting to pick up my son at school :-)  These are moving pretty fast so I'm hoping to have them done in a couple weeks.

Just a random knitwear pic, my youngest wearing hand knit sweater (made my the aforementioned Suna) Meg (the insane 3 year old) wearing a chevron scarf made from sock yarn, a Windy City hat made from some random worsted I had in my stash, and my wristwarmers.  The only good thing about chilly weather is that I can enjoy dressing my family in knitwear!  I have a pair of mittens almost finished for my 3 year old, but I'm still annoyed at her so I think tonight I will work on my socks instead of her mittens.  :-)  Take that!  LOL

And these are the socks I finished for my hubby before CHristmas.  Can't remember if I shared pics of these or not and i'm too lazy to go back and look right now, so disregard these photos if you've already seen 'em!

I would have made them longer but he said he liked them this length.  I think he was just anxious to wear them, he said his feet were cold LOL.

OK, dinner is ready.  Off to deal with my crazy child and then (hopefully) enjoy a peaceful family dinner.  HA!  Like that will ever happen. . .

Fun project

I got commissioned to make a stocking for a friend of my mom's. She has a relative who's had a challenging life thus far and is coming to live with them for Christmas and hopefully longer than that. He's a teenager and has never had anyone worth celebrating Christmas with up till now, and she wanted him to feel welcome with their family. She has these wonderful stockings made by her MIL many years ago and wanted one for him to match. This was a fun and challenging project. The two on the right are a couple of the originals and the one on the left is the one I made. She's also got a couple more, one with a Christmas tree and one with a reindeer, so she said the snowmen would be great. My sock wizard software came in so handy for this project! I use that software a lot (if you like making your own sock patterns I HIGHLY reccomend that software!) but this project alone made it worth the money. All I did was measure the gauge and measurements from the original stockings and plugged the numbers into the software. Then I chose my method and type of heel/toe, and voila! I did add increases for the leg, and while the originals were cuff down I opted to do toe-up just because I prefer it that way, but it turned out pretty close to the original I think. I also repaired the other two in the photo. My repair jobs aren't perfect, but they look a lot better than they had. One unfortunately had a large hole in it (hey, it has held up pretty well considering it is over 50 years old!) but I was able to pick up the dropped stitches and with some new, very similar yarn was able to graft it together. I'm thrilled I got to be part of making Christmas special for a family, plus I got some unexpected spending money so YAY!

I hope the things I knit for my children are as treasured down the road as these stockings are for this family. I had planned to make stockings for my family this year but didn't get a chance, I am hoping to have them done by next Christmas especially since I was unable to find a stocking for my newest child that matched the others we had. I like everything to match, I'm a bit OCD like that. :-) This stocking only took me about a week, so I know I can make some for my family for next year over the course of 2010.

I also managed to finish up my holiday knitting. Well, they were going to be holiday presents, but I finished my husband's socks on a particularly chilly day and he was complaining his feet were cold so I decided not to wait (they weren't a surprise or anything, he'd seen me working on them and had even tried them on a few times). Then I finished a pair of socks for my son and wanted to see how they fit, so I let him wear them to school. That pair was started many many months ago, before I learned how to do toe up and magic loop for socks. They were cuff down on 2 circs and had gotten stashed in a front pocket of a bag where they were lost until last week. I dug that bag out to use for my baby girl's first overnight trip (my parents watched her while my inlaws watched the other 2 so my husband and I could attend the KISS concert!). Lo and behold, there were the socks I'd been looking months for! I had the cuffs done, so I did a quick short row heel and a stockinette foot and they were done quickly.

After those were done, I started another scarf for my 3 year old. I think she may be sensitive to wool, she's complained that the other scarf I knit for her is itchy. She picked out a skein of fuzzy fluffy novelty yarn last week and asked me to make her a necklace, LOL, so I suggested a scarf instead. Did a quick garter stitch scarf and finished it at my knitting group this week (it is easy to get a lot of knitting done there when you bring basic garter stitch!). Since I had already given my husband and son their holiday knits, I gave it to her when I got home that evening. She was thrilled but then asked where her necklace was, so being the nice mommy that I am, I'm working on a simple i-cord necklace for her with the leftovers.

Now I'm working on the slip-knit socks for myself after I restarted them to enlarge them. I was going to just frog back to the toe but had a difficult time getting them back on the needles so I just frogged the whole thing and started over. They're moving pretty fast and since I love the pattern and the yarn, I don't mind. I'm also working on a pair of sock booties for my baby girl, and if the pattern turns out like I hope it does, I'll post it here.

I've also decided that 2010 will be the year of the sock for me, and I plan to (hopefully!) have at least one pair of socks on the needles at all times. Considering I have enough yarn to do around 50 or so pairs of socks, I really would like to use up a lot of it. Who knows, maybe if I manage to do an average of a pair a week I can use it all up next year! Then again, that would mean I couldn't buy any more sock yarn next year, and I don't see that happening. But maybe I can try to buy, well, less or something. . . .

Have a Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate. I'm looking very forward to spending quality time with my family and my knitting.

New Moon Review

OK since this is MY blog, I'm gonna post my New Moon review here. If you're here for knitting content only, feel free to ignore this post. :-)

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD--if you haven't seen it, or haven't read the book yet, and don't want to know, then don't read. You have been warned.

OK first of all, overall I LOVED it. I'm a team Edward person but I must say seeing Jacob without his shirt (the first time he took it off, a guy a few rows in front of me yelled "It's about time!" and everyone else responded "Hell Yea!" LOL. Gotta love going with all the fangirls!) WOW. There are no words. That and the fact that Taylor Lautner is a Michigan fan, well, I have to say I've considered switching to Team Jacob. But, Alas, Edward is the perfect guy so I am sticking with him.

As for the movie, it was 1000X better than Twilight. I'm not one of those "judge the movie on the movie and the book on the book" type people. If it is a book I love, I go to see it brought to life on screen. This movie was the best book adaptation I've ever seen in the aspect that it really stuck to the book well, and only changed a few things. The ending left you gasping for more, the cinematography was so much better than the indie-vibe you got from the first movie, the acting was a lot better (although Kristen Stewart still just seems monotone and flat to me, but it fit the role in this movie so it worked.) The actors were a lot more comfortable with eachother too, so there was better chemistry. Another thing I liked about this movie was that it was FUNNY. Billy Burke (Charlie) was hilarious, really did well as a bachelor dad of a teenage girl. The fight scenes were action-movie quality IMO, but thankfully without the gore. They took a lot of lines directly from the book, and the scenes flowed very well together (again, unlike the first movie). Where I would have given Twilight a C at best, I had to give this one an A.

Oh, and as a side note, as much as I'm Team Edward, he really needs to keep his shirt ON. That really wasn't doing much for me. :-)

And just in case you think I'm a nut, yes my husband is fully aware of my Twilight obsession. He even read all the books so that he could understand some of what I was going on about ha ha ha. And he enjoyed them. He's going to see the movie with me next week, he just didn't want to deal with the fangirls. :-)

Oh, and just to insert a bit of knitting content, I wore my new wristwarmers to the movie. They were nice in the chilly theater.

Lacy Fingerless Mitts

I'm BACK! And I have a new pattern for you!! (Plus we got a new charger for our nice camera, so the photos are much better quality than my last few!

Introducing, FINGERLESS MITTS!





These are knit flat then seamed up the side, leaving a space for the thumb. Here's my pattern:

Materials: Less than 100 yards of worsted weight yarn. I used almost exactly 1 ball (had about a yard leftover!) of 127 Print, color #40. (100% wool. I have to be careful not to accidentally felt these!)

1 pair size 7 US straight needles, or size needed to get gauge.

Gauge: 16 sts= 4".


I got the lace pattern from a hat pattern in a book and modified it a bit to knit flat and changed the decreases a bit.


Cast on 37 stitches. Knit one row.

For lace pattern (1 stitch on each end is for seaming up)

Row 1: K1, *K1, yo, s1k1psso, K2, K2tog, yo* repeat to last stitch, K1.

Rows 2 and 4: Purl

Row 3: K1, *K2, yo, s1k1psso, K2Tog, yo, K1* repeat to last stitch, K1.

Repeat rows 1-4 until 1 " shorter than desired length. I did 11 repeats. Do 6 rows of 1x1 ribbing as follows:

Row 1: *k1, p1* across
Row 2: *p1,k1* across.

Bind off in ribbing pattern, leaving a long tail for seaming.

I blocked it, but you don't have to. I dampened it carefully so it didn't felt, then stretched it slightly and pinned in place until dry.

To seam up, hold on hand and use removeable stitch markers or safety pins to mark the beginning and end of your thumb hole. Starting at top with WS facing, use mattress stitch to seam to the beginning of thumb hole. Whipstitch around one side of thumb hole (so you don't have to cut the yarn and weave in extra ends), then continue seaming from the end of the thumb hole to the end of the piece. Weave in ends, and wear proudly!

These are great for those chily mornings when it's too warm for gloves but not warm enough for bare wrists.

Feel free to use this pattern to make these for yourself, a friend, or make a bazillion of them to sell at a craft show, I don't mind. Just please give credit where credit is due, if you share the pattern please link to my page instead of copy/pasting it, and please don't pass off the pattern as your own. Thank you!

And I realized that i had never shared pics of the finished Spiderman blanket! Here it is. I did make a mistake, I got so excited about finally being done that i forgot to garter stitch the last few rows, so I did 2 rounds of half-double crochet. He LOVED it!! He uses it at school for rest time :-) And I finished it at 12:30 am the morning of his party, so JUST in time! :-)

finished projects!!

Just a quick post tonight b/c my alarm is going off in 6 hours and I'm not in bed yet--yeah, that's gonna be a problem in the morning! Ugh. Oh well. I would have been in bed sooner, but. . . .

TA-DA!! It is finished. . . almost. I still need to weave in like a million ends and and then do the webby black stripes on the outside, but it is sooooo close to being finished, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It MIGHT actually be finished in time! WOOHOOO!! He's gonna love it. He's seen the picture on the pattern, and he saw me working on it, but he has no idea that it is this close to being done. I'm hoping to give it to him at his birthday party (he just turned 6! My baby!) on Sunday.

This is my other finished project, a chevron scarf for my 3 year old. She wants to wear it now, even though it is still 80 outside. LOL. This was my car knitting, super simple. I'm working on one for me now, in different colors (U of M sock yarn! GO BLUE!!).

I feel so good about finally getting something [almost] finished! Now I have a couple of projects for a group on ravelry that I'm in, then I'm going to start some socks for myself to celebrate.

YAY. Ok, gotta go to bed or I'm gonna sleep thru my alarm . . .