Lemonade

I found a nice 6 row pattern on Ravelry for a good sock top. It’s called Lesley’s Sock. Pretty! And I thought it would look good using one of the blue striped sock yarns I have.

I usually only use the directions for the pattern, as I almost always use my own numbers for a short row heel and standard toe. So instead of carrying around a big sheet of instructions, I write the pattern repeat down in my little journal. I ran out of space, so I continued to the previous blank page – and noted that with an arrow so I wouldn’t forget.

I bet you can tell where this is going.

I finished the sock top and discovered that I had only been doing 4 rows of the 6 row pattern. It looked okay and thankfully it wasn’t one of those patterns where every row has a different stitch count. I also realized that even if I had done the whole 6 row repeat, it wouldn’t have shown up any better because this sock yarn isn’t so good for a pattern. So this is where I just have to suck it up and repeat the mistake on the 2nd sock. But now they are known to me as Lemonade, although with that lime row they should really be Limeade.

Here is the sock so far:

I am pretty lucky that I didn’t have to rip back any of those mistake rows as I knitted the last repeat in almost total dark. Chaachi and I went out Saturday night to “our” coffeehouse, The Coffee Grounds to see the The Mama’s perform. My friend Sally/Drumming Astrologer was a guest performer and I just had to see her play. One of the Mama’s is now a member of The Beadladies so I double needed to see the performance. It was terrific – though dark hence my worry about stitches. But even though it was dark, it was where I made the discovery that I hadn’t done those other 2 rows.

Kerry mentioned in my previous post comments that I need a fantastic project to get me going. I don’t know – it seems like a good idea, except that I think I know the reason for my project blahs. I have a few things that I really need to finish, (and start!) and they are kind of weighing on me. Better to just get the ball rolling and get them done, then the black cloud of guilt will lift and I can be inspired again.

That is what I am telling myself anyway.

Peace!

First set for 2008

I finished my last socks for 2007/first socks for 2008 pair last night. Here they are:

Not really spectacular colors but I love them. I have been wearing a lot of browns and greens so they will be very much used.

So onward to the next set. Wanna see my sock yarn stash that I am drawing from?

A lot of blue and grey, not a lot of hand-paint. I do have some skeins of Cherry Tree Hill and Koigu that I have set aside for shawls, so even though they are sock yarn, they don’t count. I think this is a pretty good stash to draw from, but I think you would agree it that is a bit heavy on the blues and greys. Not a lot of other colors in there. I might need to reinvigorate my pile after I withdraw for another set or two or three.

So, how is 2008 treating you so far? I think it is going pretty well for business/money as I have been moderately busy. In the crafting end I have been down in the dumps project wise because now that I don’t have any clear-cut goals (no race to the afghans for Christmas anymore) I have been doing a lot of nothing much to show you all. Finishing up a book or two, crocheting a bit on my bead crochet bracelet pile/stash, finishing this sock but not anything really spectacular.

I think I need another big goal. What are you all working on?

Peace!

Happy New Year!

Hoping you all have had a nice end to 2007 and here’s to:

Peace
Joy
Abundance
Laughter
Fulfilling Work
Good yarn and bead purchases, snarl-free spinning…
Healing Sleep and wonderful dreams (day dreams and night dreams) in 2008!

Peace!

Just hanging out

I have a few of my "finished" afghans to really finish – weaving in all the yarn tails, try to remove as much cat and dog hair as I can. Some will get a good washing, others just a good shaking. Two need to be wrapped and then boxed and mailed.

I still have my sister’s afghan to work on. I haven’t felt like working on it, but I will get down to it tomorrow after my Reiki student leaves.

I have been making a lot of bead crochet bracelets. They need to be sewed together – some with bead and charm pieces holding them together, some just sewed up (hopefully) seamlessly.

I completed one tonight:

It took me 3 tries to get it right. The first time was sloppy so I tore out the center piece to start over. Then I got it right but realized it was way too big. So out went some of the center beads. I got it down to what you see. It could be smaller, but it won’t fall off my hand.

Are you all doing well and getting ready for holiday celebrations? William-Thomas and I don’t quite know when we will be celebrating with my family. Mom thought we might do Sunday instead of Christmas Eve. I am okay with that. That way I can be somewhere else Christmas Eve; perhaps with friends or just hanging out at home.

Peace!

My Friend Kerry

My friend Kerry is celebrating her birthday today! I am so proud to know her – she is a very talented knitter, spinner and pattern writer, and a wonderful, caring person.

Kerry recently started her own pattern company – Northern Palm Designs and has a really cool free mitten pattern on Knitty.com called Matrix.

Wow!

Please take a moment to check out all her stuff and wish her a happy birthday.

Peace!

Ahhhhh….

I finished another afghan last night. All but a bazillion ends to weave in. I did start doing that, but then decided to just concentrate on the bits that were poking out where I added a new skein of yarn (in the middle of a row).

Here it is:

I cropped out the ends 🙂

These afghans that have a new color every row are really a bunch of work to finish. You would think I would learn, I mean this is only the Eleventy-oneth one I have done like that now. And this one is a cotton/acrylic mix and you know how cotton just likes to poke out.

To recap: This one is made with TLC Cotton-Plus yarn, cotton 51%/acrylic 49%. The pattern is in a Leisure Arts pamphlet called Rippling Effects. Great pattern, but the materials list has errors. Buy more of the color that goes into the dk blue slot. If you think it over, there is one more row of that color, so it shouldn’t be less yardage/ounces (whatever) than the red.

Now all I have left (afghan-wise) is my dear sister’s granny square one. Good thing too because I am crazy go nuts over doing bead crochet bracelets. Want to see?

I can really crank them out now. Before was agonizingly slow to even get a bracelet started. I am not joking this time either; bazillion and eleventy-one aside. When you first try do do bead crochet you think you need at least 2 more hands. Especially since I am using thread vs. crochet cotton. Have you ever tried to crochet using thread? Now add to that that you need to crochet in a round with thread and beads. One of my BeadLadies friends, Jean gave me a tip to do the first chain row without beads, then on the 2nd row add the beads. It works a lot easier that way, but still takes practice.

Of those 3 finished bracelets, two have similar center beads. I bought a strand of 20 of them and because they are marbled glass, they all have a slightly different color and design to them. I am going to work up a bunch to sell at a craft fair at “my” coffee house, The Coffee Grounds on December 2nd from 10:00 – 4:00 p.m. But beside those that I am aiming to sell, I am making some for gifts so count me busy right now: Sister’s crochet afghan that is started, but let’s face it – way more to go. More bracelets for gifts, get things ready for the sale, a bunch of Fetching(s) for gifts too — VERY VERY busy.

Peace!

Back in the saddle

I’m back in the (sock) saddle again.

Even though I finished that pair of red socks, that was just a finish-up an old project kind of thing. This time I started a new pair. My favorite mindless sock – a modified ridged feather from Sensational Knitted Socks. I am using some sock yarn I picked up on clearance at the Needlework Unlimited Outlet. Two balls of Meilenweit Fun and Stripes in colors that I seem to be wearing a lot lately. Fall colors! I am making these a bit longer than I normally do. Why? Who knows, just wanted to. I will still have bits left anyway because I have short feet.

I have also been up to bead crochet a lot lately. I had to re-teach my hands to do the stitches. One of those techniques that get rusty. I just finished this bracelet for a gift for a friend and I like it so much I am making one for myself too!

The beads are an size 8 mix of matte and rainbow blue strung on polyester thread. Crocheted pretty tight. Bead caps and a center stone bead of black labradorite.

The charm is a Tierra Cast one, called Tree Spirit. I love it. Of course I had only one of those charms, and I had to both find out who manufactures the charm and then find out if anybody sold them so I could have one for my bracelet. I hunted on Etsy and found Dragynsfyre. I saw she had sold those charms before and asked if she still carried them. Yes! Great service. I found some beads she created that I added to my order and I am anxious to see them in person. She has some beautiful items on her Etsy shop so check it out if you have a moment or two or three…

The labradorite stone center piece I found at a local bead and yarn shop called Be-Ya-Gi (Beads, Yarn, Gifts). Great place. Not a lot of each but what they do have is very reasonably priced. The staff is friendly and helpful without being hovering. Great knitting and beading classes and such too!

Besides working on that sock I am working on other bead crochet items and need to get one brother’s afghan finished as the yarn has arrived and I don’t have any other excuses besides wanting to do other things too.

I hope you are having a good time getting ready for the holidays. I love this time of year!

Peace!

A Piece that was lost – a big piece

I hosted my ZenKnit blog for about 2 years on my knitting website at ZenKnit. But then my blog was banned on my server because that version of WordPress or some internal pointers were making their system crash. Banned isn’t the right word, what they did was move it to a different folder so that nobody could access it, and I wasn’t able to rename the folder either (I tried that *grin*).

I ended up starting over here because I could:

• still use WordPress, which I was very familiar with by then
• get all the wonderful yet horrid program upgrades without having to do them myself
• hoped like heck that a wordpress to wordpress export would some day come about

I bet you know where this is going. A week or so ago I was just clicking around in my WordPress blog admin and I noticed that that export/import function was now available. All I needed was to get my old blog up and running and pray pray pray that I could get it upgraded and exported before my hosting service brought it down again.

Many days later I had succeeded in restoring, upgrading and exporting and then importing to this blog, only to find that the ALL the links to my photos were either there and incorrect, or not there at all. I am sure if I noodled around in the now upgraded old blog I could have fixed it somehow and exported again, but I decided to just bite the bullet and manually type in all those image links.

And now I am finished! It feels like a very large piece of me has been restored. Now I have better documentation so that I can go play around in Ravelry and get more of my projects inserted. This blog now goes back to when I first started my ZenKnit blog, waaaaaaaay back to June 2004. Woohoo!

I got my Ravelry invite the day before my birthday this year, isn’t that sweet? I am spending some serious time there just noodling around. I have loaded in most of my afghans and some of my socks. Now I may do the shawls and other projects. Maybe not, I will see.

And I am almost done with my 2nd "A Little Bit Crazy" sock.

Peace!

A Little Bit Crazy

Back when I was actually knitting – waaaaaaaaay back before all the crocheted ripple afghans I knit this sock:

Now that my traveling crochet is at an end, I decided to pick up the bag that still held this one sock, all my sock needles, the ball of yarn and thankfully, my notebook that has all my sock notes in it to the Crazy Aunt Purl booksigning event at B&N at MOA.

It was a very good thing that I still had those notes but even with it I was making so many mistakes on the 2nd red sock. Now these socks will forever be known to me as, "a little bit crazy".

Laurie is just a little bit of a thing. Short and and oh so cute and very, very funny. There was a good sized group at the Barnes & Noble at Mall of America. I guess the group was one of the biggest for a book signing because the guy that sets these up told us. He also told us a too long personal story of the power of knitting. Gah. But Laurie was finally on and all was well.

To back up a bit, there were too many people for the seats but I still had space next to me so I motioned for Annie Modesit and her daughter Hannah to sit next to me. Annie is such a nice person (great teacher too) and Hannah is a delightful, smart girl.

Someone came along to give us sticky notes so we could write our desired inscription on them. I told Annie that I just couldn’t come up with someone so she said write, "I want you" on it and then I just couldn’t get that out of my mind. Dang. Then she told me stories about what she writes on copies of her books that she signs for others. Things like, "I like you best" or "You’re the best knitter" and about how when mother and daughter couples come to book signings she writes, " I like you better than your mother" and "I like you better than your daughter". Funny! So I wrote on mine for Laurie to sign: "I like you better than Annie". Which is a crack-up because they are good friends. Then in the end I just couldn’t do it, so I wrote, "Nervous talkers unite!"

Peace!

One more down

Here is a another completed afghan for my Christmas 2007 project.

This is the Golden Harvest design from the Leisure Arts pamplet, Rippling Effects. 4 colors of Red Heart Super Saver and a size I hook. I modified the pattern for a narrower width, and less rows in each dark brown section. It is a nice stitch, alternating rows of crocheted v’s and then a row of single crochet. It is nice and lacy, but still substantial.

I am down to really needing to order yarns to complete another brother’s afghan, and then get back to the squares for my sister’s. Since sister’s afghan is too fiddly to do while I am with other people talking and such, I plan to take my completed afghans out for a spin – to stitch in ends and show them off.

I am also planning another afghan for myself – a chakra colored one (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) done up using the new Vanna White yarn. The colors are nice – not clownish and the yarn is really soft. I am going to use it in my Reiki healing work. After that, who knows?

Peace!