A Knitting Contest with Myself

I started my second Mystic Spiral hat on Monday night.  It was going really well, and seemingly quickly - it starts with 8 stitches and then you increase from there, so you cross off the first rounds really fast since they don't have many stitches.  Since this will be for an upcoming class, I wanted to get it to The Spinning Room as quickly as possible.  So I decided to have a contest with myself to see if I could finish it and block it in time to bring it to knit night tonight.  Wednesday. Two days later.
Here is what I had by yesterday, mid-naptime:

I knitted all during nap-time, then when I got home and then I finished binding off during Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood this morning! Ran home this afternoon after babysitting, put it in a quick bath and got it ready to block using my color coordinated fiesta plate:

and blocked/dried it using my impatient method:

Luckily, this yarn is a superwash merino, so I could use a little heat in the dryer and it was ready to go by the time I left for knit night.  Then, got a nice picture of it on a head at the shop:

Speaking of the yarn I used.... love. Love. LOVE. IT.  This is Kestrel,100% superwash merino wool, handpainted by Liz at Peace Love & YARN in the Still Waters Run Deep colorway.  Merino is so nice to work with because it is so soft, and I just love Liz's color combinations.  You should get some.  The Spinning Room sells it.

At any rate... mission accomplished.  Contest done.  I win.  Blue ribbon for me.

Knitting Overload....Again.

My brain is on knitting overload again.  I'm knitting a lot.  While I'm knitting, I'm thinking a lot about knitting.  And thinking about knitting a lot of things.  What I'm going to knit next, with what yarn.  What things that I'm going to knit that I can teach in a class.  How much time I have to knit.  How much time I don't have to knit and how I can change that to more time to knit.

Remember that post where I said I loved the Knitter's Pride Karbonz needles and I was going to go out and buy more?  I did and I now have a second sock going:

...which I worked on when I visited my family in Connecticut this weekend and got up early:

Can you even see that???

I will say it again.  I. LOVE. THESE. NEEDLES.  The tips are pointy but not too pointy that they hurt the tips of your fingers.  The join to the rest of the needle is smooth and the rest of the needle is made of I'm-not-sure-what but it  is smooth but not slippery.  A nice combination of needle attributes.  You should get some.  If you knit.  Ooh, and I think I'm going to try a new kind of heel on these socks.  But, I'll tell you about that when i get to them...

I also bought them in a larger size so I could start the Treads tipless gloves:

...and I still love them.  However, I didn't love the yarn for this project.   To clarify, I love the yarn.  Just not for this project.  Aslan Trends Royal Alpaca is 100% alpaca.  But it was a little too dark and too fuzzy.  Too dark to see the braid and linen stitch pattern, and too fuzzy for the same reason.  I also thought it would be difficult when it came time to do the tips - lots of picking up of stitches in a small area.  So I switched to Cascade 220 and it looks much better.  See?:

Cascade 220 on the right. (ok, the light could have been
better...)

And now I'm cruising along, having just finished the thumb gusset:

Better light.  That happens in the daytime.

Look at this cool sideways stitch:

It is a braid and involves all kinds of acrobatics with the needles.  But, it's worth the effort because it's pretty.

And I finally finished my Cozy wrap, AND blocked it:

Blocking.  Yes, I know it's uneven, but it won't be worn
so you can see the whole thing like that and know
it's uneven....see pics below...

It turned out to be about 80 inches long and 22 inches wide.  A really nice size for wearing it like the model above.

I also finally got some good pictures (on a foam head) of my Mystic Spiral Hat:

I've got to get one of these.  So handy for pictures, and blocking too.  And then I started another one:

I'm sure you were wondering about the garden.....  Tomatoes galore.  And an eggplant.

Still no books to tell you about, but hopefully soon.  Loving the one I'm reading and I also started listening to another good one.  I mostly listen in the car, and now I'm trying to think of reasons to get in the car! Never mind that I can just listen with earphones on my phone, but for some reason that never happens in the house, what with The Food Channel and HGTV and all.

The usual summer stuff

Paul and I did some of our usual summertime things this past weekend.  First, we went to see Spamalot at the Washington Park Playhouse:

This is my usual  picture of knitting-while-waiting-for-the-show-to-start-because-we-got-there-an-hour-and-a-half-early-because-I-get-obsessive-about-not-getting-a-good-seat.  Apparently other people do too, because there were A LOT of people already there when we got there.  It was a terrific show - hilarious!   See the below knitting update for what I'm knitting in this picture.

Then we went to the Brimfield antiques show where we got a few things:

That would be:
1) A dolly for a 55 gallon drum.  I don't even know if we have any of those...
2) A Buick hubcap from the 1940's.
3) A Murray pedal car for Paul to restore.  This was the best one we found - in working order with only one thing missing that we could see.  And which we don't know what it is.   There is simply a hole where something should go.  We need to research.
4) Not shown - because we didn't find any - a dress form and a head model, for me to display and take pictures of my knitting.

No pictures from while we were there since it was HOT and I didn't think about it.  And when I thought about it, it was raining.  We got away with no rain for about 3 hours but trudged around for another hour while it was raining on and off.  Good times.  Mostly.

Then, we drove up to Lake George to see the lake and get ice cream from Martha's Dandee Crème.  I would put some pictures here but I took them with my newfangled "smart" phone but I can't find them.  That's not smart.

In Knitting News
Pictures of my blocked Mystic Spiral:

This picture is the best representation of the true color.

 

Like you really need three pictures, right?  The one I took of me wearing it came out terrible, so I spared you.

While at Spamalot, I worked on my latest obsession, the Oak Trail hat from Alana Dakos' latest book, Botanical Knits.  Here's the picture again, because I forgot to get a better one (click on the link for the official pattern pic):

In Book News:
I'm gearing up to do some book reviews, I promise.  However, I must tell you that Goodreads has informed me that "At your current pace, you're 4 books (9%) behind schedule."  And by "informed me" I mean shouted it from the sidebar as I scrolled down the page when I went to my Goodreads homepage the other day.  To remind you, my goal is to read 45 books in 2013.  I have only read 20. ONLY.

Five years and nine months

Five years and nine months.  That's how long it took for the deer to find the hostas in the front yard:

If you look closely, you will see that the stems in the foreground have no buds on them.....  argh. 

So.  A closer look at our yard.  Remember this from the last post?:

 Paul and his brother digging trenches for the electrical wiring and water to go to the new garage.  They cut the phone wire, which Paul patched up.

This one is the beginning of the excavator's work for the garage site.  Our yard is going to be a huge muddy mess for a few months.  The excavator also cut the phone wire (in a different place), which the phone company will be coming to fix today.

In Knitting News:
I made this Mystic Sprial hat a while ago:

It's currently blocking with a plate in it.  That's what the instructions said to do in order to give it the right shape.  Another picture to come once it's dry.  I haven't shown it to you because I bound it off too tightly and it took me about a month and a half to shake off my annoyance and then take out the bind off and re-bind it off more loosely.  How annoying is it when you think you've finished this great new hat and then when you go to put it on the brim is too tight?  So annoying.  Cute hat though.  Probably an upcoming class for me to teach at The Spinning Room.

I can't remember if I told you I started a Citron shawl(ette):

I am on section 5 of 5.  Then there is a ruffled edge.  However, I have a lot more yarn and this shawlette is pretty small, so I'm going to add 2 more sections.  I'm getting to the point, though, where I'm getting a tiny bit tired of this project and knowing that it's "supposed" to be done soon is making me re-think if I want to make it bigger.  I keep thinking, "Maybe it won't be that small." or "Small could be better."  I'm trying really hard to overcome this.  Hopefully by the time I get to the last row of the section, I'll go right on to row 1 of the additional section and not cave in and got to row 1 of the ruffled edge.  Apparently it will depend on my mood at the time.

Here is the next pair of Travelling Socks that I'm sending on to Oregon:

Pretty funky looking but  that's pretty much the point of these socks!  I just received the next pair so those will be posted soon too.

And check out my sister-in-law Anita's sweater!

Isn't it great?!  I think it's her first sweater. I love the yoke pattern.  I forgot to ask her the name of the pattern....
I seem to be back in knitting mode and thinking of patterns to teach for classes this fall.  But I can't get any of that together until I get the craft room put back together.  That's on the list for today...