I'm Still Here!

     Wow, the time has really just whizzed past me!  In my last post I remarked how I couldn't believe the year was 6 weeks old, and now it's more than half over.  Where does it go, I wonder.

     I wish I could say I'd been busy finishing up UFOs all this time, but while I have finished some things, most of what's kept me from blogging has been the much more mundane, real life junk.

     When I was working on the two little bags in my last post, I also finished a cream silk clutch bag, which I'd started at a class one year (I don't recall which year!) at the Original Sewing and Quilt Expo.  I finished it around the same time, except that I wanted to do something on the front, to cover where I'd sewn on the square of Velcro I used as a closure.  It took me a while to find what I wanted to use, but now at long last, here's what I ended up with:



In January and February, I participated in a Knit Along (KAL) in one of the groups I belong to on Ravelry, and made this pair of socks:



Today is going to be a day full of paperwork for me, so I suppose I'd better get started on it.  But I hope to get this blog all updated soon ;-)

Thanks for stopping by to play!  Come back again any time.

2012 Is Winding Down...

Well, I never seem to have gotten the big block of quilting time I was expecting and hoping for.  I have gotten some knitting done, and I may yet get a bit of quilting done before the end of the year.  It all depends on how much life decides to cooperate, or not.

Here are the socks I've finished recently and haven't yet shared here:













I have the next few days pretty much free, so I'm planning to spend it getting "lost" in some sewing.  And maybe some knitting as well. 

I hope that 2012 winds down in a good way for you, and that 2013 will bring you health, happiness, and lots of good things -- and the grace to appreciate them all.

Thanks for stopping by to play.  Come back again soon.

Let the Crazy Times Begin

The weekend before Thanksgiving, I was at our Toastmasters Fall District Conference.  We were at Pere Marquette Lodge and Conference Center, in Grafton, Illinois.  As always, it was great to see some of the Toastmasters from around the District, that I don't see except at District events.  I always learn something, and this time was no exception.  And I always have fun, too, and this conference was definitely fun, as well.

I always think of the Holiday Season as beginning with the Fall Conference, because it's almost always the weekend before Thanksgiving.  So it really does lead right into the craziest six weeks of the year.  Well, for most people it's a crazy time of year, anyhow.  For me, it's usually a time I can slow down a bit, and get some quilting stuff done.  I absolutely don't leave home at all on Black Friday.  I have get-togethers with a few groups during December, but I don't have nearly as much craziness as many folks I know do.  So, while everyone else is hustling and bustling, I can nest and quilt.  I always get in the mood to work on quilting at this time of year, too.  I think it may go back to my days in school, when I did a lot of crafting and sewing during Christmas break, that I didn't necessarily have time for during the school year.

For the rest of this year, I'm going to try to get a number of my completed quilt tops layered up, quilted, and ready to be bound.  Then in the early part of the new year, I'll have a binding marathon, and all of a sudden, I'll have a whole bunch of newly-finished quilts ;-)

For today,  I can show you a pair of socks I finished recently.  This was a pair I test-knitted for a designer who is new to me.  I stumbled upon her Ravelry group, and happened to be on the site right after she'd posted a request for test knitters, and was able to be the first volunteer.  They may look like they're from two different yarns, but they're not.  I was working from both ends of the skein, and apparently, the hand-dyed yarn was not dyed consistently throughout.  I really like the effect of slightly mismatched socks, though I know there are folks out there who would be bothered by it.  Anyhow, here they are:



Last week, I finished up this cowl, and blocked it over the weekend:


It's not really crooked or lopsided, I was just apparently standing at a funny angle -- when I fold it in half again, the top edges and the bottom edges are nicely in line all the way along.

I also finally got around to blocking several other things that have been waiting a while for that.  First, here's my Color Affection shawl:


 This is supposed to be striped in three colors, but unfortunately, the colors in my yarns were closer to each other than I thought they'd be, so I lost quite a bit of the stripe effect.  Here are the yarns I used for this:


Looking at this, it seems obvious that these yarns would be somewhat "blendy," but in person I really thought they'd be more distinct from each other.  No matter, I still like this and will wear it.

Then a fun little cowl I made during a knit-along (KAL) with the designer's group on Ravelry:



Then two basic long cowls/infinity scarves, one for DH:



and one for me:



The color is horrible on those last two pictures.  Here's the yarn that I used for DH's cowl:



and here's the yarn I used for mine:



I'm glad to have gotten all this blocking done, and to be able to use these items now. 

I've got a couple other pairs of socks I'm making good progress on, so I hope to show those here very soon.  And maybe some more quilty pictures, before too long.  For now, I'm off to do some sewing!

Thanks for stopping by to play!  Come back again soon.

A Bit More Knitting

Most of what I knit is socks.  You've seen what I've gotten finished recently.  I have another 8 pairs that I'm actually working on at the moment, as well as a number of pairs that I've started that are in hibernation for one reason or another.  In my last post, you saw a hat I knitted for my DH.  Using the same pattern, I also made myself a hat.  In fact, I finished mine first, then made DH's.

This yarn is in a colorway called "Mallard," so (because I like to think I'm clever sometimes) I called the project "Excuse me, is that a duck on your head?"  It turns out, that's a quote from one of the DiscWorld books, so I'm informed.  I hadn't even heard of the books, so the reference wasn't intentional.  The yarn is 80% Merino wool, 10% nylon, and 10% cashmere, and it feels wonderful.  It hasn't really been cold enough for me to wear it yet (though DH has worn his, but he's out in the early morning hours, and I haven't been), but I really like it.  Here it is on DH's head, so I could take the picture:



I have some other things that I've knitted that I still need to take pictures of -- a shawl and three cowls.  But they need to be blocked first, and I haven't gotten that done yet.  I'm hoping to do it over the holiday weekend, and post pictures very soon of the finished and blocked items.

Thanks for stopping by to play!  Come back again soon.

Rest Easy, Sweet Spirit

My very dear friend Sue died somewhat unexpectedly in early September.  She lived in Florida, and in the last couple of years I hadn't seen her much.  We did talk on the phone, but it had gotten more infrequent because I was busy and distracted, and she had been busy helping her mother quite a bit, until she finally put her foot down and told her mother she could not continue to be at her house all day, every day, that she just didn't have the strength or stamina for it.  Sue was quite a bit older than me, only 15 months younger than my mother.  We met in the early 1990s when we both worked at the same hospital on night shift.  She was a nurse in the cardiac Critical Care unit, and I worked in the laboratory as a Medical Technologist.  We didn't have a phlebotomist at night, so I had to go to the floors and collect blood samples myself.  That was how we first met, and we eventually got talking, and hit it off.  I don't know if I've ever had a best friend as an adult, but if I have, Sue was it.  Even though we had been in contact less frequently recently, we could always just pick up right where we left off, and it was always comfortable.  She was the one person I could always be completely myself with, and know that it was okay.  And she could do the same with me.

About a week before Sue died, I had started knitting this hat for my DH.  It's in a lovely bright turquoise.





Sue loved cool colors, and was especially fond of turquoise, teal-y greens, and purples.  So after I learned of Sue's death, I renamed my project of this hat "Sue would have loved this color."  Does that seem a bit macabre?  Well, she was friends with my DH too, though more my friend -- still, he feels her loss also.  He didn't mind me naming it that, so I did.  As I worked on the hat, after I knew of her death, I was thinking a lot about her and all she'd meant to me.  So it was a healing project, to some extent.  So many times in the last few weeks, there have been things I've wanted to tell Sue, and I'll catch myself saying "oh, I've gotta call and tell her..."  And then I remember.  And I miss her all the more.




~~~Susan Jane Becker, 9 January 1946 - 8 September 2012.  Rest Easy, Sweet Spirit.  You are loved and missed.~~~


Thanks for letting me share a little (mostly "non-crafty") piece of life.
 

More Knitting Stuff

I've finally got some space where I can leave my sewing stuff out, and have room to work on it.  But, I'm always working on knitting stuff in the background.  It's more portable, I can do it when I want to watch television or a movie, and it's very meditative in a way that sewing on a machine isn't.

I've previously shown you the first six pairs of socks I made for the 26 Pair Plunge, which runs from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013.  I'm ahead of schedule a bit, as I just finished Pair #13 last Thursday.  Here are pairs 7-13:










This pair is for my DH, the only pair in this Plunge so far that is.





Thanks for coming by to play!  Come back again soon.

Socks for Carrie

The only other pair of gift socks I've made so far this year was actually started back in the summer of 2010.  This was a kit (pattern + yarn + commemorative stitch marker) which was sold as a fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen foundation by Knitters Brewing Company.  I didn't want to make pink ribbon socks, but Wendy from KBC posted a list of awareness ribbon colors.  I saw that purple was the awareness ribbon color for Cystic Fibrosis, and that was it.  My friend Carrie and her husband lost a daughter to CF some years back.  It wasn't so much that I thought she needed more awareness of CF, but it was a way to honor the life and memory of her daughter.  I set these aside several times, as they're a bit complicated, and I needed to focus when I was working on them, not be watching TV or anything else at the same time.  I finished them in June, but didn't give them to Carrie until late July -- ironically just a day or two after her birthday, which I wasn't aware of until I gave them to her ;-)  Gotta love those happy accidents!  Anyhow, here they are, though the color's off a bit.  They're a lovely medium purple shade in real life:

It's not obvious from this photo, but up the center front and center back are the ribbon motifs.  Here's a picture where I turned them a bit to the front, trying to capture that:

Carrie liked them, and apparently her grandmother used to knit for her, so I struck a nice chord on several levels.  Win!

Thanks for coming by to play.  Come back again soon.

Have You Missed Me?

It's been a really long time since I've posted, I know.  All I can say is that this year has been a series of things that have exploded in my face.

I've knitted a number of pairs of socks since my last post.  This time, I'll post the ones I've made for DH.  Then I'll post those I've made for others, and finally the ones I've made for myself.  So, since the beginning of  this year, DH has gotten seven new pairs of socks.  Here they all are:

I'm so glad that he doesn't want plain, boring black or blue or brown socks!  Of course, if he did, I wouldn't be knitting him socks, but would be buying them instead.  He loves the socks I knit, though, and he loves the wild ones best ;-)

Thanks for stopping by to play.  Come back again soon -- I promise to post more often!

How Does This Happen?

So, it's an established fact that I don't need any more yarn. At the rate I knit socks, I think I have sock yarn SABLE (Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy), probably at least twice over. But I'm weak, what can I say? I went to check out a site for an Indie Dyer, and absolutely fell in love with a lot of their colorways. There were a lot more that I wanted -- believe it or not, this was an exercise in restraint for me:



All that yarny goodness came in the mail the week before Christmas. I also received my Hazel Knits sock club shipment that same week, which was these two lovelies:



Sigh! So much for my intention to not buy any more sock yarn! I'd be okay, if I just didn't go look at dyer's websites, or sign up for clubs. I don't think either one's going to happen. I'm just going to have to learn how to knit a whole lot faster!

Thanks for coming by to play. Come back again soon.

I Knit Something Besides Socks!

My feet weren't the only things that have been cold lately. My hands are always cold of late, as well. So I made my first pair of fingerless mitts. Here's the first one, on my hand:

The color is really off in this picture, it's a lovely gray/green/blue colorway called "Loch Ness." Not nearly as dreary gray as the picture makes it look. Here's the pair:


DH liked them, and I'd been promising him a pair of fingerless mitts as well, so I gave him these. Then I immediately cast on a new pair in the same yarn for myself:
This picture shows the color somewhat better, but it's still not completely accurate. The second pair, I made longer by one pattern repeat, and I went down a needle size to get a slightly firmer fabric. I love these, and love the longer arm length -- I often get a breeze up my coat sleeves, and these will help with that tremendously. Then, because these were for a KAL (Knit Along) in one of my groups on Ravelry, I took a picture of both pairs together, just to show there really are two pairs. Mine are on the sock blocker legs, and DH's are on water bottles:

These were fun and quick to knit, and I'll most likely be making some more mittens and gloves, and a cowl and a hat for me are also on the agenda.

This evening I'm attending a performance of "Scrooge" at a local church. I'm looking forward to seeing how they do with it. For now, back to packing and organizing. This move seems to be interminable.

Thanks for stopping by to play. Come back again soon.