Wagon, what wagon?

Right after Christmas I went on my latest yarn diet.  Having cleaned out the stash room to dig out some not stash things that were hidden in there right before the holidays I realized that it was a little tiny bit out of control.

Yes, just a little tiny bit.

Nothing that some extra baskets and containers couldn't handle.

Or giving away a ton of books to create space on bookshelves for yarn.

Or maybe a rather large knitting jag!

I was doing really well until TOB knit this for his sister for her birthday.

He had knit two for teacher gifts during the holidays (one escaped without being photo'd ) so he found that knitting a third one for TDQ was a quick, yet thoughtful, gift.  We like those around these parts!

All was well until he asked for another ball of yarn.  Now that exceptionally large stash that I have in the stash room runs from acrylic to cashmere in a rainbow of colors, but the one thing it doesn't usually contain a lot of is funky yarn!

There isn't any more in my stash and he isn't ready to take the plunge to regular knitting yarn that takes more than a few hours to knit a scarf with.

So what is a mother to do?

Yeah, some more stash enhancement will be heading my way shortly.  I ordered online as the roads are awful today, weren't all that great yesterday and I work some really long hours this coming week.

Having shown you TOB's finished object for the week, would you like to see some of mine?

My second Lichen is finished.  No beads this time, it was my traveling knitting and when I hit the row where the beads were supposed to go I didn't have them with me, so I just kept on knitting.  This is knit in ShaSha from Land O Lace.

The third pattern shared with the group is Kelpie.

I named my project, Blood Thirsty Kelpie, knit out of Knitted to a T's sock yarn in the colorway HeartThrob it is a more dramatic piece than I would usually wear and not in TDQ's favorite color (her favorite saying right now is "Everything purple is mine, everything else can be painted or dyed.) so it might make its way into my gifting box.

Today we got the start of the next project files.  This time for a Fractal Blanket, that can also be knit as a stole.  Like the Summer Squares pieces this is a modular knit, so I can make it as big or as small as I like and by using different numbers of squares and different yarns, yet again, Andrea has created a project that I can go back to a hundred times and still never really knit the same thing twice.
 
Guess I have a few more of these to knit though!

~M

I wish I had infinite time for my infinity knitting!

Don't you wish you had infinite time, to do whatever it is that you want?  As long as you need to prepare for things, as much sleep as you can possibly get, as much knitting time as you could ever dream of!

Me too!

But, alas, we all have other things tugging on our time.  Pulling us in different directions, sometimes, than the ones we want to go in.  Stopping us from getting to spend all our time on things we desire to spend time on and instead making us do those things we have to do.

I had hoped to have a couple of finished objects for you today, but those things that I have to do kept pulling me away from the things I wanted to do, so I have an in progress shot and a completed shot for you.

The latest in the Infinity Projects from Andrea, of Bad Cat Designs is called Lichen. (side note, I don't now how she gets so creative with the names of her projects, but for many of her patterns she will tell you about the name and why that particular word, or phrase is important to her, which I, in my knitting geeky kinda way, think is really cool!)  Andrea explains that Lichen's are symbiotic, used in dyes, medications and perfumes, come in many different earthy colors and are long living but vulnerable to their environment.  Further research showed me that they can be used as emergency food supplies (but be careful, they contain toxins) and can survive, unprotected in space.  (Now that is truly impressive.)

My first Lichen is in a varigated sock yarn in blue tones. (Yes, they come in blues, purples too!)  with clear ab beads on the final pattern row.

My second is in ShaSha from Land O Lace in the discontinued colorway of Maplewood, this is the one I hoped to finish, but maybe tomorrow while I am waiting for TFB to get his braces adjusted I will finish off those final few rows!

TDQ wants you to know that the Red Thing is now hers, never to be in my hands again, and the Yellow piece is beautiful but I can keep that one.  Maybe instead of The Drama Queen we should call her the Spoiler Queen.

For those of you who are a part of the Infinity Knit Along, practice your center starts and post pictures of your Lichen's.  I already have coveted a few (could be why I have two!) but I am sure that more of you have some fabulous colorways I haven't drooled over yet.

~M

Well, What About...???

Today is Sunday, the day I usually find something to put on the blog just to let people know I am still alive and knitting.  Today I was in a bit of a dither about it though.  Not that there hasn't been any knitting going on, there has, but....

The conversation with TDQ went like this.

"I don't know what to blog about this week." yeah, that would be me.

"What about the yellow thing, it is starting to look like something." - and that would be TDQ.

Me, sadly shaking my head, "Nope, can't talk about that one."

"Oh," scrunching her lips all to one side and frowning. "Then what about the red one?"

Me, again, sadly shaking my head. "That one too."

"Oh, that's a problem isn't it, they are what you have been working on all week." Again she scrunches up her lips and frowns. "You could tell everyone about how the cat dumped my entire bead collection all over the floor and we have been trying to sort them out for ages now......." she pauses dramatically, "No, you better not talk about that, I don't want your blog readers to think I am dumb, leaving my beads on my bed like that."

So instead, we will talk about my lack of progress on the other things I should be knitting!

My Peridot Shawl, out of Lara's Creations Angel's Kiss (and I can't say enough good things about how that yarn feels in my hands!) is growing, but very slowly.  I wanted something that was more than a triangle, and showcased the halo of the yarn before hitting a fancy lace edge.  I started out just kind of winging what I wanted and then started looking for a lace border that would fit my stitch count.  After much deliberation I think I am going to steal the fancy lace edge from a shawl called Tiong Bahru.  The shaping of mine is a little bit different, so I will have to make a couple of adjustments to get to the right stitch count before adding the lace, but yarn is pretty forgiving where a stitch or three are concerned.  I think I spent more time figuring out what lace to add than actually knitting on it, so not much difference from the last time you saw her.

So that I will actually have something to talk about next week I did cast on for Lichen, the next project in the Infinity series from Bad Cat Designs. (Of course if you didn't join up yet, you still can, there are several more patterns to come....at least that is what a little bird told me, and they get better and better as we go!)

This time I am knitting with a yarn from another of my favorite independent dyers.  Bev at Land O Lace makes some beautiful Just About's in lace and fingering weight yarns.  This one is Sha Sha (they are all named for nieces and special people in her life) and I have barely cast on but can already tell that I am going to love the subtle shading in my moebious!

Have a great knitting week.  Hopefully by this time next week I will have something more than cast on's to show you!

~M

To Inifinty and Beyond

Buzz Lightyear may be famous for his catch phrase of "To Inifinty, and Beyond!" in the Toy Story Movies, but he has nothing on a certain Bad Cat and her knitting patterns.  The first of the project files was loaded for the New Year and many crafting hands started manipulating yarn to make necklaces.

I, being easily amused, find the cast on and knitting of a moebious strip to be fascinating. There you are knitting along and suddenly you are back where you started but inside out and upside down and your knits are suddenly looking like purls!

I also really enjoy that these are called necklaces, because really they are lace that you wear around your neck and if I ever get mine back from TDQ I might have to try one on!

I knit two, both in ColourMart Yarns that I had on hand.  The Yarn Diet is back on now that we are in a new year and new month. 

But I digress, both of these ColourMart yarns have a cotton content, the creamy one is linen and cotton with just a touch of cashmere, the darker one being a cotton/cashmere blend that was part of the scrap set I bought for the scrap set challenge a couple of years ago and ended up not completing.


TDQ declared them a success but wants one that is longer so she can wrap it around her neck doubled, with more of a halo to the yarn. She also says to make sure you watch these videos, because it is fun watching a girl geek out about math concepts!

In other knitting news, check out this upcoming book release on Amazon.com, I hope they post a Look Inside feature soon!

~m

Happy New Year's Roundup

Usually around Chez Yarn Diet, in the days leading into the New Year I ask (force) the kids to clean up their stuff, get charity giving together and find homes for all the presents they got over Christmas.

This year there wasn't as much to find homes for (thank goodness) although they did seem to get a lot of electronic type gifts.  The quote of the day on Christmas was "I went from having 21 items on my wish list to 7."  followed just a few hours later with "But, there are still seven things in my wish list you can get me tomorrow!"  Luckily for the child in question he was joking about getting the other seven any time soon!

The clothes and things that had been sorted out early in the month went out on December 30th and were promptly picked up by a charity.  I hope the pick up guy had eaten a good, fortifying breakfast that day, two boxes of books were in the load for him, and they were not light!

New Year's Eve found us all crammed on the sofa, with popcorn for some and knitting in my hands, watching movies and listening to the fools who felt they needed to discharge their firearms at the stroke of midnight, and later for those who couldn't tell time!

According to Ravelry, if you count all the washcloths individually I completed 89 projects in 2013, but still have 6 things that I started and either didn't finish or didn't frog when I should have!  But Ravelry isn't always the whole story where my knitting is concerned, there are secret projects that haven't made an appearance either on my blog or there yet. So we will call the number closer to 95 items completed, and while some of them were small, like wash cloths, others were big, like sweaters and shawls!

Today, the first day of the New Year is usually a day of running around, finishing up what we didn't before the New Year to get us started off right.  This year was spent quietly talking about the things we would like to accomplish this year. (Serous things like picking a college for TDQ and funny things like getting video game achievements for TOB.) Followed by just relaxing, me of course with knitting needles in hand!
 
My wishes for myself in 2014 actually pretty much mirror the ones I usually have, help the kids become more self sufficient (after all I do hope they move out some day, maybe not soon, but some day) and learn some new things.

I made a pretty good start on the learning new things already.  Andrea of Bad Cat Designs has started our New Year's Knit Along with a Novel Way to cast on for a moebious necklace.

See, already 2014 is off to a good start!

I hope it starts and continues well at your house.  Happy New Year!
~M