February wrap up

Kittens, look at this yardage. 2010 is kicking some serious fanny in plowing through yardage!

Yardage Totals 2010

January: 1884 yds
February: 2850 yds

Year to date: 4734 yds or 2.70 miles

That kind of yardage will never happen again. Little sleep and being propped up by caffeine is insane. In the first two months of '10, I have knit more then a quarter of my total yardage for 2009. 31% of it, to be exact.

Yowza!

No pictures tonight...

but I'm almost there.

Body? Done.

First sleeve? Couple of rows left.

Second sleeve? Needs to be done.

Then weave in the ends, sew on buttons--FIND BUTTONS FIRST--take pictures.

And yes, it *is* 1:30am and I've been pulling late nights and early mornings to accomplish this. Dr. Pepper, you are a good friend to me. Sometimes. I have a knit date tomorrow and skipping a guild meeting to make this sweater happen.

I will finish. I have until 1:59:59am Monday.

But what is this?!

It would seem that all hope is not lost, Kittens! Behold! I'm about half-way through the body of the cardigan and will likely get a few more inches done tonight.

I have been knitting All. Day. Long. The children have been bribed with jelly beans and Blue's Clues to make this happen, but it's happening. One more good long day like today and I'll be finished. The body is the hard part; I plan to have rather short sleeves in the spirit of the original Shalom. Mine will be more versatile and wearable, imho. It's going to be a great layering piece and wearable in many types of weather...even in Texas (early spring and late fall, anyway and there's always movie theaters and other indoor venues that are chilly).

I have until 1:59:59am Monday morning to have this wrapped up in time for the Ravelympics. I just might make it.

Quick WIP

Must knit...will not make it. But, I said I'd do a WIP it Wednesday and it's always nice to share projects even if it takes a little of my knitting time away. Not like I'm kidding anyone here; my children are awake so I'm not very productive at this moment in time.

This is as far as I've come on my Olympian Cardi. I could make endless excuses for it. It's a custom gauge and experimenting as I go! Look at all of that twisted rib! I have to make a larger size! I could keep going. But at the end of the day, dividing my time and having other things to do is what really did this project in. It will be finished, but probably not in time for the end of the olympics. But hey, I tried, right? I'll have to post up pictures again on Sunday so I can show off how far I got.

I am not a master of the mirror photo, apologies for the craptacular picture. I wanted to show off how well the yoke is fitting and exactly where I am on the body.

The more I think about it, the more I realize just how ambitious of a project this was for just over two weeks' worth of time. Especially when it's not the only thing I'm working on. But really, wasn't the the point of the Ravelympics? To try and finish something that it would be very difficult to do in that amount of time?

Moving on.

You can see the old colors I've photographed before peeking out from the bottom. I'm more then a third of the way done, but not quite a half. I'm not really sure how long an afghan should be. I'm thinking I'm still going to run short on yarn before I get this finished. *grumble grumble grumble*

Yesterday I hinted at a WIP that is not knitting or crochet. I've been working on making custom art work for The Girl's room as well as a piece for our living room. So far, I've gotten to the above point. I bought fabric at Ikea while we were in the Dallas area, and I already had the stretched canvases from Hobby Lobby sitting around. They've been gathering dust for two years now. So far, this has been really simple: cut fabric, staple to frame. Repeat. The next step is where the fun will come in. I want to add texture and interest through embroidery. I'm still not sure how this will work, but it will. When I finish, I'll be sure to blog it.

And that wraps it up! I hear my cardigan calling. Back to work after I make dinner.

The silence is over!

Hello Kittens! I am officially back and settled in enough to start blogging again. I'll hopefully have a WIP it Wednesday for tomorrow, since I am definitely working on some projects...one isn't even knit or crochet. Ooh, I'm hinting at things.

It has been a rough two weeks. We left in the middle of the night which allowed me no chance to work in the car. By the time it was light enough, I was burnt out and ready to veg in the passenger seat for a bit. This started a snowball of Being Behindness when it came to my knit and crochet projects while on "vacation." No working on my mother's sweater in the car meant I had to work on it while home. I finished on the 13th--pics to follow. Since I cast off after the start of the Olympics, I was late to cast on my Olympic Cardi--I'm only now starting to pick up some speed on that. It's going to be a close one. This also left me with no time to crochet the afghan in between; I had been hoping for 1-3 days with nothing else to work on so I could focus on that.

Long story short: I'm behind, Kittens. Waaaay behind. And panicing. Both projects I have now have "deadlines," though not set in stone ones. If I work on my Cardigan, I feel guilty because I'm not working on the Afghan, and vice versa. I want to finish my Olympic project in time, but not at the cost of being that friend who says your gift is on its way and then it doesn't show up until 4+ weeks later.

I've come to a conclusion: I need another set of hands. And possibly an additional brain. Though, maybe a partition that would allow me to control each set of hands separately would do the trick.

...

Not in this lifetime, I'm sure, no matter what sci-fi movies would lead me to believe.

I will be so happy to have both of these projects--and the stress that has come with them--squared away and I can move on.

Oooh look, shiny!

Pattern: Featherweight Cardigan (Ravel it)

Needles: US size 7 Knitpicks Options

Yarn: Sundara Sock-Bronzed Forest

I did say that I finished my mother's cardigan. This took more time and yarn then originally anticipated. I finished with less then a yard to spare between three skeins. I lengthened the sleeves and body to meet her preferences and I think it came out nice. It should work well for layering in the office. Nothing really tricky about this pattern; it's a basic raglan cardigan. The shoulders are wide-set and if I were to do this again, I'd start with a few more stitches on each front side to make it sit a bit higher up on the shoulder. Though with almost 4" thick ribbing, that does make up for the lack of body. Good basic sweater. I hope she'll get a lot of wear out of it.

Sadly, this means that there was none of this lovely yarn left over for me to play with. It feels good to have not only the yarn out of stash, but the project as well.

Back to knitting...crocheting...no, knitting. Um, crocheting?

WIP it Wednesday

This will be the final WIP it Wednesday for two weeks. We're heading out of town at O'dark thirty Monday morning to brave the 20 hours each way trip back to Wisconsin. I'll attempt to blog while there, but it's doubtful I'll find the time. For the next two weeks, imagine that I'm knitting my fingers off, and that will be pretty close to what I'm actually doing. Seriously, I'm converting Shalom to a sportweight pattern and that is my Ravelympics project come the 12th. I'll be knitting like a fiend and testing out motion sickness medications to see if I can finally do something in the car besides stare out the window. Wasting all that prime knitting time makes me a little stabby.

Oh, and in my Factoid Friday entry, I was asked if I was ranting about just sweaters or other knit items as well. Mostly, sweaters, but certainly any other article that can vary alot depending on who wears it is also good. So skirts, dresses, sweaters, jackets, etc. Socks are nice to see modeled as well. Especially when the pattern changes quite a bit when stretched over a foot. Hard to know if no one ever photographs it on a foot!

Anywho. WIPs!

The crochet blanket again, of course. I'm waiting on--yet more--yarn before I can move too much further. Crochet really does eat it up and I did a lousy job guestimating what I needed. This is the pattern I'm using, with more repeats added. In the picture, the blanket is laying across my Queen size bed, to give an idea of the size. Hey, it's for a couple. I want to be sure they can both snuggle under it. I'm hoping to have this finished by the end of February so I can ship it out to its new home. I am finally starting to speed up and could easily finish.

If I finally have enough yarn. /Grumble

And a quick shot of my mother's cardigan, which I am seriously dragging my ass on. I think I'm getting burnt out working on projects that are not for me. I have no idea how some people can do nothing but gift knitting. I really want to have this finished in time for my Shalom cast on. If I can knit 20 hours in the car, that's a start.