Knit Happy!

It’s late, especially today, but I just wanted to share this before bed:

I got this adorable mug from Knitting Today earlier this week. In fact, I got several of them. They come in six colors, and of course I picked purple to show you. I don’t plan on using the mug for tea; I plan on keeping one on my desk at home, one on my desk at work, and giving the other three as gifts. The little sheep is adorable, and I love the saying on the front, “Knit Happy.”

The ironic thing is that I don’t feel like I’ve been knitting happy at all lately. I’m surrounded by yarn and a plethora of patterns and books, and everything is all neat and organized and I can actually see what I’ve got now. Except that now that it’s all neatly put away it’s like I don’t want to touch it. I wish I could just dump all my yarn out all around me and go diving for something fun. While I’m great at making the kind of mess something like that would involve, I’m not so good at putting it all away without help. So in the boxes it stays, and at times I think I forget what I have.

Maybe I should bite the bullet and go to my trusty box of Cascade 220, and ball up some yarn and knit a hat. Hats used to make me knit happy. But you know what? I haven’t made a hat in a looong time. Maybe that’s the cure. The hat I’m dying to make most is Vivian, by Lisa Cruse. The showier, the better. Big hat, huge flowers.

Or, cables? I have a fabulous pattern for a cabled scarf that came with some cashmere I bought at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. The cable pattern looks pretty complex, so I told myself I should practice it on something else before tackling the cashmere.

Or, Girasole? I know I mention that project a lot. But one advantage to that one is that the alpaca yarn I have for it is right behind me in my active projects bin, waiting. Maybe I should just cast on for that.

Tomorrow is an interim meeting of my knitting group. Our official meeting isn’t until September 12, but lots of folks have been itching to get together and knit. I’m going, and I guess I better decide by tomorrow what I’m going to knit.

Wish me luck deciding! I’ll check back in tomorrow.

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SABLE?

(SABLE = Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy)

I think I’m there. One of the other boxes that came this past week was from Webs, and you see, well, they’re having a huge sale on Cascade 220, and that is a weakness of mine, and, well… look:

I got a bunch of single skeins in lots of different colors. Some of the things I’m planning to do with them include:

• Boot Toppers
• The Tulip Cardigan
• a Dr. Who Scarf (my own color combo, of course!)
• Lots of colorful hats (with motifs from my 1000 Great Knitting Motifs book
• Elfin Booties for the whole family

In short I guess there are lots of things I could do with so many colors. I like collecting large amounts of many colors. It allows my creativity to flow!

Also in the box was a sweater’s worth of eggplant-colored yarn for a sweater for me (someday). Did I mention that this yarn was on a HUGE sale? I felt like it was a good opportunity to get this yarn at such a good price. I have a fantasy of someday having a yarn room with a whole wall of shelves full of yarn in many colors. I think I’m on my way there…

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Random Friday

It’s been a crazy long week here and I’m tired. I haven’t knit much this week, so there hasn’t been much to blog about. I haven’t even gotten to the second buttonhole on my February Lady Sweater yet. How lame is that? I am hoping somehow to be there by tomorrow. We’ll see.

So, I thought I’d post an update on another project I haven’t shown in a while. I haven’t actually touched my mitered squares blanket in a couple of weeks, but it’s been a long time since I photographed it. So, here it is:

In case you’ve never seen this before, I’m doing mitered squares a la Vivian Hoxbro, but for the layout of the squares I’m using the diagram from the Babette Blanket as a guide. I figured out that if I make the squares sized so that the stitches along the sides are some multiple of a common number, that it all works out and they fit together nicely. So, this will be my “go-to” project for probably years to come, for those in-between times when I’ve just finished a project, or lost my knitting mojo. I like it so far. It really has filled the void that often creeps into my knitting downtime.

Thinking Ahead

Last weekend the yarn bug bit me really hard. Thinking of course that I ordered from three different vendors, all with different customary normal shipping times, I didn’t think it would be too hard explaining it to the hubster when it trickled in in drips and drabs. No such luck! It ALL arrived on Wednesday. (gulp.) Here’s the first thing I got:

This is a pile o’ Dream in Color Classy yarn with which I plan to make the adult version of the Tulip Sweater. I know, that’s probably crazy, given that I’m less than three inches into my current project. But it’s a bad habit of mine. When I sit and knit, I’m constantly letting my mind wander about what I want to knit next, or next-next, or even way into the future. Maybe 2009 will be the year of the sweater.

We’ll see…

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My First Pattern! Fancy Cabled Braided Scarf

I’ve been playing with this pattern for a while now, as in, for about a year and a half or so! I started it when I was a beginning knitter, but it is only now that I was able to figure this out so that the two sides on either side of the cable mirrored each other. And by jove, I think I’ve finally got it! I’m so excited that I thought I would share it now, even though my scarf, as you can see, isn’t even done yet!!

Here ya’ go!

Cast on 35 stitches.
Rows 1 and 5: (RS) K3, P3, K3, P4, K9, P4, K3, P3, K3
Row 2, 4, 6, 8: P1, K1, P1, K1, P1, K1, P1, K1, P1, K1, P1, K2, P9, K2, P1, K1, P1, K1, P1, K1, P1, K1, P1, K1, P1
Row 3: K3, P3, K3, P4, Front Cross (Slip next 3 stitches to cable needle and hold in front, knit next 3 stitches, then knit 3 stitches from cable needle), K3, P4, K3, P3, K3
Row 7: K3, P3, K3, P4, K3, Back Cross (Slip next 3 stitches to cable needle and hold in back, knit next 3 stitches, then knit 3 stitches from cable needle), P4, K3, P3, K3
Repeat rows 1-8 for pattern.

Notes:

• If you prefer, (which I usually do), you can slip the first stitch of every row after row 1. I find this helpful for getting a nice smooth edge.
• Gauge isn’t really that important for this pattern. The bigger your yarn, and the larger your needles, of course, the wider your scarf will be.
• I prefer solid or slightly heathered yarns for this pattern. I’ve tried it with handpaints and varigateds, and the stitch pattern and texture get somewhat lost. Choose a yarn which is known for good stitch definition and try needles a size or two smaller than you normally would for your chosen yarn. (In my swatch shown here, I am using Caron Simply Soft, but mostly because it happened to be in a bag next to me as I was getting started.)

I hope you enjoy this pattern. Please feel free to let me know!