Stitch & Pitch!

I meant to post about Stitch & Pitch sooner, but I was hoping I'd have more knitting related updates in addition to Stitch & Pitch to post along with Stitch & Pitch. :) But alas, life has gotten in the way. Since my last post, I've interviewed for, accepted and started a new part time job. This is the 3rd time I've worked for this kind of store (note: it is NOT a local yarn store/LYS or any sort of craft store at all!). :) I also packed up and moved 4 blocks west of where I used to live, but I'm not quite done with the packing and cleaning of the old place yet and that needs to be finished this weekend! But since this isn't my personal blog, I'll spare the rest of the details, except for this one- upon the "Big Stuff Move" on Monday (when I was conveniently at work, ha!) the doors were open too long and now there are moths in the apartment! So not excited about that. Smores the permanently-on-strike bug killer has killed 1 moth (probably by accident), but there have been at least 4-5, so she is pretty useless. Never fear fiber friends, my natural fiber yarn is either in plastic bags (thank you, knock off dollar store ziplocs!) or not moved over yet. :)

But I digress. So Stitch & Pitch was August 11!

It was a great time, albeit VERY hot and humid, and the Brewers got their asses kicked. By the Arizona D-bags D-backs.

I went to the game with 3 of my sorority sisters- Emily B, Emily H and Sandy. My mom was supposed to come, but she double booked herself, so Andy tagged along with me, and Sandy's husband Greg came along too- it was their 3rd anniversary! And what better way to spend it than been geeky and knitting/crocheting at a baseball game! We were evenly split too between both fiber arts, with Sandy & I bringing along our knitting, and the Emilys bringing along their crocheting.

I had a difficult time deciding what to bring along, but I ended up bringing along another size 9 circular needle and a new ball of Bamboo Ewe for my Morning Frost Wrap. I had finished the first ball (out of 3), but as I previously mentioned it was flipping hot, so I just decided to start the 2nd half (less of a chance of having bamboo/wool sitting in my lap).

I didn't get very far with it at the game. Too much chatting. I still maintain that I did better on my knitting than the Brewers did with pitching, offense, and defense, or...well, playing baseball. :) But hey, we got to see history tied! 4 home runs in a row! Too bad the D-bagsbacks were the ones hitting those 4 consecutive home runs.../Brewers fail.

Overall though, a fun time. Minus the heat and especially the humidity, I could do without that. I'm already looking forward to next year. Besides, how could a game be a total failure if you got a bobblehead of Bernie Brewer knitting? :)

Slightly related to the Stitch & Pitch game, the Sunday before Stitch & Pitch, I agreed to meet Emily B at Loop where she was taking a crochet sock class, with the intention of looking around to see if they had any Malabrigo Worsted that I couldn't live with out (hahaha, I slay me). And huzzah, I found some and bought a skein of Azul Bolita (beautiful bright blue). Unfortunately for me my wallet, Loop had a display of Misti Alpaca Hand Painted Sock Yarn in blue and yellow (it's not on the website). As any good Milwaukee native knows, blue and yellow is none other than MILWAUKEE BREWERS COLORS! And the Marquette Warriors Golden Eagles, if you care about that (I do not). Sigh. Resistance was futile and the yarn just happened to jump into my hands and suddenly I was walking out of the store with more yarn that I didn't know what to do with (seriously, I don't even knit socks yet). :)

Anyway, so in other geek news, two of my photos have been featured on Ravelry (so what if one of them was be default??): my Wedding Roses afghan on the pattern page and my Twilight Bamboo Ewe on the yarn page (links to rav pages). Yay me!

I have also decided I really am going to attempt to fulfill one of my knitting resolutions (and here you thought I'd forgotten about them!)- I joined the Toe-Up Sock KAL on the Appalachian Yarn group on Ravelry. One of my old coworkers is a mod there, so she invited me to do a KAL there that she was hosting in August, but I was afraid I wouldn't have a chance with the move and stuff so I declined (new job popped up after I had declined the KAL too!), but I'm going to try out the Toe-Up Sock KAL. I got the pattern on Sunday. It looks pretty straightforward and lots of baby steps! I'm gonna need that....and I have a pretty skein of Dream in Color Smooshy in Blue Lagoon just for the project. :)

And last but not least - I finally started my first shawl! I picked the Traveling Woman Shawl and I loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove it. I love the pattern, and I really love the yarn I picked (which was, ironically, going to be turned into a gift for someone else! Ha! Sucker, you lost out! Too bad you don't actually know that you lost out on anything...): KnitPicks Stroll Tonal in Gypsy. Consequently, my shawl has been named the "Gypsy Woman" after the Brian Hyland song. :)

I love red. I love shaded red even more. And I love this yarn. I love this yarn with this pattern. I have never worn a shawl in my life but I'm pretty sure that I'm going to incorporate them into my wardrobe frequently since I have a bazillion more shawls queued up on Rav...

Well, I think this will be it for August, since I have a huge laundry list of things to finish up before we officially check out of our old apartment on the 31st. The Toe-Up KAL starts on Sept 3rd. I am going to try (key word: TRY) to update weekly on my KAL status, but September is a busy month for my current job, and I start my 2nd job on the 11th as well and I'm not sure how much prep time will be required prior to starting. :)

Till next time, happy kntting/crocheting! :D

Oops.

So, I didn't ever get around to posting that 2nd post I had (still have, actually) planned out for July. Oops. Oh well. :)

Lately, I've been attempting to knit one thing at a time. That attempt of course is failing because I keep getting distracted by yarn that I find and new patterns (cough - KnitPicks IDP program - cough).

That being said, however, I think I'm doing pretty good. Even though my Ravelry projects page says that I have 17 WIPs, don't believe it (okay, believe it). Some of them just really need to be sent to the "hibernating" phase but I just never get around to it. Some of them are ongoing projects (such as the diagonal dishcloths, I don't want to create a new project for all of them, but I want to track what yarn I'm using up). So of the 17, I'd say I'm actually actively working on about 7. Or maybe 8. Let's go with 8. :)

So, what's "actively being worked on?"

My crochet project is slowly being worked on. Really slowly. A little too slowly.

My April Lady Sweater- um...not really actively being worked on. It's hot here and the last thing I want is a wool sweater anywhere near me. So never mind...

At the beginning of June when I was organizing pretending to organize my craft room, I found the Bernat Bamboo yarn I've had for, oh, a couple years now. So I cast on for a quick garter stitch scarf with big needles. Still not done. About 1/3 done though since I finished the first of 3 skeins. :)

Chocolate Raspberry Clapotis...Um...yeah. So, after I posted about it in June, I worked on it some more, and was happily knitting and purling along when I discovered I'd missed an increase somewhere. So it involved much ripping. It was 100% salvageable, but I just kinda lost interest after that! So I've only knitted it once or twice since then...

The Booga Bag Cheap Knock-Off is just waiting to be felted. I more or less finished it right before my friend came to visit at the end of June and it has since sat forgotten. But part of that was also because of the fact that our laundry room is in the basement, which was pretty unusable thanks to flooding for about 2.5 weeks (it has just now finished drying out).

However, I do have 3 projects going that I am rotating in and out and working on regularly! Hooray!

The first one is my long-anticipated feather & fan afghan. I fully intend on this taking a long time, for two reasons- 1. because hello, it's an afghan. It's going to take a while and 2. i am using *whispers* red heart supersaver. Eeeeee, the horrors. In all seriousness, this is really brutal. Like, holy crap, I'm turning into a yarn snob, I used to use that on a regular basis?? That being said- I am absolutely loving the colors. And I have confidence it will soften up once finished and washed (in hair conditioner! or lots of fabric softener! or both!). But in the meantime, slow going. I am using size 10 needles anyway, and it seems like larger needles are more tough on my hands as well. So if this gets finished by next summer, I'll be fine.

I'm not following any specific pattern for this- the pattern repeats are 18 stitches, and I am doing a border of 10 stitches on each side. I cast on 200 stitches for this, 10 pattern repeats + 20 stitches for the border. I'm using the colors Coffee (dark brown), Magenta, and Cherry Chip (mix of coffee, magenta and a light brown). Great colors- nice and cheery!

My next project is a miniature market bag, loosely based on the Fantasy Naturale Bag. I am using up seme America's Best Cotton Cabled in Raspberry Swirls that has been sitting in my stash forever and since I foolishly only ordered 2 balls, I wasn't sure what to do with it.

Obviously since it's a miniature market bag, I did a lot of mods, to the point of having to frog the entire thing because it turned out poorly. First mistake: casting on 40 stitches for the base with a size 5 needle, and then trying to pick up the mesh stitches with a size 7. Let's just say the finished product ended up very wide and very short and very much out of yarn. So I frogged it, rewound it, and set it aside. I ended up going back to it a few days later, cast on 22 stitches with a size 5 needle again, and picked up stitches around the base (in multiples of 4) for the mesh. I am not sure exactly how many stitches I picked up because I had to do some adjustments. This time I decided to use a size 8 instead of 7 to see how it worked out, since the size 7 seemed to be a bit unforgiving. Size 8 is working nicely. I am about halfway done with the mesh and I think I'm going to do i-cord for the handles, but I'm not sure how I am going to do that yet.

Finally- I found the pattern for the Morning Frost Wrap (Rav link) in the new Stitch Nation Collection 1 and thought it would be a perfect wrap to make- good for fall and spring when it's not quite jacket weather but not quite short-sleeve weather, and also doubling as a scarf in the winter! As luck would have it, when I found this pattern, Joanns had the Bamboo Ewe on sale for $2.99 a skein. Perfect. I am about 1/3 done with the wrap. Since it has scalloped edges, it's going to need to be knitted in two halves and then grafted together, rather than knitted in one piece. I think it would be silly looking to have one scalloped edge and one not, plus it'll be an exercise in grafting! I really like this yarn, it is silky smooth and very soft against the skin. Pretty much everyone on Ravelry seems to say that it grows a ton after blocking, so that is helpful info. I may adjust how big I make each half then, but we'll see how much yarn I have left. I bought 3 skeins of the Twilight since the pattern called for 3 skeins.

Well, that's about all for now. I had some money in my PayPal account that I got from destashing, so I picked up some delicious Malabrigo which I cannot wait to knit with...or possibly just pet and drool over for a while...

Hopefully August brings more posts than July did! :)