Final Destinations

​It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve felt like writing, but I’ve been knitting madly the whole time. My extra skein of yarn came in and I finished All the Love on February 19th.  I haven’t blocked it yet, and it really needs to be blocked before I can wear it.  

While waiting for the yarn to arrive I got back to Jo’s Big Comfy Sweater.  I finished knitting that tonight and started seaming.  It’s quite an undertaking due to the size,  and the number of ends to weave in is daunting. Caron had quite a bunch of knotted together parts in the 4 cakes it took to knit this sweater. 

I also managed to ply the bobbins of Blue-Faced Leicester oatmeal fiber I spun. I set the twist and then started knitting it into a garter stitch scarf.  

I used some tie-dye to color some wool pink to spin next.  I’m not sure if I will spin it on a spindle or wheel yet. 

I also signed up for a beginner serger class to learn how to use my serger I bought myself for Christmas in 2019 and have only tried to use it once and that was an utter failure.  I ordered the fabric I need for the class samples and the thread for the machine.  I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to try untangling the mess and rethread the machine.  I might if I get bored with yarn projects.

Up next is finishing the seaming/end weaving on Jo’s sweater, then getting back to my Temperature afghan.  It will be nice to get back to that project of crochet.  I might cast on a sock with the yarn I got in my Sock of the Month shipment. The crochet project is so huge I can only work on it in the family room and sometimes I want to work on something in bed  before I go to sleep. 

When I ordered the yarn for All the Love from eat.sleep.knit, I also ordered 2 colors of chunky wool from Premier Yarns that were on sale at a decent price. I want to make Joji’s EasyBulky One from that yarn. I got Honeydew green for me and Chic Blue for Jo.  Although after making the Big Cozy Sweater for her, I’m not sure I want to make her another oversized sweater, especially out of non-Superwash wool.  Washing and blocking a 3X sweater will be a chore.  I will probably make my Worsted Boxy sweater out of the Malabrigo Rios yarn first, then a Easy Bulky One for myself, by which point winter knitting will be over. 

 

Losing Yarn Chicken

​It was a crazy week!  I spent every spare moment knitting on All the Love.  And by spare I mean time I found when I should have been sleeping, while riding in a car, while waiting for service at a restaurant.  In fact, I was up until 5am this morning trying to knit as fast as I could to determine if I needed to order more Silk Blend to finish the sweater.  With about 25 rounds of sleeve left to go, I called it a night and ordered the yarn.  I briefly contemplated undoing the ribbing on the body, shortening the sweater an inch, then using the reclaimed yarn to finish the sleeve. But I don’t have that in me. It wouldn’t make it out of the frog pile if I set that expectation on the project.  So instead I ordered a skein and prayed it arrives before I get tired of this sweater project all together.  I knit to the end of the yarn when I got home from work today and I have 1/3 of a round with my last decrease, then 18 rounds of 2x2 ribbing.  I went with shorter sleeves to try to conserve yarn and could go back and make them longer with the new yarn, but I don’t think I feel like doing that either.  The lace pattern needs to be blocked.  I hope that part goes well. I’ve never blocked a hand knit sweater before - only shawls and socks.  

I also ordered 25 skeins of Bulky wool yarn that were on a great sale at Premier Yarns to make The Easy Bulky One for me & possibly for Jo.  I got 10 skeins of Honeydew green for me and 15 skeins of Blue Chic for Jo. My parents gave me money as a birthday gift so that is what I’m using to cover most of the expense. 

Now that I’m in a holding pattern on All the Love until my order from eat.sleep.knit comes in, I will go back and work on Jo’s Blueberry Pudding Big Comfy Sweater.  I can’t wait for that sweater to be done so I can get back to crocheting the Temperature Afghans. 

I finished spinning my 8 oz of BFL wool last week and Wednesday I plan to ply it.  I haven’t plied wool in about 10 years. I hope the yarn is at least good enough to knit a hat with it.  I spin pretty fine wool singles, so even 2 plies is probably sock weight yarn. I’ll probably knit a Ross Hat with it.  I haven’t knit any of those yet. After plying the Oatmeal colored BFL, I plan to use some dyes I got to dye some bare roving to spin into yarn as practice.  I don’t want to ruin the good wool I bought before the end of the year from Paradise Fibers.  I’m probably going to microwave process the dye.  The other option I’ve used in the past was putting it in the crockpot.  I don’t really care what color I use or how it comes out. I am just bored spinning natural colored wool.

I got a bunch of books on knitting, crocheting and spinning from the library that I need to go thru on my day off.  There just isn’t enough time for all my fiber crafts. 

 

Panic delays

​Having anxiety issues along with depression and adhd can make life hell. Today I’m procrastinating getting up because I’m having a panic attack for some unknown reason. I just don’t want to get out of bed. I put away my knitting and changed from listening to a movie to playing an old music playlist, hoping that would change my mood but it’s not helping.  In my previous jobs this would have resulted in a FMLA-protected day off. While I qualify for it, in practice it’s just not feasible for me to do that at this job. We are a small team and I can’t flake out.  So the alternative is to suck it up and get ready for work and head to McDonalds for my usual coke with extra ice and a spicy crispy chicken sandwich without pickles. 

I’ve gotten All The Love to 8”. I’m not expecting to get much if anything done on it today because I have to be to work early tomorrow and I work late tonight.  It doesn’t look like this project will be done by my birthday but I’m gonna keep chugging along on it until I finish it anyway.  Then I will get back to Jo’s sweater and the C2C Afghan. 

More than half way there!

​Well today I got into my 5th ball of yarn on my sweater.  I’m a little more than 7 inches below the armhole.  I decided against the laundromat and stayed home doing laundry and knitting most of the day.  When Dan put on Jack Ryan my progress slowed because I had to read the subtitles.  We finished season 1 and started season 2 tonight.  I was up until about 3am and got my first bobbin of BFL wool spun.  Now I just have to finish spinning bobbin 2 and I can ply. I watched a video today on how to spin hand painted tops and was a little inspired even though I’m still spinning natural brown top right now.  I have some beautiful colorful tops I can’t wait to tap into. 

I also managed to get my yarns into the new storage bins I bought for them last month, so we can recycle all the cardboard boxes they shipped to me in. I’ve been saying I’m gonna do that for weeks now. 

I didn’t cross off all the things on my to do list for my vacation but I did get to spend a solid 10 days with my husband and oldest daughter, so that was good. We ate at some good restaurants and did some fun activities, and I made excellent progress on my sweaters and c2c afghan and spinning hobbies.  So all in all, it was a success.  

40% Complete

​I’m so proud of my progress on All The Love.  Today I got into my 4th ball of yarn on my sweater.  I’m in the body of the sweater, about 4” below the armpits, working from the top down.  I probably could have done more again today but we went out for brunch then to Dave & Busters, got cookies from Crumbl, bubble tea, and my McDonalds Coke with extra ice.  Then we came home and started watching Jack Ryan on Amazon, which is subtitled a good portion of the time. Tomorrow I need to get some cleaning and organizing done so I probably shouldn’t plan on knitting but I know I will squeeze some in when I’m having the pre-Monday-Post-Vacation anxiety attack in the evening.  

I had planned on joining the zoom meeting with the School of SweetGeorgia today but since we were out until after 4pm I missed it. I did watch Felicia’s YouTube video about her purchase of a sock knitting machine.  I really want one and I’ve looked for some before. She posted a link to the company she ordered hers from and I really want one, but they are over $1500.  I have no idea when I would possibly have that kind of extra money. But it’s there as a daydream. 

Joined up!

 I got All The Love to the point of having the front & back joined and started working in the round. Only 15” of stockinette and lace columns to go before the bottom ribbing and sleeves and collar treatment.  I’m not sure I will get it done by my birthday on the 13th but that is my goal.  I’ve used about 30% of my yarn so I feel accomplished to have this much done but also a little disappointed that I didn’t get as much done today as I expected.  I had anxiety chest pains today and my meds for that make me sleepy.  So I took some naps and watched some tv that was too riveting to knit at full speed.  Reacher is a great TV show. We binged the whole season today. 

Great Scot!

 Wow!  This sweater is coming along smoothly and rapidly. All The Love is constructed differently from every other sweater I’ve knit, so it took some imagination and faith that I was following the pattern directions correctly as I worked. Today I managed to get both the upper back down to 6” from the shoulder seams and the right & left fronts joined and began knitting the front section.  About 4 1/2” to go before I get to join the body front & back and work in the round. Then when the body is done I have to pick up and knit the sleeves and neckband.  I can probably get this done by my birthday if I put down all my other projects for the next 9 days. That’s my goal anyway. I think the fiddly parts are behind me now and it should be smooth sailing. Of course now that I’ve said it, disasters are inevitable. 

Today the only real breaks I took from the sweater was to go to a new restaurant that does Korean BBQ and a quick run to Target where I got Shout Color Catchers to put in the wash with my wool sweater I plan to wash tomorrow.  It’s dark purple and I expect that to bleed like crazy the first time it’s washed.  And then I took a nap for a bit.  But for the most part I spent the entire day knitting.  Oh and I made some planner stickers for my Hobonichi Weeks planner.  While I knit I watched various videos and my standby movies.  

Tomorrow is supposed to be a terrible storm so schools are closed and I plan to stay in and do laundry and some yarn organizing between knitting.  If the roads are cleared we might go out for breakfast but I’m perfectly content staying in my pjs all day.  

All The Love has launched

​So yesterday I gave into my yarn craving and cast on All The Love using my birthday yarn, Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend.  The color of Cactus Flower wasn’t quite the lipstick pink I was expecting but it’s still very pink and that’s what I was looking for. I got about 6 rows in and somehow had the wrong number of stitches so the directions didn’t match and I got frustrated and put it down. I looked for pattern corrections, downloaded the latest copy of the directions, but it still was the same instructions. I went back and couldn’t figure out where I had gone wrong but worked out how to fudge it so I would be back on track going forward. After that hurdle, I made swift progress on the back of the sweater.  I’m at about 2” of a 6” stretch of lace patterned knitting. 

Jo’s sweater is up to the sleeve cast on, so I have the dreaded ridged upper section to work. It also means that sweater is close to done. That’s a project that can travel as it’s only a 4 row repeat of knit and purl, whereas All The Love has lace patterns on both sides of the front and back and I don’t dare work on it without sitting still with my pattern flash cards keeping my place. 

I am also still working on spinning my Blue-Faced Leicester wool.  It’s slow going now that I’m down to the point where I split the top in half so I could spin the rest of it onto my 2 bobbins evenly.  I thought I was almost done, but I don’t seem to be getting any closer as I work thru the fiber.  I signed up for Craftsy again for this year when I got an email offering the year for $2 again. I wanted to finish watching the videos on spinning that they had available but I didn’t get thru before my last subscription expired on Christmas. I also got a video and several books from the library to look thru. The yarn has too much twist I think, but I’m not sure how to fix that besides drafting faster or treadling slower, both of which are difficult to do, as they are muscle memory at this point. 

Since I’m awake at this ungodly hour on my vacation and apparently slept in my contacts, I might as well get up and start knitting.  We have an 11am reservation for Korean BBQ, but other than that my day is clear. I would like to get to at least 6” on my sweater today.