Plugging Away

 I’m working on my Elton sweater.  Yesterday and last night I didn’t get as much done as I expected because my nephew was in a car accident and that sort of derailed my plans for the evening.  I hadn’t brought it with me to work so that I could get a couple rows done on lunch because I stopped in the middle of a row in the morning.  By the time I got home at night I was exhausted and fell asleep early.  

This evening I have a craft & chat with my online crafting community, The Mindful Creators Clubhouse. I hope people show up, because the last couple of them have been either just me, or me and one other woman.  It’s family dinner night, which I will be missing in order to stay home and do the call.  

I have 40 minutes left this morning to knit, so I’m gonna go do that now…

I’m still here!

 A lot has happened in the past 6 weeks since I last posted.  One of the big things is that I got a new iPad and have gotten back to digital planning, which has the effect of making me focus on my goals and priorities.  Subsequently, I’ve gotten blogging back on my priority list for Mon/Wed/Fri mornings.  I’m also keeping track of my projects and plan to spend an hour every morning on my knitting.  

I finished knitting Tolsta Tees for myself and Jo (sizes 3 & 5)  I just need to weave in the ends, which I plan to do this weekend.  In the meantime, I’m going to work on my Elton sweater, which is a welcome change after working on my mom’s blanket.  She asked for a lapghan and when I was almost done she said she wanted it to come up to her chin!  I kept measuring it and thinking I had only a few inches left, but then after knitting a few inches I would measure again and have more left to go than when I started.  I got it to about 56” and called it good enough.  I’ve never knit a blanket before, and I don’t plan to do it again for a long time.  I only spent 20 days working on it, but it felt like forever. This is a progress photo before I found out that it needed to be 2 feet longer.

Photo dump of the CNY Fiber festival yarn and the Hobbii yarn I had to buy when I realized I didn’t buy enough pink mohair…

My Elton sweater is going to be knit with neon peach yarn that I absolutely love.  I got it from my trip to the CNY fiber festival.  I had a great time and got a ton of yarn.  Everyone was so nice - the one shop gave me the pouch pictured above and everyone else gave me progress keepers. I can’t wait to hopefully go to Rhinebeck in October.  I need to get a lot of knitting done before then to justify the trip & more money spent on yarn.  I’ve heard that the festival is something that is overwhelming, but that it’s something you should do once in your lifetime.  I feel like I will regret not going if I skip it this year and then something happens where they stop having it.  The finger lakes fiber festival is cancelled because it got to be too much for the organizers, I guess.  The western NY fest is in East Aurora I think which is quite a drive in the opposite direction, but I would rather wait for the big one.  Maybe it can be my Christmas gift from Dan.  I usually pick what I want online and hand him the phone to put in his payment information to pay for what I want.  I think he was going to buy me new AirPods for Christmas, but I couldn’t take it another moment when they started dying every 90 minutes, so I already replaced those.  

Time to knit Elton… I love the stripes and smaller needles after the monotony of the knit blanket.  

Summer Top MAL Progress

Tolsta Tee size 3 is coming along well.  I'm about 4.25" from the underarm.  Only 7 more inches to go.  I put it back on the needles from my stitch holder cord and finished the first 100g cake of the green (Lichen) yarn this morning. 

This weekend I'm going to be busy with the CNY Fiber Festival & working Overtime to earn extra money to spend on yarn.  This morning I'm scouring Ravelry for patterns I want to make so that I know what yarn to look for tomorrow.  Otherwise I will come home with a skein of this and that and just add them to my stash.  When in doubt, I just buy 100g of sock yarn that I know can become socks or a beanie with no thought required.  After knitting the Tolsta Tee for me & for Jo, I think I will work on a shawl.  The ones I'm pondering right now are the Boneyard Shawl by Stephen West, Ashes by Joji Locatelli, or Inclinations Shawl by Andrea Mowry.  I also have the Shetland Lace Shawl by Alice Karachi in my stash of patterns that I own that I want to make. The sweater I might try again (with the proper yarn this time) is the Comfort Fade Cardi by Andrea Mowry.  The last attempt was with expensive LYS acrylic in solid pastels that did not fade, and I would have worn it but I changed the needles on the sleeves and didn't like the fit, so I gave up on it.  Or the Elton sweater by Joji Locatelli is intriguing me.  I feel like I might want to work on something with a mohair yarn.  I wish I could go back and buy more of the lace weight mohair from Lorna's Laces when I thought That was expensive - now it's ridiculous how much mohair has gotten.  

I have prepared my list - wish me luck!  

 

June Summer Top MakeAlong!

Hello, I'm back after taking most of May off from social media posting.  In the past month, I managed to finish my Serged Dream Coat by Crochetverse and knit a pair of vanilla socks for my husband.  I cast on another pair of socks for myself and started a crochet hat as a beginner level project to base my crochet teaching certification lesson plans on.  Busy Days!  I'm even more excited this morning to learn that for June/July the Creators on the Mindful Creators Clubhouse platform will be doing a Summer Top Make-Along, and I'm geared up to make the Tolsta Tee by CreabeaDesigns for myself and Jo.  I have the yarn and ordered the needles (they arrive on Saturday) so that I can be ready for the kick off on Monday. I've settled on making myself a size 3.  I need to measure Jo to decide which size to make her.  She will be happy that the yarn I bought her about a year or more ago will finally be turned into something.  I had knit up a ball of the yarn and then stopped... I have no idea what pattern I was using and I'm not satisfied with the texture at the gauge it was working up into.  

Here is a photo dump of May!

 

Progress photos

 What I’ve been busy working on!!!  

Just Dropping In

 Just a quick note that I'm still here, feverishly working on my dress.  I added 2.5" to the sleeve length and a single crochet round to the collar this morning, and now I just have 4-5 dozen ends to weave in.  Literally.  I hate working short rows on crochet. 

These are my new progressive lens glasses.  

Progression

 

 This is what my Piper Pocket Dress looks like after 65% completion.  It might be inside out in this picture, I'm not sure yet which is the 'right' side.  I've started ball 8 of 11.  I'm on row 40 of 56 of the post-pocket skirt.  That means I have about 4 hours left of the skirt, before I go back and add the pockets and sleeves.  Should have the skirt finished by the end of the weekend!  YAY! 

My Heirloom Gardening Bib Overalls from Duluth Trading Company came in yesterday and I couldn't wait to try them on.  I actually wore them to dinner last night.  Farmer Shannon is ready to get started in the garden, hopefully this weekend.  The ripstop fabric is supposedly dirt proof.  I hope that's true because I picked Candy Pink instead of a more practical color.  I also got the knee pad inserts because I'm getting old and my knees have no natural padding anymore.  I'm glad I read the reviews and researched my size because I was definitely going to buy a size medium, when I really needed an extra-small.  It felt foreign to me to buy such a small size, but they fit perfectly.  I feel bad for people who are legitimately a size zero, because this size fits my size 4 body perfectly.  

Spring has Sprung

My dress is coming along quite quickly now.  I've completed 22 rows below the pockets so far.  Only 34 more to go.  I'm on ball 7 of my yarn, which puts me at about 56% done now.  Tomorrow is my day off, so I plan to spend several hours working on the skirt.  I've been working while listening to an audio book called All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven.  The problem is that the last time I was listening, I fell asleep and awoke after a major plot twist.  I had to scroll back several chapters, but now that I know where the book is headed, I almost don't want to listen to the rest of it.  I'm tempted to just watch the Netflix movie version instead of listening to the last few hours of the book.  

On Saturday, I had my friend Tara color my hair.  

I went in with some salt & pepper and left a vibrant eggplant purple.

Next comes a lot of stained pillowcases and cold shampoos, but I love the change.  

 

Making Headway

 My dress is coming along.  I have completed the split front & back sections that allow for the side pockets to be inserted later, so when I get home from work tonight I will be able to rejoin the front & back and crochet until it's the right length.  For me, that means knee-length.  The designer says that her dress in the pattern photos was about 56 rows long.  So that's my approximate goal.  Since I am short, it may be less.  

I can't wait for this project to be done!  Both so that I can wear it, but also so I can move onto another project.  I'm tempted to add the sleeves & pockets on before the pattern calls for it, just so that I just have the length to worry about. But right now the mindless crocheting is a welcome part of the project.  

The weather here in Upstate NY is getting warm.  As usual for Rochester, we have snow one day and 70 degrees the next.  I'm looking forward to getting my garden going for the summer.  I love planning and starting the gardening, but the later work I sometimes struggle with.  This summer I will be prepared to get in there and weed and dress the soil and all that fun stuff.  I bought gardening overalls just for this purpose.  They are pink, with knee pad inserts, from Duluth Trading Company.  I hope I picked the right size.  But I can't wait for them to arrive next week so I can get started on my planting.  I have yet to start the seeds indoors, which is how I like to begin.  But with the warmer temperatures, I think they will be safe to start in our sunroom with the warmer days.  I've been putting it off because I didn't have anywhere with daylight that was warm enough at night during the earlier spring.   I plan to grow tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, beans, peas, carrots, raddishes, squash, pumpkin, eggplant, zucchini, lettuces, basil, oregano, mint, watermelon, and probably some other things I can't think of right now.  I bought 2 garden beds from Costco to do Squarefoot gardening, and I have grow bags to grow potatoes, and patio planters to grow the spreading plants like squash & pumpkins.  

Picture time!

 I have 3 more rows to complete on my dress before I start the hip shaping!  Then rows will take longer to complete because there will be more stitches, obviously.  But I'm excited that this is coming along nicely.  I'm on ball 4 of 11, which puts me at about 30% complete at this point.  I'm a little nervous about the pockets, but I will deal with that when the time comes.  I just realized I had 2 pages out of order in the pattern book - so glad I figured that out before I got to the next steps.  The photo makes the yarn look sage-y green, but it's a spring grass green in person.  My mom doesn't like it, but I do, and I'm the one that will be wearing it.  

My order of presentation books came in yesterday, so I was able to make a book for the pattern I plan to work next after the dress.  I love having the pattern pages in sleeves so I can stick post it notes to them and not damage the pages.  The pattern is Serged Dream Coat by Crochetverse on Ravelry.  I got the yarn to make it from Knitpicks, and I can't wait to start it! These are the colors I chose... Aren't they happy?  They are my inspiration to keep going on the Piper Pocket Dress, because it's my goal to remain monogamous to one project at a time. And I can't wait to get to the happy colors.