Sunday, August 30, 2015

Another Blue Moon

While there is still a fair amount of Blue Moon Fiber Arts in the stash, the opportunity to buy a little more is never one I seem to be able to pass up. Particularly when Tina describes her Rare Gems.

This batch brought me a Fire and Water Rare Gem.  One of these days I probably should try for Earth and Air but for now I've been quiet happy with what she sends.  Perhaps this time the excellent people at BMFA knew I'm starting to have more babies coming in my life, as what was sent looks ready for baby sweaters....

Here's fire
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which has some lighter pink shades and a hint of white on the back

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And Water has teals and blues.

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Part of me just wants to make socks and part of me is going through my queue looking for baby sweaters... which will win, which will win? 

Saturday, August 29, 2015

To Market

I continue to crank away at grocery bags.  The last two I've finished have been on the morning commute, so they're sitting in my office.  I need to drag them home and weave in the ends.

I'm working off of 1 lb cones and while it's gratifying to watch the pounds diminish quickly, it's not my preferred way to work. I feel like I spend half of my time pulling yarn off the cone and it's really not convenient for the train. I'm making it work, though.

As I was running out of the ivory yarn, I topped the last ivory bag with green.

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Now I've finished 2 more bags in that green and I have a third one that is just ready for the decreases, but I've run out of the cone, so it will be set aside while I work on another color. The final bag will be all of the leftovers, but that's 1.5 lbs of bulky cotton away.  And then I have two more pounds of worsted weight cotton, so I'll be crocheting for a while yet.

A colleague asked about how long a single bag takes--the bulky weight ones are about one full commute or ~3 hours. I assume it'd be faster if I wasn't trying to hop around trains and wrangle things but that's as close a measurement as I have at the moment.

 The neapolitan bags are off to their new home, I'll have to ask around and see who wants the green and ivory bags.


Monday, August 24, 2015

A few FOs

I've started to recuperate from Stash Dash 2015. I did end up completing the 5K and have done a bit of knitting since then but it's the start of the fall semester and knitting time and energy has been spent on other things.

First up--I finished the shawl!

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I ended up with a modified border as I'm not a huge picot fan and I was starting to run low on yarn. When I pinned it out, I was shooting for an 8 pointed star--and then squared out those points a bit.  I'm happy overall with how it turned out, though it's the second shawl I've made this year that isn't really my taste.  Ah well, an occasion or person will arise who loves it, I've no doubt.  I'm glad the yarn--which had been lingering in my stash for YEARS--was used up.

 One more pair of socks done. This is pair 3 for 2015. I think my usual dozen might be a half dozen, assuming a little more sock mojo comes back this fall.

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And finally, that last push through grocery bags.

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Everyone around here is looking for options, as Evanston and Chicago have banned plastic bags from big stores. These four are what I finished before Stash Dash was over, but since then I've finished one more and have one about half way done. I've got about 4 more pounds of cotton that I'd like to use up. They're easy snack food crafting, whip around in circles and you're done.

Other news near Chicago, if you've ever been to Loopy, it's changed owners. There was a very quiet email announcing this middle of last week. I don't think I've met the new owner before but will have to stop by and see how she is doing soon. I've not been in the store recently--for me it had gone far too big box yarn stores (Cascade etc) and I never found the unique stuff which had first drawn me to it.  I hope that the new owner will bring in some of the many Chicago dyers.

I did pop over for an hour to Stitches Midwest and I'll show you that as soon as I get pictures. Also, I've got a hat almost done, some mitts and another shawl started, and I bought some more yarn from BMFA.  So...more soon!

Monday, August 3, 2015

The End is in Sight

We're down to the last two weeks of Stash Dash 2015 and I am still not done with my 5K. The good news, however, is that I'm further along than I thought.  In my head I still had about 1200 yards to go and that's a very daunting amount--somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 pair of socks to knit in two weeks. It's doable but maybe not while also keeping my sanity and working on anything else.

Then I checked my Ravelry Stash Dash tab and found that I really only needed about 600 meters more! I've finished a couple of projects recently that haven't shown up here yet but they just need blocking and that's fairly quick, all things considered.

Still, the idea of another 700 yards in fingering weight seemed not perhaps my best idea, so I looked through the stash for some heavier yarn. What I came up with was a cone of worsted cotton, that last of it's weight in my stash (I still have lots of bulky cotton yarn). And with the new laws in my area about plastic bags (either a cost or not available at all) I'm sure there are a few more people looking for reusable bags.

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And so once again I'm tackling the one crochet pattern I've been able to learn: grocery bags.

They go very quickly, eat up a lot of yarn, and are immediately usable.  According to the pattern, one bag should take up about 150-200 yards, so I should get about 3 bags out of the cone and those should be pretty easily done this week, which would give me an extra week to finish out any shortages that I come across.

Next week I hope to get back to the big project I just started-- a sideways shawl that is going to take about 1200 yards of fingering weight yarn.

A Redo

 I started this pair of socks on New Years Eve just before 2020. I finished them in May 2020 , amidst a lot of optimism about what I'd a...