Knit n Things

If it's your holiday - Happy Thanksgiving! If it's not - Have a Kick Ass Thursday!
Luv to all - Jody

I won, I won, I won. Lookie what I got! Helena had a little contest and I won! I have no idea what it is (yes Megan, I know it's yarn - smart ass) it has no label, but it's soft and squishy & the colors absolutley ROCK! I LOVE IT! Fabulous goodies! Thank-you so much!

Been doin a little knitting. Some kiddie hats I made for my Guild's charity project. Crazy fast knit - how is it I've never made a quickie kiddie hat before? Faster FO satisfaction than socks!

First off let me start by saying thank you all so much for the wonderful comments on my shawl. You've been giving me the warm fuzzy's for days now & I really appreciate it.

I've started something new, something I never thought in a zillion years I'd want to make. Neverthless I saw the Wine and Roses Mitts (scroll way down) and just had to have a pair. The lovely Nora sent me some Jo Sharp a while back & I thought it would be great for these - soft and squishy in this rich lovely color - a yarn you want to pet ALL the time - perfect!

So I cast on and did a few rows. I'm not really feelin' it. What do you guys think? They're a little bit big, but I like the fabric. It could be the ruffley edge just isn't my thing but I really love the lace part on the hand so maybe I could just change to a ribb or a rolled cuff? I suppose I could alter the pattern to better fit my gauge but that seems like so much work - there's five different charts for these babys. Any ideas?

In the two years or so that I’ve been knitting I’ve done some pretty cool stuff. Things that just make you sit back and say “dam that’s so cool.” Socks jump to mind – I never fail to be impressed every single time I turn a heel and make a sock. But this – this is the most amazing knit thing I have done to date.

I blocked lace.

I had no idea about the coolness that is blocking. I knew that when I blocked the shawl I would open the stitches a little bit. I knew it would make it look a little different/nicer. I knew that it would make the ruffles on the cast off edge into nice little points. I didn’t know that it would make me feel all giddy to see it pinned out. I didn’t know that it grow so much. I didn't know it would make me want to call ALL of my knit friends and have them over to marvel at the pinned out goodness(you guys should thank me for restraing myself). I didn’t know that it would be so amazing. I've hear about the magic of blocking but I never really got it until now.

Pictures off the pins will be forthcoming as soon as it stops raining & I can get some good light.

I started these socks back in June - never to be seen again on this here blog. I discovered that I do not like Trekking XXL sock yarn so they didn't get a lot of love. But I wanted to gift them to a friend of mine who had a crappy year so I dug them out of the black-hole basket. My bud LOVED her socks. She put them on immediately and then started sticking her feet under everybody's noses - I love it when that happens. One of these days I will remember that I need to take my pictures before it gets dark out because the flash does icky things to knit pictures.

I just can't get over this weather. It's 65F out today - I live on the Jersey Shore it should be more like 45F. My poor garden doesn't know what's going on. .
I've got more roses now than I've had in who knows when. There are new buds all over the place! Heck this first one is on a rose bush I was going to pull out becuase it didn't bloom this summer and I thought it was dead

Who says baby showers have to be boring and tedious. There I was sitting at our table with my family and some of Katrina's distant cousins grumbling over the smallness of my lunch (really I got a one inch square worth of eggplant parm)and then I heard the most amazing thing "I went to this new yarn store."

What?? Who said that?? I start straining my ears and low and behold Katrinia's distant cousins, Deb and Sabrina, are talking yarn!!!! Yea! I frantically start kicking mom under the table - "Mom, Mom do you hear? They're talking knitting!" It's the best baby shower ever after that. We start discussing all the great new yarns available and projects we've made. She starts to tell me how she knits wrong, and I genlty explain to her it's not wrong it has a name it has a name and everything, continental, I knit the same way. Her face lights up and she picks up the pencils off the table to demonstrate to her daughter what were talking about. Of course pencils are so very vague so my mom breaks out her knitting so we can have a demo with real needles and yarn.
These are the only two pictures I took at the baby shower. Guess that shows you what an important role they played in my day! Thanks guys you rock!

Just in case anyone is curious - Katrina LOVED the hand-knits and gushed over our basket with zeal. She couldn't say enough nice things, and was so please that her new little one had a few things made just for him/her. And that friends is why I drove myself crazy with weaving in a zillion ends, sewing buttons that I hate, and knitting booties at 11 o'clock the night before. Because mom-to-be got weepy over a few stitches. Just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Both my mother and I feel that new babies should not come into the world without lots of handknits full of love to wrap them up in. Needless to say when new babies come into the family we go a little overboard. Meet bunny my very first knitted toy. Learned lots, and lots about finishing on this one. Think I may have finally mastered the mastress stitch. My sweater would look a lot nicer if I'd done bunny first.

The amazing blanket my mom made.


Of course baby must have booties. Notice how they match the blanket and the sweater? Clever knitters.


All together an amazing basket full of goodies for baby to be.

Sorry for the dark crappy pictures - Finishing up booties at 11:00 the night before the shower doesn't leave a whole lot of time for the photo shoot. ;)

The shower is on Saturday so I finally sucked it up and did all the finish work. Regardless of the fact that it took me two months to sew seams and buttons this was a fun, fast, and easy knit. Trellis from knitty, I made the smallest size and I substituted the Rowan for TLC Cotton Plus - which is the exact same fiber content at 1/3 the price. I think I changed needle size for gauge but other than that I made no modifications.


NOTE TO SELF: You hate finishing - DO NOT make sweaters that involve hours of it!



And since I always listen faithfully - here's what I've got instore for myself tonight.
Hours of finishing - yippee fun!