Stitch Along Wednesday

Tammy's doing a weekly linky page for work in progress. I've decided to play along. Here are my current WIPs and their status:

Name of the Doctor scarf: hibernating. I won't mention it again unless I should be motivated to pick it up.

Hopsalot (bunny slippers): I finished felting them last night. When they are dry and I can find the pattern, I'll finish them.

Kaffe Fassett afghan: I started clue 8 of 9 last night. I decided to assemble it using Option 7 (that only makes sense if you're reading the forum postings) instead of the pattern as written.

Clue 4

The Mystery of the Traveling Scarf: this is an almost year-long knitting game/pattern from Criminal Knits. I'm planning on doing it both as a scarf and as afghan squares. I got the first clue a little while ago so I've not actually made any progress yet.

2014 In Review

All my Knitmeter counters will be reset in a few hours, so I want to make note of how much I did this year.
12.3 miles knit: I cut back on sock knitting when I saw how many socks I already own. I expected this number to be shorter than last year's 12 miles.
200 yards spun
4445 yards crochet: also an increase over last year.

Projects completed in 2014:

• Afghans-2
• Amagurumi/toys-3
• Coin purse-1
• Curtains-3
• Hats-2
• Mittens/mitts-5
• Pillow-1
• Rug-3
• Scarf-2
• Shawl-4
• Socks-23
• Sweater-2

The grand total is 51.

My favorite new-to-me-in-2014 yarns were from Invictus and Cyborg's Craft Room.

That's it for 2014. See you next year!

Weaving in the ends of 2014

First of all, it turns out I can sew an afghan together neatly with mattress stitch. Maybe I did better with this one because it's crocheted and not knit. The Deco'Ghan:

Works in progress:

1. Irma sweater: Needs blocking and buttons to be sewn on. I plan to do that tonight.
2. Grandpa sweater: Needs buttons. They are on the way from Hong Kong.
3. Bunny slippers: One foot needs felting and then they can be assembled. I plan on doing the felting tonight. Really. I know it has been nearly two years, but I will do it! First project to be finished in 2015.
4. Name of the Doctor scarf: I'll finish it eventually. It'll probably take the place of the bunny slippers as the project I keep putting off. May be finished in 2015 at some point.
5. Kaffe Fasset afghan: I keep reading the Ravelry group for this thing. I keep hoping that someone will have come up with a different way of assembling it that will work for me. As soon as I work that out, I'll finish it. Hopefully early in 2015.
6. Van Gogh mini pillow: stitch count is off a bit and I need to take some of the cross stitches out and redo them. I'll probably pick this one back up in a day or two.
7. Whovian messenger bag: I think my sewing machine needs a professional tuneup. I'll be putting sewing this together until I get that done.
8. Spring flower quilt: I probably haven't mentioned this project in years. It's about half quilted. I've been putting it off because quilting is my least favorite part of making quilts and because of the Bernina misbehaving.

That's not too bad. The list could be less than half this long in a month. Then again, I could start clicking around on Ravelry and end up with a whole pile of new projects. it's been known to happen.

Yarny goodness in the mail

These came from Knitted Wit.

Monet's Garden. The picture doesn't do it justice. In person, it looks like the colors were taken directly from a Monet painting and dyed into the yarn. Impressionists and merino, what's not to love?

This one's called Sassy Santa. It's on the same superwash Merino base as the Monet yarn. The yarn itself has a good twist to it and is nice and springy. I can't recommend it until I've actually knit with it, but this is very promising. I may be back for more!

I don't care, I like it

It occurred to me that the multicolored yarns I am attracted to might be considered clown barf by other people. I. Don't. Care.

The latest examples come from The Cyborg's Craft Room. May I introduce Unicorn Rainbow Fight:

and Impromptu Dance Party:

The other four skeins I ordered last week are in the same vein. I like them. They make me happy. It bothers me not at all that I have no idea what I'll do with them.

Christmas Eve Eve

I can't believe that I got all the way to December 24 before checking out Drops Design annual free pattern calendar. I printed out a cute slipper pattern that has a Norwegian design. I may knit them tomorrow if I've got the right yarn in my stash.

I bailed on that mystery scarf. Stitch counting got even worse, if that's possible. For once it wasn't entirely my fault.

I finished the cross stitch pieces for my bag. However, I haven't been motivated to get my lazy behind over to the sewing machine to assemble it.

The yarn showed up for the afghan I decided to make. It's been challenging, but fun. It's crochet. I seem to screw up less when I have only one loop to deal with at any moment. No lifelines are necessary when frogging must happen.

Danger: cable's not working

It is working now, but it wasn't last night. If the cable's working, them I'm stitching away on something. If it isn't, I'm online. This isn't automatically dangerous. It's when all of my pretend animals and crops on my pretend farms have been cared for. I'm innocently clicking away on this and that on Ravelry. There's where it gets dangerous. One of the ads catches my eye. Ohhh, shiny, I like that color, let's see where it came from!

Four new skeins of sock yarn are on the way. I may have two new favorite etsy sellers.

Scarf not fun

Arrgh. The third day clues had multiple mistakes. I ended up doing it three times and kind of faking it on the last row when the stitch count was off by 1. It was amusing in a demented sort of way. If you knit it as written, you end up with a single abandoned stitch on one side of the scarf. That was how I knew that what I was doing wasn't even close.

I put down my needles and picked up a crochet hook. Jasmine the cat ripped the head off of her catnip Dalek. She must know what "exterminate" means. I made her a new one with Christmas colors.

Now I'm doing cross-stitch. I'm simplifying my original idea for my Doctor Who messenger bag so that it actually gets completed. Simple stitching, that's the ticket. Plus it will use up bits of those many Doctor Who fat quarters that I just had to buy.

Scarf fun

I'm over my little knitting tantrum. I've been working on Scarfy Shenanigans. It's 12 days of clues and has been fun so far.

The yarns are DK weight straight out of my stash. One's a silk/wool blend. The other is wool/silk/cashmere. Nice and soft!

What now?

I'm frustrated and am going to rant. Go grab a candy cane and log into a happy blog.

::rant on::

Issue #1: The Kaffe Fasset KAL. My problem is obvious:

That's supposed to be flat. And square. I've tried to sew them together many different ways. None of them works. I'm not perfect but I AM experienced in this sort of thing. I packed up all of the squares and yarn and put them where I won't run across them any time soon. If and when my patience returns, I'll look at it again.

Issue #2: Blogger. I'm typing away on this and the screen freezes. Suddenly, I'm back four pages from where this is. I came back and the draft was here. The way my luck is going, this will disappear. At least I'll have had the therapy of ranting.

Issue #3: PayPal. I wanted to start in on something new and fun. I found a scarf KAL where the pattern's (allegedly) free with a code. I clicked Buy It Now on Ravelry. When I logged into PayPal, it charged me for the pattern right away and didn't give me a chance to enter the code. I'm not going to do anything about it because it wasn't all that expensive. If I try to get a refund, PayPal will charge the designer a fee for the refund and I don't want him to have to pay it. I'm still mad, though. I'm too mad to want to work on the scarf.

::rant off::

Now? I'll finish the stupid curtains and put all of my knitting stuff away and get out all the cross stitch stuff. I think knitting is telling me to go away for a while.

Shop attack

I have been knitting, kind of. I'm working on curtains for some French doors and they are taking forever. I get bored and switch over to the afghan knit along. I get bored with that because all the squares are the same. They just use different color combinations. Then I try to sew some of the square together and they look horrible. All the time and expense and the stupid squares look terrible. Grrrrr. I put the squares down and log onto Ravelry. It was one of the ads that got me.

I ended up at etsy. Clicky clicky clicky. Next thing you know, there's fun things on the way: a Tardis shawl pin, two skeins of sock yarn from the Cyborg's Craft Room, and a cross stitch kit from the UK. Do I need or even know what I want to do with sock yarn called Unicorn Rainbow Fight and Spontaneous Dance Party? No, I do not. I may just leave it here next to the computer and let it make me happy. Why did I buy a cross stitch kit when I've got virtually every color of DMC embroidery floss known to man? I was unwilling to wait and see if the chart alone would be offered for sale. It's cool. It's Van Gogh-themed. Maybe it will get me stitching on the pieces for that Doctor Who messenger bag I just had to make and haven't started.

It's back to the curtains for now. Yawn.