Rip it

Started the purple baby afghan last night. I needed a change from green. Cast on 171 stitches, knitted 8 rows of seed stitch, only to discover that I had only cast on 169 stitches. Don't you hate that? Given the pattern on this one, there's nothing to do but start over. Dang.

I'm also not entirely happy with the feel of this yarn. Feels more synthetic than I would like as I work with it. I'll keep knitting the afghan, but I will also be on the watch for something nicer as the Lambert/Bell Knitting Week moves through the local yarn shops.

The first requirement of all baby stuff is that it be machine washable and dryable, and the second is that I have to be able to afford it. I did once spend too much money on 4 balls of baby alpaca in a baby weight. It feels heavenly in the fingers, but you can bet it isn't getting anywhere near baby drool or any of that other organic stuff babies are so good at. And I'm not knitting something this expensive just for some little guy to outgrow it in a couple of months. So, the yarn I have may be as good as it gets.

If I do switch to another yarn for the gifts, I can always give these afghans to Project Linus. It isn't bad, just not entirely perfect.

I also managed to tear myself away from the ice skating last night and get to bed on time, so it's only a couple of hours' work to be frogged. Next time I'll count more carefully.

After getting some news from Kate, I realized that some of the old Lake Forest friends are going to need baby afghans this summer. Yay! I was looking for an excuse! (Oh, did you guess that?) Even better, that meant a yarn shopping trip was required. (You guessed that, too? You must be a knitter!) I have a lovely stash of sock yarn and worsted, but not much in between. Although you can make baby afghans out of worsted, I prefer sport or baby weight, especially for summer babies who aren't going to need a heavy blanket right away.

However, I got so excited that I started one afghan right away from some worsted my mom had in her stash. A washable synthetic that has a good, soft feel. The pattern I used was my favorite shell stitch crotchet pattern which I learned from my grandma as a kid. It's fun to make, and that's really the one I had a hankering to do even before Kate gave me the news. I had two colors of yarn, white and that light, minty green they use for baby stuff a lot. Finding out the sex of your baby in advance seems to be "out" at Lake Forest this year, so I'm sticking to the gender-neutral colors. Anyway, I alternated a row of white shells with a row of green shells, and that ends up looking like a checkerboard. I like it! It was a pain to have to deal with the yarn ends at both ends of every single row, but about a third of the way through the afghan I worked out how to work them in as I went along, so all I had to do was cut off the long tails afterwards. That much finishing I could deal with.

I'm not going to post a picture just in case one of the recipients happens to unearth this blog. Highly unlikely, I know, but stranger things have happened!

Tonight it's on to afghan #2. 2 and 3 are for a pair of twins. A trip to Michael's turned up some decent washable synthetic sport weight baby yarn in lilac and leaf green, on sale (bonus!). Now that I've gotten the crotchet shells out of my system, these will turn into two knitted afghans using the same pattern in different colors. The pattern has these arrow-head shaped lacy bits running up the afghan in rows. It looks very pretty in the picture.

Afghan #1 was helped out by the fact that I've been staying up far past my bedtime to watch the Olympics. I have to stop that. I think I'm addicted to the ice skating.

Snowpocalypse and Sweaters

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but the term "snowpocalypse" has taken on meaning around here. On Friday, Feb. 5, we were all sent home from work at lunchtime. The school that says on its web page " it is the intention of the College to remain open during inclement weather conditions" and "In rare circumstances, the College might be declared closed" closed for an entire week. They are now saying we got 2 blizzards in one week. Local reports say we got 25-30 inches each time, but official reports (and my backyard fence) indicate a total snowfall more like 36-40 inches. Here are a couple of photos Peter took. The first one is looking out our front window at the car in the driveway. Look carefully! After we had shoveled out the car, the snow piled beside the driveway went up to about 6" below the lamp on the lamppost. That's taller than I am.


This one is my mom's car in the driveway in back of the house. It has been snowed in for almost 2 weeks now. The fence behind the car is a four foot chain link fence.


This morning I finished digging a path across the front yard to the oil tank fill pipe so we can get a refill and not run out of heating oil.

On the bright side, an unexpected week off of work left me lots of time for knitting and quilting. I finished the quilt I started for Peter for Christmas, and I finished my EPS sweater. No photos of the quilt, but here's the sweater:


The pattern really worked! I'm so happy! The sleeves are 3/4 length on purpose. The yarn is a cotton-acrylic blend, so I decided to make a spring/fall top instead of a winter sweater. The only change I will make for the next one (oh, yeah, there are going to be more of these), is to make the yoke depth a little less. Since I am short and no longer as petite as I once was, I think EZ's proportions need a little adjusting. But that's an easy change on this pattern. As you can see, this one looks just fine, it just has the really deep armholes typical of sweaters, whereas what I want to make is more of a top.

How exciting to have a big knitting success!