End of September review

What have I done this month? Well, not what I said I'd do!

The rainbow socks were done early on in September, giving me a short burst of energy.

The grey mitts were not touched at all, though I looked at them regretfully once or twice.

The brown wrap... ditto!


But, I slaved away on my secret knitting, and I made a square or two, which are the start of a long-term blanket.

I also had great success with the mini shawl -- Arthur and I have miserable colds and we spent Monday on the couch with a box of tissues, knitting garter stitch and listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.


I had a bit of trouble at the very end, since I started to cast off with insufficient white yarn, ripped a stripe, tried again with blue ... and finally got it on the third try.

It seems very small! It's still drying so I'll try it on a bit later. Elaine is big into pioneers and Laura Ingalls Wilder these days, so perhaps a plain wool shawl is just what she needs -- at least for her Halloween costume!

Coming up: October is Socktober so some socks will get knit, though I can't right now put my finger on that green yarn I took a picture of! The secret project will get finished; the big wraps, brown and blue, will get some work, really they will! (Unless something else sweeps me off course!)

And now I must go knit something else very simple while following the further adventures of Harry Potter...

Hats and shawls and sweaters, oh my!

Wow, take a look at the upcoming Vogue Knitting!

My present three VK projects are ... not worth showing you right now, but I'll show you the top of my brussels sprouts plant, before we hacked it down yesterday.

The aphids were getting too much enjoyment out of it, and actually, it was starting to smell a bit too cabbagey for me! But it was ornamental, a real show-stopper, for a while there.

Me, right now

The stew pot is on the stove and I am just reading Anne's blog, among other things, before heading back to the kitchen. This picture is reversed -- that Mac photo booth problem... I'm much less pink in real life, too! (I hope!)

Saturday September 27, 2008, 4:35 pm

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.
5. Add it to the Pool.

Yarn and leaves

I took my next sock project out to the hammock this morning. Didn't actually knit it, but took its picture.


Mesh rib socks from ye olde Patons booklet, in some green stuff I came across at a sale.


And this is our Sign of Fall for today, the virginia creeper turning red!

I'll be Socktoberfesting someday

This is apparently the fourth year for Socktoberfest! As you know, my sock yarn pile is kinda large, so I'm in!

I have the yarn (duh) and pattern all ready to go, but I have a few things to tidy up before I begin.

A few... Oh, I've been bad, I must say. The WIP pile just keeps growing. But every time I look in my closet, I see something that really should just be made into a hat right now, or that yarn I want to make a sweater out of, and don't forget the half-made this and that, and the book with the great lace pattern has to go back to the library this week!

Wrings hands and gets back to knitting... Might take pictures of sock yarn in-waiting tomorrow...

Ahem, something new

You know how you embark on a project, set mini-deadlines, know that if you stay the course, follow the rules, you'll be carefree and the whole thing will work out wonderfully?

Yeah.

Well. The things that have to get done will get done, just probably not in a carefree and mini-deadline-hitting way.

This is what I've been working on for fun while not hitting deadlines. It will turn out to be a crazy wrap thingy, quite unsuitable, I think, for a dumpy middle-aged lady. But, cool nonetheless! A few brave souls on Ravelry have made it.

I think it will be great for making all those people who wonder what the heck I can be knitting all the time stop asking...

It will have one short sleeve, and otherwise be a rectangle. They say you can also stick your head through the sleeve hole, but I'll have to wait and see how that all turns out!

It might be one of the objects discussed by the designer here, but they are all very dark and cabley and wrappy, and who knows which exactly it is. The pattern is in Vogue Knitting for Fall 2007.

I have 5 balls of this Yorkshire Tweed Chunky, and can knit up a ball a day without batting an eye (if I neglect other things, that is). However, I'm not setting any deadlines!

A lesson in something

There are two bloggers I wanna be when I grow up. One is Kay, who is a way faster knitter than I am and has nice crockery to pose with her dishcloths, and the other is NiC, who takes marvellous pictures of nature in London. He's been showing us reflections lately, and I got this picture out to have another look at it.

This is from my trip out west in August. You kind of have to work to see the subject of the picture.


There's a bright blue dragonfly in the middle. All the trees and whatnot are reflections in the pond, and you can barely see the edge of the pond way in the back corner. Funny how one's eye (okay, my eye) doesn't realise all that stuff will be in the picture! It was just a picture of a dragonfly when I took it!

Here it is upside down!


Huh.

Nice people and a brilliant movie, all for free

As I emerged from my shower this morning, I got a phone call from a friend telling me to check my local Freecycle group, as there was a ticket available for a 12 noon film at the Film Festival.

It all worked very well: the movie looked like something I would enjoy; the person giving away the ticket lived near me; the kids both stay at school for lunch today; I had time to stop at the library, have a snack and get to the theatre in plenty of time. Yahoo.

I got there early, I thought. But the ticket-holders' line was already very long! So first I thought I was being a dork for getting there too early, only to realize what a naive newbie I was to not know just how many people get there really early. Can't win...

Anyways, I was lucky to be in line beside a little concrete wall, so I could sit and knit! And, the woman next to me pulled out her beautiful blue socks and we knitted and chatted for half an hour before the line started to move. Very pleasant... I ran out of this 1980s Bed-&-Breakfast-pink wool/acrylic blend just as the lights were dimming. (It will likely end up as a square in a blanket.)

The movie itself was a load of fun. Funny and clever (too clever, say some) and nice to look at. The acting was very good, and the steampunk aspects of the whole thing tickled my fancy. Some of the costumes were cleverly timeless, and although there's a Lamborghini in the film, there's also a steam train. And lots of good explosions.

A fun day, but now I must tend to my dirty laundry and dishes. Funny how that happens, eh?

Just get 'er done

Those socks that have been on the needles for quite some time are now finiti!



I couldn't wait for daylight.

I have the next socks lined up, plus I just got Barbara Walker from the library and found a lovely lace shawl stitch I just must start immediately, plus, let's not forget the 592 things already under way... That might be a slight exaggeration...

Anyways, the joy of finishing something will spur me onward, and maybe I could just swatch that lace pattern in the shawl yarn to show you, but I can't really start it till maybe... later.

Sigh.

Updated goals and more holiday

Hmmm, what am I going to knit this month?

The secret thing is still on the needles. It will kill me, I'm sure. But that's more than I should really say, so we'll pass quickly by.

The rainbow sock needs a bit more of a foot. Should be doable. Yes, by the end of the month, I'll have a pair of socks done.





I notice that I boastfully recorded the finishing of a single mitten on January second!

Perhaps I should finish the second one, since they'd be great fall mitts.

I've dug it out and will find the pattern any day now.







That's a lot of stuff on teeny needles already. There's also the big brown thing, which would make a pleasant big-needle change. Hmm. I'll keep that in reserve.

I'll never finish all four of those things in one month. But those are the four I'll work on!

We are still settling in after our end-of-summer jet-lag. Managing to get up in the morning, though not so keenly this morning as yesterday!

I made it to two grocery stores and a drug store yesterday -- we seem to have run out of everything just before we left town! There's still a small pile of laundry, but that'll just blend in with the usual stuff.

Here's a selection of the wonderful things we saw on that holiday.

The kids loved the big slugs!

Don't get those here in Toronto!

We didn't interrupt these two. We figure this might be slug snuggling...

And this superhero slug made it up high onto a fern. This is a flash picture because we were deep in the forest, great slug territory.

For those who prefer birds to slugs, a woodpecker! (You'd better click it to get the big picture.)

This is the part of the bay we looked out on.

We saw it morning and night, calm and not so calm, with the tide going in and out.

I could sit and watch it all the time!

And now back to our regular programming.

A quick look at holiday knitting

There was some knitting done last week at the bottom end of Vancouver Island.


I finished these socks at home this morning (I took 3 balls of sock yarn with me, and if I hadn't gone for walks on beaches and through woods, and if I hadn't sat in the hot tub or around the groaning board I could have knitted more than one pair...) and will send them off to Afghans for Afghans lickety split.

The plate in the photo is just exactly why one should always drop in at the junk stores when travelling. I regret that on our Lake Huron holiday, we drove past gazillions of shops advertising "treasure," "collectibles," "knick-knacks," and even "antiques," without stopping at a single one. But this time we hit both the St Vincent de Paul and the Sally Ann, and we found this plate with a picture of Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland! We have been there; my brother used to live there. Buying a souvenir of the easternmost part of the country in a thrift store at practically the end of the road on the western side of the country was ridiculously thrilling. And it matched the socks.

The holiday was a blast, and we have plenty more pictures. But, it seems that tonight is the last minute before school starts, so I have a few other things to do! Really, when things settle down, you'll see some action around here.