Random Sink full of stuff

Okay, totally not knitting related really (altho I will give a knitting update on an awesome new project I'm working on), but there's someone that sits about six feet away from me and he smells like he carrys heavily scented laundry detergent around in his pockets! It has smelled up the entire office, it gives my manager hives and me a migraine! And what I don't understand is why that person's 'sensibilities' are of more concern than the people in the office that are being dramatically affected by the smell! I do know that I'm not living a whole nother week with this stink...

So my new awesome project that I'm super excited about is a baby blanket for my friend. She was due on Tuesday, but so far no baby, and even if she has the little guy in the next week, I'm pretty sure she won't mind if the blanket is a bit late. The reason it's late is because I found the perfect yarn, but then we decided it was a bit too 'girlie' for a boy if made into a sweater or hat. So then I decided to make a Bunny Buddy for him, but once I started knitting it up, I realized that it would make a perfect baby blanket. I'm just doing it in garter stitch in dish cloth style (k2, yo, knit to end) but the yarn is knitting up really pretty. To make it less 'girly' and boring (since it's just garter) I found some retro Star Wars flannel on ebay that I'm going to buy to line the back of it. The father of the baby is an absolute star wars FANATIC and he hates that I've never seen it and don't know anything about it. To be fair to him tho, the flannel is really cute and will make a perfect backing on the blanket! The piece I'm buying is 28"x32", so I might buy a piece of something else to put a border around it, since that's a bit small... and I just realized I have to rip out what I did already and recast on because I want the blanket to be a rectangle and the dishcloth method gets you a perfect square. I don't mind tho... I can also cast on with bigger needles, which I wouldn't mind doing... I'll probably still do the 2 stitch garter border and then put a crochet edge on it (time dependant).

Well, I'm glad I wrote about this now, because it worked out my plan in my head! ;)
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In the time between when I wrote this (Friday morning) and now (Monday morning), the plan has changed. I've purchased the flannel and I'm almost ready to start decreasing on the square blanket... I checked online and many many baby blankets are between 24" and 32" squares... so mine is right in the middle! Also, the baby was born yesterday at 12:57pm, so no time to rip and redo! It's looking insanely cute and I can hardly wait for it to be done!
This weekend it snowed like CRAZY here... not much in comparison to the other parts of our country and our American neighbors, but enough that it caused terror on the roads on Saturday night. I worked on Sunday and again, enjoyed it a lot! It's such a nice environment and even when you're counting four thousand balls of yarn in five thousand different colors, it's a nice place to be!

This week is shaping up to be reasonably nice outside and I might take Thursday and Friday off, which would be lovely.... I need to get my sewing machine fixed and it would be nice to spend the day on Thursday with Pat!

Monorail Mickey!

Monorail Mickey!

Experiments

Last summer I concocted an idea that turned out to be one of my better ones. I decided (and ended up carrying out only thanks to the enormous help of my friend Janel) that we should have a fibre and yarn swap. Basically what that entailed was tons of knitters and fibre crafters coming together to trade and swap yarn/fibre/books/needles etc. One section was for items that you didn't want anymore but that you wanted to trade for something else.... good yarn that you knew you wouldn't use but that others would fall over themselves to get. That worked great! The other section was for items that you didn't want anymore and you didn't care what happened to them, so long as you didn't have to take them home. There was a LOT of that! In the end I took all the 'donated' yarn and donated it to charity.


BUT! What I did end up getting, which was super awesome, was five balls of an unlabelled yarn. It's giant bulky single spun... almost a pencil roving, but with a bit of twist in it. I have two (huge) balls of dark brown, one (huge) ball of medium brown and one (huge) ball of oatmeal. It's all undyed, so the colors are the actual colors of the sheep it came from, which I think is pretty cool!

It's taking up a lot of space in my yarn area right now... and up until yesterday I had no idea what I was going to make with it. I thought I didn't have needles big enough to even knit it, so there it sat. And then last night, after knitting my requisite two rows on my blankie, I decided to do an experiment. I got out the biggest needles I could find and cast on 10 stitches. Turned out my needles were the perfect size (10mm dpn) for this yarn. I knit for a while in garter stitch (and by 'for a while' I mean not very long at all... it's hecka bulky!) and then broke the yarn, leaving the live stitches on my (plastic) dpn and threw it in a soak. There was so much lanolin in the wool that it made the water weird and sudsy! I let it soak just long enough for the whole house to smell like a barnyard and then took it out, rolled it in a towel and layed it out on a piece of plastic wrap. (dries faster than on a towel because on a towel the moisture soaks out of the item and into the towel, but then for the towel to dry it has to go back up through the item). I gently stretched it both lengthwise and widthwise and then left it to dry. It has a gorgeous drape (where before it was a bit stiff and bullet proof) and I can't wait to attach the yarn again and continue knitting. Big bulky knits are in this year (so I've been told) and this yarn is gorgeous! Patrick said he thought it would be good as a cowl, and I have to say I agree with him there... probably a two toned brown cowl in seed stitch but for the time being, I just wanted a really really long, bulky gorgeous garter scarf that I can wrap around a few times and feel cozy and warm!

It's a gorgeous day here today... yesterday it was snowing flakes the size of golf balls and it must have been freezing rain during the night because my car was a cake of ice this morning. But today it's beautiful blue skies, gorgeous sunshine and the mountains have a fresh layer of snow on them.

For your viewing enjoyment, and because I haven't posted any decent pictures in a long time, here's the view from my desk at work. Both taken with my iphone, but the retro one was done using Hipstamatic. If you don't have this app yet, GET IT!

Accomplishment!

Good Morning Blogland!




I have finally finished something! And by something, I mean not a hat! Yes, I know... hats are things too, but considering that I can knock a hat out in three or four hours, it's really not that much of an accomplishment... I guess ten of them in two months is an accomplishment, but anyway, I digress!



I finished my Terra! It was quite a feat, since I chose to knit it out of something much resemblant of bailing twine! It's an absolutely amazing pattern by the wonderful Jarod Flood. The guy is really amazing. I mean, he's one of the best designers of modern knitting. His patterns and ideas will live on in timelessly well after he (and we) are gone!



My journey through the Terra was not without trouble tho... I managed to snap the cable of my knitpicks needles while working through the last pattern row of the main chart. This caused my jammed on stitches to spring free and make a run for it... that was back in December/January. Once the cable came in, I gave the item a good chunk of time in time out, until Thursday evening, when I saw it peeking at me from around the stash area. It was really silly to put it on such a long time out because I only had three or four rows of the main chart to do and then eight rows of the edge chart and the bind off. It went really quickly and I was very happy to be done! I did the EZ sewn bind off, but revised it because it calls for a piece of yarn 3-4x the length of the stitches to be bound off... well, let's just say that turned into a tangled mess pretty quickly... so I did the bind off in 4 sections with four smaller lengths of yarn... it works, and you just weave in your ends when you're done, so you don't have to mess around with such a long piece of yarn!



I also learned how to kitchener and no offense to anyone, but what is the big deal? Knit (slip), purl, purl (slip) knit... and on and on you go.... doesn't seem that difficult!



So once it was bound off and I wove in alllllll the ends, it went for an overnight bath in Soak and was blocked on Sunday morning. It went from 4' wingspan to 6' wingspan and a spine of 24" went to 42"!

It's impossibly big! it's also impossibly scratchy and somewhat stiff, altho the drape seems beautiful and the stitch definition is out of this world! It's definitely an heirloom knitted piece!



In other news since the last post I put up here, I'm now working at my dream job on the weekends.... yes, that's right, Urban Yarns! I'm part of the inner circle of Urban Yarns! It's so much fun! I love helping people and helping them pick out yarn and plan projects... I love the look of glee in the eyes of people as they find their version of the softest yarn they've ever touched or the most beautiful color or the best thing for their next project! It's a ton of fun!



You know what's not fun? My other work... right now it's sucking the life out of me! I just this very second had someone come and ask me if I could order them arm rests for their chair. No, in fact, I can't. It's not my job and you have to get authorization from your manager and then order them yourself. Well, if that wasn't the dirtiest look and huffiest reaction. They're all nice until you tell them that you're not helping them do something stupid and then they're assholes...



Pictures of the 6' x 4' shawl to come... at the moment I only have a nasty iphone picture.... which I will share....