Photo Friday

Are you participating in the 52 Hats challenge? 

Hat #22 out of 52

Hat #22 completed in week 35.  I've got a bit of catching up to do.

Three on Thursday

It's Thursday so you know what that means....

Three very random things.

1.  Minnie had a vet appointment yesterday for a variety of issues.  They put the bandanna sprayed with some kind of calming stuff on her so that she doesn't have to be muzzled.  I don't know what the spray is, but boy, it sure works!   She's 14 now, 98 in dog years, (Gosh, I wish I hadn't done that calculation!)  but she still has enough spunk in her to terrorize the vet.  

The appointment went about as I expected.  I shelled out a fortune, they ran a gazillion tests and she got sent home with some ear infection medicine, a diagnosis of old age, and a new pedicure.

2.  We went to dinner with the boy child and his girl friend last night and of course, I embarrassed myself.  It had been a while since we'd gotten together and I didn't know he had a new girl friend.  When we first sat down, I spent a little too much time staring at her thinking, "Wow!  She's lost a ton of weight and styled her hair very differently.  She doesn't even look anything like what I remember."  It finally dawned on me that it was a different girl and that I'd been staring weirdly... so I blurted out, "I like your hair."  I can only imagine what she thought.  

3.  I'm very happy to report that I finished Hat #22.  I haven't taken photos yet, but the knitting is complete.  I'm only 13 hats behind schedule now.

Still blue

I should never have introduced Hat #22 in a blog post titled Turning Blue.  Now, every time I knit a stitch on the hat, I think, 'still blue' which leads me straight into singing Gary Moore's Still Got the Blues.  Which is not a bad thing for me.  I love the song.  But I do feel for my family having to hear my attempts at singing.  Frankly, it's more like caterwauling than singing.

Hat #22

I'm loving the worn denim-ness of this yarn from Cherry Tree Hill.  And the hat should be ready for bind off after a few more rows.

Photo Friday

After finishing the denim faux cabled fingerless gloves the other day, I decided to be a responsible adult and pick up a project from the UFO pile instead of starting something new.

Although I love the colorway of these socks, I hadn't been enjoying knitting them when I tossed them into the UFO pile.  It dawned on me recently the reason I wasn't enjoying them was that the dpns I was using were too pointy.  Way too pointy! While knitting the purl stitches on the heel flap, I kept splitting stitches and ending up with more on the needle than I'd started with.  I'd gotten frustrated and tossed the sock into the UFO pile.

About the time I realized what had been bothering me, I also realized that I could use two circular needles instead of dpns.  I don't know why I've never knit socks this way before.  My goodness!  Knitting socks on two circular needles is SO much faster than knitting with dpns!  I'm sure that unless today is the day you learned to knit, you probably already knew this but.....  Oh my goodness!  This has been a life changing realization for me!

Turning blue

Today's Three on Thursday post is all about blue.

Blue?  You'll see what I mean...

1.  Despite the fact I only bother to paint my nails three times a year, and despite the fact that on the rare occasion I do paint my nails, I never wear 'colors' and despite the fact that the bottle had apparently been opened (and used!) I bought a bottle of holographic, blue nail polish from Walmart and love it!

2.  The same day I bought the blue, holographic nail polish, I started knitting a pair of denim blue fingerless gloves.

3.  And the night before I started knitting the denim blue fingerless gloves, I started knitting a simple, hemmed brim hat with self striping blue yarn.

Pretending it's fall and my hands are cold.

Yarn details:

The gloves were knit with Cascade Superwash Aran Splatter and the hat is being knit with Cherry Tree Hill's Broad Band Supersock Self-Striping yarn in the Moody Blues colorway.

Makers' Monday

Makers' Monday is back!  I can't believe I haven't had a Makers' Monday post since June.  This summer's theme park work-schedule took a toll on my knitting/blogging life.  The full-time season is almost over and I hope to be back to regularly scheduled Makers' Monday posts now.  I hope you'll join me.

The game begins.

I finished knitting my Sunstorm shawl this morning and had the thrill of playing a mean game of yarn chicken in the process.

Will I win?

I was starting to get a little nervous as I knit decrease row after decrease row.

Win!

I don't know why I was so worried.  I had plenty of yarn to spare.  A whole 26 inches extra!

Help me celebrate my yarn chicken win by joining me on today's Makers' Monday link-up.

Photo Friday

I'm making progress!

Sunstorm Shawl

Slowly but surely, I'm making progress.  I've 'faded' into the final skein (half a skein in reality) and have begun knitting the decreases on my Sunstorm.  I should have a finished shawl by next week.

On the Needles

What's on my needles?  

It's more like, what's Still on my needles.

I'm still knitting my Sunstorm shawl, mentioned here.  Although it feels like a never ending knit, I'm enjoying watching it grow.  There's enough fluctuation in each yarn to hold my interest throughout all that garter stitch, plus, because it's garter stitch, I can read my email, other blogs, or a few pages of my book while I knit.  Being able to multi-task like that is pretty important to my sanity during this period of my work season.

Several people have asked about the pattern I'm using.  Actually, I'm not using a pattern.  I'm just knitting along until I get so bored I can't stand it.  In the beginning, I started with three stitches and increased until I was bored to the point of declaring it wide enough.  (That point happened at 135 stitches if you're curious.)  When I get bored with the color I'm using, I force myself to knit a few more rows then begin the next color by knitting two-row stripes for a while.  So far, the stripes range from three stripes to seven.  I've based their number on how bored I was and with how much of the old color I had left.

The only problem I've run into with knitting the shawl based on the boredom factor is that I'd originally planned to begin the decreasing once I got to the yellow.  The shawl wasn't long enough though so I'll finish knitting the yellow skein (or get as close to finishing it as I can stand) then add the other half of the speckled yarn before I begin the decreasing.  I think it will be fine in the end.

Hopefully, this shawl will be finished by the end of next week.  Then it's decision time.  Do I knit Christmas gifts with the gigantic box of yarn I ordered last month?  Do I knit the sweater my daughter is asking for, although she can't decide on a pattern?  Do I knit 11+ hats in an effort to catch up on my goal of knitting 52 hats in 2018?  Or do I knit something from the giant box of yarn I ordered yesterday?

Decisions, decisions!

Three on Thursday

I have a pretty long stretch of work days ahead of me so I thought for today's Three on Thursday post, I'd remind myself why I love my job.

1.  I LOVE playing with the money!  It's my job to make sure all the money is accounted for and safely stored each night.  I'm not 100% positive that my boss appreciates me calling it "playing with the money" but that's what it feels like.  I love counting it and strapping it and putting it in little stacks.  I don't even mind (much) when it comes to me wet and I have to iron it to get it dry.

2.  This year, we have Winterfest and I can NOT wait!  The park is going to go from...

Kings Dominion, photo courtesy of hamptonroadschurch.com

to...

Kings Dominion Winterfest, photo courtesy of wtvr.com

this.  There will be a zillion Christmas lights.  (Have I mentioned how much I love Christmas lights?)  Santa and Mrs. Claus will be there.  (Have I mentioned how much I love Santa?)  And the fountains are going to freeze over and be turned into an ice skating rink.  Have I mentioned how bad I am at ice skating?  Have I mentioned that I'm about 99.99% sure I'll break a leg?  Have I mentioned that I don't even care!  I can Not wait for Winterfest!  I'm more excited about Winterfest than I am about playing with the money each night.

photo courtesy of mentalfloss.com

3.  I love the people I work with.  Once, I was having a problem with the printer and my boss walked by and asked "Having PC Load Letter issues?"

Dear Blog,

Dear Blog,

I've missed you!  I thought I was only going to be gone a week or two but it's been almost a full month.  I hope you will forgive me.

While I may not have been here talking about it, I have been knitting.  Not knitting as much as I'd like -that pesky job of mine tends to get in the way - but knitting nonetheless. 

Since my last post, I've knit a couple of hats, I finished the Blue Heron cowl and I started another 'faded' project.

Faded Sunstorm Shawl

I'm actually much further along on it than the photo shows.  Since taking that photo, I've added almost two more full skeins to it.  I'm using the Sunstorm Hawthorne value pack I mentioned here.  The first two colors coordinate but don't really 'fade.'  The rest however....  At least so far, the other colors are blending perfectly.  In fact, they blend so well that until I've got a few solid inches of the new color knit, I don't notice the difference in the yarns.  To balance out that non-faded beginning color change, I'm saving the yellow skein for the other end.  The yellow will coordinate but not 'fade' with the color before it.  I think it's going to be perfect!

The design is simple.  So simple, I'm not sure I can legally call it a design.  It's just a garter stitch rectangle with pointy ends.  I started by casing on 3 stitches and increased with a simple K1YO at the beginning of each row.  Once the shawl was wide enough (more like, I got bored of increasing,) I began doing a K1,YO,K2tog at the beginning of each row.  Once I'm ready to decrease on the opposite end, I'll change it K2tog, YO, K2tog.  I think it's going to work and again, I think the shawl will be perfect!

The simplicity of all that garter stitch is exactly what I've needed this summer.

Hopefully I will have a more up-to-date photo to share soon.  I can't believe my luck!  Actually, I can.  Today was a fairly typical day in my life.  I finally had a chance to take a few photos of finished projects and...  It was cloudy and late-ish afternoon, which means the house is not naturally well lit at all so I set up outdoors on the porch.  I wiped down the deck railing, got the shawl laid across it just so, got the camera set up, waited for the lens to clear (It's about 4,000% humidity outside,) got the tripod set so that the shawl was framed perfectly in the camera lens, dealt with the wasp sting I got when I stepped back and my foot landed on Mr. Angry Wasp...  I was finally ready to go and...  Dammit!  The camera battery was dead.  And so was the back up battery.  Double dammit!

So, maybe next Saturday I'll get some photos taken.  And yes, Next Saturday.  Not This Saturday.  Next Saturday is my next day off.

So, once again, you may not be hearing from me for a while.

Someone please remind me how much I love my job.