The Insanity Continues

 I went MIA there for a bit.  Actually, I went S.O.A.

The TV in my area died so I've been re-watching nothing but DVDs for the past several weeks.  I pulled out the Sons of Anarchy set and have pretty much done nothing but watch bikers and knit on the Insanity blanket ever since.  (Yeah, see all those post-its scattered everywhere?  They are reminders of the things I'm supposed to be doing instead of knitting.)

It's a good thing S.O.A. is six?? seven?? maybe even eight seasons long because this blanket is going to take me a lifetime LIFETIME!  It's 17 squares wide which means it will need to be at minimum 20 squares in length.  If not at work, I really have pretty much done nothing but knit on this monster since I started it and I've only just started the eighth square of the second row.  A lifetime, I tell you!

I did take a brief few minutes off from knitting so I could pick some daffodills. We have a bumper crop this year.  I guess they really liked all the rain we have gotten over the last bunch of months.  

And of course I took an afternoon off to attend Hayden's Elsa's Frozen birthday party.  I'm ashamed to admit, I still have not watched Frozen, but I feel like I have.  Hayden quotes it and sings the songs constantly.  Like father, like daughter.

Happy knitting!

Insanity

I know I've said it before but...  What is wrong with me??

Because I'm too lazy to wind the yarn for the project that I really want to make, I decided to start knitting another blanket.  I'm calling it the Insanity Blanket because, obviously, I've gone completely insane.  

I'm using scrap fingering weight yarn and US2 needles.  Have I mentioned I've gone completely insane??

I've based the pattern on Knit Pick's Hue Shift, but I've made a few modifications of my own.  I'm still using two colors per mitered square, but there's no plan for what colors come next.  I'll use one skein until it runs out and change the contrasting color for each square.  I'm also going to knit the entire blanket in one piece rather than in Hue Shift's four pieces that have to be grafted together.  I'm also using a differnt number of cast on stitches since mine is using fingering and Hue Shift calls for worsted. 

I also plan for this blanket to fit over a queen size bed.  

And all of this because I'm too lazy to wind one skein of yarn.  Good grief!

Yes, I'm pretty sure I've gone completely insane.

Meanwhile, spring has sprung here in Virginia and I've been thankful to spend some time outdoors.

Time outdoors with Hayden.  She loves her trampoline! 

She turned four recently and I can not get over how much more skilled she is this year than last.  Last year she couldn't figure out how to pedal any of her riding things and this year,  well, let's just say, Nana is taking up running again in an effort to keep up with her on that bike.  

Oh, and she blew out her candles on the first try this year instead of just spitting on the cake!  My little grandbaby is growing up so fast!

It's raining. Again.

Goodness! It's been a wet winter.  Sadly, we've had no real snow, but we have had 9+ inches of rain since the first of December.  And it's raining again today.  Good grief!  I really shouldn't complain because we are now 'water front' rather than 'swamp mud' fronted. The view is definitely nicer.

Anyway...

I've been knitting.

After finishing the brown striped socks, I pulled Rambling Rows out of the UFO pile.  According to Ravelry, I started this Cottage Creations blanket in April, 2020.  I've knit a few of these blankets before and really like the pattern. It's super simple but the color changes keep you from getting bored, and best of all, the blocks are large-ish so there are only 100's of ends to weave in at the end instead of 1,000's.  

The blanket is made up of multiple sizes of mitered squares and rectangles, it's super easy to knit and it's a great way to use up leftover yarns.  For this version, I'm using fingering weight and it's going to be more of an oversized baby/lap blanket size.  I'm thinking seriously of knitting another (or maybe 3 more) and sewing them together to form a blanket big enough for a large bed.  But considering it's taken me four years to get this far.... probably not.  But on a positive note, I'm on block 47 out of 55.  Here's hoping I can stick with it and actually get it finished.  

I'm really enjoying this 'finishing' thing.  I finished the summer/4th of July diamond painting.  I'm not really into the shiny/sparkley way the finished pieces look (although I LOVE my sparkley snowflake coasters) but I do enjoy attaching the diamond dots to the backing.  It's so mindless and meditative.  I went a little crazy last summer and ordered multiple coaster sets and three large seasonal designs.  There's this one for summer, an autumn one with pumpkins, and a winter one with a snowman.  They're all the same size and the idea is to buy one frame that I can move the diamond paintings in and out of seasonally.  The goal is to finish one each quarter.  We'll see how that goes.

And, I finished the shawl.

I haven't blocked it and honestly, I may just skip that process entirely because the yarn is so soft and drapey as is.  I used almost 5 full skeins of Obsidian City Tweed and most of a skein of Snowbank.  I didn't use a pattern, it's just a simple triangular, bottom up, garter stitch shawl.  Easy peasy and now I have another item checked off the list and 6 skeins of yarn out of the stash pile.  Win/win.

Happy knitting!

I'm back???

I'm back!  I think.  Maybe.  I don't know.  I don't want to pin myself down to feeling like I have to post X number of times a week but I have missed talking to myself about yarn.  It's been almost a full year since I last posted.  Hard to believe!

I hope you've been well.  I'm ashamed to say I haven't kept up with anyone else's blog or even any form of social media. When I stopped blogging, I pretty much stopped internetting altogether.

So what have I been doing with my time?  I'm still working at the grocery store.  We are still living in my in-laws' house but it should be our house next week.  Fingers crossed.  They've been saying we'll close on the morgtage "next week" since two weeks before Christmas.  We moved all the in-laws' stuff we didn't want to keep out and we moved all our stuff in from storage.  Boy, was it nice to see my stuff again!  Our stuff had been in storage for four years!  Hayden, my granddaughter, is in pre-school and loving it.  And of course, I've been crafting.  I bought a loom and plan to be comfortable using it by the end of 2024.  I've been doing a lot of diamond painting.  It's delightfully tacky.  Ha ha.  Diamond painted things tend to be sparkley and I'm not really into sparkely artwork but I find the act of doing it to be very meditative and a little sparkle in my life won't kill me.  And of course, I've been knitting.  In 2023, I completed:

5 hats, 

4 sweaters,
2 pair of mittens, 
2 shawls, 
8 pairs of socks,
5 blankets and
2 Christmas ornaments.

The sad thing about all that knitting is that it didn't even make a dent in my stash pile. 

One of my 2023 goals was to go 90 days without buying any new yarn.  I didn't succeed with that goal.  But, I made my last yarn purchase on October 7th and today marks 105 days without buying yarn!  I am SO proud of myself!  I've been feeling overwhelmed by the stash pile for quite a while. Years, really.  

I finally cleaned out my closet (which is really a mini attic) the other day (on day 87) and tossed the old projects I  had no intention of finishing and organized all the remaining yarn.  All the bins won't even fit in the photo.  I have 16 of them.  And that's not counting the large cedar chest full that I can't even access because the chest has so much junk piled up on it.  Actually, I'd forgotten about the cedar chest yarn until just now.

Anyway, to make a long story a little longer, my plan is to go 120 days without buying yarn.  And then 150 days, then 180 days, and so on until I go a year without buying yarn.  Unless of course I run out first, but the likelihood of that happening is about the same as me winning the lottery.  The Big lottery.

Another goal for 2024 is to finish all the WIPs I have.  The 'rule' is I have to finish one WIP then I can knit anyting I want, then finish a WIP, and knit what I want.... rinse and repeat untill all the WIPs are finished.  They may not all get finished in 2024 but there's hope.  I was pretty ruthless when I was frogging/tossing old projects I knew I didn't like anymore.

Currently, I'm knitting a simple triangular shawl from the WIP pile.  I'm using Obsidian City Tweed from Knit Picks and a US 8 needle.  I'm currently at that stage where the shawl is eating up yarn but not growing.  Or at least it feels like it's not growing.  I only have a few skeins left so it will soon go from WIP to FO status.  Yay!

And now, I'm going to go curl back up under my blanket and knit some more.  Until next time, stay warm!