On The Needles

 Timeless is still OTN.

I am making progress though.  I'm seven decreases in on the first sleeve, only eighteen more decreases to go. And then I can do it all over again on the other sleeve.

Did you notice the sheep stitch marker?  I think she's absolutely precious.  I had signed up to take a bus trip with my LYS to the Maryland Sheep & Wool festival back in May.  Of course the festival was canceled.  Center of the Yarniverse gave me the option of getting my cash back or getting a gift card for the full amount, a 10% discount, and some unnamed freebies.  Of course I chose the gift card option.  The shop just recently opened back up and several of those little sheep stitch markers were in the bag of freebies.

And because I seem to be on a roll with live critter photos recently...

We had another visitor but he didn't ring the doorbell.

On the Needles

Timeless Pullover knit with Aloft

Well, technically, it's off the needles at the moment.  I finally finished the body of my Timeless pullover.  Next up, the sleeves.

My apologies if that photo is blurry or there are tons of typos in this post.  I've had one of those nasty, nauseous, blurry vision headaches all day today and I can't see well enough to tell what that photo really looks like.

I can, however, see well enough to tell that I'm very pleased with the way the body fits.  It's slightly looser than it needs to be but I'd much rather it be too loose than too tight.  And I LOVE the neckline!  It's not all that exciting on the mannequin, but I really, really love the way it looks on me.

Speaking of being pleased with how it looks, I'm thinking of knitting another in some kind of summery type yarn and not adding the long sleeves.  I would probably knit a row or four more on the sleeves but that's it.  It looks really cute without sleeves.  The only glitch with that idea is that the gauge is 5 stitches to the inch, which is generally worsted weight yarn which may be way too hot in the summer. I'll have to see what kinds of yarns are out there.  I don't generally knit summer sweaters, or with cotton so I really don't know.

What??

I got nothing to talk about knitting wise.

Timeless Pullover knit with Aloft from Knit Picks

I'm still working on the Timeless Pullover knit with two stands of mohair held together.  I think ten years from know I will still be knitting the body of this thing.  I don't understand.  The yoke knit up so fast and the fabric grew in length quickly.  I expected that the body would fly off the needles once I'd removed the sleeve stitches.  But that's not the case.  Not the case at all.  I knit and I knit and I knit and I knit some more.... and I swear, I think the fabric is getting shorter rather than longer.  Maybe it's the fact that I'm knitting mohair in 89% humid, 100+ degree weather.  

What is wrong with me??

I'll tell you what's not wrong with me - my vitamin B12, D and cholesterol.  Well, okay, my cholesterol is still terrible but it's no where near as terrible as it was eight weeks ago.  

What's still not okay is my A1C, or blood sugar.  It didn't budge.  And I do not understand that at all.  Not at all!  I haven't even been worrying about my cholesterol.  I've been focusing on my blood sugar and eating healthier, lower sugar/carb foods.  I haven't had a potato in two months and I've only had rice once or twice.  I've learned to almost enjoy wheat bread.  I've even cut out dessert.  But that ^^$%#% blood sugar has not reacted one single bit.  It's still sitting there at the exact same number it was eight weeks ago.  And eight weeks ago, I'd had breakfast and was chewing sugary gum when they drew my blood.  This time around, I'd been fasting for 14 hours.  Argh!

It's okay though.  They've now doubled my medication.  By the time I take all those pills, I won't have room for any food in my tummy.

Oh, and you know what else?  Okay, this is getting kind of personal but...  I haven't shaved my legs in six plus months.  And a few months ago it dawned on me that if I didn't need to shave my legs anymore, maybe I didn't need to shave my armpits either.  So I stopped that too.  But suddenly, my legs are looking ape-like.  Like, over night, I grew an inch of leg hair.  I don't even own a razor anymore.  Good Lord!  Apparently, now that my vitamin B levels are back up where they are supposed to be, I'm not only growing fingernails (Yay!!) but also leg hair. Argh!

Health rant over.  Back to knitting...

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, Happy Knitting!

On the Needles

Timeless Pullover

I'm still plugging away at Timeless and will probably still be knitting on it this time next month.  I knit and I knit and I knit and I knit some more... and it seems I make no progress what so ever.  And that's weird because with the two strands of mohair held together, I'm getting gauge at five stitches to the inch.  I think it just feels like it's taking forever because I can't read while I knit all this stockinette. Well, I can, but I find myself only grabbing one strand too frequently to bother.  

Despite not being able to read while I knit, it's still a fun project.  The yarn is just so light and soft and it hasn't shed all over my clothes a single time.  

And, the sweater fits!  Actually, it might be a little bit too big.  I was in between sizes so I opted for the larger size because I'm not into body hugging clothes these days.  

And for those of you interested in the tank....  I have a new addition.  Meet Herman.  He's a Mystery Albino snail and he is going to help me with my algae problem.  Apparently I can't count.  I had the timer for my lights set on 10 hours, not 8.  Oops!  A big, giant oops actually.  Everything was okay until I got Viviane, the second female Emperor Tetra.  She came from a shop that specializes in plants rather than fish and her tank wasn't the cleanest.  Two days later, Bam!  I had a Massive algae problem.  I'm blaming Viviane's water but I know my light timer miscalculation may have been the cause.  Anyway, I've been fighting algae ever since and hopefully Herman is going to help.

Now, if I can just resist the urge to get Herman a girlfriend....

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, Happy Knitting!

TNT

Finally!

A tiny little beach chair cross stitch

I finally get to have a TNT (Tiny Needle Tuesday) post!

Doesn't look like much yet plus I forgot to take photos for today's post until late last night so the lighting is horrible.  Even more horrible than normal!  Some of the bad lighting might be karma coming to get me.  I'm feeling a little bit guilty about the pattern.  

I'm not even sure what magazine I saw it in, but it was one of those 'Ladies' magazines about decorating, cooking and  old age face creams.  Anyway... In one of the photos of a beach house, there was a simple little cross stitched beach chair hanging on the wall.  I thought it was adorable and that it would be so cute to have a set of them in different colors... So I ripped the page out of the magazine, scanned it into the computer, enlarged it and hand copied the pattern onto graph paper.

And twenty minutes after I sat down to start stitching, Hayden came to visit so I didn't get very far.  But that's okay.  I have a few stitches done.  It counts as a TNT!

Timeless Pullover knit with Aloft, a mohair and silk blend

The Timeless pullover is coming along, slowly, but surely.  Actually, I'm astounded at how much progress I've made considering the sweater is knit with mohair, it's July in Virginia, and we've had a week of 95+ degree days with 'feels like' temperatures exceeding 105 degrees.  

Timeless is obviously way too big for my mannequin, but that's a good thing.  I am also much bigger than my mannequin.  I haven't had the nerve to try the sweater on yet.  Did I mention that it's been 95+ degrees with 'feels like' temperatures exceeding 105?  Yeah, I'm sticking with the "I can block that out" theory until it cools off.  Cools way, way off!

Timeless

Can you believe - we had nice enough weather the other day that I was able to sit outside on the deck and knit on my mohair Timeless sweater.  In July!  How crazy is that?

Timeless Pullover

I've got two rows to go before separating the sleeves from the body.

As exciting as that is, it's not the important news.

The view from the screened porch

The important news is that my sister and I spent yesterday at our cousin's house.  On the river.  It was fabulous!

Believe it or not, it was my first full day away from my mother-in-law since moving in with her on November 1st.  That's a looooong time to go without a full breakfast-through-dinner day off.  

It was the first time I'd visited my cousin and his wife at their river house but it won't be the last.  I know where they live now.  What a gorgeous old house they have, what a gorgeous view they have, and what a gorgeous day we picked to visit.

The shore was covered in muscles that had washed up for unknown reasons.

My sister had gotten a new car the day before so she had a good time driving us to the river.  Once there, we had a fun "ladies' lunch" that, thankfully, did not involve take-out pizza or sub sandwiches.  Besides the fabulous food and the wonderful company, what made it so fun was that the table was set with old family silver and china.  

What's so special about eating off old family china?  Well, if I understand how it works correctly, my cousin is both my first and second cousin.  My mother's brother married my dad's first cousin.  And the cousin we were visiting is a product of that marriage.  What it all boils down to is that all the 'stuff' from from multiple generations of two family lines got split between my sister and I and my two cousins.  There is a Lot of family history there.  And my cousin's wife is into genealogy and relationships as well as history, so she's full of stories of where things came from and the stories behind the items.  

Wow!  That was a long winded way to say we had a really nice lunch.  

And then we hit the water.  There is something so incredibly special about swimming in salt water river water.  And we had gorgeous, perfect weather.  I didn't want to leave.

Not Reyna

Not Reyna

Well, I'm going to have to rename this shawl Not Reyna.  I got a little carried away with the previous lace/mesh section and continued to knit mesh instead of switching back to garter.  Rather than pull it out, I'm claiming artistic license and making my own garter/lace mesh stripe pattern.

Besides the fact that I think you are looking at the back side of the shawl in that photo, I wish the yarn's true color showed up better.  It is The prettiest greeny-blue I have ever seen in real life but no matter how much editing I do to the photo, I can't seem to get the color right.  And of course, it's way too dark to retake the photo now.

I feel like I haven't spent any time knitting recently but Not Reyna is a tad bit past half way complete and my Timeless sweater is coming along too.  

I'm pretty excited about Timeless.  I'm past the second pearl row and knitting with (1) mohair in Virginia in July and (2) two strands of mohair held together is much easier than I expected.  And yes, I did mean "pearl" not "purl."  The sweater has bands around the  yoke that are supposed to represent strands of pearls.  You know, it's a timeless, classic sweater and if you're wearing a timeless, classic sweater, you must also wear your pearls.  Or is that just a southern girl thing?

On the needles

Not much knitting happening these days.  I've gotten a few rows completed on my Timeless sweater, I've made it to the second lace section of the Lagoon Reyna and I picked Rambling Rows back up to work on while I read my, cough, cough, week's worth of email.  Good grief!  How did I manage to not open my email for an entire week?

Anyway, not much knitting happening these days.  The pool gets in the way.  I need to figure out how to knit while I float.

I'm glad I wasn't floating yesterday because this happened.

Hayden's reaction to the rain was priceless.