Ripple Ripple

I will fake as if I hate this blanket, and then when her back is turned, I shall nom it.

Pattern: Easy Ripple Afghan
Yarn: A lot of Red Heart acrylic. Yes, acrylic!
Hook: I (5.5 mm)

Ooooh, I love it! This was another of those occasions where I wasn't sure about color. Sometimes, I just don't "get" it while I'm up close and personal with it. But when I look at the photos, I think, yeah, this is nice.

As mentioned above, this is a heckuva lot of Red Heart acrylic. I had a lot of it stashed around the house because when I first started knitting, I didn't know much about fibers and such. I soon found out that I hate knitting with acrylic, but I also didn't make much effort to give it to a good home. (Yarn, if I can't have you, no one can have you.)

When is stash yarn no longer stash yarn? Because all of this isn't stash yarn. I bought the light purple and bright yellow after starting the afghan, which I know defeats the purpose of using up stash. Ah well, the leftovers will go toward my ongoing granny squares.

And this bright delight goes into the playroom, where the kids can curl up under it while reading or watching TV. I thought the vibrant colors were perfect for the kids. I suspect it'll get a lot of use this fall and winter, even though it's very warm today. Still, as soon as they saw I was finished with the afghan, they nearly snatched it out of my hands and ran off with it.

Happy weekend, all!

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Home Stretch

Blanket: Two, maybe three (?) more stripes of color, ends to weave in and it's done!

Sock: Poor forgotten sock, second of a pair. I'm now on the toe. How much easier can you get than stockinette? I realized sometime into the first sock that I wasn't crazy about these slippery needles that I bought for making sock work go faster. I actually prefer wood (and to some extent, I guess I prefer "slow").

I don't knit for speed, that's for sure. This makes me very much a process knitter. The next time, I'll knit socks on my trusty wooden needles, turtle speed and all.

Since I'm now on the home stretch for these two WIPs, I should have FOs next week. I hope. Don't hold me to that. Whatever you do, don't make me promise. Maybe I'll surprise all of us.

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Just Call Me Stupid...And Idiotic...And Dumb

I'm not someone who fears Mondays. I don't wake up Monday mornings filled with dread. Monday is just another day of the week. Or was.

Yesterday had to be one of the worst days ever and it just so happened to be Monday. I'm not going into a lot of detail (suffice it to say that the day SUCKED) about how it started or how it piled on, but it ended with this.

This is not new yarn.

This is old yarn which was previously Girasole in progress. And what lovely progress it was. I loved the pattern, the yarn was wonderful and once you finish the first chart or two, every other row is straight knitting. Lovely!

And then, I miscounted. On 640 stitches. Without a lifeline.

Yes, stupid stupid stupid I actually worked on a lace project of this magnitude without a lifeline. What was I thinking? And I made it all the way to chart E -- if you're not familiar with this project, chart E is near the end. Only chart F and G follow before you get to the border.

Anyway, if it was a simple matter of one missed yarnover, I think I could've lived with my mistake. But this was a matter of the pattern actually shifting over one space. And I knew I couldn't live with that. I don't tink back lace well at all (especially not without a lifeline! stupid stupid stupid) so I painfully frogged the shawl-in-progress, all the while wishing I was bilingual so that I could verbally abuse myself in more than one language.

Today has to be a much better day.

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Playing with Color

Blogging again, in technicolor...

I promised I'd tell you about how crocheting came about for me, so here goes. I forget sometimes that my mom taught me to crochet when I was about 6 or 7. It's easy to forget because she doesn't do anything crafty at all now and doesn't have much appreciation for crafting. Which I find sad. Anyway, I remember she taught me how to make a single chain, but I don't think she taught me anything beyond that. Since she's always incredibly busy, I don't recall her crafting anything else from my childhood.

So a few months back, after telling myself that I wanted to learn to crochet and also telling myself that I didn't have time to learn anything new, I said "what the heck?" and just went online and found videos that would help me. I checked out books from the library and because I already had a few crochet hooks and plenty of yarn, I just sat down one day and did it. And it wasn't hard.

It took me a while to get my tension even, and even now, sometimes I realize I'm sitting in an uncomfortable position and have to fix it, but it took me, what, a day to get the hang of it? And now this whole other world has been opened up to me. I wasn't planning to go full steam ahead with crocheting, but then I saw a Spiderman afghan at Ravelry (where else?) and just had to make it for the Dimpled One, who loves Spiderman. (No pictures yet, sorry -- I told you it's been a mess over here and I've been so lazy about taking pictures.)

Okay, I'm about to stop rambling any minute now. So after the Spiderman afghan, I started making the Clapotis of crochet -- the granny square.

Very first granny square I made -- see I didn't even bother to weave in the ends!

These next photos are of some grannies which I'll eventually join together and make into an afghan for the family room sofa. Nothing fancy because all the kids are going to do is toss it on the floor when they're done using it!

Clearly, the burgundy border is the color I'm using to tie everything together. It takes me a long time to decide when I'm using colors and even after I make a decision, I still second guess myself, usually throughout the entire project. I'm not like this in other areas of my life, so I can't figure out why I'm so unsure when I'm doing something that's only a hobby for me. Good thing crafting is not my job!

This is my budding stack. I don't yet know how many of these colorful little squares I'm going to make before I connect them all.

So that's the tale. Knitting is still going on, though, but I want to finish the ripple afghan first. Got to get this WIP list down to a manageable amount.

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