Dragon Rambles

I’m posting this tonight, even though there’s a few hours left in the month. Then if I remember, I’ll link up to Lily’s Quilts in the morning.

Well, as predicted I got much less done this month, what with going back to work. Bummer about that work bit. Also I got hit nice and early in this flu season, so wasn’t much up to doing my fwq blocks these last two weekends. Probably just as well, as this gave Nicki a chance to catch up (I believe she got distracted by family visits and knitting). So this month, instead of the 10 blocks I should be showing you, there are just 5. But a pretty 5

I didn’t pick up Moonglow this month. I’d love to finish the blocks and start piecing them together. But it’s knitting season!

I made a shawl for Granny’s birthday.

I started a new cardigan.

This one is knit up without side seams. Probably a good thing because my first attempt at sewing my coat pieces, well, sucked, so it’s still in pieces. Hopefully you’ll see the completed garment in November’s post.

I also started September’s project in the Knitspot Fall in Full Colour club, Hazeline.

Of course, it’s hard to see much here but I’m almost at the half way mark.

So that was October. I’m predicting November will have a lot of knitting too, but hopefully more quilting than there’s been.

You might think that being in bed sick for a few days would mean no getting up to mischief or spending money. You’d be wrong.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across Artist’s Palette Yarns. Or more specifically, I stumbled across a very interesting yarn listing there: Heirloom gossamer. 60% merino, 20% silk, 20% cashmere….. And more importantly…. 2600m per 100g! Yep, truely gossamer yarn. Perfect for knitting some of those Heirloom Knitting projects I have in my queue.

At the time, there were no skeins listed, so I emailed asking if this was still a stocked item. The lovely Juliet responded, yes!, but that she hadn’t dyed any for a while and if I let her know what sort of colours I liked, she’d put some in the pot that weekend. My response of jewel tones was met with enthusiasm, so I sat back to see what the offering would be.

Fast forward to Monday when I was in bed feeling like crap but having already slept for most of the day. What’s a girl to do but to pull out her ipad and go through all her favourite sites looking at the pretty yarn . What a nice surprise I should get when I saw that Juliet had added some heirloom gossamer to the site (just that morning, I found out later).

First I saw this one (photo from Artist’s Palette, therfore it’s only fair that it’s linked to where you can go and buy a skein. Or two).

I drooled and thought that would be the one to buy. Then I saw this one.

After some umming and ahhing over which to choose. My stuck-in-bed-feeling-like-crap brain decided that the second one would make a beautiful Princess shawl and the darker one would be great for the Wedding Ring shawl or lerwick lace shawl. So I bought enough of each colour for those planned projects.

And they arrived yesterday

Of course, that finishes off this month’s and uses half of next month’s budgeted spending money, but hey, I was sick

Ok, ok, lets be honest. I’m not sure I could have decided between the two colours even if I was feeling normal. And we all know that the tried and tested solution to the question “which do I get?”, is “both!”.

The pics don’t do this yarn justice. And in truth of colour, the original website photos are closest. I’d love to cast on one of these projects once I’m feeling better. But I know I won’t. I need to reaquaint myself with cobweb yarn before I take the plunge to gossamer. Plus, I currently don’t want to think about how long it’ll take to hand wind 2.6km of yarn from one skein. Let alone all five of them.

Did I mention that just over a week ago, I caved and started the Koi Rama mystery shawl? Well, I did. I had three friends on facebook talking about it, and I had that Seen the ocean from OMA, so I thought, why not. Of course, I started when the second clue (from four) was published, so I spent a big chunk of weekend catching up. Fast forward to Fri night and I took a good hard look at my progress. I was 10 rows into the third clue and I just didn’t like how it was going.

The first two clues, comprising the hem of the shawl, was very pretty, and in the designer’s normal style. But then the body was suddenly full of double yarn overs, making lots of big holes.

See? And this is before blocking! While there’s nothing wrong with this airy pattern, it just doesn’t look right to me. So I visited ravelry to see what it should look like. Nope, I’m doing it right, it’s supposed to look like that. A bit more thinking, and a comment from my friend’s on facebook that they too weren’t sure they liked it, and I made the decision to abandon this shawl. It just looks to me like it’ll be bottom heavy and I’d much rather use that beautiful yarn on something I like.

So….. Rip, rip, rip, down it comes.

Instead, I picked up the project that I had put down when I felt I just had to start the shawl: my blanket style cardigan, PattiAnn. I got quite a bit done by lunchtime on Sun.

But I decided it was a bit too much of a mindless knit. So I’m relegating it to my weekday evening project, and started Hazeline with the gorgeous Posh yarn I showed you. It doesn’t require much thought either, but since I also managed to get rather sick this weekend, I probably don’t want anything too mind bending right now. Maybe by next weekend I’ll be feeling up to starting a nice intricate lace project that’ll see me through the winter. Because, of course, it can’t really be called intricate unless it takes months to knit

Because it really is all her fault

It all started before Knit Nation. We were in the planning stages of meeting up and she said she really wanted to get to the OMA stall (Old Maiden Aunt, for the unenlightened). I hadn’t heard of them at the time, so Nicki assured me I’d love Lillith’s yarn. She was right and I came home from Knit Nation with three skeins of OMA.

And could easily have come home with much more. So when I needed yarn for Granny’s birthday shawl, of course OMA was the place to shop. And I felt quite happy about buying the yarn for two shawls, not just one.

And lets not even talk about the custom orders I have planned for sweaters and cardigans….

But Nicki’s evil mastermind plan to completely corrupt me doesn’t stop there. Oh no, as if introducing me to OMA wasn’t enough, she had to tell me about Posh Yarns too. Now these guys are difficult to buy from (for me), because they update their store once a week and all the yarn sells out very quickly. And of courseI always forget to go to the shop until at least an hour after the update and they’re all sold out. Yes, selling over 200 skeins in under an hour is impressive. So while I was on holiday, of course I had to look on ravelry to see what Posh Yarn people had listed for destashing.

There was one that I loved, but while the person selling the yarn had two skeins, she was only selling one. And I really need at least two skeins for most of my queued projects. So I put it out of my head and forgot about it. That is until last week, when Nicki fav’ed the exact same skein for sale that I had been eyeing up. I believe I started cursing Nicki, muttering “why must you remind me of this yarn”. So really, after unsuccessfully putting this yarn out of my mind, what else is a girl to do…. Why, message the seller and ask if she would possibly consider selling BOTH skeins, of course.

To my amazement, she said yes. So, guess what I came home to on Tues night.

I think this yarn will be great for hazeline, September’s knitspot club pattern. Or, in fact, for any number of shawls I have in my queue.

So you see, it really is all Nicki’s fault. All hail Nicki, evil mastermind of yarn corruption

Ok so it’s Friday, and my farmer’s wife post was supposed to be in sunday. The one just gone, that is. I sewed them then, am just getting to post them now (finally picked up a camera adapter for my ipad last night, so I no longer have to wait until I bring my laptop home to post pics).

First I pieced together century of progress. Remember how all I got up to last week was cuting out the pieces? Well they are all together now. But I played around with the colour layout as the book’s version just looked wrong to me.

So that was my blocks from the previous week done. Then I started the new week’s blocks. And did checkerboard.

I picked out the fabric for churn dash then decided to make this week a one block week. I may go back to one block a week for a little while, I need to chat with Nicki about it as we’re doing this project together.

Very late this week with a FWQ update. I was distracted last weekend, working on Jaali, so didn’t get my blocks finished. I did get one done, Cats and mice:

But Century of progress is still in pieces.

Tomorrow is FWQ day again, so the plan is to sew together this block and do my two for this week. Hopefully, I won’t be distracted by knitting again, because this yime I don’t have a deadline I’m working towards.

Some furious knitting, combined with ignoring most of what I was supposed to be doing last weekend, meant I was able to finish Jaali on Tues night. I blocked it Wed and popped it in the post Thursday. Isn’t the colour just gorgeous!

I’ll definitely be buying some more. And the lace pattern is impressive given it’s a pretty easy knit.

With it on it’s way to it’s new home and with the sofa bed pulled out from one night of blocking, I decided to finally get around to blocking my Aria scarf too. It looked great before, but now? Loving it!

And there’s already something new on my needles

After my unsuccessful yarn shopping trip last Wed, I went back to Old Maiden Aunt Yarns and systematically worked my way through all the 4ply bases to look for colours where 2 skeins were available. Normally this would be easy, but remember, Lilith was on holidays so her shop was decimated. I narrowed my selection down to two different colours on two different bases, and decided I’d wait and see which one would be best for Granny.

Friday morning, I was not yet out of bed and a knock came at my door. Postie! But there was not just the one parcel, but two! Made my day.

First up was my OMA order. I got some merino/bamboo in bean nighe

And some alpaca/silk/cashmere in seen the ocean.

Both of these are beautiful and I think Granny would love them. But the bean nighe called to me the loudest, so I’ll use that first.

My second parcel was wool I’d kind of forgotten about. Not that I’d forgotten I wanted it, or what I wanted it for, just that I should be expecting a parcel. I’d gotten a good deal on some merino dk wool on ebay, 20 balls in all. In mulberry (lovely colour, looks better IRL).

Sound like a lot? Well I need it for this.

This will be my next project after I’ve knitted Granny’s shawl and sewn my coat together.

Yesterday was again the day for sitting down to some fun of picking out colours and making two Farmer’s Wife blocks.

First up, buzzard’s roost.

Then, calico puzzle.

Putting me at 15 blocks.

The photos aren’t too great as it was back to work for me today (booooo!), so I needed to use artificial light when I got home. I should have taken the pic yesterday when I finished them, but I wanted to pick up my knitting and continue watching season 3 Castle episodes instead

And September thundered by. Probably because I had the month off (and we all know that holiday time moves faster than other time). I thought I would get out and visit places these holidays but the beautiful rainy weather combined with my exhaustion and feeling the need to be a hermit, saw me mostly spending the month at home reading, crafting and making my way through my dvd collection. Total bliss!

So today I’m again linking up with the fresh sewing day.

Because I have a storm of progress to show you. First, on the quilting front…

I made another 8 blocks for the FWQ, bringing my total up to 13.

I finished those 12 easy blocks for Moonglow,

Got the first 8 stars done,

And almost finished two more.

Though none of them are ironed yet.

I had thought I might get them all done before I finished holidays, but the knitting bug hit so I still have three more I haven’t started yet. But I did get my knitted coat almost done. I just have to sew it together and knit the collar.

Then there was the scarf I knitted and just needs to be blocked.

And those other 3 projects I started.

I won’t be this productive again ever. Alas I must return to work again on Monday and my time will be limited. But I’m going to make sure I can do a little every day even if it means an hour less sleep. I forget just how good knitting and stitching is for me.