oopys..

Progress on the cropped turtleneck... one sleeve finished and the top portion of the body.. I just started knitting in the round again for the second sleeve..It's not good to knit when you are tired. I totally missed a little paragraph in the pattern and added some stitches where I thought they should be for the center cable... woke up this morning and re-read the pattern and noticed the missed paragraph.. ooopsy.. so I need to rip out to the where the neck ends and I start knitting the sleeve in the round again.. this time adding the 2 extra stitches where they belong.. guess I'll do that now.. 0.0

Last night I went to the INOKissimmee knitting meeting..We had 3 new visiters.. One person learning to knit.. one just recently learned to knit (she was knitting like a pro already) and one that just learned to crochet.. it is so nice when people learn a new craft and are enthusiastic. It makes me feel all enthusiastic again..I'm so glad for knitting groups.. it's great to have a place to share and learn and enjoy knitting together . (^_^)

puffy pinkness!!

There was a little time to work on the vogue cropped turtleneck yesterday before work. The pattern took a little figuring out at the point where the sleeve part ends and the body begins. I had to refer to the picture a few times to see what it was supposed to look like and was able to figure it out...I knit the sleeve in the round and then had to split it and work with 2 separate balls of yarn and increase and add cables for the body length.. that done .. it's just knitting in the pattern for 46 rows now... I worked a few rows a ribbing on the flame socks too..0.0

Something new.. something old

I couldn't help myself.. I was just itching to cast this on..The raglan jacket was so fun to knit that I wanted to start another bulky yarn project. This is the Cropped turtleneck also from the Vogue 2009 winter issue.. For this I'm also using Lion brands wool ease thick and quick. I picked up this pretty color at Michaels Craft store and it just happened to be on clearance. I wont have as much time to work on this as I did the jacket so it probably wont be finished for a while.. Maybe by the time it's finished we will have another cold front.. The something old I'm working on are the flame socks.. I need to get them finished some time soon.(^_^)

knit, sew , block.... wait

For some strange reason unknown to me.. I had this past Sunday off.. So.. I did the usual day off stuff...laundry.. tidying up here and there.. and of course knitting... it was the home stretch for getting this sweater finished.... I ended up actually working on the sweater pretty late in the day because our internet has been pretty horrible and I spent a good part of the day trying to figure out if it is the router or the internet... My conclusion.. it's both. The router is leaking a little of the signal so when the internet signal drops... it really drops. I think there is some kind of problem because while I was at work yesterday my daughter said the internet was down for an hour or so.. What ever the problem was.. there is not much difference today from the normal slow laggy signal. I'm thinking of changing to comcast .. but some people were saying comcast was pretty bad too..So we are just going to buy a new router as soon as we are able to scrape together some pennies and see it that helps.

Back to knitting.. as I said before I didn't really start knitting until late in the day. At this point I had both sleeves and the body knit and was working on the yoke and raglan decreases.. This went surprisingly fast on size 17 needles and bulky yarn. I thought this sweater was going to be real stiff and heavy, but it's not.. It's soft and pretty light and knitting the lace on such large needles was fun and gave the lace a puffy feeling.. I was intent on finishing the sweater that night and ended up going to sleep after 2 am.. but.. it was done.

















Here it is unblocked.. ( don't ask me where this underline came from)
















Yay.. washed and blocked.. drying under the fan. I wanted buttons that had leaves on them. I don't know why.. anyway I found some at Michaels on the way home from work yesterday. They really aren't the color I wanted but I think they will work.
















Shopping on a budget ... I bought this shirt for $3.99 but someone enlarged (tore) the button hole a bit. A needle and thread and a few stitches fixed that right up..

one sleeve down.. one to go

My progress on the raglan jacket: I stopped at this point to think about adding the last 1" that the pattern calls for on the sleeve. I'm really petite so the extra inch might make them too long..This will be the length that all will be attached for the upper body of the sweater. I'm loving this sweater so far and I hope it gets cold again so I can wear it..!!
Note: I didn't need to make double pointed needles after all to knit the sleeves.. My circular needle was long enough to use the magic loop method.
















Thank you SagePixie and cousin Peter for your advice about the plastic on the windows. Our weather here is rarely that cold and it's going to be 72 degrees today and will hit 80 sometime next week. We were having a cold front.. and since I'm so used to the hot weather... anything below 50 degrees feels bitter to us down here... Two nights ago it went do into the 30's and I saw someone running around in shorts in the parking lot of the grocery store.. Mean while.. I had on a hat and scarf.. so I probably wont apply plastic to the windows.. I probably would if it stayed cold for longer periods of time... All this made me think that.. if cold air is leaking in that would mean that the hot air is leaking in too.. the plastic would probably melt right off the windows in the summer here though.

days off.. time to knit

The few days have been pretty cold in Florida. My heater isn't the greatest either and my house has way too many windows that leak.. You can actually see the blinds move from the wind outside.. So lets just say it's been pretty cold in the house. I started this raglan jacket from the Vogue Knitting winter 2009 issue on Tuesday night at my knitting group and worked on it most of the day yesterday.. as the temperature dropped in the house the jacket was getting longer and keeping me nice and warm. This has a lot of stretch to it and the one other person on Ravelry that completed it said that she blocked it..right now it's basically a giant lace panel knit with bulky yarn on size 19 needles... so fun.. Today before work I want to knit the rest of the body of the sweater... I can't start on the sleeves yet because they call for size 17 dpn's which I don't have atm.. I priced a few online and they were a bit expensive so I'm going to try to make some out of wooden dowels of the same thickness.. all that would require is a new belt for my belt sander.. I had the dowels already.. I hope it works.. if not I'll just put this on hold until I can find the needles locally.. So far I rate this project as FUN.. it grows so fast..

















My Thorpe was finished 2 days ago. Having more days off from work has given me time to knit more.. The yarn is Patons SWS , size 10 needles. I used larger needles so it would be a little bigger and it turned out the perfect size..Now I have to pack it up and mail it out to Alaska.. This hat was really fast to knit.

Crocus bud shawl

I finished my Crocus bud shawl yesterday morning.. gave it a good washing.. and the blocked it later in the day and let it dry over night.
Here is the pre-blocked finished shawl.
















Here it is after blocking and the finished size is 15"X 80". (click on the picture for a closer view)

















As you can see there is quite a bit of yarn left on the cone... It doesn't seem like I actually used that much but I did put a little dent in it so to speak.. the rest will go back into the stash for another day.

















This is almost a Thorpe. I'm using Patons SWS in three different colors. I should finish this some time today and try to get it in the mail some time this week..