Caturday and some beautiful new yarn

Many of my friends like to post pictures of their cats "helping" with their knitting. Well, here's a picture of our cats helping with mine:

Yep, we've got 2 cat celebrities here - Grumpy Cat on the left and Lil Bub on the right. They like to help me with my Elder Tree Shawl. Sweet, aren't they? They never mess up my knitting! They do love yarn, though.

I got some yarn today that I'd ordered from The Cyborg's Craft Room a few days ago. I was so excited to receive this yarn because her colorways are exquisite. (I could tell from the photos - I had never seen the yarn in person before.) The yarn I got is Digital base (superwash merino worsted) in the Wildflower colorway. Here's a picture I took of it today:

It's a terrible picture of really beautiful yarn. Granted, even the photo on Etsy didn't do it justice - it's mostly purple, and purple is notoriously hard to photograph. This yarn comes out bluer in photos than it actually is. But my point is, it is GORGEOUS! I'm so happy! There are so many different patterns I want to make with it. Decisions, decisions.

I definitely want to make a shawl or cowl with it. What do you think: Arroyo shawlette? Podcaster cowl? A Cowl for Every Season? Embrace the Cowl?

At long last, a WIP Wednesday post

I have some WIPs to show off today. First, the one I started last night. I am so excited about it! It's an Elder Tree Shawl. I'm using Malabrigo Rios in the Jupiter colorway, generously given to me by my mom last year. I have 4 skeins, and I doubt I'll use them all for this project, but I want to make this pretty big so I can wrap myself up in it and be all warm and snuggly. (Yes, I know it's lace and has holes in it. I'm sure it'll still be nice and warm.)

 
I'm using size 9 circs and alternating skeins - I've got 2 different dye lots going on here. My mom isn't a yarnie and doesn't know from dye lots, so she got me 2 skeins from one lot and 2 from another. I could've just used one of the sets of 2 for this shawl, but like I said, I want this to be really big, so I'm alternating and I think it looks great. I don't know if I'll want to use more than 2 skeins for this shawl, but I like having that option.

Speaking of my mom and Malabrigo Rios, I'm crocheting a pair of Basic Fingerless Mittens for her out of Rios in Azules. I've made one and a half so far.

She tried the finished one on and it fits, well, like a glove! ;-) These are turning out great. I love this pattern. It's my 2nd time using it. I plan to make myself a pair eventually. I have a skein of Rios in Bobby Blue waiting for me. Anyway, my mom's apartment can get very cold, so I'm glad to be able to make these for her. May she wear them in good health.

I'm also still working on the Clapotis and on my kimono sweater (which had been in hibernation for a while), but they don't look different enough from the last pics I posted of them to bother putting more pics here!

I finally got some hollow glass beads from Alisha White's Etsy shop. I have sapphire blue and emerald green and I know exactly what I'm going to make with them. I just have to get myself to actually do it!

My New Year's resolution was to learn how to knit hats and socks. I've got some Craftsy classes and a bunch of books. I've ordered some DPNs so I can make the socks the way the class instructor makes them, and I think I have enough interchangeable circular needles to try using 2 or doing magic loop. I do not have the smaller sizes for socks yet, but I already know I get hand and wrist pain from using smaller needles, so I may have to stick to making heavier socks.

That's it from me for now, but I have a bunch of FOs to show off, so watch for a Friday post...

WIP Wednesday - more Croeso, a knitting pain update, and Clapotis thoughts

Hi! I don't have any pretty pictures for you today, but I hope you'll bear with me anyway.

My wrists and thumbs are doing a little better lately. I took 2 days off from knitting, and I got wrist braces (nothing fancy, just OTC stuff) from the drugstore and a wrist rest for my mousepad. All these things together seem to be helping. I've also been trying for better posture while knitting.

I can still really only do 2 rows on the Croeso at a time, but they're pretty long rows at this point so I do feel like I've made progress even after just doing that much. I've finished section 4 and started section 5. This is the last section! In the next row, I'll be starting a few more cables.

I've been obsessing a little about a certain section of cable that I accidentally twisted. It looks weird and is somewhat noticeable, but it's way back toward the beginning and there's no way I'm going back to fix it now, so I've just got to learn to live with it. Whoops. Checking my cables a lot more carefully now.

I've been thinking a lot today about knitting a Clapotis. I have 2 different yarns I could use - one is Berroco Cotton Twist (worsted cotton blend) in a brown/white/teal multi and the other is Wool in the Woods Cameo (100% rayon DK) in a green/blue/pink/purple multi. Leaning toward the latter only because I have more of it. I've only got 595 yards of the Cotton Twist. Of the others on Ravelry who have made it with the Cotton Twist, some have used more than this and some have used less. I can't figure out why the amount of yarn used varies so widely. (If you know, please leave a comment!) :-)

What's cookin'

I know this isn't really a cooking blog, and I generally don't consider myself much of a cook. However, recently I've baked up a few things I'm proud of, so I thought I'd share.

First up: lasagna. I've made this twice since my husband's back surgery 6 weeks ago, and it feeds us well (and it's so yummy!).

This is made from this recipe from the De Boles website. It's gluten free, since I can't eat wheat (I just have a sensitivity to wheat in particular, not a gluten allergy - wheat does very bad things to my stomach but I can handle lower-gluten grains such as spelt). I love this recipe and have been using it for a long time but hadn't made it for a while. We use our own "Nomato" sauce (sub for tomato sauce - mostly carrots and beets and some spices, good stuff). Again, this is because of my picky stomach, which doesn't do so well with tomato sauce.

Bonus: since I'm on Weight Watchers right now, I appreciate this healthy recipe even more - it's 8 Points Plus per serving, and a serving is enough for dinner in and of itself, no extras needed unless you want to make some more veggies or something. Not bad Points-wise!

Next, I'd like to share the blueberry muffins I made today. I used King Arthur gluten-free muffin mix. Here they are:

Oh my goodness these came out well. Not hard to make at all, either. In case any WW-type people are interested, 5 Points Plus per muffin. I used fresh blueberries courtesy of a certain grocery store that recently had a sale of 6 1-pint boxes for $6.99. Could not pass that up! I made blueberry pancakes yesterday, too!

And finally, some knitting! Here's my latest Croeso pic:

This pattern is great. I am loving the cables. I'm actually a bit farther along than this pic shows; the middle now has 3 cables and I've just started the lace sections in between them. This yarn is creating a stripey effect which I absolutely love.

And that's it for now! Hope you've all had a great weekend!

Let's play catch-up...2012 FO's

Um, holy wow. It's been a very long time since I last posted here. I didn't mean to neglect my blog! Honest! I have a lot of projects I haven't posted here yet (all of these are from back in 2012, and of course I have stuff from 2013, too), so I'll have to pick and choose. Without further ado:


Here's a duck in an apple hat (the hat comes off), pattern from Ana Paula Rimoli's book Amigurumi Toy Box. She's the mommy duck from the Mom & Baby Duck pattern. First and only amigurumi I've made (so far). I gave her to my best friend for her birthday - in July 2012!

I have to say, I love amigurumi (so cute!) but I don't really like making them, or at least I didn't really enjoy making this one. They involve using small-ish hooks so there aren't holes for the stuffing to come through, which makes for some fiddly, fussy work. (I pretty much reserve the words "fiddly" and "fussy" for crochet. Heh.) My main issue with this ducky, though, was the sewing. You have to sew the limbs on, but there are no specific instructions in the book as to how to do that. I searched the Internet and found no further information on the best way to sew amigurumi limbs, so I just went ahead and did it however I thought I should. In my opinion, the beak didn't come out quite right because of it. Oh well. I'd like to try one of Stacey Trock's patterns sometime; maybe that'd be easier? Anyone know?

Oh great...I'd written a whole long blog entry with photos, and then Firefox crashed. Apparently I didn't save the rest of it, so here we go again. I don't have time to rewrite the whole thing, but I'll do what I can.

And I tried again, and it got "eaten" again, this time by Blogger. OK...third time's a charm, right? *sigh*

Here's the finished Seraphina I made for my mom. Unfortunately, she thought it was too short...so she decided to steal my grandmother's instead. I know that sounds awful, but it's not so awful considering that Grams wasn't using hers and has dementia and doesn't even really know what to do with a shawl now. (I mean, the dementia thing is awful, my mom's taking the shawl - not so much.)

 

This beautiful creation is the #09 Cowl by Kazekobo from the 2012 issue of Vogue Knitting Crochet magazine. Love it. Used my Debbie Bliss Cathay, and the yarn was perfect for the design.

And here is my finished Wingspan:

 Here's a bad mirror selfie of me wearing it:

I'm just going to end this blog post here because I'm afraid of losing it again. More to come soon, unless I procrastinate again, which I hope I won't!