My Life is Baby Projects

Jeez, where do I start? Well, I guess that one of the reasons I haven't posted any of my projects in half a year is that my life is currently baby patterns, and for awhile I couldn't even talk about it.

I was merrily carrying along up to the end of last year working on things like the sweater pattern I swore I'd create and the sky shawl when one of my sisters announced she was pregnant.  In my family's house, that goes quickly from 'yay!' to 'oh, shit now I need to buy yarn and make stuff!'

Well, maybe that was just me.  But other members of my family are also making stuff.

Anyway, so for the past 6-8 months or so, almost all of my projects have been baby stuff.  I made this sweater:

I have to credit the woman who works at the button section of the notions store I go to.  I'll be looking at something that would work, and then she'll come up with completely different buttons that work perfectly.

and a matching hat and booties:

and then started this blanket (haven't finished it yet, though):

and then got this out of the way:

and then started another, cooler weather sweater, for which I have no picture yet.

We're not going to talk about the amount of yarn I bought for this (more than I've used, certainly). I always get into this 'I can make all the things!' mode when it comes to special things like having an excuse to make really nice baby items (since this is my niece).  However, it turns out that, no, when you work full time and go to school part time and have to do things like keep up with an apartment and get distracted by my fiance and my attention-whore of a cat:

Who then proceeded to attack the sweater.  He's already claimed the extra, wrong-sized, baby bootie.

, let alone all the scheming and planning I've done for various things, one being the baby shower, you in fact cannot make all the things.  I can barely make the baby stuff; I haven't even touched the other projects in months, and I'm still in the middle of it.

My niece is due next month.  Oops.

Emergency Baby Sweater

I used to have an extra baby sweater lying around, a couple of years ago, until I decided to gift it to my previous downstairs neighbors who had just had a kid.

I should have made one to replace it.  I wasn't expecting to be told a relative of mine was having a kid only two months before being due to have said kid (communication?  Why would there be communication?). However, I decided to try, and managed to pull off making a baby sweater within a month.

The pattern is Preppy Cardigan from 60 Quick Baby Knits, the yarn Cascade Yarns Pacific (which is one of my favorite acrylic/wool blends now; it worked up wonderfully and you can throw it in the washer and dryer no problem.  This is after I washed and dried it, by the way).

And because of that, there's a happy ending to this story.  I managed to mail out the sweater to have it arrive just in time for the baby to be born (as in, the relative I mailed it to took it to the hospital with her to give to the new parents). So I have that going for me.

As well, this is on top of the other relative I've known was pregnant for longer, which luckily is due in March and therefore that project is on the back burner, because holidays are coming up fast and I had to start making presents. I've already made at least two of my presents already and am working on a third:

I based this off of a pattern on Ravelry called Squishy Soft Cowl, but I cast-ed on a lot more stitches. And accidentally twisted the cast on, so it's now a mobius cowl. Oh well.

Pattern is Brain Waves, also on Ravelry.

Yeah, I've got the socks done.  And a baby sweater.  And a cowl. And part of a hat.  Wow, that's a lot given that I've had no time recently (going to grad school on top of everything can do that to you.  Oh, and getting this fur-ball doesn't help either:

This is Murphy.  This is Murphy sleeping on the bag my project is in that I brought over to knit on because he was trying to sleep next to me on the couch. Instead, he immediately sat on the bag and fell asleep.

). At least I still have my commuting time to work on things.

Of course, the one thing I did sacrifice this year was making a Halloween costume, so I did forgo something. Can't have it all.

It's Going to Be Full Of Stars

With the sucess of finally doing and finishing Xeina behind me, I decided to start another I-planned-to-do-this-and-bought-the-yarn-ages-ago project:

Yes, I ended up using DPNs in the beginning.  It turns out while Magic Loop works for starting, it doesn't once you get a few rows in -- it puts too much pressure at the corners with only two points.

This is Celestarium.  It's a pi shawl.  Why am I doing another shawl?  Well, because this one's a freaking star chart of the northern sky in knitted form.

Honestly, since this was the other yarn purchase I screwed up on and got the wrong weight for (using sport weight yarn for a fingering weight shawl...because who knew a yarn with socks in the name would be sport weight?), it may come out bigger than planned.  This works because I'm not planning to wear it. If it's big enough, I'll most likely use it as a blanket, or do what my boyfriend suggests and hang it up as a wall decoration.  Especially if I, um, borrow the edging pattern idea from this lovely person (I'm a sucker for infinity cables).

If you're familiar with the pattern, you might have noticed that I've adapted it a bit.  I decided to not do the yarn overs that were paired with the beads. I want it to look like the sky.  Let me tell you, this makes it so much simpler as well; I don't have to worry about one star over two rows, I just have to find the stitch to put the bead on.

However, I upped the complexity a bit by also deciding to the luminosity version, which is the one where someone marked all the starts by their luminosity rating so that you could use different bead sizes for each rating. But it's actually not all that complex.  If you're planning to do this, here's the trick: take an couple of hours to go through the charts and color each bead by the colors in the luminosity chart (this works if your doing the different color version as well, or both). Write a chart matching color to the bead size you're using. Ta da, don't have to worry about it again:

Of course, I ran into a snag where I couldn't get enough different bead sizes to do all the luminosities. Hell, the 6/0 beads are a pain to string on the stitch with this yarn, since it's thicker, and you can only go so big.  So I'm using the 6/0 beads for the lowest two luminosities, then scaling up. Also, watch out for total bead size vs hole size; I actually have to flip the 5/0 and the 4/0 mappings because while the hole is bigger in the 4/0s, the 5/0s I bought are bigger beads overall.

Despite all this, it's actually a rather simple pattern. It's mostly knit, knit, knit...place bead, knit, knit, knit... The only trick is looking at the chart and knowing where the next bead needs to be placed, which of course is easy if you put a set of stitch markers every 20 stitches in the circle, and mark where they are on the chart. This makes the thought process go: 'OK, my next bead is two stitch markers and 13 stitches away'. Boom, get there, put bead, look where next one is. And there are rows where it's mostly knits.

The only demoralizing thing is that I got this far so quickly and I'm on the second to last section, but now I'm slowing down (because pi shawl: the stitch count doubles when you double the rows). Also, looking it up?  Less than 10% done, of course.

It doesn't help when this happens:

This is my parent's cat, Atticus. Why the cat decided to sit there when there was a whole rest of the chair available is the mystery every cat owner has.

It also doesn't help that the yarn keeps dumping dye on my hands, so every time I have to put it down, I have to go wash my hands:

Yeah, I've never had a yarn do this to me. Bleed when washed? Sure, all the time.  Bleed a little on my hands? Yeah, once.  Make it so half my hand is discolored? Never.  The color is worth it, however.  It really does look like a night sky.

So I Went to Rhinebeck and Brought Back More Photos of Cats Than Yarn (Rhinebeck Debrief 2013)

I said I was going to post about Rhinebeck and...I don't know what to talk about.  I re-read my post from last year and realized that my experience was pretty damn similar.  I went upstate, stayed with family, went to the fair, had a fun time, and went back home.  It was great but it was pretty much a repeat of last year, minus the class I took then.  I didn't take a class this year, so I can't even talk about that.

So, I guess I'll just picture dump then (not that I have many good ones.  I seriously have just as many pictures of cats this year, and none of the yarn):

The view from the porch of the building my sister's apartment was in (slightly north of Duchess County).  Pretty leaves. Still loooove the fall upstate, though it was freezing cold both mornings (it was better during the day).  Dunno what was going on at that church over there though.

Crappy picture; got taken through my windshield

The billboard on the way to the fair!  They seem to use the same design every year, though this is the first time I got a picture.  I shouldn't have been on 9G anyway (the billboard is at the intersection of the road from the Kingston-Rhinecliff bridge (it's also a highway, but I forgot the name) and Rt. 9G.  It's meant for people coming from the bridge, which is why it's at a weird angle here)  Turns out you can drive straight down Route 9 through Red Hook to the Fairgrounds.  Duh.  I turned in Red Hook, got on 9G, and got stuck in all the traffic coming off the bridge to the fair.  Took me 30 minutes to get through it.  On the other hand, when I went Sunday, there was no traffic and I got there early because I was expecting to crawl for at least 10 minutes.

I got to the fair with plenty of time though, and got to see everything this time, more than once (several times in some cases...hey, you miss stuff the first two times). Saturday was crowded (figures with all that traffic), so I did more looking than shopping that day, though my mother and I are a bad influence on each other and so we both ended up with unplanned things that Saturday (favorite quote from her this year: 'I'm buying so  many things for myself this year and not for other people!'  I told her that was a good thing, that she should make stuff for herself).  Sunday I ran around with my sisters, and bought most of the yarn I wanted.  I also convinced my poor college student of a sister that she had to buy some yarn there, he he he.

For some reason, I have no pictures of the actual fair, but a few of sheep:

...and a llama (llama llama duck.  You're welcome for the earworm):

Wait, I took this bad picture of a shawl I really liked and want to knit:

I did buy yarn to do it at the fair, and by buy yarn I mean I bought a skein of heavy laceweight dark blue yarn to go with some royal blue fingering weight yarn I bought two years ago and still haven't used...for a sport weight shawl.  Oops. All sorts of fail there.  For some reason I thought that vendor only sold fingering weight yarn.

Of course I then went a bought what ended up being three skeins of sport weight yarn for a fingering weight shawl I've wanted to do since Phil Plait,of all people, linked to the Ravelry page for it, because of course Socks that Rock Mediumweight isn't actually standard sock weight yarn.  At least that just gets you a bigger 'shawl' (it will most likely go on my wall, not get worn.  It's just awesome).

And before you ask, no, I can't use the yarn I bought for the second shawl for the first and vice versa (well, I could do that first one, but I don't want to).  I need a dark black-blue yarn for the second one and two different colors for the first one.

So...wait, did I mention I have tons of photos of cats? I won't derail completely so I'll just post a few that go with a story about yarn.  Saturday night I spent lazing around my sister's apartment. Of course I had bought some of the yarn I bought that day (not the stuff above.  Other yarn.  You'll see). One of her cats (she has two) first decided it liked the yarn I was knitting with:

And then decided it wanted to get the new yarn in my bag:

And then decided that on top of my yarn and bag was a good place to sleep:

Yes, the socks in the bottom corner are my Crazy Purple Socks.  Had to wear something I made to Rhinebeck...

I eventually moved the yarn to the suitcase so it didn't become cat toys overnight.

On Sunday we did dinner and then I drove back to my parent's place.  Since I was lazing about on Monday as well and never made it to the bus to go back to the city (took off Friday and Monday.  Yay four-day weekend), I took pictures of what I bought:

Lots of gray and black this year

...and then decided to go check out the new yarn store that opened up the next town over this year.  Because Rhinebeck wasn't enough yarn.  Anyway, it ended up being a pretty nice store, and I had a nice chat with the owner since I was the only one there mid-day Monday.  Turns out she had organized a bus trip to Rhinebeck on Sunday, and she also had bought more yarn than she needed (her actual statement was closer to: 'I bought some yarn and then asked myself why I was buying yarn; I own a yarn store').  I also bought a skein of yarn, and signed my mother up for the mailing list because she keeps saying she's going to go check out the store and never does (I also told the owner about her so now she has no excuse). 

After the yarn store, I went to a local park and took more pictures:

I also sat in the island in the middle of the lake and knitted a bit.  Because why the hell not;  I had an hour left on the meter for my car.

And that was my weekend at the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival.  And with the cats.

Next year I'll take photos of the fair instead, I promise.