If you give a knitter a dust rag...

I had great plans for Labor Day weekend. I was going to finish Omelet, I was going to quilt Penguins, I might have even finished the binding on Penguins. Saturday I started working on the Penguin quilt and realized I didn't have enough batting so that required a quick run to town. As long as I was in town I figured I may as well check the second hand shop to see if I could find a cute outfit for the Des Moines Quilt Show in October. The moment I walked in the door I saw this beautiful sewing cabinet complete with a Singer sewing machine and matching chair. It was marked 60 dollars, but they were having a red, white, and blue sale. The clerk looked really hard and found some red and white on the seat so I got it for 45 dollars. Of course it also meant that I had to drive back into town in the afternoon with the husband (and explain to the husband why adding a sewing themed piece of furniture to our cramped apartment was absolutely necessary.) Saturday I got my Penguin quilt basted and a few rows on Omelet finished.

Sunday I did a little rearranging in our living room so that the sewing cabinet had a home and we could access our front door again. I did outline quilting on all of the penguins and fish and did about 10-15 rows on Omelet.

This brings us to the rabbit hole that was Monday. I wanted to clean one corner of our living room to make space for something the husband wanted to move in there. (After not getting too upset with me for buying the sewing cabinet he pretty much had carte blanche this weekend.) Of course from that corner I could see our printer table and that needed organizing, which led to the chair next to the printer, which required moving things to the bedroom where there was more mess to deal with. Six hours later I have two new bookcases in the living room (which looks amazing!) a clean hallway, and half-way clean bedroom. 

With all of this distraction Omelet still fared pretty well this weekend. I have two rows and the bind-off left. I wanted to stay up late finishing it last night, but I know it will be another hour or two before it's done and I have work today. Hopefully tonight I'll do the last bit of work and tomorrow can start the Christmas knitting.

Thank you

I want to start by thanking everyone for the kind comments last week. I am a firm believer that a blog should reflect the whole creation process included the bad parts. Last week I felt like a whiny child crying "Boo-hoo, this is taking too long." I anticipated the comments would be along the lines of "Suck it up buttercup," and reminding me that I don't have to make a shawl; when I want to knit socks I should cast on those socks. Instead you guys told me exactly what I needed to hear. You reminded me that my shawl is looking beautiful (that it will look even better when it's blocked) and that I can finish if I hang in there. I'm in a much better knitting place this week.

I started Chart E (the last chart!!!) over the weekend. I am currently on row 13 of 34. I want to wear this shawl to a wedding I'm attending in mid-September. When I started knitting I set the goal of finishing by the end of August. I'm not sure I'll be done by August 31, but I'm pretty sure when you check in for next week's yarn along I'll be sharing some socks. Once Omelet is blocked and I can do a proper photo shoot with her I'll share the finished shawl.

Never Ending Shawl

It feels like I've been working on this shawl forever. It just keeps going and going. Some of this is the fact that this shawl is one of the more complicated projects I've made (not to mention my first real attempt at lace) and requires a lot more focus than my knitting usually does. 

One of the things I love about blogging is the ability to see a project's progress. Turns out Omelet made it's debut on the blog July 17. I guess my progress isn't so bad when I consider I've only been working at it for a month. 

I have a couple pairs of socks with simple ribbing waiting to go on my needles. I think they will be the perfect project to celebrate the completion of Omelet.

Yarn Along

Tomorrow I finally get to share the quilt I've been working on this summer. Since I don't want to miss joining up with Tami Ami and Ginny I've decided to write my knitting post a day early. I'm almost finished with chart C of Omelet. It's really exciting to see something new coming off of my needles. This weekend I asked my husband to help me wind the second skein of yarn for this shawl. After we finished winding the requested skein he suggested we go ahead and wind ALL of my yarn.

We have a don't ask don't tell policy when it comes to my yarn and fabric (and his books) so I don't think he knew what he was getting into when he suggested we wind everything that was in skein form. He ran to the kitchen to get a drink and returned to find this waiting for him.

When we wind balls together I act as the swift and he gets to use the ball winder. He got major points half way through when he made the comment that if we had a swift he could wind my yarn without me. He also got big points for telling the difference between fingering and lace weight yarn. Three hours later and I now have 10 skeins happily waiting to go on the needles.

*For those who are curious I'm using the yellow yarn for Omelet and will make another shawl for someone for Christmas, the brown will be made into a hat for husband, the four dark blue skeins are going to become a cardigan, and I'm thinking the two light blue skeins will become mittens if I can find a good fingering weight pattern.

Omelets or Scrambled Eggs???

When I was learning to make omelets in my high school cooking class our teacher shared a great secret with us. If you mess up you just change the omelet into scrambled eggs and no one knows that great scrambled eggs weren't your original intent. (Okay maybe this isn't a great secret but my cooking skills don't go much further than great scrambled eggs.) 

I'm not sure that my Omelet shawl will be as easy to save if I mess it up. I'm struggling with my rows continuously being one or two stitches off. The stitch isn't in the logical place for it to be and it creates more problems when I frog so I've just been adding or decreasing at the end of each section as needed. Maybe not the best solution, but so far it's working. 

I have 13 rows left of chart B and then I move on to the next chart. I'm hoping that since charts C-E are each knit once the rest of it will go pretty quickly. I have a month and a half to finish this shawl and am really starting to feel the time crunch. (I know, I have a twisted sense of deadlines. This is also why when this shawl is finished I'm casting on Christmas presents.)

Shawl Progress

As predicted my shawl has gotten all of the attention this week and the socks and green sweater have been horribly neglected. Since I plan to wear the shawl to a wedding mid-September this is probably a good thing. The shawl has charts A-E, with 4 repeats of chart B. I'm halfway through the second repeat of chart B.

The lace doesn't look like much now, but it shows a great deal of promise. 

I can't wait to see what more of it looks like.

Knitting ADHD

This week I think my knitting brain has been struck with ADHD. Nothing I've touched has brought much satisfaction. I'm not sure if it's the heat or arthritis but I haven't been in the mood to do much cabling. I fought these feelings and have made some progress on the green sweater.

I like the fact that this sweater is knit as one piece with shaping added in. I think it will create a very tailored piece when it's finished and I love that I don't have to do any big seams. The thing I hate is that it's close to 300 stitches long so I only do one or two rows a day. Progress is very slow, but it continues to be made.

This weekend was extremely hot. I couldn't handle the thought of knitting the green sweater and having all of that yarn in my lap. I have a dirty little secret hiding in my knitting stash. A lone sock. (I know it's a shocking secret I'm sure no other knitters share.) I prefer using DPNs for socks, and usually I cast on the second sock immediately after finishing the first sock so second sock syndrome doesn't have a chance to strike. Since finishing this sock I've finished three pairs of socks and a shawl since finishing the first sock of this pair in January. Unfortunately I chose the wrong pattern for this yarn and refused to admit it until the end of the first sock. This sock continues to haunt me though so I cast on it's mate on Saturday. I'm not overly motivated to make hand knit socks in July and a sock I don't particularly love isn't going to draw my attention very often, but it's on my favorite needles for sock knitting so it will get done sooner or later.

Monday I finally found something to capture my knitting attention. Last week I shared pictures of my new Shimmer yarn. I've gotten it wound into a ball and have started knitting Omelet. I love this yarn and it works perfectly with my pattern. I've done a couple of projects with lace details, but nothing quite like this. I am in LOVE with this pattern and this yarn. My guess is that next week the green sweater and socks will have been neglected horribly as this shawl and I have a joyous knitting affair.

Almost done...

I'm beginning to wonder what it is with cuffs. I set myself a goal of having a sleeve finished by the next Yarn Along and once again I find myself within an inch of being done. This weekend I focused on Free Motion Quilting a quilt for the first time. This sleeve has been my happy place. When everything seemed to be going wrong and I was questioning whether or not I should be allowed to sew anymore I would walk away from the quilting, pick up the simple knitting of this sleeve, and could remind myself that I am a competent women capable of creating things of great beauty out of simple materials. (Yes, I'm even starting to see this purple sweater as beautiful.)

This weekend I even found some great buttons for this sweater. I need to do a bit of research before I steek. (I'm somewhat confused why I left nine stitches in the middle, but am only supposed to sew a line of securing stitches one knit stitch apart. Until I know what will happen to the other 6 stitches and how to put those stitches on needles for the button band I think I'm going to wait to finish this sweater.)

Right now Knit Picks is having their summer yarn sale. I got some great yarn for Christmas presents (more on that later) and a lovely lace weight so that I can finally make Omelet. This yarn is 70% alpaca, 30% silk and so soft and dreamy. I can't wait to start knitting with this.

Shimmer yarn, colorway Buttercream