Woolly Interlude

… in the Crochet Pattern-a-Day Calendar, that is.

I crocheted this afghan as a gift back in May of 2005, and wrote up the pattern to share on Crochetville. Then I submitted it to the calendar, and now I’ve got a free one. It’s probably the only design I’ll ever have published, so I was hoping you all would celebrate with me!

Have you ever designed something to knit, crochet, or sew? Do you improvise your patterns? Leave a comment, and a link if you’ve got one, about something you’ve created, or even something you wish you had created, and you’ll be entered into a contest to win a set of Megan-designed coasters and a skein of sock yarn from my stash (although you won’t get them until after the holidays). This post will be open for comments until the end of next Thursday, so you’ve got a week to enter.

Also, I don’t know how many of you guys crochet, but I’m going to try to format the pattern nicely and offer it as a free pattern here. If you’re interested, just stop back by soon!

Boy howdy, it’s been a long weekend! I actually planned on a long weekend, taking Friday and Monday off for a mini-vacation to Iowa. Of course, you always take a chance flying to the Midwest in winter, so I didn’t make it back to Kentucky until Tuesday at 11:30 at night. I was traveling with Heather, and we were fortunate enough to get to spend our extra day with her family, rather than stuck in an airport, but the extra travel when we finally got to it was long. I mean, since when is Dallas between Chicago and Louisville?

The actual vacation bit itself was great, though. It snowed (real snow, not Kentucky snow, we got about 10-12″), I got to see my favorite ballerina dance the lead in Swan Lake not once but twice, and I finished my super stripey cardigan! Of course, I don’t have any pictures of it right now, because I’m sick and because it was a looooong day back at work, since the office staff consists of, well, me, and I was gone for three days.

One thing I do need to post about, though, is my February project for the UFO Resurrection Challenge, since it’s already the 28th! This month, I’ve been quietly working on my very oldest UFO, a crocheted ripple afghan that I started (and nearly finished) in May of 2005.

There’s a little turquoise tail there in the middle of the second turquoise strip from the right; that’s the point at which I picked this back up. The pattern is my own, because, really, it’s not that hard to figure out a ripple pattern. You might notice that one of the cream sections is wider than the others; that’s because it’s the center of the afghan, and also the point at which the color order reverses.

I started this afghan as a gift and was working on it while on a long ago vacation when I realized that I had forgotten a ball of dyelot yarn (and seriously, folks, this was probably the first dyelot yarn I was working with, it’s Lion Brand Wool-Ease) and that I had to give the gift on the way home from vacation. So, I did what anyone who wants to crochet during a 14 hour car trip will do, I went to Walmart and bought an armful of Caron Simply Soft and started a new afghan, which ended up as a pattern in the Crochet Pattern-a-Day calendar. And because the gift had been given, I had no reason to keep working on this blanket (plus, wool + Iowa summer = not too much fun). By the time the weather turned cold, I had been converted to knitting, and couldn’t be bothered to pick this back up. However, I diligently moved it across four states, so now’s as good a time as any to work on it. It’s not done yet, but I’m sure I’ll finish it soon.

Because when it’s done, it’ll make a nice warm nap blanket. That’s good news for the current nap quilt, which was lovingly handmade by my grandmother, but is in need of repair before the binding falls off completely and gets lost somewhere.

This has totally been the weekend of finishing things! Of course, that means it was also the weekend of watching TV, and it was unfortunately the weekend of having a bit of a cold and pretty much sitting on the couch for way too long. So, I give you the weekend in movies and knits (and a crochet, too, for good measure).

We start with The Two Towers Platinum Extended Edition, which is a very long movie. This produced a lovely crocheted coaster, as well as a knit hat.

Here we have a single crocheted coaster. I used KP Shine Sport in some bright pink I had lying around, and made a double crochet circle with a single crochet edging. See, I still crochet! I only made one, because I’m taking it to work to put on my desk. As I’m the only one there, I only need one coaster, right?

As that only accounts for 15 of 223 minutes, I finished off the movie by making a hat out of Rowan Tapestry, a single-ply yarn made of 70% wool, 30% soy fiber. Being a native Iowan, I naturally love soy and soy products (except for tofu, and soy “milk,” and roasted soybeans), so I had to get some of this yarn, and I got colorway SH 171. Because that’s meaningful.

Of course, the only picture I got is of the hat in progress. I’m planning a matching scarf, so this yarn will be appearing again on this blog. For the hat, I just made a garter stitch rectangle and sewed it up to make a hat that stripes vertically.

After those two FOs, I devoted myself wholeheartedly to finishing the red Adamas shawl, my very first project for the UFO Resurrection Challenge. Of course, it’s not blocked yet, but I have summarized the last of the knitting below.

I modified the pattern, only repeating the main chart 12 times before doing the edging chart, which means that this weekend, I had to do two pattern repeats, the edging, and the bind off. That’s a total of 42 32 rows, which in most patterns isn’t that much. With a lace shawl that grows as you knit it, however, these forty thirty-two rows take a very long time. Measured in the inimitable unit of time known as television, they took this long: Return of the Jedi, The Truman Show, Groundhog Day, Dances With Wolves, Ghostbusters, What a Girl Wants (yes, I’ve seen this movie… twice), half of Footloose, and two hour-long episodes of Mythbusters.

And having admitted that, I feel kind of pathetic. But the upside is this:

Now all I have to do is block it and go to bed, so that I can finish sleeping off my cold before work tomorrow.

Sorry, had to get that out of my system. My favorite football team, the Iowa Hawkeyes, just beat Iowa State, our rival, which always makes me happy. And, of course, I’m also happy that we have cable now, because otherwise I’d have to find a much more difficult way of getting the play-by-play. And after watching every game for four years as a member of the marching band, well, it’s important to see the play-by-play. And the best thing is that the networks are getting better about playing footage of the marching bands and having a microphone on them, which (I think) really improves the broadcast.

And that’s enough football, isn’t it? Apologies for any tangents I take from now until, oh, early January. I’ll try to keep them minimal

In other news, um, I didn’t knit anything yesterday. But I did read some more of those library books, and some of them were great. I checked out Barbara Walker’s fourth Treasury, which is interesting, but a little too much about mosaic knitting for me. There were a lot of great lace patterns, although one was a bit too much like a swastika for my tastes. All in all, I’ll be making some notes, and I’d check it out again, maybe photocopy a couple of great patterns, but I wouldn’t buy this book unless I found it for $5, which is unlikely.

I also checked out Knitted Shawls, Stoles, & Scarves by Nancie Wiseman, and it’s okay. The only thing I would knit out of it is the Lavender Linen Lace Shawl, but if I ever want to do entrelac, her instructions seemed pretty good.

I got another Wiseman book, though, that was interesting: The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques. It covers various cast-ons and bind offs, as well as increases and decreases, seams, picking up stitches, etc. Some of the information was really basic, and in many ways I prefer the articles Knitty has had on cast-ons and bind offs, but I hadn’t seen the chained cast-on before. It’s a provisional cast-on worked by crocheting a chain over the needle, which eliminates the need to pick up stitches from a crocheted chain. I think I’ll definitely use this one. This book is useful, and it’s spiral bound, which is a huge plus, but I think a lot of the techniques are adequately covered on the internet. It would be good to have around if you didn’t want to have to look things up online, though.

I’ll save the other two books for a little later, but they’re the two I liked best. Besides, I’ve got another football game to watch….

So, my Lace Swap partner over at Crafty Bean got her package from me the other day, which is exciting. Obviously, people like to tuck fun extras into their packages, and mine was a big knitting needle magnet I found at my favorite LYS, Sophie’s Fine Yarn Shoppe. It’s a great way to show everyone that you’re clearly a knitter, as you can see below.

I also, you know, like that it’s pink.

In other news, here’s a picture of what I got from my swap partner, Lindy. I love the color of the Karabella Lace Mohair, and there’s some gorgeous brown alpaca in there, too.

Of course, there were also goodies like tea, chocolate, knitting and cooking magazines, a magnet, pens, and I could go on. And a couple of great Karabella patterns that should be lots of fun to knit!

And because I have no exciting knitting progress to show you (note that I don’t say there wasn’t any, just that it wasn’t exciting), I’ll distract you all with pumpkins! Tracy knit and felted some awesome pumpkins earlier this week, and posted a pattern for the mini ones. I think they’d be an awesome centerpiece for Thanksgiving dinner, and Tracy also suggested using them as pincushions, and filling the stem with sand to keep your pins sharp. What a great idea! Any of you who knit for the Preemie Project will no doubt already know exactly how creative Tracy is, but if you haven’t stumbled across her blog yet, check it out. There’s always something totally inspirational there!

Happy knitting, and I’ll be back soon. I checked out some awesome and some so-so books from the library, and of course I’ve got to tell you all about them. Also, the Knitter’s Review newsletter reminded me that I’ve got to start working on Christmas presents, so I’ve got an overly ambitious to do list in the works. And I can’t wait to see what everyone else is cooking up, too!