I'm Branching Out...

What's that? you say. It's this. I only have a few repeats of Branching Out done, but it's been the hardest few repeats of my short knitting life.

Branching Out, why do you mock me so?

It's such a gorgeous pattern, yet...I just could not get the hang of it. Okay...so I started it at midnight last night. I'm not a good knitter late at night, but I felt pretty confident that I could do this. Was I ever mistaken! Now that I've taken the time to sit down and figure out what I was doing I can sit and watch TV and knit BO.

I'm in love with lace knitting! I'm going to frog the scarf I am still working on for my SIL and start a lace pattern from my Vogue reference book. Then I'm going to start some sort of lace shawl for my grandmother. I have no clue which shawl is the best to pick, but I'm definitely going to start looking.

Okay, off to bed for me. Nighty-night!

After frogging 5 times...I think I have it.

Busy weekend finally over

Mike finally persuaded me to go fishing with him on Friday night. I left work at 5:30, rushed home, changed, and off we went. My family owns a farm in the middle of nowhere Indiana and it has a pond and it's our favorite fishing hole. Mike and my dad go at least once a month during nice weather times. I haven't fished since meeting Mike though so he's been not so patiently waiting to get me out there. My dad didn't help though. See, when I was young I had a habit of taking a book with me to read while fishing. I don't know if it was the patience that I had since I was otherwise occupied or what but I would normally catch about twice what every one else caught (with the exception of my father who is a great angler). Dad's been telling Mike these stories since they first met and Mike wanted to know if it was true.

So we got to the farm and made our way to the pond through the weeds and grass and started fishing. The fish weren't biting much until it was almost too dark to see the bobber go under. Can't really fish like that. We brought home 8 fish and....I caught 6 of them. Mike believes my dad now and he still wants to go fishing again. All in all, it was a good night.

Saturday we ventured out to the Hoosier Hills Fiberarts Festival in Osgood, Indiana. It was a blast! Mike and I both learned to use a drop spindle and then promptly bought roving. We're going to dye the roving with KA and then knit each other hats (if we have enough). Mike's learning to knit!!! He's totally bitten by the bug. He's always wanted a house with some land so he could have horses, but now he also wants sheep and angora rabbits so we can spin yarn. Have I told y'all how much I love my husband??? He's really quite amazing.

Sunday we spent the day with my parents and my younger brother for Father's Day. We had a great time and them came home, fell into bed, and promptly doozed off.

It was definitely a busy weekend, but it was so amazing!

Mike and I drove out past where he works the other day and arrived at a sea of beauty. Aisle after aisle of hanging baskets of petunias of all sorts. It was amazing. We had the hardest time picking a basket and the compromise was to get one that had all the colors in it. This basket is so huge that it barely fit through our sliding glass door to our deck. I'm in love!

Shapely Tank as of last night. It's coming along. I'm doing the neck shaping at the moment and am coming up on the straps which requires a second ball of yarn. I have no clue how to do that so I'm going to research and/or hope someone at knitting tonight knows how to do this.

Shapely Tank, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...Mystical Creation Yarns Cotton Ribbon is a joy to work with. Definitely rougher on the hands than wool, but not as bad as I thought it would be. The colors are gorgeous, a little pooling, but it's not so bad. I love the short row shaping at the bottom. I went through some intense calculations for the right size, cast on, and had about 20 stitches too many so I frogged back and cast on again for my actual bust size. It's perfect now. This picture is after day one.

Answers for Gaby

Gaby,

Thank you for your comment! You didn't leave an email addy for me to respond to so I'm going to respond here.

For the variegated scarf (My-So-Called scarf) I used handpaintedyarn.com's merino in the worsted weight in a color way called Magnolia. It was amazing to work with and the first time I had ever even touched merino. If you can find some (try Ebay) it's awesome to work with.

The red cabled scarf was done in Lion Brand Wool-Ease using the Irish Hiking Scarf pattern. If you like the pattern it's a good way to start cabling. Google it and it'll come up along with the knit-along.

The tan scarf was done in a wool/acrylic blend that I got in bulk from Ebay.

The bulky black and red cabled scarf was done in the Irish Hiking Scarf pattern with Lion Brand Wool Ease Chunky.

Whoo...I think that's it. Oh, wait! The purple one. I have no clue. It was for my friend and she picked out the yarn, but it was bought at Wal-Mart and they still have it.

On Memorial Day Mike and I decided to tackle dyeing some cream colored Cascade 220. We picked the above colors as these are the colors Mike most loves to see me wear! This picture shows our preparations. I had so much fun working on this and the Sophie Bag that I knit with the yarn (see post below) is so pretty. I think I'm addicted...wait...I know I am!

Dyed and waiting to be zapped in the microwave.

Kool-Aid Dyed yarn for Sophie after drying for a day.

Sophie, pre-felting, in Kool-Aid Dyed Cascade 220. So far I'm thrilled with the way this has turned out. Felted to take place later today.

And in non-knitting related news, this past weekend Mike and I finished our container garden. The large one on the right is our rosebush, next to it and on the ground are lillies surrounded by portulaca, and in the front with the cage are our grape tomatoes. There are also three hanging baskets, but those didn't fit in the picture that I took while trying to lean as far backwards off the deck as I could!

And here she is in the socks.

This is my mom. I knit her ankle socks out of Cascade Fixation. Her face when she opened them was absolutely priceless. I cannot keep a secret from my mother and I managed to knit these and give them to her without spilling the beans. Okay...so I had her open them before anyone else got there for Mother's Day, but come on...I kept them from her for over two weeks! :)

Booga Bag in Lion Brand Cotton-Ease. I loved knitting this and when I was done I lined it with some funky quilting fabric and then used a braided ribbon of sorts for the handles.