Newest Aran Afghan Squares

Last Tuesday evening was the latest class for me Taste of Aran Afghan. Usually, I have found that one of the two blocks we work on flies by, while the other drags on. Happily, it is not the case this time! Both blocks seem to almost knit themselves. I finished the first, Star Stitch, Thursday morning. You can see a poor photograph of its beauty above. I finished the second block by the end of the same day. I like to get the blocks finished as close to the class time as possible so that I don’t set it aside and then not finish! :)
I have a stealth project with a deadline that is not in the too-distant future, so I doubt that I will be posting much until it is done.

Finally Catching Up

During the Christmas season, I was quite busy, so I neglected my blog. However, I am now back to posting. To see what I have been knitting in the past month, feel free to click the link on the left to view my Ravelry projects, as I have finished many, many projects, lately.
Most recently, I am working on a baby blanket for a coworker. During our mid-November all staff meeting, I was sitting near the back knitting on a sweater. I was recognized by one of our clients as going above and beyond in my job. As such, all eyes turned towards me. I knit because I concentrate better and fidget less during meetings. My bosses understand this so there is no problem. However, I prefer not have EVERYONE interested in what I am doing as I do not like to be a distraction. Well...To make a long story a little shorter, I later received an email from a coworker that I don't know that well. It read, "Do you make baby blankets?" I basically said, "No," as I don't like the idea of making something that someone else has imagined. I am always afraid that it will not be what they expected or that they will want me to use a yarn or pattern that I hate. Several weeks later, an invitation to her baby shower arrived in my inbox, so I decided to make her one, but in the yarn and pattern combination of my choosing.
I drove down to VY&T that evening and purchased 5 balls of Berroco's Comfort and a simple pattern for the Heritage Blanket. (I later returned one ball as the blanket is already getting plenty big enough.) I hope to have it finished today and may get a picture up by the weekend. The shower is next week, so I need to wash and block it, too.

Fractured Lattice Afghan Block

This past Tuesday night, I went to the second installment of my “Tour of Aran Afghan” knitting class. I ended up being an hour late for a two hour class as I was incorrectly remembering that the class started at 6PM and not 7. I felt like a complete idiot, but at least I was able to be there for a little over half of the instruction time. Since that night, I have been working on finishing the two squares that we started in class. I finished the second one, except for the top border, quickly. I love the pattern and could picture myself designing a sweater with it in the future. The other one, however, I hated knitting. It is finished, just today. I like the way that it turned out, but I had to pay close attention to every row of the chart. As soon as I would start to think that I had the pattern memorized, I would quickly find an error! So, without further ado, here is the Fractured Lattice block for my afghan.

Taste of Aran Afghan

I love knitting in groups, especially in groups of people who are all knitting the same thing. So, when Faye, at Village Yarn and Tea, started talking up her aran afghan class, I was intrigued and signed up. I didn't want to spent hundreds on the yarn, so I ordered 24 balls of Wool of the Andes from Knit Picks in white. My living room is mostly black and white, with a floral black and white couch, so this will go great. It is also a great, neutral color so if I decide to use it in a different room it will still go great.

Class began on September 8th. We started the simplest block, Candle Flame, during class. Faye taught cabling without a cable needle, a technique that I already love to use. The class was fun and I look forward to October's class.
I finished the block the next day. The top picture, is of the unblocked "square." Faye recommended not blocking any of the squares until the end as they will probably come out different sizes, due to the nature of the patterns. They will need to be blocked to match one another closely.

New Cotton Project

When I knit for babies, I just love to make sweaters. I have used both washable wool and cotton many times. I have found that mom's don't mind laying a sweater out to dry instead of throwing it in the dryer, so I don't worry about it much. My SIL, with the 18 month old, is not usually very careful with laundry. However, she loves the things that I knit so they are well taken care of. I made a little hoodie for her son E last spring and she puts it on him all the time. I used Tuulia Salmela's Tailored Sweater Pattern, which is lovely. A person does need to know exactly which measurements to use, but I have found that with a little research, I can make a pretty good guess.
Over the weekend I was in my favorite LYS, Village Yarn and Tea. They were having a 40% off sale on many of their summer yarns and Tahki's Cotton Classic was on the list. Available for sale, they had a deep chocolate brown, a bright orange and a cornflower blue. I purchased two skeins of blue and one of each of the other colors and figure that it should be easy to get a sweater out of it for him for less than $15. I plan on using the orange and brown for accent stripes.

FYI I finished the stealth project, so I should have more stuff that I can actually blog about, now! :)

Skirt Knitting Class

My friend K & I finally took our skirt design and knitting class at Village Yarn, on June 13th. The class was nice and I really like the design worksheet that Carol Lansinger (the designer) had created and handed out. It was just the 2 of us in the class and so it finished earlier than expected. During the class, I was the only one who had a completed swatch with me, so we used it to design a skirt to fit me. I will probably knit it up for fall as I love the pattern and have measured another skirt that I love to realize that the guesses I made for some of the measurements were very close. Also during the class, we knit up these swatches. It was fun and let us see what the border on one of Carol's patterns really looks like. All in all, it was a good class and I am glad that I took it.

Saturday Fun with Friends

On Saturday, my friend K picked me up for knitting, about an hour earlier than I expected. My DH and I had just returned from a walk, so she was lucky that I was home, but this also meant that I was ready to go. We picked up another friend and headed off to Village Yarn and Tea. We had a lovely few hours knitting and talking and then realized we were all hungry, so we headed off to the Mongolian Grill, a restaurant near my house. There we had a plate of fresh, lightly stir fried vegetables and our choice of protein (beef, chicken, tofu, etc.) We sat there for almost an hour and a half and then I needed to get home so that I could leave again. I had been invited to another friend’s house for dinner. DH was playing in a softball tournament, so I went alone.
The evening was filled with good food and interesting conversation. Also invited were our church’s missionaries that have been living in Central Asia and are home to gather more support and then will be moving on to Austria to work with the same people groups, but these will be refugees. Listening to them talk about their experiences was fascinating. The couple comprises of an American man and his Austrian wife. With my love for accents, I particularly enjoyed listening to her talk. She also brought a little different viewpoint on each subject, being from Europe rather than the US. We talked of governments, learning new languages, and told many personal stories and the occasional joke.

More Classes!

Watching the flowers start to bloom outside my front door and then seeing the snow flurries today, makes me impatient for spring. So, I have been looking to knit in lighter colors and fabrics. However, my friend K has also lured me into taking a class on skirt knitting at Village Yarn and Tea. I don’t have much money to spend on yarn for swatches, etc for the class, so I went stash diving on Saturday afternoon. I came up with what I think will be enough yarn for a skirt in Knit Pick’s Wool of the Andes Kettle Dyed. This one really does not fit with my desire to knit spring fabrics, but the colors are lovely! I started and finished my swatch for the class, yesterday. I even had it blocked by the time that I went to bed. I plan to hang it with a weight on the bottom to see how much stretching out I can expect when wearing the skirt. Since it is a 100% wool yarn, I don’t expect much, but thought that I had better check it.

I have also registered for another class with Tuulia Salmela on knitting sweaters from the top down with set in sleeves. I met Tuulia on the Seattle to Portland Yarn Train in January of this year and really enjoyed talking with her about the Kauni yarn that she had purchased. She inspired me to knit the Revontuli Shawl. I thoroughly enjoyed listening and expect to love the class. This one, I invited my friend K to join me on, so I am sure that I am just as much of an enabler as she has been in getting me registered for the skirt class!

ETA: I just received a call from VY&T. They had to cancel my skirt class due to insufficient students signed up. :( However, I emailed my friend to see what we should do instead, so we get the joy of planning another outing!