2008 Projects

2008 Projects, originally uploaded by Ballatrina2008.

Here is a visual collage of all my knitted projects from 2008!

Just quickly...

I thought i'd post a quick pic of the 'shrug', now called mini-cardi, that I finished off last night. I'm glad I went and got an extra ball the other day - otherwise it would have been a weird length! Just need to find someone to take a photo of me wearing it now!
It's hard to tell from this photo, but its about hip-length, and a lovely rose/coral colour. Its so thick and warm, perfect for the miserable weather today!

I'm in meetings tonight and tomorrow night for youth group, but I think I might get a bit more done on my cowl-neck shawl over this weekend, since i'm in a good stride! Then I can start on my Sassy :)

What a weekend!

Winter has well and truly hit Wellington! The front page of this morning's paper just goes on and on about all the damage the storm caused over the weekend... All in all it meant I got through a couple of knitting projects that had been sitting there waiting to be finished for a couple of weeks!

Friday night was spent sorting out rewards points certificates for my Sunday School kids, followed by organising music for youth band practise on Saturday afternoon, which meant knitting came later on in the night and into the wee hours of the morning. I'd been going through a bit of a knitting funk last week, not good!













I made these to cheer up a friend at work - i'd showed her a pattern and she said that she would have made them in grey and white... so I set off to Knit World and picked up the first ball of grey and white wool I could find - it just happened to be 14ply, which was way too thick for the pattern! So I'd been looking around for a pattern that I could easily manipulate for such thick wool (preferably not on dpns!), and finally found this one which worked like a charm :) She loves them!

Although - this turned out to be my first mini-disaster project! I'd finished the first one and had just done the ribbing of the second one, when my plastic needle snapped in half! It was terribly upsetting, since I was using the needles my Grandma had given me when she taught me years and years ago :( I know its going to be too hard to repair, but I need to think of some way of displaying it, with the other one which is still fine, since they mean so much to me. Any ideas are welcome! I would have got both the mittens done in one night if that hadn't happened, as I was out at M&Ds working on them and didn't have another set of needles with me! Thus the start of the knitting funk...

Anyway, I also finished my Presto Chango on the weekend:












This is SUCH an adorable pattern! I love that when baby spits up, you just unbutton the front panel and wash it, instead of washing the whole top! Definately making some more of these up :) The colour of this one is more like the first photo, but the detail of the lace panel shows up in the second one.

With those two projects out of the way, i'm now working on a new top for me, called Shrug This. After looking through lots of other people's projects on Ravelry and discovering that following the pattern actually makes a top sized for a 6-year-old, i'm using bigger needles and thicker yarn to make it more 'me' sized. Looking good so far - i've finished off the sleeves and just working on the body, so it should be finished tonight or tomorrow night - but now I fear it may be a bit bigger than I planned! Not that that's a problem with a shrug, I can always cross it over in the front if it is too big. Photos up soon I hope.

Social weekend

Bec left on Wednesday, and already its really quiet! M&D are also away this weekend, so instead of pouting on my own (although i'd probably get a ton of knitting done that way!), i'm going out with S tonight for drinks and a catch up, and H tomorrow night to see Sex and the City, and enjoying a quiet night on Sunday since the final of Greys and Men in Trees is on! So there, I do have a life :P

Knitting-wise though, I have another baby to knit for, so i'm making the Presto Chango sweater - its such an easy pattern so far, although a few holes have appeared at the end of the moss stitch on the back, but no-one but me is going to notice... It appears I have developed a slight case of insomnia lately, so I didn't put my knitting down until about 11.30 last night, since I figured I had to try and get some sleep if I was going to make it through a day at work AND my outting tonight!

I ordered my wool online today for Sassymetrical , which i'm so excited about making - the wool has to come from Canada though so it may take a while to arrive :( I'm going down to the local to get the wool for this Shrug which i've been planning to work on for a while - it was the first thing on my Ravelry queue! I've also been asked to make another Cabled Cap for mum, but that shouldn't take to long to whip up, since I know what i'm doing now. All that being said, i've put the baby kimono into hibernation for the moment, in hopes that i'll be inspired to work on it again soon! I'd planned it to be a Christmas present, so i'm not in any real rush.

QUOTATION OF THE DAY from the New York Times:
"Plants have a secret social life."
Susan A Dudley, an evolutionary plant ecologist at McMaster University, who found that a plant species can recognize its relatives...