Yarn Along - Baby Blanket Progress

Well June has been a crazy month this year.  The husband took a 17-day motorcycle trip across the country with my dad, then three days after they got home I left for a five-day church conference.  (You can read all about the motorcycle trip on my dad's blog In Search of the Weird.  They found some.)  I've been trying to catch up on a lot of things and re-establish some order and routine around here.

I finished the first baby blanket of the year on June 1, right on schedule.

This is my second time making the Mitered Crosses Blanket from Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting.  I still really like this pattern, and would like to do another variation of it.  Also, I love it when I can knit a whole blanket from the stash.

I love the look of i-cord edging.  It takes forever, but it isn't hard and is so worth it.

This blanket is for a baby I wouldn't "normally" knit a blanket for.  Blankets are usually limited to nieces and nephews, especially since there are so many of them.  But I felt moved to make a blanket for her, I had an idea, I had the yarn, and I make the silly knitting rules anyway, so I did.  I'm not sure yet if this will wait around until her first birthday (when I usually gift blankets), or if I'll give it when the weather starts to turn cold.

During this crazy month of June I've been working away on Nephew E's blanket.  Rendition #4 of the Tell Me A Story blanket.  All 42 squares are done now, and I've started in on edging them.

 Actually at some point during the church conference I lost count and ended up with an extra square.  Whoops.  I'm trying not to look at all the ends already in that picture.  So that's more than half done, running a bit ahead of schedule.

As far as reading goes, there hasn't been much of it with all the other things going on this month.  I do have My Grandmother's Knitting by Larissa Brown out from the library.  It's a great book with stories from some well-known designers.  They tell stories of the knitter who first introduced them to knitting, or the one who really inspired them.  Then they share patterns inspired by these (usually) family members.  I have it more for the stories than the patterns right now, but both are quite good.
Check out Ginny's Yarn Along for more books and knitting.

More to come from me, hopefully soon.  Washcloths are on schedule, and I'm working to finish another Christmas stocking this week.  I need to show you the most recent finished baby sweater, and there's been one more birth this month, so one more sweater to start, too.

Yarn Along: New Baby Blanket

I'm joining in Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.  Check out her blog for lots of links to lots of great projects and books.

I haven't finished anything recently, but that hasn't stopped me from starting the next baby blanket.  This one is for Nephew E.

I've knit this same pattern, Tell Me A Story, three times before: Nephew S (in the pre-blog, pre-Ravelry days), Nephew R, and Nephew O.  This time I'm using Plymouth Encore Worsted yarn, and this is the first time I've used grey as the neutral color instead of cream.  Six squares done so far, out of 42.
This blanket has been accepted as my Defense Against the Dark Arts OWL in the HPKCHC. Stranded back-and-forth knitting, fourth time through a big project, and all the ends to weave in -- I think any one of those elements would have qualified this project for "Practice Repelling the Cruciatus Curse."  But it's not that bad, and while I'm still knitting the squares, it makes good portable knitting.  Staying on schedule with this is taking almost all of my usual knitting time.

For reading, I recently started Ireland's Pirate Queen:  The True Story of Grace O'Malley by Anne Chambers.  My dad picked this up for my husband, but he left it on the dining room table one day too long and I'm reading it before him now.  This is the kind of non-fiction my dad and I absolutely love.  It sounds like Granuaile was a truly amazing woman.  I can't wait to read the rest of this, and I hope to get to go visit the O'Malley lands sometime in the next few years.

Baby Blanket Squares

Most of my knitting time recently has been going into squares for the first baby blanket of the year.  This is my second time making the Mitered Crosses blanket from Mason-Dixon Knitting, and I still love the pattern.  Instigated by the 2011 tsunami in Japan, proceeds from the sales of this pattern still go to Mercy Corps relief work.
For a baby-sized blanket, I adjust the pattern and do a simple 3x3 square.  That's my 5-inch gauge ruler in the picture for scale.  I'm knitting it entirely out of worsted weight stash, and am pretty thrilled that it looks like I may actually have enough of the cream color.  One more square to go, attaching, weaving of ends, and an applied I-cord border (in the multi-color yarn).  Looks to be on track for finishing by the end of May!

I have once again joined the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup group on Ravelry.  I intend that this will distract me from neither my knitting goals nor my blogging.  It did last time, but this time around I feel like I know more about it, and have a plan for incorporating it into my knitting routine.  Hopefully, it will also help me get my ravelry projects page caught up with reality.

Yarn Along - 2012 Washcloths April Edition

Joining in Ginny's Yarn Along. She says:

Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading, and the evidence of this often shows up in my photographs. I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well.
Check out some of the great projects and books linked there this week!

The Lil One wanted to help me knit today, so I pulled out the April washcloth. She sat on my lap for maybe two rows, and then I finished it later in the day. Simple garter stitch with three-row stripes. The goal for this washcloth was to use up the scraps of dishcloth cotton I've accumulated and to do a trial run of three-row stripes. My friend Alisha made a Baby Surprise Jacket a while back using three colors and making stripes that were each three rows wide. It's a little hard to see the effect in the washcloth because I was using variegated yarns and had to swap in new colors when my remnants ran out. But I really like this idea, and I believe I will use it in my next BSJ, which will be my second and probably to be knit in the next few months.

The book is my new toothbrushing reading (use the moments you can), as I've finished the Harold Bloom collection from way back when. The Growing Church: Keys to Congregational Vitality was edited by Rev. Thom Belote, who was our History and Theology presenter at UU MidWest Leadership School my student year and my first year on the volunteer staff. It's a collection of essays by ministers of thriving congregations, and I'm using it to help me get back into church-lady mode as we gear up for this year's MWLS, and I gear up to rejoin my congregation's board in July. I think my position will be Secretary, which means I won't be able to knit as much at the meetings. :-P

Oh, and I finished the OSU Baby Blanket. In time and everything. It ended up being 170 stripes long plus two 3-inch borders. 170 stripes x 2 sides x oh, at least 130 stitches per row = I don't even want to know. Let's just look at the pretty instead.

Yay.

Yarn Along - More Striped Blanket

The end of the blanket is in sight!

Yesterday I started the final border on the Buckeye Baby Blanket. The rows go so much faster with almost half the number of stitches. Imagine that! Very excited to be nearing the end of this project. I'll even be done in time for the nephew's birthday.

Yesterday I read a graphic novel that explains the new Healthcare Reform Law - the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or just ACA). I understand it SO MUCH better now. This book is making the rounds of my Thursday afternoon knitting group. It seems very timely to read it this week while the Supreme Court is hearing arguments concerning this law. I wish there was a series of books like this explaining other pieces of legislation. What a great way to become informed.

I'm joining up with Ginny's Yarn Along again this week. Please check out her blog to browse all the cool books and projects.

Yarn Along - Striped Blanket

The Striped Buckeye Baby Blanket continues. All of my remaining grey yarn is in the picture above. My LYS has ordered more. While I should be avoiding any delays on this project, I'm actually excited that I may get to knit on something else for a few days while waiting for the yarn to arrive. I know I'm ready to be done with something when I start making detailed mental lists of what I'll knit next, which I have been doing today. I think I'm only about 40 stripes and a 3-inch border away from having a square blanket.

For month two of our bookclub the husband and I are reading Stephen King's The Stand. We're listening to it on audiobook, and we chose to go with the expanded version. It looks in the picture like we're almost half done, but that would be almost half done with Part 2 of 6. I'm really enjoying the book, even though it had me feeling that every cough might mean my death. I really enjoy Stephen King's books when I can bring myself to read them. I'm also really enjoying the new bookclub. I think this month's meeting will be to go to the Hunger Games movie together.

Please check out all the great knitting (and crochet) and books over at Ginny's Yarn Along. I've been loving all the cool projects and blogs that gather there weekly.

Nephew O's Blanket

Here is the final report on the blanket I made for Nephew O. for his first birthday last November.

I believe I mentioned before that this is the third time I've made this pattern - green, blue and now orange - one for each of the boy babies of my husband's siblings. It's made in pieces - 21 squares each of two patterns - then each square gets side edgings, the squares get sewn together into strips, the strips into a rectangle, the two end borders (with bobbles) are knitted then sewn on, and the two long side borders are knitted on.

As you may imagine, this makes for more than a few ends to weave in:

This is why this blanket was late. I just couldn't subdue all those ends quickly enough. But it was finally gifted to the deserving little guy last month.

It is a lot of work, but I'll probably make this pattern again. It's great portable knitting while working on the squares, and I think it's a great size for a kid's blanket. They don't stay very little for very long. Toward the end this time around, I was actually thinking of how to convert it into a double knitting pattern. Almost twice the knitting, but all the ends could just hide between the layers. That idea seems to have taken hold, and I think I'll have to follow through with it.

I bought three huge skeins of orange for this project (the cream was all in the stash already) and this is how much I had left at the end:

A very close call, but having made it twice before, I wasn't really worried. Not too much.

Yarn Along - Next Baby Blanket

Please forgive the crappy picture for this week's Yarn Along. It was a beautiful sunny day here, but I didn't think to take a knitting picture until after sunset. The red yarn does not actually glow in the dark. It's quite a nice Ohio State-colored scarlet and gray color combination. Please check out other Yarn Along projects and books (with better pictures) at Ginny's blog.

I just looked back at my posts and realized that I still haven't posted about the last baby blanket -- the orange and cream one due at the end of November and finally gifted recently. I'll put that at the top of my blogging list, now.

The newest nephew (little HH who came so very early) will be turning one at the beginning of April (and he may well outweigh my 19-month old Lil One by then!). Pastel baby colors just didn't seem to fit for this little fighter. So since that branch of the family is full of OSU fans, I got a Buckeye friend to help me pick the best scarlet-and-grey combination of Encore Worsted yarn and cast on.

This pattern is from an old edition of Knitty and is based off a blanket knit by First Lady Lou Henry Hoover. I've made this pattern before, four years ago for Nephew V, out of blue and cream. This time I may have made it a little bigger -- I did some math in my head and cast on several more stitches than the amount in the pattern. Also, I bought all the yarn my LYS had in stock - 3 red and 2 grey - and I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out. Of course I didn't swatch! It's a blanket. If I'm going to make it a square, I think I'm going to need at least one more skein of each color, and I think it'll end up about three feet square. Did I mention it is double knitting? So it's almost like knitting two blankets at once. I am nothing if not ambitious. I'm glad I let myself start it before I finished weaving in all the ends on the last blanket. The estimate right now is that if I knit four rows a day I should be done in time. Each row takes 20 minutes. At least there will be only two ends to weave in for this blanket. The rest can just be tucked between the layers.

I really do love the pattern, though. Double knitting is so much fun, and seems a bit like magic. So far I only have one spot where the yarns crossed over -- it's way back and I can't tell without dropping stitches exactly what happened, so I'm not sure I'd be able to fix it. It isn't the normal crossing mistake I make and have corrected at least twice already. I decided when I found it today that I can live with it.

The book for today's Yarn Along is Le Seigneur des Anneaux: Le Retour du Roi. This is my go-to-bed-nursing book with Lil One. I've been reading The Lord of the Rings in French to her for a while now, at about three pages a day. We just finished the Houses of Healing chapter after the battle at Minas Tirith. These are my favorite books, and this was a great excuse to finally read through my French editions. I bought them while studying in Luxembourg, which was nine years ago now.