Yarn Along - March Washcloth & Starting Them Young

Ginny's Yarn Along is a great place to see lots of knitting and reading ideas.  I'm joining again this week.  Thank goodness for the Yarn Along; it seems to be the only time I blog recently.

I found the March washcloth.  Niece K had stuffed all the knitted things from the coffee table into the toy purse they were playing with when she visited.  Makes perfect sense, but it took me a while to discover.  This washcloth is knit out of a cranberry color of Nashua Creative Focus Cotton (CFCT033), and the pattern is Box Stitch (March 7th on my perpetual calendar).

I've been reading Annie and the Swiss Cheese Scarf by Alana Dakos (of Never Not Knitting fame) a lot recently.  It's a sweet little book about a little girl learning to knit.  Lil One got the deluxe version of this book for Christmas (includes paper dolls and a jigsaw puzzle), and in the past week or so has completely fallen in love with it.  We read it several times a day and Lil One has started knitting her own blue scarf -- well, she's sat through two rows of 15 stitches with her hands on the needles, which I find impressive for a 2-and-a-half year old.  She's also incorporating phrases from the book into her speech.  She'll look at me and proclaim, "Mommy, you're a knitter!" or grab and hug the nearest random knitted thing and declare, "I love your knitting SO MUCH."  While I know this won't last, I'm pretty thrilled.

Yarn Along - First 2013 Stocking

Joining Ginny's Yarn Along again.  Check out lots of knitting and reading at her blog.

I'm getting started on the first of the Christmas Stockings for 2013.  I'll have three or four to do, so I'd like to have the first one done by the end of March.  Deep in the tangle of intarsia, but moving along well.

I've finished the March washcloth, but can't find it now.  When Niece K was over for an afternoon this week, she played with some of the knitted things that had been living on the coffee table.  I have no idea where they got to in the course of that.  They are around somewhere, but I haven't been able to find them yet.

For reading, I'm still on Turn of the Screw via Craftlit.  It's a very interesting story.  I'm not at all accustomed to having a narrator quite this unreliable.

Yarn Along and Extra Winter Washcloth

Joining Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.  Check out her blog for lots of knitting and reading fun. 

Apologies for the picture quality.  It's been very grey and wintry, and opportunities for pictures in sunshine are rare.  This is the +1 washcloth for the first quarter of the year.  Still in Nashua Handknits Creative Focus Cotton, this time in a navy blue.  The pattern is Ribbed Slip Stitch, the pattern for February 19 from my pattern-a-day calendar.  February 19th is the day our newest nephew was born!  He of the navy-yellow-orange bsj.

My current reading is mostly through Craftlit.  Right now listening to Henry James' Turn of the Screw, which I have never before read.  Very interesting, and I'm so glad to have the discussion along with it.

Yarn Along - Golden Lion Throne

Joining in with Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.  Check out what everyone is reading and knitting, and join in the fun.

I have recently discovered the Craftlit Podcast by Heather.  I had to go back to the beginning and start listening to everything (I'm "that sort of bear"), so I've just finished listening to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  I am really enjoying this podcast.  Good crafting talk, great literary talk, and books.  It is a bit weird listening to episodes from several years ago.  She made a reference to information she got from a knitters' yahoo group, and I realized these episodes are pre-Ravelry.  What a watershed moment it was for knitters when Ravelry was created!  Hard to imagine what we'd do without it, now.

The project I'm knitting for myself right now is the Golden Lion Throne, a shawl made with both lace and mosaic knitting techniques.  I'm taking a class for this at my LYS, and it's quite nice to have a small group of us working through the pattern together.  I really am loving it.  The rows are very long - four of them in an hour and a half is good progress, and the pattern requires lots of attention.  But I am still enjoying the knitting, and I think the result is going to be wonderful.

I'm at about row 70 of 101.

Gloves and BSJs

 Finally, a picture of the husband's finished fingerless gloves.  He's been wearing them everyday.  He was showing them off to my dad, and now Dad wants a pair too.  I love it when the handknits are worn and used to full capacity.

The Baby Surprise Jacket Assembly Line continues work apace.  The brown-green-blue sweater has been gifted, and the navy-yellow-orange one is getting sewn up and having buttons added today.

Since my sister-in-law is in labor today, I call that pretty good timing.  This one has stripes of five rows each, which I think helps it look more like a striped sweater.  With only three-row stripes, the colors seem to blend a bit as you look at the sweaters.  I couldn't keep the stripes continuous around the shaping, though, so I may go back to three-row stripes.

 Next on the needles is a bleu-blanc-rouge sweater for a friend who now lives in France.  For these stripes, I'm using the Fibonacci Sequence (1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21-34-55).  Gotta keep it interesting now I'm on my seventh BSJ in the last eight months.  I ran out of white about 30 to 40 stitches short, but called that plenty close enough.  I'm hoping the blue holds out for the final wide stripe.

I am knitting something very fun for myself in the midst of all this, too.  That deserves its own post.

2013 Washcloths - February Edition

February's washcloth is done already.  The pattern for February 2nd on my pattern-a-day calendar was Snowdrop Lace.  Since we got some snow that day, I decided it would be perfect for a washcloth.  This was made with Nashua Handknits Creative Focus Cotton, in the color CFCT025, which is a silvery grey.  I quite like this lace pattern.  Easy to memorize, simple, looks good.  Two down, fourteen to go.

Several people commented on my Facebook link to the post about January's washcloth, letting me know where in my area I could get Sugar 'n Cream yarn.  I found out about a JoAnn's Fabrics & Crafts I didn't know was nearby, and have already been to stock up on dishcloth cotton and buttons for Baby Surprise Jackets.  Thanks, commentors!

I finished the husband's gloves last Sunday, but since he's been wearing them to work everyday this week, my first chance to get a daylight picture of them will be this weekend.

Tomorrow I'll be starting a class at my LYS to knit the Golden Lion Throne Shawl (the blue and cranberry colored shawl in the pictures on the Ravelry pattern page is the one knit by an employee at my LYS).  I'm really looking forward to it.  Fancy knitting for myself!

Yarn Along - Flood and BSJ

Joining in for Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.  Check out lots more knitting and reading on her blog.

My brother found my size 3 needle tip!  He was riding in my car, where I had been sitting and knitting before the tip went missing, and it somehow revealed itself to him, because he just picked it up off the floor.  Hooray!  With this find added to all the wonderful knitting Christmas gifts, he is in the lead for doing the most to facilitate my knitting this year.

So now that the tip has returned, I'm knitting away on the next Baby Surprise Jacket.  For this one I'm trying five-row stripes.

This year marks 100 years since the Great Miami River flood of 1913.  My senior thesis was on this flood and the response to it.  Hamilton and Dayton, Ohio, were worse than decimated -- estimates are that one out of three Hamilton residents were homeless (at least temporarily) after the flood.  75% of buildings flooded.  (Way worse than one out ten.)  Afterward the people in this valley created the Miami Conservancy District, which is still a national model for regional flood control.  None of the areas designed to be protected by the massive works of the MCD has flooded since.  The flood was the last week of March, and there are going to be lots of commemorative events this year.  I'm preparing by reading through the books I still have from my senior thesis days.  The one in the picture is "Through Flood, Through Fire:  Personal Stories from Survivors of the Dayton Flood of 1913" by Curt Dalton.  There is a real wealth of first-hand accounts of the flood.  Personal stories are a very powerful way to study history.