Hide All the Ends!!

Currently, I am finishing a baby blanket. Now, this is not your usual one color blanket, which would have more than enough ends for you to hide. I decided that this should be a striped blanket. Stripes means LOTS of ends. I hate hiding ends.

I'm not sure why I hate it so much. It's not hard. Especially since I have recently learned a better, and quicker, way to do it. It takes maybe a minute per end. There is just something about it that I cannot stand. So, of course, I do stripes. I should have been smart. I should have done strips that were two rows. Then, I could have just carried the colors up. I would only have had to hide the ends of the balls of yarn. Nope. I had to do one stripe two rows, and the other stripe had to be six rows. You cannot carry yarn up a six row stripe.

The blanket is already over due, and so I can no longer put off the tedium of hiding the ends. I must suffer through it before I can start much of anything else.

I also have the horror of deciding to finish all my guilt knitting this year. That means that I am also unable to start as many other things as I would like. The guilt knitting pile is huge. I have several sweaters as well as a couple pairs of mittens and a few pairs of socks. I am not looking forward to it, hence why I haven't really started it.

The one thing I have started? A scarf for a beginning lace class I hope to teach. So, technically, it's not even hobby knitting. It's knitting for work. Sometimes, I wonder why I ever got into this. (Plus the stash needs to be reorganized.)

The End of the Beginning

So, the beginning of the new year is drawing to a close. I have a few goals in mind (yes, late, I know. It takes me a while to figure out how I want to spend my energy.). 
First off, I want to start fewer projects while I still have stuff on (most of) my needles. I don't need 20 projects going. I only need 3 or 4. (or 10)
Also, I want to use patterns and yarn I already have. That is the point of the stash. If I didn't want to use it, I wouldn't have bought it.
I want to work on designing a few more things and actually writing the patterns for them. Then putting them up for sale.
 Finishing projects also means hiding ends, blocking, taking pictures, and making notes on what I liked/disliked about the project. What I thought of the yarn, pattern, needles, colour choices. All that. 
I also want to spend more time sewing, bringing my crochet skills up to par, I want to read at least 1 book per month. I also want to finish more pairs of socks, and get  my guilt knitting done and off my chest.
All good things to know by the end of the beginning of the new year.
Cheers.

Nuvem

So...I finished Mystic Ice. I've been working on it since May, and the really long rows slow me down. I was down to 8 shawls on the needles for about two hours before casting on Nuvem. It is a very simple wrap, but I just had to make it.

I'm using a lace weight yarn from Dye for Wool, an Etsy shop based in Germany. The colors is Dark Clouds on a Rainy Day, and it is a beautiful grey. Since I don't have quite enough in the skein, I'm getting a second skein in a grey-pink color called Dyeing Rose from the same shop. I'll be doing the outside edge and ruffle in the pink. I hope the colors match since I was unable to actually compare the yarns.

One thing I have realized from working on this, is that lace weight yarns can be tricky to work with. You'd think I would have already figured that out, considering that I have made many, many projects with lace weight yarn. I love lace weight yarn. And yet, it is very tricky when working with more than one needle of any sort. Nuvem starts out with two circulars, and suggests you work the whole thing on two. I hate working with two circular needles. So as soon as it got big enough, one needle was eliminated and now I must convince myself it does not mean I can cast on yet another shawl.

I am being sorely tempted by Sugar Plum Fairy. I have some beautiful light grey yarn by Juniper Moons Farm, Findley. So pretty. Such soft, lovely yarn to work with...oh dear, I might end up with 11 shawls going at once. Almost all of which are going to be huge.

A Small Parade...

Amazingly enough, with all the projects I have going I managed to finish a couple things

First off: Begonia. It's done. It's knitted, seamed, and washed. And it's beautiful. If I do say so myself.

 The whole vest ended up being longer than I had expected while making it, and that was good. I was afraid it might be too short.

And a close up of the small lace section in the back. This was a lovely, "mindless" knit.

Second: Semi-Precious. It was a fun knit, but required a little more attention than I was expecting. Thank goodness for stitch markers.

 The yarn was lovely to knit with, and got softer after it was washed and blocked. I was a little worried about that since the yarn felt slightly scratchy while I was knitting with it.

I was feeling great about these projects, and then I started a wrap, and a shawl, and a hat. I finished the hat. The other two projects, well, they are still on going. Which brings me up to a grand total of NINE shawls on my needles at this point. I want to start knitting the Icicles Shawl, I got some new yarn from my swap buddy, and I want to knit Nuvem. Sadly, I cannot start them yet. I must finish at least 2 shawls, and then I have at least 3 (now 4 I guess) that I have both pattern and yarn for that I should start. Nuvem must wait.

On the plus side, I did also finish the sweater dress I was making. It's hot pink. Everyone needs a hot pink sweater dress.

A Lesson in Patience

So, at the beginning of the year, I found a great vest pattern. It was the Begonia Vest pattern on the Knitpicks site. I knit it out of some lovely merino/bamboo (I think) fingering weight yarn dyed by Taylored Fibers on etsy. I thought the vest would turn out great, and the yarn knits beautifully.

I couldn't stop knitting on it. I got about halfway up the back and then this happened:
 

My lovely cake of yarn disintegrated into a huge mess of a knot. I nearly cried. However, I did not cry. Instead, I very maturely put the project right into the back of my WIPs bin and worked on some other projects for the next couple of months. Finally, I pulled the vest back out and sat down and untied the knot. (Which is actually what's going on in the picture above.) I then promptly finished the back and the left front. The back has a lovely lace bit on the upper back.

The vest is a racer back so it's a nice detail. It also makes a lovely change from all the plain old stockinette stitch that makes up the rest of the vest. Unfortunately, the right front has proved troublesome. I'm decreasing and decreasing, and yet, somehow, I keep ending up with more stitches than I had when I first started. (Explain that one to me.) I also got some lovely new stitch markers from another etsy shop, Lady Danio.

At some point, this project will get done.

Introduction and Works in Progress

So. I am a knitter. I have been knitting (seriously) for six years. I tend to be drawn towards lace and stitch work that does not involve cables. I get frustrated with the time cabling takes. Lace on the other hand is wonderful. You follow straightforward directions and at the end of the project, you get to work magic!

I struggle with color work, but I'm working on that. I also have a chronic case of startitis. On the plus side, even though I usually have ten plus things on the needles, I do end up finishing things. Eventually.

I spin, and I tat. I even crochet a little. Emphasis on little.

I have also started organizing my stash. I need more space to store it and also discovered that I probably have closer to twenty projects than ten right now. Which means I need to stop starting new projects. Which also means I promptly cast on a shawl last night.

I cast on Semi-Precious in a 75/25 wool/nylon blend of yarn from the etsy shop Lanitium ex Machina, colorway Sabotage. This is one of the quickest shawl patterns I have ever knit up, and it's a lot of fun.

That's what I have done since last night. Like I said, a quick knit! And I'm so excited to get it finished so I can block it. Blocking is the best part of lace knitting. Absolute magic.