The Well-Traveled Socks…

While packaging the Spearfish Socks to head out on their 1516 mi journey from here to thier new home (yes, that is clue) I realized these are quite the traveling socks. They were inspired by scenery in South Dakota, knit in Colorado and will be living 1500+ mi east and slightly south (yes, another clue) in yet a third state. Too bad I didn’t drive the hour up to Wyoming and do some of the knitting there, LOL!

If you’re curious to see the wrapper I designed a little closer up, click here.

In other news, I’ll be adding another button over in the upper right in the not too distant future. In case you didn’t know, Snow is a big bully. Don’t let her musings on kielbasa toes fool you. She twisted and twisted my arm to join her Blackwater Abbey KAL. It’s an ongoing one with no formal start or finish date, so with the low pressure I decided I could join in. I’m not sure what I’ll be knitting for it yet. It might be socks or it might be one of the totes. We’ll see. I probably won’t have time to get to it for a couple months anyway so I have time to think about it. Give me a holler if you have a suggestion for me… And, join with us yourself why don’t you?

Baby Got Back!

Yes! My birthday present to myself - a finished Shapely Tank back panel :-)

DH didn’t get me anything knitting related for my birthday. I think mostly because he figures I’ll buy it for myself. Instead, he gave me a DVD and CD and a promise to take me shopping for some clothes. Which, is good, because I will likely use the b-day money I got from his parents, and my grandparents to get a swift, a ball winder and hopefully the Denise Interchangables. Shopping for clothes somewhere other than Target is actually quite exciting. And, I have no shorts that are suitable for wearing in public anymore and as hot as we get here and since we do not have any AC, shorts are a must!

Emma ended up being muzzled at the vet yesterday, but we complimented on her muscle tone and told her food (Eagle Pack’s Lamb and Rice formula) agreed with her very well. The little trooper had blood drawn for her heartworm test (negative) and three vaccinations. Then she decided to be sticky and sat at my feet while I knit yesterday afternoon. In recent months she has taken to sleeping on her bed back in our dark (NE corner of the house) bedroom and not spending any time in the basement with me until the evening when DH is home. DH doesn’t have to be in the basement too though, which has me perplexed. She is definitely my dog and attached to me more than DH, yet she lays all by herself in the bedroom all day. I’m hoping when it really starts getting warm she’ll come back to the cooler basement with me as I got her to be a companion while I spend 10 hours a day by myself at home and I miss her when she sits upstairs.

I think I’ll be casting on for SIL2′s Sigma tank today. I’m going to do it in Lion Brand CottonEase in Sugar Plum and Candy Blue. It sounds like we’ll be celebrating on May 9th, which means we’ll be headed down on the 7th possibly, though likely the 8th. So, I’m setting a DDD of May 6th so there is time to wash and block. But, since it is in the round and about 15 inches small in circumfrence than my own shapely tank I think it should go pretty quickly. I just need to finalize my striping pattern and get the entire pattern written out for her size and my gauge.

I’m contemplating a trip down to Loveland a little later too. There is a new LYS there and I could meet up with DH for lunch (if he doesn’t want the usual pizza they always have on Fridays at work)… I’m not sure if that will stiffle my obsessive need to get out of town or not, but it couldn’t hurt (well, anything other than my pocketbook), right?

Almost there…

The back of my Shapely Tank is almost done. I have about 40 rows left or so, though they are getting smaller and smaller and thus quicker and quicker to complete! :-)

I ended up not getting any knitting done yesterday as I running all day. Between my therapeutic massage, voice lessons, taking the dog to the groomer and a last minute invitation to an “aromatherapy workshop” that ended up being a pyramid scheme thing and not much about essential oils so much as all of this company’s products. But busy was nice since I’ve been couped up in the house writing lessons for the past 7 weeks. There have been sooo many things that needed to be done that haven’t.

Today, my birthday present is taking Emma to the vet… Well, at least the groomers let me in on her little secret of being so scared and such when I’m around, but being fully cooperative when I leave. They told me at the vet it’ll be best to take her into the exam room and step outside. I would have never thought of that. Wish us luck, LOL!

We Have Armhole Shaping!

Okay, prolly boring to those who have knit garments before…

But, I am stoked. The thought that I’m down under 100 stchs per row helps too! :-)

I had knitting tea today at the LYS and I got a ton done. I did 7 or so rows before the shaping, plus the shaping. I still have a few more rows of decreases. I need to take a closer look at the neckline shaping as I’d like the back to go up higher. I often have pain patches and such on my upper back/neck that I’d like to be mostly concealed. I’ll have to see if I can just plain knit for say 3-4 inches before starting the shaping instead of the 2 inches the pattern calls for. We’ll see how adventuresome I get :-) Mom is giving me heck for not following patterns, but so far it has always turned out. And, I already didn’t follow the pattern because I didn’t do as many increases for the bust area as I’m terribly pear shaped and even though this one hits at the high hip, there was still a decent discrepancy. This means I should have 3-inc ease throughout the entire tank (*knocks on wood*).

Unfortunately I probably won’t make anymore progress today. Partially to rest my wrist and also because I have other work that needs doing :-( Nah, it’s okay work though…

Hi to those peaking in from the Knitting Blogs ring, my traffic has more than doubled the average of the past month! I hope you come back!

I really am making progress…

Okay, so my progress is much slower than I would have hoped. With my ample size we’re talking only 4 rows completed in about 30 minutes. And, I can only knit for an hour before I have to take a break. I wish things were going faster! But, I’m only a few inches from starting the arm hold shaping. I’m hoping to be there by bed time tonight.

There it is, a whole lot of st st!

If I hadn’t have been almost done with my increases I think I would have been highly tempted to rip and do it in the round ala Theresa’s directions. I’m pretty sure I’ll end up working a second one. Perhaps with some added patterning in a central band or maybe just some yummy stripes. That one I will definitely do in the round. If for no other reason than my purling rows take me about 20% longer to complete than my knitting rows :-P

Both DH and I have been wiped, partially from allergies so we ended up staying home this weekend so Easter was just like most any other weekend when we decide we want to hang at home. It probably meant less knitting time I would have had 6 hours on the road if we had gone to his parents’ house, plus I tend to knit a lot when I’m visiting them because it is the only way I can stay awake after having to take muscle relaxers to get through the car ride, LOL!

We did get a fair bit of snow between snow until evening on Saturaday and then more snow arrived last night after we had melted Saturday’s offerings. I’m not complaining one bit though as we need the moisture so terribly bad. Yes, it would have been nice if it has been in a non-frozen form, but we’ll take whatever we can get!

Here’s today’s gratuitous puppy pic…

“Mom, would you put down that knitting and that darn camera and give me some attention?? Please??”