Summertime

Well, I finished my lovely shawlette yesterday.  I blocked it and it is dry and stored away safely.  It is over 5.5 feet long and it is going to look awesome with just about any color I wear.

I made good progress on my Spring Forward Socks.  I turned the heel today and am almost done with the fourth of six repeats.

And this is the yarn I've been eyeballing...  Just sayin'.

Tomorrow I'm going to finish the sock and restart a new shawl that I started today, but am going to modify to make it skinnier.  It is called Baktus and it's free on ravelry.  I'm using my MarigoldJen yarn in Cumulus.  I don't have much blue, so this should be unique to me!

End of June

I did pretty well this month whe it comes to knitting.  3.5 pairs of socks, 1.5 shawls, and a cowl.  I have been slowing down this past week for some reason. And I make matters worse by casting on 2 more pairs of socks and starting another shawlette. I must be mad.

Why am I up this late?

I've been up looking at yarn and pictures of shawls and more yarn and more patterns.  The smaller my stash gets, the more twitchy I get.  I'm running out of sock yarn! What if I run out before December? The horror!  Of course, I'll quicklyswitch over to hats and hopefully mittens!!  Yes!!

Anywhoooo.  I finished 2 socks this week.  Hoping to finish one tomorrow.  But probably will not.  It's getting to that point in my StashDash that I lose steam.  I'm currently at 1770 yards and these 2 pairs of socks will put me at 2300.  Sigh.

I'm trying short rows tomorrow.  I tried today, but got distracted.  Tomorrow I'll sit in better lighting and turn off the tv.

😴

Last Day of Spring!

It was a beautiful day in Cleveland!  Had breakfast with my friend Ally and her son Nelson, and two other teachers.  Got a little knitting done.  Lunch with Andrew--and he FINALLY let me drive the truck.  (And he probably will never let me drive it again!!) And then I worked on my Spring Forward socks and my shawlette that I'm designing as I go along.

Here's the Spring Forward socks.  See the pretty swirls?

Here's the Russian Rainbow socks.  (Love these colors!)

Here's the shawlette I'm working on.  Once it gets to 60" I'll decide how much more to go.  Right now I'm at about 50" and just over 100 yards.  Not bad!  This will be great for using up stash or that single skein we all,buy and never can find anything to make with it other than a hat!

And then I discovered these lovelies!  Unfortunately, the ydon't get very soggy in milk, so I had to twist them apart and dunk them that way.  Booooo.

Have a great weekend!!

Knit Night!

So, I finically finished my Firefly socks and they are very beautiful!  I will never be making another pair, so these babies better last forever! 

I started 3 projects yesterday, since all of my other projects were complete.  I'm very proud of myself for going 12 hours without any works on my needles.  And then, I go all crazy and start 3.  I'm going to confess something...  I frogged the bridger cowl.  It was too small.  And I was so happy that it was too small so I can make a shawl out of that beautiful yarn.

These two skeins are my newest socks.  Russian Rainbow and Spring Forward.  They are utterly fabulous so far.  I'll show pictures in my next post when I can take the picture outside...  The rainbow socks are self striping so I'm making plain socks.  The Spring Forward pattern is kind of swirly and I'm using Destination Yarns "Cleveland Spring" colorway.  Yay for Cleveland socks!!

Since the break up with my BFF, I've been struggling with myself.  Questioning why I can't seem to make GOOD friends-- why they always seem to put unrealistic expectations on me. Andrew says it's because I have nothing in common with them.  He's right--he generally is.  He told me to go out and make new friends--but not at the yarn store.  Ha!  Where else to make good friends?  With people I have something in common with!  I know he said that because he didn't want me buying yarn because when I told him I was going he was cool with it. "Get out of that little room and go meet people!" So tonight, I drove to Lakewood and plopped myself down at the community knitting table at my LYS and knit for 2 hours with some nice ladies. And next week, I'm going again.  (The hardest part was the initial meeting and hoping they would like me,  Laura said, "How could you not be nice?  You knit!"

Beautiful Weekend

So, this was Father's Day weekend and I got to spend Sunday with my parents and Andrew's parents and his uncle Alan. Very relaxed and pleasant.  We spent the day relaxing on the porch enjoying the beautiful weather.

Friday, this lovely arrived.  It's from Simply Sock Yarn and it's the Poste yarn in Bravery.  I got it because it is my school colors and I needed a pair of school socks! Right? Right.

I finished my Bridger cowl on Sunday evening.  It is a beauty.

And I took a quiz to find out which Snow White Character I am and I got Grumpy. 😳👍 I asked Andrew which character I got and he guessed grumpy.  Hmmm.  Perhaps I need to work on my personality...

Great Lakes Fiber Festival

Memorial Day weekend is whe the annual Great Lakes Fiber Festival is held in Wooster, Ohio.  I forgot to share with you some of the lovely things is saw there...

Fiber Optic yarns was there with their lovely selection of yarn and gradient sets.

These lovely baskets were there.  I always think I want one, but I never buy one,  

And this lovely shawl called Plumeria Frill. 

There were 5 barns of vendors and lots of alpacas to pet.  Tons of fiber to buy for spinners. I wasn't all that smitten this year because I'm currently loving socks and there was very few sock yarn vendors and none were self striping.  But, it was a lovely day and the drive was very relaxing.

Saturday Shenanigans

Let's just say, my butt is tired.  I had a "Michael" day.  Cleaned off the front and back porch, scrubbed lawn furniture, watered all the plants at my house and the Randall's, made 2 salads, boiled brats, marinaded 2 different meats, ran to the grocery, took the dogs to the groomers, vacuumed the entire house, and weeded 1/3 of the flower bed.

I made good progress on my Bridger Cowl.

And then I sat down to sort my perler beads by color. 

Good Night!!

So Far...Not the Best Week Ever

Sumer vacation is in full swing.  I've battled through my caffeine addiction and am now headache free. It took about a week to ween myself completely off Diet Coke.  Now, I can have one if I like, not because I HAVE TO! Very nice to be drinking water more.

I finished my watercolor memories socks today.  242 or so yards.  My stash dash total is over 1100 yards, so not bad!

I finished the Plumeria Frill and was disappointed that it is too small--despite an accurate gauge swatch. Booooooooooo.

I broke my glasses and can't get in to the optometrist until July 1.

Rik Mayall died this week from my favorite Bristosh Show called The Young Ones.

And my BFF is now my BFNM. (Best Friend No More) 

What can I say?

Getting Back on Track

So, my yarnbox subscription was a bust.  Out of the 6 shipments, I only really loved 1. So, I've been exchanging and selling the ones I don't like.  These sales allowed me to purchase this beautiful yarn below.  What makes it beautiful?  School. Colors. Self. Striping. Sock. Yarn. Ok, it's actually Harry Potter colors, but who cares?

Today, I finished one pair of the 3 I have working.  These are Kroy in Sing'N the Blues and they are lovely.  209 yards puts me at 663 total yards for stash dash. 

And this lovely spiral of yarny goodness is the Plumeria Frill I fell in love with at the Great Lakes Fiber Festival.  I'm finally on row 5--only 12 more to go.  Gosh, I love crochet. Quick!

And this week I started walking a mile everyday with my neighbor Alice.  As a result, when I get home, these two insist on their walk, too.  So, I get 1.5 miles in each day.  One walk is nice, one is fast and quick and full of dragging! The nice part is that it gets Alice out of the house and gives her a chance to talk instead of listening all the time.  We've gotten closer and the husbands are now thick as thieves.  We spend a lot of time sitting on their porch picking on each other and it's very nice.  I don't really have any friends so it's nice to get to spend time with someone as nice as her.

When All Else Fails....

This seems to be how my first few days of vacation are working out.  And Tess has been joining me.  I'm terribly bored (don't tell ANYONE) and I canny actually knit all day like people think I can.  I find myself staring out the window a lot.  I actually wonder if I'm getting nothing done because Andrew is home with me.  Perhaps I am being a big baby.

I did, however, turn the heel on both socks today.  Didn't do much else and the goal of finishing both pairs by Friday is shot to hell, but what can I say?  I'm very well rested!

Planning my Days

So far, if you were to look at my daily activities, my summer would look like this: knit, nap, read, knit, sleep, repeat.  So, I created a list of things I would like to do and places I would like to visit so I don't sleep my vacation away.

Today, however, I knit and slept.  I did manage to move to the front porch for a while but it got hot and there was no breeze so I moved back to the cool house.

Andrew decided we needed real food so we showered and went to our favorite restaurant.

Now we're home and I'm knitting and he's doing whatever he does...  Here's my progress today on both socks.  These are Kroy Sing'N the Blues.

And these are Lollipop Yarn's Watercolor Memories.  My goal is to get to the heel on both tomorrow after I go to the West Side Market and Target and Office Max and I contact the county Auditor about lowering my taxes.  Wish me luck. 😳