knit+sew+bead: look, over there!

I’m distracting you with lots of other things this week so you don’t notice the lack of knitting. Also, a warning this post was written under insomniatic conditions.

*sigh*

I found this easy and [photopress:flowerpin.jpg,thumb,alignright]beautiful felt flower pin at craft and as I have a felt stash that just is sitting around, I decided to make one myself. I think hope the recipient will like it and not notice her lace shawl (which she doesn’t know about) isn’t finished yet. (that is the “sew” for the week, which was done totally by hand b/c my real machine is still in pieces in the closet.) I really liked it and I think a few more to have on hand as gifts would not be a bad thing. I’m not really thrilled with my colour choices but that is my own limitation as my felt stash isn’t that big. It was easy and fast even by hand using horrible office scissors.

Darn Craft. I was planning to take E’s old jeans to the thrift store. Then I found this pattern. I also picked up craft yesterday (Tues) afternoon but have not yet had a chance to open it. I totally need to decide if I will buy any more copies or not because at $15 a pop that is a TON of money (that’s 75% of my weekly “allowance”! PB&J for lunch!)

In good news, E played with my camera a bit and said he understands the focus a bit better now. So maybe he’ll explain it to me one of these days.

I made a friend some stitch markers recently. I only am about a month behind on holiday gifts (we won’t talk about the birthday knitting, I frogged the too small knuck, so progress WAS made. sort of.) I really hope that my friend likes them. I only have at least 3 more people to make stitch markers for. At least in the urgent batch.
[photopress:stitchmarkers.jpg,thumb,pp_image]

Ok, knitting. Mr Baby A and Ms Baby B were born Monday evening. [photopress:kimono_preseam.jpg,thumb,alignright]Which means I need to knit faster. I cast on for the second sweater Tuesday morning but that was as far as I got. This is a pic of the kimono pre-blocking and seaming. I hope that my few wonky sized stitches aren’t too noticeable and bad. I also hope that the baby likes green. I have some store-bought goodies to send as well so if I’m too embarrassed about my horrible first sweater I can wait a bit. I (am writing this at midnight, we’ll chat about insomnia later) will bring my sweater knitting with me tomorrow. The significant thing about this kimono and its brother pullover is that i knit this on 10" straights! Nice cheap metal clanky straights. It was quite therapeutic. I hate big needles and these classify as big needles in my book. Heck the size of the needle on Addi 24’s drives me crazy. I can’t explain why I want these straights to do the baby knitting but there you go. I’m planning on knitting Erica Knight’s one piece classic cashmere as it’s similar in style to the MDK kimono, but with cotton. When both are done and gifted I’ll write them up super proper. If anyone has any huge comments one way or the other about the EK please let me know.

A classmate’s second son was born last November? December? *blush* and I quick knit up a HUGE garter stitch bib in some Sugar n Cream faded denim. At our first class meeting after the break last week I was shown a photo of the handsome baby dwarfed by this bib and it just warms my heart. I reiterated if they wanted to use it to mop the floor I didn’t care. He is a wonderful little baby and I think his father is a very nice guy too. I still need to knit up his real present and figure out a gift for his older brother (who is 3 or 4, I was thinking one of the dinos..)

Other knitting. Mom’s shetland shawl is not going well at all. I just[photopress:e_sock23jan.jpg,thumb,alignright] don’t want to knit it. I have no clue as to why. Maybe it’s because I have to go out to visit her and I’m dreading it because I won’t have Cosette to play with. I’ll probably rip the one repeat I’ve done and cast on another swallowtail. I’d love something fast in garter lace, but we’ll see. I’ll poke around. E’s socks are slowly making progress. I am really really hating black. And that he has an overflowing black sock-bin as is. *sigh* Here’s where they were Tuesday morning. I added about 8 rows on the subway on my way to campus.

I recongize that I broke the progress meters a few days (weeks?) ago. Here’s the roundup:

1. Baby Surprise Jacket #1 – 18% I’ve stalled on this and have no idea why. I expect to pick it up after second rush sweater.
2. MDK Kimono – 99% needs seaming and blocking.
3. Gift for S (who I haven’t emailed in ages) – 8% It’s been sitting there staring at me. I don’t know what my problem is, it’s perfect get ready for sleep knitting.
4. E’s socks – 72% need to get this done ASAP
5. geeknoob’s knucks (her birthday was only at the start of october)- 45% I need to stitch up the first one and reknit the second. I actually frogged it this weekend so I had some progress on it…
6. mum’s shawl – 1% i finished one repeat but am just not into it at this time. I need to produce something fast and pretty and complicated looking. she’s my MOM!
7. purl berets – on hold as I have a long talk with the pattern and my brain. Error exists between needles and yarn. Might gift up and make a wimple or something weird. Who knows. In good news, grumperina solved her problems!
8. surprise for dave – 0% oops. I’ll try to do this soon. :)
9. surprise for sara – 0% as soon as urgent baby knitting is done. I was sketching it out earlier today.
10. wedding afghan for j&v – I need to redo the maths as I’m petrified I’ll run out of yarn. My goal is to get 1/9th of it done each month between now and September.
    …

11. blue socks are dreaming of being cast on.
12. lavendersheep socks are also dreaming of being cast on.
13. Icarus – 0%

Right and how am I supposed to do all this knitting working 60+ hour weeks, keeping the flat clean, E fed, and hamster happy? And I keep saying I want to spin?

Ok. This insomnia is horrible but not totally unexpected. I return home from class half an hour before bed. I’m hungry. I’m tired (physically) but my mind is racing with exciting thoughts from class and things I have to do tomorrow and things that are undone from “today” (Tuesday). It hasn’t helped that I shifted my journal writing to the mornings in order to give that some more focus. I need to work on quickly clearing out my brain so I can just fall asleep when we crawl into bed. I’m sitting on the couch now with a hamster actively running on her wheel (which she’ll only do if the lights are out, as if she’s ashamed of her big butt..) [it’s loud. she broke her other one the spoiled overfed furry ball of love] and a cup of chamomile green tea. Last night I went to bed about 1:30 and fell asleep after 2. I hope to beat that tonight as it’ll be another 5:30a wake up and get home at 10:30p.

I should not be allowed in the library. I was all proud of myself for returning 7 books to 4 different libraries Tuesday afternoon. And then I realized that FIVE of my holds had come into NYPL. And their policy is that you must pick them all up at once. That branch is closed on Wednesday so they followed me around on Tuesday. I also picked up two others at the Uni so we’ll see what happens. I was trying to clean OFF my to-read pile. I want to blame Rachel for two of the books I took home, but that wouldn’t be fair. Two of the books I picked up on typography and ROCK. I recently discovered Rachel’s blog and obviously love the title. Can you believe those stranded black and white socks are her first REAL pair of socks? Go woman Go!

• Category: handmade
• Tag: knit, sew