Progresses

Saturday at The Frolic was so much fun - as always!! We had the Throwback 4 ways at The Needle Emporium booth. There were so many ooohs and ahhhs as Frolicers realized that we were all wearing our own versions of the Throwback! 

Company T-shirts are cool and all, but seeing 4 versions of a sweater on real people - priceless!! After much discussion, we settled on Understated for out Knitters Fair sweater. Simple, but the simplicity lends itself to highlighting the yarn and the skill of the knitter. I can’t wait to see what we all pick out! I’ll probably head to Julie’s this weekend to pick out my colour ... I might be the one in the group who goes bright on this! 

I am passed the short row shaping for the front neck on Amali and am enjoying the pleasure of just knitting stockinette in a yarn whose spirit just refuses to be captured by a mere camera lens. 

I have also made av bit more fabric on Veronica’s Christian Grey socks. 

The snow!!! in Angus is motivating and I’m going to be productive after I hit “publish”. 

Amali

I have only gotten a little done on the pink Leo & Roxy strip - we’re coming up on the busy season at DQ and the transition for scheduling is tricky so some  most shifts run long. I live what I do, so it’s no great hardship - I’m fortunate that the puppies and Craig are understanding. 
These pinks are so intense and subtle!! I may name this the 50 Shades of Pink strip! 

I’ll do a bit more on this tonight, then tomorrow start on a quick little Amali for la Bien Aimée  It is a privilege to be able to do this sample for her and I can’t wait to get this lovely yarn between my fingers!! 

Tomorrow, amongst my errands, is a mission for buttons for my Throwback for the Frolic - I’ve certainly left it to the last minute!! 

Next

I finished Leo & Roxy s April from their Mystery Yarn Club!! The regularity of the patterning is addictive - I had to count almost every other row so that I didn’t get caught up and just keep knitting.  

My fix is not complete. I am going to wind up the three skeins that Craig & I bought at their birthday event and do a strip for the next Sweet Spot afghan. I’m going to do an “a, b, c, c, b, a” stripe sequence - this is going to be gorgeous!! 

Gonna wind them up now and try to resist casting on as I have to be at work early tomorrow. May the odds be ever in my favour - though I’m not sure what my favour in this instance truly would be!! 

Just. Can’t. Stop.

Look at this face!! You’d never guess that Chica has the most foul flatulence of a dog five times her size!!! I think that it may have been the raw bone she had earlier.  Lord have mercy - there’s no warning sounds as she slumbers beside me, just air so thick with noxious gas that my eyes start watering as I try not to gasp for air. 

Then there’s Petey. What sets Petey off?

People outside

Dogs outside

Voices/sounds from the front apt

Animal sounds on tv

Seeing an animal on tv that doesn’t make a sound

Me putting my knitting down 

Extending/retracting the recliner

End credits on a show (change in music/graphics?)

Crying (mostly babies)

The word “baby”

Me getting up 

This dog is the chillest and also the most high strung dog - he does my head in. But I love him and, more importantly, he loves me. 

I have made much progress on my Leo & Roxy Sweet Spot strip - I just can’t stop!! January has great colours - très English Garden, February is more subtle, but March is giving me life!! That dark blue line, the yellow streaks interrupting the seafoam, and the tiny hits of Barbie pink!! 

April is a study of violet, lavender, purple, and mauve!

The Frolic is only 10 sleeps away. I have got to get buttons for my Throwback cardigan and then sew them on! 

Sweet Spot The Frolic

Planned Argyle

I am finally blocking my Lolo Sweet Spot strip! Wow - this gives me so much joy!!




I did run short on the last colour section, so this strip will be the start of a new afghan, as I need the same number of rows in the strips to be able to join them without fudging. Not a problem as I have many more strips I’d like to do. 

I have started on my Leo & Roxy strip. January is quite colourful and sometimes too a step sideways on a colour, but the patterning still runs through it. February is more subtle and delicate. . 

I’m off to work, so I will have to wait until later to keep making this magic happen

So Sweet

I have been powering along on my Lolo Sweet Spot Strip!! I’m just over 300 rows into a 500 row stretch. I’m not gonna lie - I’m feeling like I might be playing yarn chicken at the end. Fingers crossed.  

There are times when there is a row or two where there is no blue, so I just trust my tension and then it catches up. It’s like a creek (my granny would’ve called it a “crick”) meandering and skipping through river pebbles. This is a lovely colour to finish up with. 

I couldn’t help it though. I had wound up the Leo & Roxy  ystery club skeins and they’ve been singing an enticing siren song to me. 

I am weak. I just had to cast on and swatch, if for nothing else than to find the Sweet Spot. 

Every time I cast on a new yarn, I have a small doubting Thomas part of me that says, “This is the one Wannietta. This is the one that will defy your assertion that every indie yarn has a Sweet Spot.” January has short dye stretches and I was questioning whether this one would be That One. But I trusted my process and I could feel it starting. Kind of like The Quickening from Highlander. I don’t even know how to explain the pleasure and satiafaction that I get from seeing this magic happen!! Random, random, less random, something happening, boom!! 

So now I can go back to my Lolo strip and finish it. Yes. Resolve Wannietta, focus!! 

Where did the Week Go?

In which our knitter went back to her secular job and a week went by in a blur. 

It’s a good thing that I really do enjoy my Dairy Queen job!! No matter how crazy it gets or what challenges each day presents, I still look forward to the next day. 

I have been knitting - my Lolo Sweet Spot strip is coming along; I’m almost done the 3^rd colour section. can’t wait to join up the last colour!! 

 I wound up the first three colours of the Leo & Roxy club so that I can swatch it up for the Sweet Spot.

The only thing more exciting than working up a Sweet Spot strip is finding the next one!! Craig & I will be driving down to the Little Red Mitten for Leo & Roxy’s Birthday bash. It’s a bit of a drive, but it’ll be a nice little adventure and loads of knitting time! I’m clearly a bit taken with the L& R yarn and can’t wait to see what new colours that they have in person. 

I played with SnapChat this morning - there are some fun people working behind the scenes there!! Not gonna lie, I think I’d make a great Bearded Lady ;) and def gonna think about new piercings!!  

Tomorrow will be domestic chores, puppy loving, and knitting bliss.

Staycation Day 9

This is the end of the staycation days. Well, for this stint anyway. 

I have got a lot done and, for the most part, it has been relaxing. I’m pretty sure that the puppies will miss me tomorrow; I know that I’ll miss them. 

Today I went with my heart and worked on my Lolo Sweet Spot strip.

Lauren dyes her skeins what I call “not solid” in that the dyed sections do not have distinct demarcation lines and are not entirely through the depth of the skein. 

This makes the patterning in the Sweet Spot slightly more ... interpretive shall we say. The lines of colour are sometimes broken, but I trust my tension and it hasn’t let me down.

I have worked out a near Fibonacci sequence for the 4 colours that I have chosen. It couldn’t be an exact sequence as I am working with a set 560 rows, but I came pretty close with 59, 96, 155, 250. I think it will be close enough for government work when all is knit and done. 

I started with Tin Roof Rusted and am now on Mustards Last Stand. I have thoroughly enjoyed my knitting today - it’s reached my soul and has been healing. 

I really do wish that knitting paid enough for me to stay at home and pursue that. 

Alas, I will console myself by heading back to a job that I do enjoy and find fulfillment in doing well, knitting as I can make time. 

I’ve been bingeing on CSI NY and the 6:22 episode that I’m watching is très Rear Window - one of my fave Hitchcock movies!! I’m going to finish this episode and a bit more knitting before calling it a night. 

Staycation Days 7 & 8

Sometimes I just get caught up in the knitting and then I’m done and just crash. I think about the blogging, but the yarn is so soft and the fabric is just happening ...

Yesterday I knit a ball of Bernat Blanket into the start of my grandson Amin’s blanket. His birthday is coming up (as he has become fond of reminding me). I have informed him that Nana doesn’t miss deadlines, but I really do have to get moving on it. 

Today I cast on to swatch some Lolo did it for a new Sweet Spot strip. It has been so long since I’ve worked on this personal project!! I have been aching to get back to it; I have two strips done waiting for a few more to make another afghan. 

When I cast on and started knitting the knit one below fabric, I just relaxed so hard into it. My fingers loved the feeling of the stitches, falling into a rhythm and seeking out the pattern that I knew was in the yarn. Some of the colourways let the patterning flow out, some are more complex and less obvious, but it’s there. I love this deconstruction of the colours; it’s like dancing with the yarn, a little give, a little take. I played a bit with the tensioning, stacking the colours instead of moving them. 

When I felt like I had a sense of the colourways and how they wanted to dance, I finally stopped. Now I’ll pick the colours for the strip, figure out how much of each colourway I want to do (yes, I have favourites), do some maths, then set to the real thing. 

I have more colours than I will likely put into a single strip, but I picked colourways that I love, so if I don’t use them in this project, I know I’ll find what they are destined for. 

I only have one more Staycation day, and I had really wanted to work on my Chatelaine X cross stitch, but I think that I am going to get lost in this Sweet Spot strip. The magic of the stitch and the yarn has such a hold on me ... I don’t even know how to describe it.