Small projects

My boyfriend's been out of town, so I've been knitting A LOT, among other things...

In the last week, I've made a hat and wristwarmer set for myself, a cowl for my mom's 50th birthday, and half of a hat for my dad's birthday.

My hat:

I bought the yarn in Wyoming on my second drive across the country.  It's 100% Montana wool.  Unfortunately, I blocked it... and it grew.  So now I need to felt it so it will fit again.

Wristwarmers:

I know, I know it's a terrible picture.  I should really try to take another one... The pattern looks like this:

Mine are nice, and they are warm, but one is slightly larger than the other... I suspect I may have picked up the wrong needles off the coffee table when I cast on for the second one.  Sigh.  That's what you get for knitting and watching West Wing at the same time.  Blocking has not remedied this issue, so I'm going to try to felt them a little when I felt the hat down.

Lastly,  the cowl for my mom's 50th:

It's Teesdale (Welsh!) wool, handspun by hilltopkatie in HPKCHC.  It's awesome that it's from Wales, as my mom's family is very strongly Welsh. :-) I won it for completing my Dr. Who scarf.  It's loooovely stuff.  I think my mom will like it.

I forgot to take a picture of it around my neck before I mailed it to Mom... but it looks almost identical to the pattern picture:

Dad's hat should be finished tomorrow or the next day.  Pictures soon!

A very HPKCHC post

I got to meet Oriocookie today!  On her birthday!

A local spinner/dyer posted on Ravelry that there would be an open house for crafts and food in Ann Arbor today.  I've been planning on going for a couple days, and yesterday it occurred to me I should ask Oriocookie and tangledskein if they wanted to go, since I know they both live in Michigan and aren't too terribly far away.  Orio said she could make it!

So I ended up getting to meet our lovely caretaker.

We both had a lot of fun.  We fondled yarn for an hour and then stood around for another hour chatting!

We both also bought some lovely yarn, and I'm going to skein hers for her.  Ball winder + swift = best present I've ever gotten.

Also, I took some new pictures of Shipwreck (still not blocked... I think I need lace blocking wires. will ask for them for Christmas).

November wrap-up

November ended on a pretty good note.

I finished Kayla and Ben's wedding blanket. I finished my 5,000-bead lace shawl. I finished my grad school applications.

I only got to 19k words in NaNoWriMo. I feel a little guilty about this. But I really don't think I could have expected myself to finish, with everything else going on.

Jim and I got to spend a week in Reno for Thanksgiving, which was awesome. I got to hang out with my mom (we went to a yarn store and neither of us bought ANYTHING--it was incredible) and see my little sister (she's definitely cute). And just before we left, my parents lent us their third car and we got to take a quick road trip to San Francisco and Santa Cruz. Since I've got my grad apps in and we're crossing our fingers at least one of the schools accepts me, we took half a day to look at some houses in the region. Most of what we looked at was ~30 minutes outside of San Francisco, so hopefully we can find something reasonably priced on a BART or a bus line and I'll be able to commute in fairly easily. I'm not insane, so I refuse to drive in, but it's likely I might have to drive to a BART station... which would suck. It would be much better if I could walk or bike.

Anyway. PLENTY of time to think about these things next summer, if I do get in somewhere. Please please please cross your fingers for UCSF.

And now... pictures!

Me working on the Shipwreck on the steps of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

I love Grace Cathedral. Jim had never been there before (obviously... it being only his second trip to California, and the first having been with me in February, when the only place in SF we went was Pier 39), and we got really lucky and ran into a docent who was giving a tour inside. So we followed the tour for about 20 minutes and learned some fun things about the Cathedral and San Francisco's history.

Also, did you know there was never a Saint Barbara? The church made her up. It was some sort of ploy to get people to convert, but I don't remember exactly what the docent said the motivation was, not knowing much about Saint Barbara.

Done, and spread out on the kitchen floor! Boyfriend and Mom included for size reference.

It needs to be blocked--the lace will open up a lot more and it will get a LOT bigger. But isn't it gorgeous already???

Remind me to take a detail shot of the beads when I take blocking pictures. It's just stunning in person. I wish my camera could capture it!

Now, the wedding blanket...

It looked like this when I pulled it out of hibernation early in November:

Now it looks like this!

And once it's blocked, it will be ready to go on its way to Ben and Kayla!!


Also, I need a new project now....

Testing!

Cross-posting this from my LJ, just to see if I can get this one started.

I'm in this group on Ravelry (okay, yes, it's Harry Potter-themed) that has 3-month-long "terms" composed of "classes" that last 1 month each. So each month there are six "classes" offered, and you have to knit at least one of them--they're things like "knit something cabled" or "knit something in a plant fiber" or "knit something embodying love". This month there is one to clear a "weed" out of your project basket and finish it up--guess which one I have chosen? Yep. The wedding blanket o' doom, for my favorite cousin, which should have been gifted to her, oh, I dunno, maybe BEFORE her first child was born. The nice thing is that if I get this finished, I get bonus points for things like the project having reached "mythic" status (i.e. the intended recipient no longer believes it exists) and for a video testimonial. If I am diligent and actually accomplish this--plans are to do it this weekend--I am pretty sure I can bribe aforementioned cousin to do a short video testimonial for me. Right, K la? Right??? (I promise it won't take more than two minutes away from NaNo. It can be a 10-second video. Really. I will beg.)

So, for the same group, I'm doing an "OWL". It's supposed to be a project that takes the entire 3 months of the "term", and I decided to do something ambitious back in September, not realizing that everything would all be due on November 30th at the same time. So I'm knitting this. It's a lace shawl (my first lace). It's huge. It is on tiny needles. The "hard" part (the center) took me two months. Now I'm on the "slow" part--knitting 5,000 beads into the netting on the outside. I'm about 1,200 beads into it. Putting the beads on entails sitting for an hour or two (while watching tv or something) and dipping a beading needle repeatedly into a bowl of beads, then locking the cat in the bedroom and unstringing hundreds of yards of lace up and down the hallway and pushing thousands of beads down those hundreds of yards until there is about three inches in between EACH BEAD, and then re-balling those hundreds of beaded yards so they don't tangle. And THEN knitting with them.

(I'm in love with it, by the way. I do not at all mind the effort that goes into the beading. I'm so in love with this shawl it could kill a man and I would forgive it.)