March 29, 2012

yarnyarnyarnyarnyarn! YARN!

I might be excited!

Wanna know why?  Do ya? Do ya? Do ya?

My Mary Maxim parcel with all sorts of yarn in it was shipped ridiculously quickly!  I came home today hoping to find my grab bag of yarn in my mailbox and instead found AN ENORMOUS box sitting on my front step!

Well, that'll do!
This is for a cabled cardigan

This is for a lacy spring cardigan

This is for a heavier lace cardigan

My cats were way more excited about the box.
I am super happy with my colour choices!  Woo!

Though, I must not start ANY of these today.  As I assumed last week, this week's job for the CAL is a blocking week / catch up week.  I've never blocked anything before, so I set to it and then decided that EVEN after blocking the clue 6 motifs don't sit properly in the middle.  A lovely lady on the forums suggested dtr clusters instead of CH11 spaces.  I think I'm going to frog ALL 6 clue 6 motifs and re-do them with dtr clusters. So, I am SUPER far behind now.  YAY!  Hopefully I can finish both blocking AND the new clue 6 motifs this weekend.

*Fingers crossed!*

March 25, 2012

Oh my @#$! That hurt!

Ever have one of those mornings?  Of course you have.  Everyone has.  Well, I was happily going about my business this morning when the alarms bells in my pain sensor went off and said "look at your finger, you idiot" and there was a pin sticking out of it.  So, I did what any normal person would do and I shook my hand thinking it would come out on its own (I haven't had my coffee yet.  I know, stupid) and that just hurt more, so I pulled the stick pin out of my finger and looked at it thought "gee, for something that made no mark and isn't even bleeding, that sure hurt" and continued about my business.  Now apparently I bled all over whatever square I was working on at the time (adds character, right?) as I looked down and my finger that was fine is now just a smudge of blood.  Awesome.  Time for coffee.

Anyhow, so the whole reason I am playing with stick pins, which is something I rarely do, for obvious reasons, is that our mystery CAL is over - sort of.  It's not over, but this past week's clue was the last of square making.  We still have blocking, sewing up, and adding a border.  I heard a rumour that this CAL was supposed to last 15 weeks and be done near the end of May (ish) and we're only just finished week 6.  Anyhow, my guess is that next week, we'll have to block our squares - so I started blocking last night - and it went great!  Thus, this morning, my motivation to keep the progress at a high level, resulting in the stick-pin-blood-smudged-squares.  :(

This morning's progress!
Last night's progress.
On a positive note, I can't see the blood on the squares, so I must have got it all over one of the red ones! hahahaha!


Right, so I am a delinquent blogger / CALer.  I seem to give you two clues at a time because I don't finish one before the weekend is over and then I work my butt off to make sure I have two for the next weekend.  

So, clue #5 - every "square" in this CAL is so interesting and different - and then there's this clue.  It took me forever to finish it because I just wasn't interested.  Introducing - GRANNY SQUARE OCTAGONS!  I must admit, it's a cool / super easy technique that was used to turn a granny square into an octagon, but I still find I have very little interest in it.  I'm assuming it'll look great in the finished product.
mmm... granny squares

And, clue #6 - This square is G.O.R.G.E.O.U.S!  I had so much fun making this piece -even if on Friday I was JUST getting my first finished one done.  I had a hard time with this clue because I'm a little fussy and I didn't like how the inside of the circle was done, so I altered that and then I had an issue with the join from round 6 to round 7, so I changed that too.  The Bernat CAL forums were a ton of help for the ideas for slight edits to the pattern.
worsted weight doily for the win!

In other random news, I have been a very very bad yarn addict this past month.  My bank account is going to be mad at me for it, but I am super excited for all this yarn to show up on my doorstep!  

First, Facebook told me there was a yarn store that was having a grab bag sale because the couple who own the store are getting married.  How exciting!  So, I checked out the grab bags and thought - yeah, for $22 I can get me some chocolate brown yarn in small quantities for "testing out" and see if I like it.  I got an email from Yarns of Italy a couple days ago to say that my yarn has shipped, so now I'm anxiously awaiting it to show up at my door.  

THEN, Mary Maxim, who has ridiculously expensive shipping, sent me an email to say that they were having a 3-day free shipping (when you order $70+ of merch online) sale.  I just happened to have a list of stuff I wanted from them and I was really contemplating buying it all as a prezzie to myself for a nice bonus this year.   So I pared my list down to the three things I wanted the most, picked some gorgeous colours, got myself just over $70 and sent in my order.  But they don't tell me when my product has shipped... and it takes forever to get to me for some reason.  I'm less anxiously awaiting the arrival of this yarn, but it'll be coming soon enough!  AND!  Everything I bought was for making myself cardigans.  I'm stoked.  :D

My stash is growing by the week.  ooops.

March 11, 2012

Up to date on the CAL - Clue #3 and Clue #4

Well, I've been quite ill this week, with no more energy than to get up, get dressed (sometimes) and crochet or read a book, so I got caught up with the Crochet Along.  Not that I was really all that behind.  I think I finished off clue #3 the Sunday before the clue #4 came out, so I'm still pulling off getting each clue done before the next one comes out, just not always before the weekend so that I have time to write about it.

Okay, clue #3 - more octagons!  This time in green (contrast C) and the red that is my MC.  Some people think the middle motif looks like a snowflake - I think it looks like a sun!



Anyhow, my blanket colours are great, but they really don't work without the contrast D colour.  I'm so glad that clue #4 was itty bitty popcorn stitch squares in contrast D... they're pretty fantastic and are currently stealing the show from the rest of the squares (ouch!).

omg.  These are sooo cute.  :)

On another note, I'm finding that my pink octagons with the flowers in the middle are much bigger than everything else.  This is because I was crocheting very loose.  I don't tend to do that, which is why I sized up my hook in the first place, so I should really pull them apart and redo them with the right (see also "the same") tension - like the rest of my squares... *sigh*  oh well.  :)  Everyone was so worried about their gauge that I got caught up in it.  I don't find it's really a big deal as long as you stick to the directions - AND you make a test swatch - which I did - and it was awesome.  So, I shouldn't have worried. 

Here's all my pieces to date!

Popcorn squares steal the show, right?

March 4, 2012

Socks - in the meantime

So, I'm slow this week and I haven't finished clue #3 yet (only one more piece to go).  But I did say that I finished those socks I was making right?  Right.

I took pictures with my blackberry because I was feeling incredibly lazy, sorry if the quality is kind of crappy.

Anyhow, from the socks from the toe up book by Wendy Johnson - here are my Traditional Gansey socks.

mmm... stripey.

I started out making these as the posie socks, but the stripes overpowered the pattern (I honestly didn't realize that this sock yarn was MAJORLY striped.  oops).  Anyhow, so I tore out my first sock after getting just about to the heel, and then went searching for a pattern that would compliment - or at least not detract from - the stripes in the yarn.  TA DA!

That totally isn't a two-at-a-time sock book in the background.  Totally.


Now, back to the crochet along... *sigh*