Cross-stitch, you are so slow!

Okay, so I promised finished projects... of the cross-stitching variety.

I thought I would be faster than this.

The finished cuties!

I picked up this lovely set from Mary Maxim.  I adore these Christmas tree ornaments.  They're super super cute!  I managed to finish one before we took off to Europe, and then another while we were there.  Since we got back, I've ALMOST finished a third.  I highly doubt these will be ready to be gift-toppers for Christmas.  Oh well, there's always next year!

Love them though!

Right... and a pic or two from our trip.  :)  Started in Paris and worked our way to Rome.  

I'm BACK! And I made socks!

I'm a married woman now!  WOO!

Anyhow, before we go off to see the world (well, okay, maybe not the WHOLE world, but parts of it... in Europe...), I should put some "stuff" up here.

So, I've recently rediscovered my love of cross-stitch - but with a twist... so stay tuned for finished projects (oh yes, I said finished).

This means my knitting has taken a hit though.  I finished these socks right before the wedding (I know, I shouldn't have been knitting then, but it really helps with the stress levels!)

They're awesome!  From the 2-at-a-time socks book... can't remember what these were called... huh... oh well..

Feet!

Aww... what a fun sock pattern!

So, what I'm looking for now is a really really really amazing pattern for a kitchen hand towel to knit.  You know the ones with the button that go through your drawer handles?  Yeah... one of those!  If you know of a great pattern, let me know!

Not enough time

I so want to knit. 

I'm getting married in less than three weeks.

This does not equate to getting anything done on either front.

Best. Ever. Baby. Blanket.

Seriously!

A friend of mine started this blanket for a co-worker of ours and I fell head over heels in love with the pattern.  I just had to make one for myself.  Mine is disobeying the pattern title though.  It's the "boy wrapper" pattern.  So, I made a peach / purple, etc. one... :)
ADORABLE!
YAY!

I folded it so it would fit onto my couch.   It looks better with my couch than with my floor.

LOVE!  Yay for bows and buttons.

Doesn't look so good against my floor...

I've been busy - here's some socks

I made these lovely socks because... as we all know... I don't think before I start a pattern.  Jenn got me a two-at-a-time sock book for Christmas... and... it uses the magic loop method of knitting socks... I haven't used this method before.

Starting these socks was incredibly painful, as all I could tell I was doing was making a giant bungle of my yarn (and that made me sad).  AND... then I realized I had started a size that was too big (!) so I tore the whole thing apart and started fresh.

Aside from the fact that the twisty-ness of the pattern seems to make the foot of the sock twisty... I like it... it looks great... and they're comfy.  Love the yarn - I got it from Mary Maxim.

FINISHED PRODUCT!

TWISTY!  FUN!

Love the colour of these socks.  It's so nice...

Girly Baby Sweater?

I have been on a massive crochet binge lately.  I really really really need to stop.  For two reasons - 1. I'm running myself low on projects 2. I have no idea where any of these things I've been making lately are going to end up - aside from in a drawer of finished projects (it's small).

Anyhow, I was at Michael's and I found this lovely baby yarn that I liked and wanted to purchase, but I had no pattern, so I picked up their Loops and Thread Baby Patterns book while I was there (sorry for the lack of a link, I can't even find the pattern on raverly at the moment!).

Then I went nuts and made a baby sweater... it's sort of girly... sort of boy-y... so I decided that it was going to be a girl sweater... and added pink buttons... so there.

AND... the finished product.... drumroll please!

Isn't it adorable?

Close up and armless....

Buttons and detail!

SUCCESS!

Alright, with all the massive motivation of posting all the things I'm working on and not done... I finished a few of them!  Woo hoo!  Of course, they were the easy things to finish... but still!  Progress!

Most exciting news - Johnny's Camo Blanket is FINISHED!  C'est fini!  And just in time for him to come to town, so he can take his lovely new blanket home.  :)

Kind of huge, but good huge - aside from the phenomenal
amount of work.  I have no idea how to do a project small.

Looks nice with the bannister, doesn't it?

Easiest to finish - the Christmas Snowman hanging.  He's cute.  I'm going to need to figure out something a little better for hanging him, but he looks good for now.  I may just glue some popsicle sticks to the back of the "let it snow" sign. 

Adorable!  Now with his head on his shoulders!

Then, of course, I started more projects, but that's a story for another day!

WIPs - what's left

So, only two more projects to speak of when it comes to my works in progress (I know, how do I ever FINISH anything if I'm constantly working on 8-10 projects at a time?  Well, in all honesty, the answer is that I generally DON'T finish the things I'm working on - shhh!  That's a secret!)

First, I've been working on a "Cleopatra Wrap" from the Sensual Knits book.  I am not even kind of using the right weight of yarn.  I was trying to make something a little more sunblocking than a very fine, lacey wrap.  I like working on this, but I've found I'm getting bored.  Not too much longer to go before I call it quits and graft the thing together, but wow have I been working on this for some time - maybe a year or so? - and every time I pull it out, I get all excited, do a couple patterns repeats and shelf it again.

Second, and most likely to be finished sometime soon, I decided in a moment of temporary insanity that I was going to try knitting two socks at a time, which uses the magic loop method - this is new to me.  BAH!  Why make knitting easy for myself when I can make it oh so very difficult!?!  Easy is for wusses!  Anyways, thus far, the verdict on socks two at a time, it takes a long time (or at least it feels like forever!  "But it's never taken me this long to knit a sock before" "you're making two right now" "and how does that change the problem??") and at the beginning your yarn is all tangled up, BUT... if you stick with it... it's stupid easy - not sure how, but it is - and well, no more second sock syndrome!

More works in progress... with a different needle variety

I am still working on cross-stitch and needlepoint stuff... in the background of this incredibly fun and speedy thing called knitting.  But, I'm not getting very far.  In fact, I thought I was further on the tea-cup one.  *sigh*

Anyhow, this is what I'm up to.

Cute Zen Butterfly:
Ya know, I had a plan for this at one point.  I was going to have an incredibly Japanese-ly decorated kitchen.  I no longer have this plan.  Now what on earth am I going to do with this when I finish?  No idea.  So it's being worked on S.l.o.w.l.y.  Very very slowly.  This is my progress... not even finished the butterfly, let alone the background.  Ya know, I like cross-stitch, maybe I should dedicate some time to it in the near future.

Trio of Teacups:
Yeah, so I've FINISHED one teacup, but haven't started the other two.  Oh ballz.  That sucks.  I thought I was further than that... I thought I was about halfway done the second teacup!  That makes me super grumpy.
Anyhow, progress to date is such.

Swinging Christmas Snowman:
I got this pattern from Mary Maxim.  It is super super cute and was a lot of fun.  It was my first attempt at needlepoint (I think that's what it's called) and I learned a couple of interesting things 1.  Cut the pieces out of the plastic canvas immediately before you start sewing them so that you don't work on the wrong side of the piece only to find out later that you've done such, and have to take everything out because the canvas is NOT SYMMETRICAL!  2. Make sure all of your stitches go the same way.  It looks stupid otherwise.  Cross-stitch is VERY forgiving this way.  and 3. Figure out which colours are which BEFORE you start stitching.  Now, this is very obvious.  This is something I should know and something I always do.  However, this time, I was tricked by the colours on the package.  Looks like someone else decided that the colouring should be done differently and here I am trying to match colours up and thinking "that's not dark enough to be the dark blue colour, it must be this..."  which was NOT true.  I ended up having to go out and buy another ball of yarn to finish this thing.  Sadly, now that I'm done the stitching work, I have not put the darn thing together.  It was like I went "YAY!  I'm done" and put the whole thing on the shelf.  I know there's no rush to finish it up as it's nowhere near Christmas yet, but still.  The snow JUST went away here and I'm not feeling overly fond of anything related to snow at the moment, so this will probably stay shelved until I get my Christmas decorations out - or until I decide it's taking up too much space in my craft room.

Works in Progress - afghans

In an effort to force myself to finish some of the projects that I've been working on for some time, I'm going to start posting a few of them on here at a time.  I figure if I post that there's something in progress, it will give me a little motivation push that I need to finish it.  Hopefully.  (key word, right?)

AND... with no further adieu...

I mentioned I was on an afghan binge.  These are the rest of the afghans I'm working on...

Zigzag blanket
This is actually a baby blanket pattern.  I liked it so much I decided to make a "full-sized" blanket.  Sadly, this was pretty much when I first started knitting... and like so many other projects that came afterwards, I had lofty intentions and no idea how to make them reality (ie. I doubled the size of the blanket... woops).  This blanket is likely going to end up large enough to cover a queen sized bed.  This is why it's taking me so very long to finish... and, well, the pattern is rather repetitive and somewhat boring... the thing is huge already, but I still have a full ball of yarn let to use up.  BUT... I love it... the pattern is easy-ish, but still pretty... I'm just stalled.

The entirety of the blanket.  That ball of yarn is about as big as a grapefruit.

ZigZag Detail

Johnny's Camo "Granny's Attic" afghan
So, this pattern didn't end up making a big enough blanket.  I posted that I was nearing completion on this monstrosity some time ago.  Sadly, when I laid all the squares out to sew it all together, I found that I was lacking, probably half a blanket.  This one isn't going to fit a bed, but it needs to be large enough to swaddle a full-grown person - comfort is key, right?  So, back to the proverbial drawing board... and I started making more squares... and now I just need to tuck in ends (which I SERIOUSLY hate doing.  There are so many ends in this pattern!) and finish sewing it up.  This blanket is probably the nearest to completion of all the WIPs that I have - and yet, I still can't drum up the motivation to finish it.  I'm slowly plugging away at tucking in ends... I get a few squares done a week... or, rather, I WAS getting a few squares done a week.
I must admit, I am rather pleased with how this blanket is turning out.  It's beautiful, but with all the end-tucking and huge number of squares required (the pattern calls for 48, and I ended up making 99), I think I would have to admit to a loss of sanity prior to starting another one of these.

Current status.  The neat pile has the ends tucked already.  *sigh*

The glorious detail.  Love the way it looks.

Rainbow baby blanket
This is one of those "new fun" patterns that caught my eye while I was working on afghans.  Verdict?  This one is going to get shelved for a while.  I can't figure out how to put all the lovely weave sections together.  I WILL figure it out though, but don't look for completion of this one anytime soon.

Quite the non-traditional baby blanket colours.

Circles / squares earthy afghan

I'm on an afghan binge!  I'm finishing up afghans and blankets that I've been working on for years and I'm making some new neat patterns while I'm at it.  Sadly, the new neat patterns tend to get the attention rather than the patterns that I've given up on for oh so very long... but... I am REALLY trying to clean out my stash - or at the very least finish the projects I've already started.  This is usually my lofty aim, but I'm a bit of an ADD knitter/crocheter and I go... "focus... ooooh... that looks fun! I'm going to do that...."

On that note, here's the first finished afghan from the binge!  And... you guessed it - new neat pattern!  I found it on ravelry.  I was just looking for something cool and funky - you know, different than the average granny square afghan.  It's purdy.  I used Vanna's Choice yarn in Rust, Olive, and Barley.

Ignore the crochet hook sticking out of it.  It's done now.

 I really like how it turned out.  I mostly finished it in a lovely weekend at the lake.  Isn't that terrible?  It was still snowy out here though, so you'll have to forgive my working through a weekend at the lake.  :)

The only issue I have with how this turned out is that I'm not particularly good at sewing up the squares.  It's a little bumpy on the edges, but otherwise, great afghan!

Faux cable socks!

So, I am way behind on my posting.  That is mostly because I keep forgetting my drive with all my photos on it at work.  Ooops.  I have really got to stop doing that.  Anyhow, another good excuse for forgetting to post a lot is that I've actually been working on a lot of projects recently (yay me!) and ones that get finished sometimes... :)

So, I bought a whole bunch of sock yarn from Mary Maxim not that long ago and I thought I would just go nuts and make lots of socks... and, well, I finally finished - A pair.  Guess I'm not going to be a sock knitting machine.  Oh well... I'm trying.   This pattern came with my lovely sock yarn, so I don't think it's actually available online... my bad... but I'm really happy with how they turned out.  It's a faux cable pattern.  No actual cable crossings, but all the effect of cables. 

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how to not make things ladder on dpns without putting a hole in my index finger (aka knitting too tight). 

Baby Clothes - because I had the yarn

Well, this is a new development.  I'm not making things because I have "this amazing pattern that I just have to try out" and then go find yarn for it anymore.  I'm starting to accumulate so much yarn that I have the need to make use of it in some way, shape or form, whether it's particularly useful or not.  Ooops.

I guess I just graduated from "newbie knitter" status to something somewhat more dangerous.

Anyhow, Jenn had this lovely pattern that she sent me... and I don't actually know where the pattern is from because I'm bad like that... BUT... she's got  it somewhere... let's see if I can link to her post with the pattern. 

Right.  That was easy.  Okay, so I made those super cute baby hats (for people!  Not to just sit in my pile of finished knitting... it's small, but it exists!) - the bear and bunny hats - and then I had a ton of left over yarn.  So I thought I'd try out the adorable pattern that Jenn had just finished coz I'm a copy-cat like that.

This is Goldie - she's my baby sized model.  :)

I liked it, so I made two.

It worked out quite well, I'd have to say.  I did have a little bit of trouble with the whole changing colour thing on the pink and white sweater.  This pattern is built so that it does make that white line you can see in the sleeves... you have to change colours at the appropriate time in the body to make it appear everywhere else, which is something I didn't master.  Heh... oh well.  It looks nice now!

Last Christmas gift

I'm sure you've been kept waiting long enough, so I will just get on with it.

Snezi!

I made my other sister a lovely grey shrug from the Sensual Knits pattern book. This is the easiest pattern in the world with little to no sewing up involved. It took me two weeks to knit up and I made the biggest size (my sister is tall and it was sized by length). I loved working on this because it was so simple. I'm sure it could be considered tedious to some, but it was so mindless I didn't really even think I was "working" at it. I think I will have to make more of these, but not for me, I am too short.

My sister is "modelling" on Christmas morning.