8 months old

Some recent mile stones - Clapping, cruising, pulling up to a stand, eating more solid foods with her 2 bottom teeth!

Ravelymics 2010

I didn't have time to blog the last 3 weeks because I was busily knitting on my Ravelymics projects!

I *finally* finished my monster "WIP Dancing" project - the 4 Season's Throw by Judith Shangold.

You guys, I started this in June 2008. Being the project oriented person that I am, it was like a monkey (or rather a gorilla) on my back sitting in my ravelry project page at 65% for months. I had no interest in working on the strips because the block patterns were boring, and lace is much more interesting. As a prize at the end, I allowed myself to stray from the pattern for the last block and I used Barbara Walker's Embossed Turtle pattern for the green square. Although I despised this blanket as I was working on it, I love it now. It is really warm and cozy to have on the couch. It also ended up bigger than I thought it would, each block is about 14.5" x 14.5" after it was blocked.



For "Short Track Shawls" I used - 198yds of Heaven by Christy Verity
The yarn is Madiline Tosh DK in Fjord, a bday present from my friend Patrice. This was the perfect project for the yarn, since it only needed on skein of yarn! I finished this in only 10 days. It would have been done faster if I had not had the blanket to work on. It's a great mini shawl and totally my colors! I'm keeping this one for me! I modified the border of the pattern, because I didn't like that the yo's did not line up with the body of the pattern.



I did watch a lot of the Olympics while working on these projects, but for the last week I was just getting bored by the NBC coverage. They were very biased to the American athletes and did not show scores during the ice skating if it wasn't an American (for the most part). They were jumping all around between 4 different events each evening and I felt like I had ADD watching :( Only towards the end did I find out Curling was on USA network. GAH! I've never watched it before and thought I would try to, oh well.

Spring is here already!

All the cherry trees are blooming!

Play

Hazel is finally playing with a stuffed animal. It took a while to figure it out.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Prettiest flower in the garden

I couldn't help snapping this picture while we were at costco tonight.

Pavo Real Shawl

Forgot to blog about this shawl!

I was surprised that it only took me one week to knit! It's blue, it's sparkly and it's totally me :) I love this shawl!!

This shawl is worked from the point upwards and the chart is a little difficult to read because there are 3 separate charts, it only took me 2 false starts before I was off and running.

Pattern - Pavo Real Shawl
Yarn - Kitchen Sink Dyeworks Silver Spoon

Shawl FOs

Well, I thought the new year was going along beautifully, until I got sick again. I went from having a sinus infection that went away and came back again to getting the stomach flu. The flu was awful! And to make it even worse than that, Owen got sick at the same time. Imagine having us both sick and then taking care of Hazel. It's been a few days since the "attack" and I'm still recovering. This really hit us hard! Owen thought it was "romantic" because now we can share our stories of being sick and have someone else understand how gross it all was. Can I get better now? kthxbai!

So, I did manage to get a couple of shawls finished.

I have not decided if I want to keep this for myself yet. I love it, and I love the pattern (even if it was St st and only had 3 rows where action happened) because I could just knit and purl and not have to really pay attention to what I was doing. I guess I'm just not sure about the color on me. I don't have a lot of things that match it.

This was my first attempt at dyeing yarn. I used Wilton's icing dyes and followed these instructions. I started out using the no-taste red and instead of a crimson, it turned a strange pink. So, I added some burgundy and that made it better. I would post pictures of the dyepot, but it looks like I'm cooking intestines, I kid you not! Long story short, I didn't put enough vinegar in the pot and when I rinsed it my hands turned pink, so I cooked the yarn again and it felted a little bit. In hind sight I probably shouldn't have used Malabrigo lace as my first yarn to dye, but oh well, it gave the yarn a fuzzy halo that I kind of like.

Pattern - Citron
Yarn - Malabrigo laceweight



And what would a blog post be without a picture of Hazel???

I never inteded to knit her a shawl when she was this young, but OMG I'm so happy that I did because she looks so cute in it! I used the yarn from a Hazel Knits baby sock kit that I purchased wayyyyy back at Sock Summit. I took the sock with me on TWO vacations and only got to the heel flap of the first sock. Yeah, it took me 5 months and guess what? Hazel grew up too fast and I knew that if I ever finished the socks they would not fit over her toes. After a poll on my facebook I ended up frogging the sock and Tami suggested a few patterns I could use the yarn for. She found a cute bear shawl (rav link) and I would have done that, but the price was 6.00 for a basic mini shawl pattern!!!!!!! So did a search on Ravelry and found this adorable hearts shawl pattern for an American Girl doll. Hazel will soon outgrow this shawl and I"m not even sure if I could keep it on her for very long if I did put it on her, so it will be for her bear.

Pattern - Loving Hearts Shawl
yarn - Hazel Knits sock yarn in Tulip