More baby stuff

Where: Home
When: October 2011

This is going to be a pinwheel blanket. I'm extremely proud of it, because it was the first time I had used double pointed needles, and I figured it out by myself, with the help of some descriptions and youtube videos. It's now quite a bit bigger - when it's all finished, it will look like it's made up of 10 spokes, with a lace separation between each section. I'm doing it in 4 colors, and have started the second color at this point.

Here are the colors in order of use:
(The center color)


(The color I'm on now)






The colors remind me of a sunrise or sunset, with the blue representing either water or the sky. We'll see what it ends up looking like - it will be rings of color around the center. Some people who have done this blanket have managed to make each pinwheel section a different color, but I'm not that clever, sadly.

It's coming along very quickly, with the help of librivox.org, which has free audio recordings of classic books. So far I've worked through the second half of Pride and Prejudice, all of Persuasion, and am now listening to A Room With A View. It's amazing how listening to the book makes the knitting go incredibly quickly, and the knitting enhances my ability to focus on the book. Between them both, waiting for this baby to get here becomes less tedious and frustrating, as the day flies by quite quickly, and I feel like I've gotten so much done by the end.

Baby stuff

Where: Home
When: October 2011

Baby booties, on top of a baby blanket that I finished recently! The booties are adorable, but probably too small - my first attempt to make a larger pair was a bit of a failure, I'm not quite sure how to increase the pattern while maintaining the proportions.

I'm kind of disappointed with the blanket, it's not particularly interesting, and I made a number of mistakes in the seed stitch which bug me. I'm now working on another blanket that I am MUCH more excited about, with a much more interesting pattern and a challenging start.

Next project

Where: Home
When: October 2011

This scarf exists because I am incapable of entering a yarn store without buying something, apparently. I had gone in with a very, very specific yarn in mind, in a specific quantity, and I had picked it out and was waiting for the yarn to be wound, and congratulating myself on only spending $6 this trip... and then I started touching things, and disaster struck, because I touched THIS yarn, which is an amazingly soft and delicious and squishy baby alpaca, and I before I knew what had happened I was walking out the door with FOUR skeins of it. Sigh.

Originally I was planning on knitting the scarf, but I recently learned how to crochet as well, and I came across the pattern which seemed both good looking and relatively simple, using double crochet stitches, so I decided to give it a shot.

I kind of wish that I had decided to do one more row, and I think it actually wouldn't be that hard to add one on with the crochet pattern... I'll have to think about it, I decided to stop because I didn't really want to use more of the yarn for this, I wanted to save enough for a hat! So I think I'll do the hat first, then see how much yarn I have left and maybe try adding another row. I blocked it yesterday (my first attempt at blocking), but I think I wasn't bold enough with the stretching or the wetting, as it didn't really do much in terms of making it wider, although it did make it a bit longer.

I've already used the scarf, and it is quite decadently soft and warm, so overall I'm quite pleased!

Projects

While I wait for Baby Powers to hurry up and make her debut:


Where: Home
When: October 2011

I've been knitting and crocheting like crazy, which has been so much more fun than I imagined when I first decided to learn how. And now that I've discovered audio books, my productivity knows no bounds!

I have several projects that are either finished or almost finished - I'm not going to post them all at once, as that will be a little overwhelming, but I'll get them all up over the next week or so.

First project: my first attempt at a (very simple) lace pattern, which is turning into a gorgeously thick, squishy, cozy, warm scarf, with only a few bobbles and errors here and there:

Piper discovered my body pillow

Where: Home
When: October 2011

She was one happy girl. Until I came to bed and took it back.

Fall flowers

Where: Warwick, NY
When: October 2011

Dalliance

Where: Warwick NY
When: October 2011

In the interest of full disclosure - I totally didn't see these two grasshoppers until I downloaded the photos and looked at them in lightroom. This was the only photo where they were in focus, too.

Apple picking

We went apple picking last weekend! And I have a new lens to play with, so that made it even more fun. It's the Nikon 35mm 1.8 - I'm enjoying the new focal length, and it's proving to be quite a good walk around kind of lens, it served me well this trip for the detail shots, portraits, and a few landscapes. I'm quite pleased.

There were many, many apples:


Some rain - not too much rain, but just an occasional drizzle:


And a seasonal chill in the air, which made the hot mulled cider and apple cider donuts even more satisfying. We had both a pre-picking cider and donut, and a post-picking cider and donut - it's important to keep up one's strength in this kind of situation:


The drizzle made hats even more necessary, which always improves the hat-wearing experience:


A great time was had by all! It was my last outing before this baby decides to make an appearance - I'm not sure I want to be hours from the city in the next several weeks!

Oh, and I worked on this during the car ride:


Baby bootie! It turns out that attempting to crochet, when you have only just learned how to crochet, is made far more difficult in when in a moving vehicle, because there's a lot more bouncing than one might expect.