Starfish Shawl, Moving Update

A lot of baseball watching means a lot of knitting time. My Starfish Shawl is growing at a good clip and is finally starting to look like a shawl. I'm not a sports fan myself, but living with two guys, and the small one is tracking every sport with statistics, it's hard not to care about the games. Giants keeps winning, my shawl keeps growing.

Last Sunday I brought the guys to Carmel to give my mom a thorough "keep or toss". My husband made five trips to the Goodwill truck down the hill, and we still ended up with a bunch of boxes coming home with us. At least we put a nice dent in her stuff collection. Next, sell or give away the bigger furniture.  

Happy Fiber Arts Friday! Join the party on Andrea's blog and leave me a comment! 

Catching up on Old FO's

These were all made pre-digital camera, pre-blog, pre-Ravelry, pre-Facebook, pre-Daniella days. Finally got around to taking a few good pictures and properly record them.

Project: Perfect fit pullover
Pattern:  Perfect fit pullover by Lisa Myers, Interweave Knits Winter 2001/2002
Yarn:  Ellen's Half Pint Farm Falkland wool
Yardage:  about 700 yards
Needles: Size 6
Cast off: 2002
Cost: about $50
Notes: This is one of my favorite sweaters of all time! The sweater is designed with shapings according to your own measurement, decrease at the waist, and then increase at the chest. The yarn is perfect, light weight with a firm hand. I made it in my early days of knitting sweaters, and became a firm believer of the traditional 4-piece sweater design. 

Project: Einstein Coat
Pattern:  Einstein Coat by Sally Melville, The Knitting Experience, Book 1, The Knit Stitch
Yarn:  Lion Brand Fishermen's Wool
Yardage:  roughly between 800 to 1000 yards
Needles: Size 8
Cast off: 2002
Cost: about $20 - $30
Notes: Made this for my mom when the book first came out in 2002. Added shaping to sleeves and ribbing on the cuffs. Changed from buttons to zippers. My mom outgrew it and gave it back to me since she's moving.

Project: Viking Turid
Pattern:  Viking Turid by Elsebeth Lavold, Knitters magazine Fall 2000
Yarn:  Garnstudio Drops Camelia Superwash
Yardage:  a lot more than I expected
Needles: Size 5
Cast off: 2001
Cost: at a discount
Notes: Knitted this when I was working at The Knitting Room, where I fell in love with Clover bamboo circulars, Drops yarns, form fitting sweaters, complex cables, and many other things. This is a tunic length sweater, but the sleeves were too long and I had to rip out half of the first sleeve so I could still use my hands while wearing the sweater. This got a lot of use over the years, still a great treasure in my wardrobe.

Happy Friday! Join the party on Andrea's blog, Tami's blog, and leave me a comment! 

Charity Knitting, Mom's Move

A new batch of charity knitting was collected last week when I visited my mom. She's clicking on those needles a lot more to use up some yarn before moving to Houston.

The moving, however, is not quite coming along. More precisely the getting-rid-of-stuff-before-moving is not coming together at all. It's been over two months since she decided to move, and she has hardly cleaned out anything. Every time I talked to her on the phone, she promised to start as soon as we hang up the phone. Her closets are still completely packed to the brims, empty boxes piled up high, and she just wants to sit down, watch TV and knit. I'm not sure if it's age or the whole prospect of packing and moving simply too overwhelming, she just doesn't seem to want to deal with it at all. I will have a few more chances to go down there and help her sort though all the books, files, clothes, and just general "stuff", then we have to sell or give away all the furniture, pack up boxes that are going to be shipped to Houston. It sounds like a very daunting task.

That's enough whining.

Happy Friday! Join the party on Andrea's blog, Tami's blog, and leave me a comment! 

More Shawl, A Lot More Emma

Continuing to make progress on the Starfish shawl. There are five sections, and for the armhole slits, two sections, and the other three sections, are knitted back and forth. If you see part of the shawl slightly bigger than the opposite side, don't need to have your eyes or screen checked.

Now the fun part! Emma has been with us for a week, and if you ask her she'd tell you it's pretty nice here. She has three humans doting on her, and a big brother to wrestle with her. She has a pretty good idea when it's meal time, and runs to the spot to wait for her kibbles. Her idea about bathroom is less than perfect, and we are working on more business and less fooling around in the backyard, which is hard since her new hobby is mulching, munching on the wood chips that is.

I started a Facebook page for the pups so we have a place for all their stories. Do come join us, just click on this link: Rascal and Emma.

Last but not least, a little video of Emma, someone on Ravelry called her "flying nun ears" :-)

Happy Fiber Arts Friday! Join the party on Andrea's blog and leave me a comment!