Blanket Woes October 4, 2013

Now that it’s been gifted I can finally let the cat out of the bag and reveal two parts of the sooper seekrit project.  The main project, a rainbow sock yarn blanket, has been in the works for four months.  Here’s a pic of it pre-washing and blocking.

I’ve been calling it the Sock Yarn Rainbow Baby Blanket of DOOM these past few months.  If you’ve ever made one of these before, it’s not a task for the faint of heart, each one of those squares takes 30-40 minutes to knit.  The first snafu happened when Thing 1 decided he would help me out by trimming all of the ends from the top squares and the beginning and end pieces of the crochet border, all waiting to be woven in.  I got some good advice on one of my knitting boards and reinforced the top of each square with a new piece of yarn.  With baited breath, I put it in the washing machine and prayed that my fixes would hold.  When it came out of the wash, a corner of one of the internal squares had come unraveled due to what I can only guess was a weak spot in the yarn.  I was devastated.  The morning of the shower had me looking up instructions on how to darn a hole and I made a passable patch, one that was glaringly obvious to me but something everyone else had to look for.  I took the blanket home with me after the shower so I could put it through the wash again to make sure the patch held.  You can see where this is going — it separated on one side.  I must not have gone in deep enough on that side so now I have to fix it again.  It’s currently drying on my banister and I’m hoping I can do the fix tonight.

On a happier note, part two of the project did turn out all right.

The green vine lost some of its spring in washing, but that’s an easy fix.  She loved both of the gifts and part three is waiting to have ends sewn in and to be blocked and washed.  Once that’s been gifted, I’ll post pics.

I seem to have some bad knitting mojo going on right now.  Between the hole in the blanket, the almost three inches of shawl I had to frog because I was going to run out of yarn before I finished it to a ladder – yes a ladder – in a sock I’ve been playing around with since the summer it has not been a good couple of weeks in knitting.  Here’s hoping things will get better.

Box of Goodness! October 2, 2013

I’m still hard at work with sooper seekrit projects and an update on that will probably come next week.  In the meantime,  I’ve been working on my Oaklet Shawl.  Thing Two wanted in on the progress pic so here he is…

But the big news is my swap package came in the mail today and it’s fantastic!  The due date isn’t until the end of the month so getting this early is super cool.  It’s everything I could have dreamed of and more.

The purple is from Julie Spins, the colorway is Sweet Caroline and it’s 50/50 Wool/Silk fingering weight.  I think I’m going to do Rainstorm Shawl with it since the drape will be perfect for it.  The other skein is Spinner’s Candy La Grande Fingering yarn, 100% superwash wool in Dierdre of the Sorrows.  I love the color — it’s a lot like the vanilla bean Tosh Merino Light I’m doing the Oaklet Shawl in.  Both are so soft and squishable.  But it doesn’t end there!

Those are Dr. Who stitch markers with the project bag.  Chocolate, patterns, and a project bag.  I sure could get used to this kind of treatment.