TGIF

Yes, that’s a little throw back to my childhood. We would sit down as a family and watch the TGIF Line up on TV as a family. Cheesy, but fun 🙂

This week in St. Louis, the temperatures have felt like fall. For instance, we opened all our windows yesterday and the thermostat in our house read 65 last night before I went to bed. I’m wearing a cozy sweatshirt and PJ pants, not to mention my awesome Christmas socks!

I’ve been reading all over blogs and Ravelry about knitting season. This change in the weather has definitely prompted a desire to knit everything, even more than I was feeling. Now instead of just knitting on my WIPs, I am scanning my yarn cabinet, Ravelry queue, and my physical library to pair up yarns from my cabinet to knit things. Any things. Just something to put around me and keep my warm. Forget knitting for other people, I’m feeling selfish and very, very motivated.

Plus it helps that I’ve finished a few things. Let me show you those!!

First up, the MariGOLD Slouch hat!! I even blocked the thing!

I love the color. I love the cables. My only reservation is that it’s big. Like big! Lots of slouch. I know that’s the point, but I’m not quite convinced. It’s still drying, so when it’s done, I will take some live action photos of it on an actual head.

I also cast on and finished a Little Red Riding Hood cape for a dear friend’s little one. She contacted me when I was home visiting my new niece and helping my mom organize her stash. I found this darling pattern, Capuchon, hurried over to Michael’s to pick up some fun, hard-wearing, kid-friendly yarn in the Red Heart Shimmer, then went home to raid my mom’s needles and cast that bad boy on.

The pattern is written to start at the neck with a provisional cast-on, then knit the cape down, come back pick up the neck stitches to work the hood. I decided I didn’t want to do that, so I cast-on from the bottom up, did a little math and away I went. It has this adorable raspberry stitch border along the bottom.

It was easier to do than I thought. I held the yarn double and knit it on US 10s. I did a 3 needle bind off at the top of the hood. I used a bowl to steam block this thing on. I wanted to even out my stitches and help the borders lie flat.

Overall, I love the thing. Super easy to knit. I used a satin ribbon that I threaded through the fabric around the neck. I didn’t want to do anything permanent.

I’m mostly impressed that it fit 🙂

It’s just too adorable. I made pretty thorough notes on my project page in case you want to knit one from the bottom up too…I only made the notes for the 12 months size. Should be a good starting point though if you want to do a bigger size.

You may have also noticed that I blocked these two items. Aren’t you impressed? Especially after my Knitting Confession a few Mondays ago about it. It really does make a difference. I have another awesome blocked object to show you. I guess we could count this as a FO as well on this lovely Friday.

It’s my Follow Your Arrow Shawl. I know I’ve posted about it a lot. I love it and blocking the lace made a huge, HUGE difference. Before:

After:

She is beautiful. I can’t wait to wear her.

Have you finished anything lately??

v’s & bumps,

Jenna

Follow Your Arrow to the Driving Range!

Happy Free-For-All Friday!!!! I feel like this week has flown by. Here in St. Louis, there was a terrible tragedy on Saturday when a young man lost his life. The rest of the week has been utter chaos. I’m hoping things will settle down here soon.

I bet you are wondering what the title is about…if you’ve been keeping up, you know I’ve been recently working away at my Follow Your Arrow Cowl…a Mystery Knit-A-Long from Ysolda Teague that I started in February…well…

I FINISHED IT!!! Yahoo!!!! I really, really, really need to block it, but here we go.

I love the edging. I love the color. I just love it.

I’m hoping with a good block this 100% Merino Ella Rae with grow a little. The shawl is a little small for me. I’m going to blame it on me being tall. With volleyball shoulders. Yes, that’s why 🙂

About the driving range…last weekend, I went “golfing” with my husband, his brother and his girlfriend (you follow?). I mostly drove the cart and knit, but I did get to hit a few balls. Man! It was fun. And frustrating since I didn’t know what I was doing. So, Tuesday, Jordan and I went to the driving range to work on my swing…We hit for about an hour. I left a little frustrated that I wasn’t just killing it.

So I went back. By myself. On Wednesday. I got the Medium bucket of 70 balls. And went to work. I was improving, but still, quite a few swing and misses…

So I went back. By myself. Today. I got the Large bucket of  100 balls. Much better…much much better. I missed less, I hit the ball straighter, and I can say that I’m hooked.

Anybody else do something once and get hooked? I guess knitting has been the same. A few stitches, a trip to the yarn store and BAM! Here we are 5 years later, juggling 3 different active WIPs and itching to cast on more 🙂

Happy Friday! Have a wonderful weekend!

v’s & bumps,

Jenna

Take Time to Knit :)

After racking my brain for a suitable Technique Tuesday, I decided to revisit a post I made very early in this blog. It was this post about knitting faster and potentially learning to continental knit. It was during my first few posts and I ran it at the same time as the 5th Annual Knit & Crochet Blog Week hosted by Eskimimi Makes ( totally cool, fun project that I’m so glad I participated in). Long post short, I was thinking about learning to knit continental so that I could knit faster. I received from sage advice from Kaiya at Winterlime Knits and that was to simply spend time knitting instead of browsing Ravelry & blogs wishing I could knit faster so I could cast on all the beautiful projects I was seeing.

I think it’s the best advice I’ve received ever when it comes to knitting. Anytime I think I want to cast on something more or want to learn something new or wish I had more handknit things, I remember to just sit down and spend time knitting 🙂

Since doing this, I have finished a couple of awesome projects and made some progress on others like my Follow Your Arrow shawl that is holding onto my size 6 32″ for dear life 🙂

Just wanted to share a short post and some encouraging words that have done me good 🙂

v’s & bumps,

Jenna

When a problem comes along…

You must WIP it!!! Thank you to my lovely husband for reminding me of that chorus 🙂

It’s that time again, to see where I have progressed on my projects! I will say that with some dedicated time to knitting at a World Wide Knit in Public event and a Stitch and Bitch meetup, I’m feeling good with my progress. Add in some Cardinals baseball on ESPN (thank goodness they showed that instead of the Reds for at least one night!) and the World Cup and you’ve got some high quality knitting time.

First up, the Midsummer Baby Blanket for my future niece.

The slipped stitch pattern is giving the blanket an extra squishy feel, perfect for a baby girl.

And the texture on this side is just knobby enough to make it interesting. I almost think the colored bumps look like little flowers.

I’ve got about 5 more rows in the blue, then on to another color change. The slip stitch pattern is eating my main color yarn quite quickly. I may have underestimated the amount I would need. We shall see. I did buy an emergency back up skein while at Sophie’s on Saturday.

I did cast on (sort of) for the Nice & Knit Knit Along.

It’s the Whispers pattern. I knit a gauge swatch on US 7s and it was too loose, so I tried again with US 6s. I’m liking this better. The pattern says to block the gauge swatch to get a true measurement. Is this true? Should I do this? This will be my first knitted garment that has to actually fit me, so maybe I will.

I’ve also been knitting a little bit on my Follow Your Arrow shawl I started a while ago.

This is NOT  mindless knit, unless I’m on my resting row. I really have to pay attention and this is not good when trying to knit and talk. I do love the way this is shaping up. I’m about halfway through clue 4B.

Lastly, as I’ve been exploring the blog world more and more, I have noticed people posting some about the books they are reading. I think this is a work in progress as well. I’ve picked up the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis as a summer pool read.

I found this giant thing at Half Price Books and it has all the books in it!! I don’t remember if I read this as a child or not, but I’m starting with the Magician’s Nephew and hoping to work my way through them. Just a little more distraction from getting back to my Harry Potter 🙂

That’s all the progress I’ve made since the last WIP Wednesday post. It’s tough to balance my selfish knitting with gift knitting, especially when the yarn on the projects for me is soooooo heavenly.

 

v’s & bumps,

Jenna

PS. Linking up with Tami, Nicole, & Ginny.