Ok, sorry I haven't blogged in a while...

.... Work has been really busy lately, so I finally found some time to write a new blog. Hooray!
Anyway, here's the update:

So my co-worker, Ashley, has put all of her wedding plans into her mothers' hands, so therefore, she will not be needing my services, or my little pouch bags, anymore... oh well, at least I don't have to spend all my knitting time (when I actually have knitting time) knitting a hundred of those little pouches. I like a little variety in my knitting, and those pouches are just..... not the "it" for me. So yeah, no more worries about that.

And also, here's an update on my sweater-cowl that I'm making:








Isn't it AWESOME?? I'm so excited! The instructions were a bit confusing, at which time my mother and I had to pause "Fiddler on the Roof" to figure it out, since it's a European pattern, but we figured it out pretty quickly, so I was able to carry on with my project/my favorite musical.














Anyway, that's my update on my latest projects. Oh! And I have a new pattern that I wanna start sometime. A friend of mine, Kelly, goes through my starbucks every day, and lo and behold, she's a knitter! And she happens to be knitting, at the moment, one of my all time favorite tote bags. Like, I've wanted this pattern for the loooooongest time, and she gave me a copy! Hooray!




I'm super excited to start that one! But I need the yarn, first off , which is Lamb's Pride wool, cause it's felted, AND I want to wait till my sweater's done, which probably won't take that long, since there's not a lot of sewing involved. YAY!

So there you have it. The official update since February. I'm thinking of cleaning my house, and then putting in a "knit-to" movie. The Prestige? maybe.... we'll see.

My latest.....

Hey, I'm back! I haven't blogged in a while, and a lot of stuff has happened since then!

You remember this?




Well, now it's this:

Pretty neat, eh? I didn't use a pattern. I just cast on 20 stitches and did K2P2 ribbing until I thought it was long enough to fit around my neck comfortably, then I cast off and added the buttons. The gaps between the stitches are big enough to where I don't need button holes, really. So I was lazy. Don't judge me.

Anyway, I've also taken this time to sort through my yarn closet. Not to where its all bagged up and dated, but I actually put all my scrap yarns in a different basket. AND I've figured out what I'm gonna do with them! I've decided to make..... a scrap afghan. I'm just gonna make big swatches with all my different yarns and then stitch them together later into a big blanket! I'm so excited! Cause for a little while, I was afraid I was gonna have to actually get rid of some of those yarns. So this is great, cause I also have a side project for when I get bored of the bigger stuff, just to keep me going.

I have also taken on a knitting assignment. My co-worker (fellow barista) is getting married in August, and so she approached me and asked if I would knit little pouches to put, you know, candy, little bubbles, etc. So I gotta make approx. 100 of them. fun. But I can do it! Here's what I have so far:

So not bad. The bride likes them, so I'm happy. I also embroidered their initials on the front of them, and I think it's cute! She picked out the yarn, and those are her colors, of course. I'm usually not a big fan of Caron yarn, but this'll definitely do the job wonderfully. I'm satisfied. Now I have 96 more to go. YAY! lol
Alright, well there's my update. I'm blog later, I promise:)

Yay for hat making!

A co-worker of mine, Ashley, wanted me to make an oversized beret for her (she didn't really say "beret", but I knew what she meant). So for the past couple of months, I've been debating over all of my blue yarn in my stash, trying to figure out which yarn she would actually like. I'm always so paranoid about that type of stuff. Anyway, I finally found a good yarn, and I started on it.
Well..... I got 5 rows in, and I kept getting stuck on this one increase row. I kept getting the wrong amount of stitches on the needles, and I had NO IDEA why! After a month and a half of trying, and 3 very sad froggings, I figured it out, and after that, it took my a day to finish the hat. So here it is:

lol... Josh says hi....

She wants to have this kind of hat because she goes camping alot, and so when there are times that they have to go without a shower, this hat will hide her greasy hair. I think you'll get a good idea of how it's gonna look, given that her hair has about the same curliness and length...



Hope you like it. I think I'll make it for myself. It's called the "Huggy Bear", and it originally calls for Noro Iro yarn, which I might go ahead and use, cause it looks really pretty.

Safe knitting!

Field Trip!!!

I'm so happy! Mom and I just went on a field trip out of nowhere and went to my favorite yarn shop ever!!! It's called Acorn St. Yarn and Needlework in Seattle. Yay!!!




I LOVE this shop! It's right downtown by the college up here, and it has SOOOOOOO MUCH YARN!!! Shelf upon shelf upon basket upon shelf! Crazy amount! EVERYTHING! We were in there for a while too. Here's mom's fun findings:



And here's mine:


I'm so happy! I saw this yarn and I fell in LOVE with it! same with the buttons! There are 4 buttons altogether. I think I'm gonna use both of these and find a cool pattern for a cowl. I've been wanting to make a really cool cowl, since I have so many scarves, and I think that these are just the right things to make it! Oh! And here's a felted fish we saw in the window lol:



Fun times! Next time we'll bring Josh with us, and I promise I won't forget the camera...

Safe knitting!

In my closet.....

Ok, so every knitter that I know has to admit that they have at least one project on the needles that's hidden away under the bed, behind the couch, in the fireplace.... for me, I'm pretty simple and just hide them in the back of my closet.
Yeah, I know what some of you are thinking, and I know that I just blogged about an hour ago, but I'm listening to a podcast right now (It's a Purl, Man), and he mentioned all of his projects on his needles, and it made me think of aaaaaaaalllllllll the projects that I have on needles, and which ones are just sitting, and will probably remain sitting for a while longer..... just until I get enough nerve to finish them.
So I went into my closet just now to see how many unfinished projects I could find, and (thank GOD, I thought there'd be more)I found three. And here they are, I am showing my "closet shame" to the world:


Yes. So I'm a bit ashamed, but I will tell you that this hoodie has been sitting on the needles, progressing painfully slow, for about....... 4 years. yeah. This is the first sweater I had ever started, but, obviously, not the first one I finished.


Here's where it's from and what it's supposed to look like:



Ok, that's out of the way.

The next one might look familiar to you:



...........yeah.



.............I know.

I will say that I am very proud with how the back turned out on this sweater. This, as I mentioned in one of my previous blogs about this sweater, is my very first project working with color. I really was proud. But, honestly, I'm not a fan of working with color knitting. I much prefer the challenge of lace and cables. I think that's why I've put this away. I was afraid that if I kept going, I would get annoyed. I could do it, but I guess......... color knitting's just not something that I prefer to do. I mean, I like the look of it, I think this sweater, when I finally finish it, will be awesome. I just don't like the work. Oh well, onto the last project that I found:



This one I'm not so ashamed of. I remember picking this one up, not really that long ago, just because I didn't have anything on the needles that I was doing, and I wanted to avoid the "hidden objects" in my closet, so I got out some cheap Red Heart yarn and started this striped St st scarf. So I'm not all that surprised that I put this one up. It got very repetitive and..... frankly, boring. And I didn't want this to be the cause of a "loss of interest" for knitting, so I shunned it before it was too late. So that's my excuse......

So there you go. Now my dark secrets are known to the world..... well, at least all who read this blog (mom and dad, right?). Sorry mom, don't be ashamed. I promise I'll pick them back up someday.

Safe knitting!

You know what's NOT fun?...

..... frogging.

Yeah. I had to frog my Mottled Olive Sweater and had to start over. Yeah. It starts out knitting in the round, and I didn't realize that I had twisted it in the first row, so the only thing I could do was start over. sad. Oh well. I was only 10 rows in, so it's not a big deal. I'm already 5 rows into the new attempt.

Anyway, I wanted to show you pictures of Josh's new discovery! As some of you may know, all he has ever knit is hats, and he has never used a pattern before. Well...... my mom showed him.....



.... and he fell in love with it. So....................




So yeah. He's REALLY loving making this too. He's using Wool of the Andes from Knitpicks, and he's made a few modifications to the sides of the sweater. There's supposed to be a line of garter stitch going up the sides of the sweater, but it didn't really appeal to Josh's style, so he's doing ribbing up the sides instead. It looks really good too. YAY!

Anyway, I thought I would bring everybody's day down with my horrible frogging story and then lift everyone up with Josh's Cobblestone Sweater progress. I like to play with people's emotions (teehee). But I'll end this blog by showing you a picture that I came across today that has to be one of my favorite pictures from our wedding. It's a picture of "mine mother" adjusting the piece of art that I still can't believe she knit for me to wear and treasure....



Safe knitting!

Works in Progress.....

Ok, so a couple of nights ago, my mom and I decided that we were gonna go yarn shopping with my birthday money. So I had to pick a pattern for me(for once) that I could buy yummy yarn for. So I was up AAAAAAAALLLLLLL that night, littering the living room of our tiny 1-bedroom apartment with magazines, looking for just the right pattern. So FINALLY, after so many indecisions, I picked one pattern out of the pile:


This is pattern #2 in issue 36 of Rebecca Magazine........ I just realized that I really like the patterns out of this magazine. I made a lace hoodie out of their magazine not too long ago. My first attempt at lace, and pretty easy too.

Anyway, this is what I have on this "Mottled Olive Top":


I'm using Plymouth Yarn's Encore worsted weight yarn, and doubling 2 colors. It's turning out very pretty. I'm really liking it. I got 5 balls of each, which should be enough, and the value was 60 dollars, but the best thing about having my birthday so close to Christmas and New Years...... all the closeout sales and clearance sales! YAY! 25%off all my yarn! so I only paid approx. 40 bucks! So I got a bunch of yarn!

The extra 2 skeins of yarn you see there is undyed Cascade 220 I got for under 10 dollars! I'm excited! The new issue of Knit1 magazine has all these recipies on how to dye yarn naturally, like with blueberries, herbs, teas, and(what I'm gonna use, of course) coffee grounds! I'm so excited! I can't wait! I think I'll call this batch....... "Guatemala Bliss Yarn", or whatever kind of coffee I use from my store (did I mention I work for Starbucks? just clarifying so I don't sound crazy or something lol).

Well, enough blogging. I just got home from work and I'm CRAZY tired, but I wanted to share my thoughts before they left me in a dream....... That was a Disney line if I ever heard one.

Safe Knitting!

Ok, so about my wedding shawl...

So I totally forgot until I scrolled down just now that i have failed to keep up with the wedding shawl that my mom made for me. Well, the day before yesterday was my hubby's and my 6-month wedding anniversary, so it's a little late for the "in-progress" term. So I'll just show you some wedding photos and some honeymoon photos. Before we get to that, though, you should know that this shawl took from February till about a week before the wedding (June 28th), so here's the results:













Ok, those are some wedding photos, and these are definately some of the best shawl photos from the wedding. But we're not done, oh noooooo.... I got honeymoon too!






































Well, there it is. The Shawl. Oh, and by the way, the beautiful beach in the honeymoon pics is in a tiny town called Yachats, OR. I hope you enjoyed the pics. Safe knitting!

I'm back! Finally!

So, I'm finally blogging again. FINALLY! With all the changes in my life this past year, I barely have time for anything! No worries, though... I always make time for my knitting. Well, today is my birthday (yay!) and my mom, Passionknitgirl.blogspot.com, took my hubby and I out to breakfast and then took me to Borders where I got the one knitting book that I've been craving for AGES!!!!!

This book is ama-ziz-zing! absolutely one of the top books that I own! I'm so excited! I've already read the articles and patterns front to back. So exciting. Happy Birthday to me!
Anyway, so Christmas just passed last week, and to entertain myself on the days that the snow storm kept me from making coffee (I work at Starbucks), I knit till my hands cramped up, all presents for my co-workers; sad to say that some are getting late presents, but they're greatful just the same:)
Anyway, here's a couple of gifts I made:

Btw, these pairs of gloves are my first attempt at cable knitting, and it is awesome. I really enjoyed making these gloves, and they're so easy and warm too!I got the pattern (Cableback Fingerless Gloves) from Second Nature Design, and they're amazing!


I got this pattern in Rebecca Magazine, and I know the Melissa's gonna LOVE this top!

Anyway, I think that's enough blogging for right now, but I PROMISE that I'm gonna find time to do this alot more often. Till then, safe knitting!

My gift to her.....

I knew my great-grandmother, Erma Powell, for over 14 years. She was a fantastic human being. Even up till when she was 80-some years old, she would be dancing to good ole' "Go, Jonny, Go". She was an amazing woman that anyone would adore.

Anyway, to get to the point of this blog, she was a Knitter (capital K, as Stephanie Pearl would say), and when my sisters were born, she knit each of them special things (Corinne a sweater, Danielle a TON of booties), but when I was born, she didn't make anything...

She always felt bad about that. So later in life (I think I was 8 or 9), she still had that guilt pressed to her heart (while I was completely unaware of anything of the sort), so she started to knit me this sweater from the Mary Maxim catalog. Well, if you can see these pics, she got as far as the hearts, and even though her mind was "itching" to press forward, her hands were "aching" for her to stop. That was the last attempt she ever made to try to knit again.

Well, about 3 years after her passing, I was informed of all of this. And my mother also informed me that my mom recieved all of her knitting/yarn/anything related to the "cult", as my "non-conformed" friends would say. Well, I couldn't just let that go, now could I?! She had the pattern that my great-dear grandma tried to accomplish in her hands, and so I took it, went on the Mary Maxim website, bought the yarn that suited, and here it came!


......oh, and by the way, this is my first intarsia attempt EVER! I'm surprised it's going pretty well so far. lol I'm making it smaller than what she would've made it though, so when I have kids, they can have it at toddler/baby years (the time that they aren't able to say their opinions, cause most likely, by that time, I'm sure it'll be reeeeeeally outdated).

To conclude this blog, let me say that some of the best times were with my grandma. She was really good with kids. She knew how to make chores/water/veggies/anything into a fun time. She knew how to make me feel better when I was sick. She knew how to cheer me up when I was down. She was a giving person. She was a great role-model. Not until she was gone did I find out that she was a Knitter, but I hope that one day, especially when I have kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, and the like, that I'll be known for the same great things that she was.