WIP Wednesday: Hello Spring Edition

Yesterday was the first day of spring! Appropriately, the day was full of sunshine, so as soon as I had completed my daily word count I grabbed my WIP bag and headed down to the beach.

I am lucky enough to live about a block away from the beach so there are lots of different places along the bay for me to visit. Yesterday I decided to go somewhere I used to hang out a lot when I was younger: near the local surf lifesaving club.

I had a boyfriend once who was a lifesaver and had a key to the building, so we used to go there so we could duck in to pee (definitely an issue that is under considered when people decide which beach to go to. I suspect that often the warm spots one feels when swimming in the ocean are definitely there because of a lack of public loos!

There is also this gorgeous (although somewhat uncomfortable) mosaic chair which is ridiculously romantic to sit on and drink wine while the sun goes down. I guarantee smooching will follow the sunset, so be careful with whom you share the chair!

For non-romantic sunset drinking, there is a picnic table which fits up to six women who like drinking chardonnay at the beach very comfortably. (It was at this stage that I realised why I hadn't come here since my early 20s - I stopped drinking at the beach!)

I put the picnic table to a non-alcoholic use and set up my two Practically Pairfect socks.

Because I am crazy, I ended up buying another set of 2.25 mm needles last week so I could work on both pairs of socks at the same time.

The striping is so fun and the socks look fantastic (if I do say so myself). 

Welcome, spring! I've missed you and I hope you're here to stay.

WIP Wednesday: Christmas Knitting Edition

It's that time of year again - time to plan Christmas knitting. I am taking some time off work to finish my (stupid and ridiculously time-consuming) thesis, which means a) I'm hopefully going to submit on the expected due date and b) I'm going to be poor when Christmas Day rolls around. Hence, it's time to start looking at what I can do with what I have.

I have five pairs planned. With the three sets of sock needles I own, I have cast on for three pairs:

I thought maybe I'd take a picture every Wednesday in the same spot so I can see that I'm making progress to avoid that moment where you feel you've been working on something forever but all of your knitting is going straight into some sort of weird woolly black hole rather than contributing to the size of your project (see, my Helical Scarf project, which is ... dum dum dum ... done and soaking!):

From left to right: socks for Sam in Wendy Roam Fusion in Craic (yarn bought in the UK), a pair of Hers Spiralled Socks for Friend P in Patonyle (with matching His Spiralled Socks to come) and a pair of socks for my dad in Regia Design Line.

I've got five months, which should be heaps of time for five pairs of socks! But I would also like to make a pair for my sister and Friend J has a baby due in November and I'm only one side of the border away from finishing my Mitered Square Blanket...

We'll see.

WIP Wednesday: This is the scarf that never ends; it just goes on and on my friend!

This last week has been the coldest week in my city for many years. As anyone who has read this blog for any period of time knows, I hate the cold. There is nothing more likely to make me take to my bed like a Victorian maiden than a forecasted week of temperatures at 10 degrees. Urgh. This, combined with a wee lurgy I've had for the last few days have combined to make me pretty much the most disagreeable person on the planet in the last few days. I'm cranky, short tempered and likely to stab anyone who irritates me with the nearest knitting needle.

Fortunately for humanity, I have largely been working from home. Unfortunately for me, I still haven't finished the stupid stripy charity scarf. It is the scarf that never ends! Here is the latest progress:

It hardly looks different to last week :( I am seriously starting to feel like it may never get done.

Last week

Three weeks ago

To alleviate the boredom, I started a Magic Ball Monster Stock. A magic ball is a ball made up of short lengths of yarn tied together and wound into a ball, which is then knitted like a normal ball of wool. My lengths were 2.2 metres each and joined using a weaver's knot. That's probably a little short  for each length (each sock takes about 160m to knit, so that's a lot of ends!) but it was pretty fun to knit. I just did a little magic ball as a test run and used it all up in two days. Now the project goes on hold until I get some more scrappy ends, which means...

..I need to start another sock (my inability to finish my stripy scarf seems kind of more obvious now...)

These are for a requested Christmas present and I am excited to be knitting for someone who really wants what I am going to make. 

Now, to finish the damn scarf...

WIP Wednesday: Lace time

Two Fridays ago, I knocked off early and spent the afternoon outside with some classic literature, a vodka and tonic and a new shawl I'm hoping to finish for Christmas (the 100th anniversary hearts half-circle by Mwaa Knits).

10 days later, I've moved Middlemarch to the "when I'm on holidays" pile (it is a very long book!) and started Amy Poehler's Yes Please, which I am enjoying immensely. I also have a more midweek appropriate beverage (a nice cuppa) and have done a lot more on the shawl. I haven't knitted lace for a while and I'm really enjoying it, although if you count all the knitting I've ripped out, I've really  knitted three times as much as you see here (vodka and soda and lace knitting...really bad partnership!)

Lucy is also an Amy Poehler fan. What can I say - my cat has very good taste.

I have 13 days to go...I think I can do it!

WIP Wednesday: End of year edition

Today is the last WIP Wednesday of 2013! I haven't done many of them this year; primarily because since I've been working very slowly on big projects, weekly tracking of my knitting progress would bore even my closest, most interested friends.  

For example, the Luxury OpArt blanket.

It looks pretty much the same as last time. Trust me, it's bigger! It's just not very interesting to look at (although I am loving the knitting. It's so brainless - it's like knitting Valium. Guaranteed to reduce stress levels.)

I had a conversation with my sister yesterday, and she said to me that she is incredibly pleased with the present she has bought with me. This immediately led me to start worrying that the present I have for her is not good enough (why does Christmas have to be so stupidly stressful?), so I pulled out my three-quarter finished Soleus socks.

I'll definitely get it finished before Christmas but I suspect I'm going to run out of black wool before I run out of sock knitting. Urgh!! I refuse to worry about this - if there's not enough black wool, then she'll just have to be happy with the present I got. Gift-giving should not be a competitive sport!!

This final item is not a WIP, but I wanted to show you how adorable my cat is. She does this thing where she locates the point at which sunshine and shade meet and lies as close to the sun as she can get without it actually directly touching her.

Unfortunately, she doesn't understand that the sun is huge ball of fire that is being orbited by an always spinning Earth, so when then shade-sun line inevitably moves, so does she. The poor thing must never get any REM sleep because she has to get up and readjust her position every fifteen minutes or so. It is honestly one of the cutest, stupidest and funniest things I have ever seen.

Till next time :)

Christmas knitting time!

It's the November 1 (already?), which means that it's the time of year to ... *dramatic pause* ... talk about Christmas knitting again! This year I am taking a zero-stress approach and only knitting three things. No additional Christmas knitting stress this year - I'm using knitting to reduce my stress instead!

The first is the Serenity blanket, which is technically not a Christmas gift but a blanket for a baby that's due on the 20th of December. You can't see it very clearly in this picture from the project's pattern page but the original pattern stopped the inner lace section by cutting though the leaves (Source of the photo).

I didn't like that so I continued the pattern so the leaves 'closed'. I really like how it looks now.

I just have to figure out what border I'm going to use now. Any suggestions?

The second gift is a pair of Rainy Day Socks for my stepmother, just like the ones I gave to Sam's grandma last year. I loved knitting them so much and they were so very quick and easy that this choice was a no-brainer.

Finally, and this should come as no surprise, a pair of plain boring huge stockinette socks for Sam. The colour is not quite as garish as it looks here - it's more of a dark burgundy that matches perfectly his old school colours. I know the school colours of his private boys school because still has a pair of boxer shorts that he got while attending there 10+ years ago. It seems strange to me that a) his high school gave out underwear and b) he still owns it, but apparently it's something boys schools do. Boys will be boys, I guess.

Of course while I was deciding what to make this year,

 Lucy was right there offering all the assistance she could.

Thanks Lucy. You're the best.

Day 3: All Socks All The Time

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows that I am partial to knitting socks. I knit a lot of socks - I love that they can be complicated, with cables and fair isle, or pretty, with panels of lace and texture, or just a mindless simple stockinette tube. I love that they are so very comfortable and keep my toes toasty and warm. Socks are the best!

But, sock-wise, things are a little out of control Chez HereIKnit:

(look who figured out how to use a new feature on her computer)

FIVE PAIRS OF UNFINISHED SOCKS! Disgraceful.

I think the most embarrassing thing about this is that four of the socks are 75% completed. So clearly I start a pair of socks and then power  most of the way through before losing interest and starting another pair of socks.  Apparently, I will continue to do this until all of my sock needles are used up. It's insane behaviour and I really need to stop!

I probably won't, though. It's an illness.

3 down, 28 to go. Woohoo, 10% done!