Look! Pictures.
I have been knitting, I swear! It has been ages since I've posted pictures. As usual we have been a very busy family. Here is the past weekend.

Saturday: Aptos, CA Seacliff State Beach, The Kids TKD beach party.














Sunday: Felton, CA Roaring Camp Railroad, A Day out with Thomas












That is a genuine full scale Thomas, like a dope I cut off Thomas' face in the picture, I hope my sister took a better picture. It was a beautiful day and the only spoiler was my nervous Nephew throwing up as soon as he was on the train! Fun!

Monday & Tuesday Swimming Fun with Friends at a Friend's House

All the while I was making The Everlasting Bagstopper from LionBrand Yarn Incredible. It took 4 balls of yarn. The first picture is the bottom of the bag while still on the needles. The second obviously is finished, ends woven in. The finished size is 15" tall (not counting the handles) 4" wide on the bottom. Instead of using sewn on handles as Amy Singer prescribed, I knitted on a pair of handles using a band 10 sts wide, picked up from the edge, directly above the bottom corner, then made them 15" long then grafted the end above the other corner. I used the size 7 needles so it was pretty tight gauge, hoping it would stretch out less and maintain its wide shape. I have loaded it up with about 10 lbs of stuff to see how much it stretches. It stretches some, but not an unreasonable amount. Loaded up it is probably about 25" long.
Last but not least the Felici Firefighter sock for DS! I made them a little big because he outgrows them so fast and more importantly he won't be wearing them until Fall, as it will be Flip Flops until school starts. Last but not least, I have arrived!! I am finally on Ravelry. I won't be such an idiot next time and I will jump on the bandwagon the 1st time it passes by and not the 100th... At least I am not number 21,500th in the queue... talk about waiting to get on the bandwagon.... Oh yeah only 2 days to MS3 clue 5! Sweet!

I am not a notorious project starter. I am a finisher. I start something, finish it off, then move on to the next project. Lately though I just keep on starting, project after project. Because 3 inches of toe on a sock, a 1/3 finished "Tenderheart Shawl" and Mystery Stole are not enough, I started an Everlasting Bagstopper today. I keep intending to make a bag, but I've never found the right pattern and, though I knew it was very easy to design one, put a bottom on it, make an even number of stitches and then do faggot stitch around until you hands fall off, I was never inspired. However the prospect of wiling away my day at the beach for DS and DD's Tae Kwon Do school's beach party, and the 2 wool projects and 1 alpaca project I had on the needles seemed a little hot and destined to absorb sand faster than the crotch pocket on a swimming suit, I thought I needed to bring along something else to work on. I thought, Everlasting Bagstopper, knit up with something entirely different might be cool. A week and a half ago I happened to pick up quite a bit of Lion Yarn Incredible (which is very pretty but was always over priced and knit up has a texture that eerily reminds me of a crabs lungs/gills when you are cleaning out a crab for consumption) at the local Dolllar Tree for the amazing price of $1 per ball (well duh, it is the Dollar Tree right?)! I switched up the needle size a bit using 7 and 11 instead of 5 and 10.5, using dpns for the beginning instead of circulars then switched to circular once the stitches were picked up. It is coming out, super cool! I LOVE it. It is pretty and sparkly and I am currently using Autumn Leaves, a wonderful brown/copper color that looks great! The online photo of the yarn doesn't do it justice, it just doesn't shine the way it does in person. This bag is going to be the eye catcher of all Everlasting's made and I have a feeling I will be working on it tomorrow (well, later today that is) as I ride on Thomas the Tank Engine under the shade of the Roaring Camp Redwoods!

It's Friday and I grant myself permission to finish clue 4 chart F! Wahoo!

I finished the first sock of DS Felici Firefighter socks while watching Planet Earth when I should have been going to bed. It is really quite nice, it is SO soft. It really is some of the nicest superwash Merino I have ever felt, we'll have to see how it washes up, if it gets all pilly or shrinks some or if it comes out completely unscathed like the SUPERWool I am suspecting it of being. I am surely going to have to order at lease what, 8 balls, nah, I'd need at least 11 (but no odd balls so at least 12 right?) to make the $45 minimum to get the free shipping... Oh what a sacrifice!

DS's foot is relatively (child's size 13/1) small and skinny so I have a fair amount left over in one skein, I'll have to make something small out of it, like wrist warmers or something. Now to begin the next sock. I'll have to go pull out a bunch of yarn until I get to the right spot. Teenuh knows how obsessed I am with getting perfectly matching socks (unmatched socks, like the ones I made from Trekking drive me BoNkErS!!). There is an 8 stripe variation (amazingly enough with only 4 colors) before the next matching repeat so there'll be 2 chunks of leftover yarn, unless Goddess of knitting willing I got nearly perfectly matched balls with similar starting points.....

As for MS3. I am taking my time on Chart f. I have forbidden myself to work steadily on it, until at least Friday, then it will almost feel like a normal clue release....

Running out of things to do.

I made what now sort of seems like a mistake by finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Sunday because I found that nobody else that I know has finished reading it yet!! So I have to sit patiently and keep my mouth shut about what happened so as not to ruin it for anyone else.

After finishing the book I blasted through chart E of MS3. I have started chart F but am trying to pace myself realizing that there are still 10 more days until the next chart is released. Work a line here, work a line there.... I am still working on the Tenderheart shawl and still working on DS's socks. It just doesn't have the same sense of excitement though, does it?

Hooray for clue 4...

Printed and marked all 4 pages of pattern for Mystery Stole 3. I have begun working away. I love it. It is so fun to not really have an idea of what you are doing and just go on good faith that the designer will not lead you astray.

Not that I really needed more to do. I started a pair of ST stitch socks in Felici Firefighter colorway for DS. I almost hijacked the yarn to make a pair of socks for myself. I was working away in a lovely chevron when my mom looked over at my socks and asked if they were for DS or DH because I had finally succeeded in finding a wonderfully manly color. Feeling outed and guilty for being caught in making myself another pair of socks out of something clearly intended for another person, I promptly ripped back the 4 inches of progress and reduced it to the size of DS's foot. This yarn is so very soft and smooth. It is yummy. I am going to have to order some more Felici for myself in one of the 8 fabulous colorways, or maybe all 8!

The Tenderheart shawl, (as I think of it fondly in my head, when my daughter was small(er) she had a speech impediment and was often heard saying "tenda haaaart" in a way that was so very cute) is progressing nicely although I am thinking it is more like Love-A-Lot in the color scheme and volume of hearts. My pattern is working out nicely, although my one concern is that it increases in width more than length and I will have to stop when it is shorter than intended simply so that it doesn't become too wide to be useful. I tried to rework the shawl to have only 1 increase per (rs) row but couldn't quite get the repeats to follow nicely and what not.

Never Ever gonna get in.

ravelry > antsy

patiently awaiting your invite?

If you've added your name to the invite request list on our front page then you can use this form
to check your place in line.

Email address

Found you!

• You signed up on June 5, 2007
• You are #7052 on the list.
• 1076 people are ahead of you in line.
• 11343 people are behind you in line.
• 32% of the list has been invited so far

Damn. Why did I wait SO Long to sign up. Maybe I was sort of thinking, "Who would want to catalog their entire stash and all of their FO's outside of their blogs? Surely this madness will blow over. It won't be that popular" (delusional self-talk). Then, "It can't stay in Beta forever, soon everyone will be able to sign up and no one will care much any more." (more delusional self-talk). Then, "Well, if I'm getting on the bandwagon I'd better get moving or I'll be left far behind." Cripes, what was I thinking waiting? #7,052 on the list. Over a thousand people ahead of me. Waiting. I can tell you what I'm thinking now..."Damn! I'm glad I'm not the person who is 11,343 people behind me!" Do the math. I am 7052. 1076 people are head. 5976 people are already in. How much more room could there be!? Isn't the pool getting crowded? There are still 12420 people on the waiting list. Will 18396 people fit!? With all of their stashes and fo's and wips. What could possibly contain this?

I am very impatiently waiting for clue #4. In the meantime, I have been driving myself nuts trying to design a shawl with hearts on it for my DD. I am the world's biggest heart hater, and some how I ended up with a daughter who is so totally into hearts and pink stuff and stuff that is just so girly! I bought this bright pink and purple yarn at Sitches from Helen's Half Pint Farm. I poured through my pattern books. Graphed extensively (started this part 3 separate times over the last 4 months before I sat down and got serious about it.) Began knitting. Ripped back. Re charted (repeat these 3 steps about 20 times, yeah seriously, until I kid you not, 6 AM!) At some point I switched to some waste yarn, so as not to wear out this wonderful yarn. I went to bed when I realized the sun was coming up. Began working on it again the next morning. Repeating those 3 infamous steps. FINALLY I liked what I saw, cast on 8 stitches and started to knit. I am still not entirely fond of the way it is working out, I think it should be more lacy, but I don't want it to be too lacy, since I think she is planning on using it for practical warming purposes and she said she likes it the way it is, though I suspect this is because she doesn't want me to try and redesign it, she just wants it finished. I found things worked out easier if I used a TON of stitch markers, you may have not ever seen so many markers on one project. I am waiting to see how nice or ugly it turns out before I post pictures... You'll just have to wait and see.

Yahoo! MS3 clue #3 finished. This is a shot of only the newest portion. This one went quick. It was fairly repetitious and just cranked off the needles, it was very similar to clue 2 and the pattern was fairly obvious in that you could see if you'd made a mistake as soon as you reached those diagonal lines traversing the stole. Here it is in its entirety still not blocked at all. My edges LOVE to curl under, I'll probably have to starch the edges a little bit when I block it. The only bummer now is that I am done for a WHOLE week. I should have taken my time... savored it a little. The next week will be a challenge, do I knit first or read my Harry Potter book. They'll both probably take about the same amount of time (well okay, the book will probably take me about an hour more than the knitting) How do I decide!? I guess if my Amazon shipment doesn't arrive before the clue is posted, that will decide for me, won't it!?

Surprisingly I got right into the Adobe file for the MS3 Clue 3 with no problems and got my pages downloaded and printed out. No huge lag, no mad rush of 6,000 people, what a relief.


So what a dork am I!? I just realized that I never posted pics of my custom needles and markers that I ordered from Scary Merry. The arrived the day before I left for Hawaii so I never had time, but duh, I should have done it as soon as I got home right? I stumbled onto her super nifty cool designs on Myspace (check out her pics it has all her work) of all places and promptly friended her and asked her to make me a of Corpse Bride needles. They are SOOO wonderful. I just need to make something that fits on straights and uses a size 6 needles so I can show them off. Ugh I am SO in love with them! She makes SO many cool things. I just want to sit around and fondle them.... You can see they are tiny (that's a dime for size reference) but SUPER detailed. Such excellent work! I was thinking of ordering some custom needles for someone special for maybe Christmas or her birthday(which just passed), but I couldn't decide what she might like best... Everything she does is so good how could you pick?!

Okee Dokee, here it is the picture of my MS3 with clue 2 finished.

It is not blocked at all, sorry for the beach towel underneath making different colors. If you click on it, you can see the beads, they certainly don't show up at all in that tiny picture, they look totally black in the photograph, they are actually a myriad of lovely rainbow colors...

Thank goodness the next clue comes out tomorrow because durn this EVIL yarn of Luna Moth Shawl. It has again, escaped only to have a GIANT hole looming 15 rows below (and like 20 stitches WIDE) where I am working. I am sure now I will wind it into a ball and give the cursed thing to some other knitter who I would like to jinx instead. UGH! For the first time ever knitting lace, I am ready to rip this thing out and never start it again!!!

MS3 Clue #2 finished!

I have to wait while my camera batteries charge . I have so many pics from vacation to download my batteries will need to last at least 20 minutes and right now they will last about 2 minutes. Then I'll post the pics.

MS3 Clue #1 complete!

I finished clue 1 and am about to embark on clue 2. It looks quite nice already. This is going to be fun, fun, fun!

Where on earth did I go again!?

I missed you all dear blogging friends! 2 weeks on Maui sure went fast! I can't believe how the time flew and I barely had any time to knit. With the exception of the airplane ride, I think I only found like 4 chances to pick up my knitting so not much progress was made on the Luna Shawl, maybe about 30 rows and I didn't manage to coerce any of my family members into taking pics of me knitting at the beach (they thought I was a super dork) or sitting at the mall waiting for my mom, or sitting in my Grandparent's house...

I was happy when I got home though, because the Mystery Stole 3, KAL had begun and I had some catching up to do! I am using the Alpaca Clouds from Knitpicks in the midnight colorway on size 4 needles. I am using iridescent black glass beads in size 6. It was started earlier this evening and I stopped for the evening on row 70, so I am nearly done with clue 1 (to row 100). Clue 2 goes to row 150 and the next clue comes next Friday so I am nearly back on track with the releases!

Someday I will post pictures of those Panda Cotton socks and the progress on the Luna shawl. Once I get caught up with MS3 I can work both at the same time.