You may have noticed the absence of this blog over the past few months. The blog went down, and I moved! Come visit me at my new blog, please.

Just wanted to let you know that blogging will be spare this week due to a family visit.

Well, our camera has been replaced! We bought a new, better, faster, shinier camera that we love. Seriously. We love it.

Anyway, the crocheting project I mentioned last time has been completed, but you have to wait until I can get someone else to get a picture of it for me. Sorry. After that, though, I cast on for Hedera:

with my shiny new cakes of Gloss. It’s not good to leave them unworked too long after you wind them, you know. That’s what I hear, anyway. It’s a fun, fairly simple pattern - the lace repeat is only 10 stitches wide and four rows long, which means that even I am starting to memorize it. See?

So pretty. I am a bit concerned about whether it will fit over my heel…but we’ll see, I guess. I didn’t actually swatch, rationalizing that it would take just as much time to make a regular swatch as it would to just try it and then redo if necessary. Remind me of that when I have to frog half a sock. We’ll see if it makes me feel better.

The sheepghan is in time-out again for being difficult. (I have to unravel a few rows, I think. Baaaaa. I mean, bah.) Apparently, I frustrate easily. Or maybe it’s just that I have so many other things I can work on that won’t fight with me - and it’s more fun to work with those.

On Saturday Greg and I swung by Yarnivore again. I went with two skeins of my Gloss to avail myself of their ballwinder. Melanie was very nice (again) and showed me how to do it, and I have to say that it is pretty darn cool.

While we were there, we picked out yarn for Greg’s scarf. (Oh yeah, I’m making him a scarf. I started making and planning mittens and socks and sweaters and hats for me and Max and Charlie, and Greg said, “So I don’t get anything?” I asked him what he wanted and he said a scarf.) Greg’s specifications were as follows: Black - or dark - with bits of color. Kind of big - puffy - and pretty plain. I interpreted that to mean a black or gray or navy tweed in worsted or heavier and a basic rectangle. I showed him some pictures and he seemed to agree. I actually found a black wool tweed that seemed to match, but we didn’t buy that. We bought this:

Greg said he liked the little ‘flyaways’ and how soft it was. Awww. If he’d only told me he was looking for a soft, fuzzy scarf that still looked manly and serious, we could have started there. No wonder, though: it’s Plymouth Indecita Alpaca Boucle - 90% Alpaca. Gorgeous.

And in other news: Crocheting.

“…so, do you like knitting now better than you like crocheting?” I took this as my cue to crochet something again. (The answer, by the way, is no, knitting is just still really new to me and I have a LOT to learn, which is a really engaging challenge. Plus, when I crochet, I design. It’s like I can’t help it.)

I pulled the sheepghan out of the closet again and slogged through the charting issues (by ignoring my previously worked-out chart and just putting the colors in the places I wanted them). My reward?

Wow. That’s actually looking pretty great. And sure, great is subjective, but it’s looking a lot like I meant it to, which is great to me. However, as you may or may not be able to tell from the darkish photo, I’m going to have a gazillion ends to weave in. Way, way more than the cotton top. Way, way, way more. I think the next church-baby afghan will be markedly simpler.

Oh, by the way - I figured out why Knit Picks sent me those color cards….they introduced new colors in both of those yarns and were trying to get rid of the old ones! The sneaks. However, I’m not complaining, because the new colors are all heathers and I love a good heather. It’s actually my favorite sort of coloring. I love them. Seriously, if I name my first-born daughter Heather it won’t be because of the flower. (I kid. Maybe if I ever get a cat it’ll be a Heather.) Um. Where was I?

My point is, I like heathered yarns.

…since April? (Oh dear. You’ve died, haven’t you?) Anyway, you can now get the directions for the snake ’sock puppet’ here.

I tried to write directions for two larger sizes, so if anyone actually tries it out, do let me know how it goes!

In my blogging absence, I’ve finished a few things. For instance, Charlie’s mittens:

Which are currently too big (and he doesn’t think much of them, besides), but we’ll be going to Japan when he’s about 18 months. Max thinks they’re awesome. Which is good, because he’s slated for a pair, too.

Also, the cotton top!

Which came out pretty well. It took less than 7 balls of the cotton (I’m not sure if it took less than 6, though, as I was using two balls at once for the top part). Seriously, though, people, I was weaving in ends for two days. Like I said, I like it, but it came out a little…strange…in the sleeves and the neck. The back is also slightly less wide than the front so it fits oddly. The sleeves keep curling under even though I did a row of single crochet around them. I haven’t blocked it or ironed it or anything like that yet, though, so I think they’ll improve with some encouragement. Still! Not bad! Especially given my lack of technical expertise and my tendency to fudge over my mistakes instead of correcting them. I’d even go so far as to say it’s kinda cute.

One more thing and then I’ve gotta run: I knit a finger puppet today.

I made it for Max, for use as a prop during Family Home Evening. In case you can’t tell (:oops: - although really, how would you know?) it’s supposed to be Nephi. You can read the story we’re going over tonight here and here.

Gotta go! I need to pick up my plaster-handed husband from work.

…no matter how many projects you have going at once, you still only get sort of the same amount of progress done. Crud. Looking at my list of things to do and to make, that is sort of… daunting.

Also, my camera pretended it was blind for a good long time this morning, but then decided that not only was it not quite dead, but in fact it was feeling much better and wanted to go for a walk. So I have pictures. But it’s probably time to start setting aside money for a new camera. Sigh.

As you can see, Charlie’s mittens are almost finished. Yay! And here’s a new pic of my cotton top:

Which has made progress since the last photo but none at all since I began the mittens. Which makes no sense at all. If you take more on, you’re supposed to be able to get more done, right? I could swear that I read that somewhere…

Yaaaay! (The package tracker said it wouldn’t be here until Monday. Woohoo!) I bought enough for free shipping, which equals a LOT of yarn. Don’t worry, though, each skein of it is tagged for a project. For instance:

2 skeins of Gloss in Cocoa. These will become a pair of Baudelaire (for me).

2 skeins of Gloss in Dusk. These will become a pair of Hedera (for me).

4 skeins of Swish in Deep Ocean. This will become a sweater for Charlie. (See how Deep Ocean goes with the Sea Blue Stripe?) Maybe a Sherwood.

5 skeins of Swish in Dublin. Probably a Sherwood for Max.

3 skeins of Merino Style in Crocus, Harvest, and Strawberry for a design of my own. It was on sale!

Also, something I’ve heard of but never experienced:

Complimentary color cards. Wow. Telemark and Palette. I already have Palette, but that just means Max gets to play with it. (He’s thrilled.) Mom thought I was crazy when I bought all of those color cards, but when I went to place my order, I knew exactly what the colors looked like.

My review: all of these yarns are gorgeous! Both to touch, and their colors. I’ll give better reviews when I use them.

Well, I’ve been really busy lately. Since Greg broke his hand, that means he can’t drive. Therefore: anywhere he needs to go, I drive. Needless to say, we’ve been out of the house a lot over the past two weeks. I’d like to apologize to the great number of people waiting for replies from me. However, I have done a bit of knitting (in the car. While waiting, not driving). Since we’ll be moving soon (to Japan), in the winter, to a place where it actually snows (Japan) I thought it would be fun to start making cold-weather gear for the family. You know. For snow (in Japan!). I started with Charlie, as he’s the smallest.

Mittens! How cute is that? Little, bitty, stripy mittens. I cast on for the second one instead of finishing the thumb on the first because I was at the perfect spot in the color repeat to have matching stripes on both of them. Pretty sweet, huh? I’m using Ann Budd’s basic mitten ‘recipe;’ in Lion Brand Magic Stripes on size 1s. Max is due for a similar set, and I’ve ordered some yarn to make each of them a sweater. Lemme tell you, this is gonna be fun.