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Look at the extremely cute stitch markers I just bought! Aren’t they just adorable? On Saturday I was browing Ravelry, like I do almost every day, and saw a picture of these stitch markers in someone’s projects (I forget whose, I’m sorry!). They were in a different color. But the picture I saw didn’t have any info on where to buy them. So off to Google I went and found Atomic Knitting. They weren’t listed on the site, but found contact information and asked if it’d be possible to get a custom set. After a few e-mails back and forth, voila! They arrived on Tuesday. :D

That knitting in the background is the Laminaria shawl. I’ve started the Blossom Chart. The rows now take awhile, so it’s slow going, but oh so worth it.

Those two bags now contain 1/4 of the blanket. 216 squares. So it’s coming along. But, I’m now almost out of leftover yarn to use for it. So I’ve just wound the yarn I got from the final coffee Sip N Stitch shipment: Footprints in Quechua. I adore the colors. It shall become socks. Spindle socks by Anna Bell to be exact. Since it’s sport weight, I’m expecting them to go by quickly. I’ve also decided to just use one of my handspun for the blanket entirely. It’s too rough to actually make a garment out of it, but it should be fine as a part of squares.

And speaking of handspun, I’ve also brought down from the stash room some fibre. 100% Shetland wool, one of the fibre club shipments from Wildcraft last year. It’s all greens with a bit of yellow and some black in it. Hopefully, it’ll grow up to be a hat.

On Wednesday I cast on Laminaria. So far I have two repeats of the star chart done. At first I wasn’t sure I liked how the stars look, but they’ve grown on me. Since I’m doing the shawl size, I’ve still got four more repeats of the star chart to go before changing to the next one.

Little bits of stuff have happened since I posted last week.

- It’s August! Yay! This means cooler temps (not that it’s gotten that hot over here anyway), but the cooler temps also mean that I get to break out my handknit sweaters again. Turns out that I don’t have a lot of summer clothing that can be worn to the office. But sweaters fix that problem nicely.

- Speaking of sweaters, I’ve almost got an FO to show. Just need to seam up the sleeves and add the ribbon into the neckline, then my Sheerly There sweater’s done. I shall do that today.

- We have our plane tickets to Chicago!

- The cherry tree is still producing loads of cherries. No clue what to do with them all.

- The weeds in the driveway are still driving me nuts. Why won’t they just die and go away like I want them to?

- Dancing starts up again in two months! Must build up endurance if I want to do the Viennese Waltz without dying. Same goes for Jive actually. So I’ve taken up jumping rope for a few minutes a day (hoping to build up to being able to jump for at least 15 minutes non-stop). I’ve also been talking to my older sis and it has encouraged me to really try losing weight again. So we’ll see how that goes…

Happy birthday to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The books are from O; the yarn was bought with gift cards from O’s sister. I got one skein of Austermann Step Duett and eight balls of Sublime Baby Cotton Kapok DK. All of it was on sale too. :D The books are awesome. I love them all. I’ve already decided that I will be making at least two of the sweaters in the Northern Knits book: Annemor and Pia and quite possibly Unnur as well. And the gloves and sock patterns are quite tempting too. I need more time to knit!

Also, I bought myself a birthday cupcake but that was long gone before I got a chance to even think about taking a picture of it.

Things at work have been… a bit hectic to say the least. And it’s not even month end, let alone year end! But since we’ve got one person off on holiday and another who is sick, I’ve been given quite a bit of extra work to get through. So when I came home today, seeing two packages waiting for me was very very awesome and made my day a lot better.

The first one was a skein of Eos in Blushing Bride. See how pretty it is? That’ll definitely turn into a shawl once I can get someone to wind it for me (there is no way that I’m doing that by hand!).

And the second? Sip N Stitch! Since I was in the coffee club, I received a handmade tea bag holder instead of a mug. And those sticks? That’s honey. I can’t wait to try out the tea. :D And that yarn is just begging to become socks. Not sure which ones yet, but it definitely wants to be socks.

Just hit 54 squares. That’s 1/16th of the amount I need. Still have a long way to go.

But the funny thing is, it just hit me that the amount of leftover sock yarn that I have right now won’t be enough to complete the blanket. So that means I need to knit more socks, right? Right. So I just spent over an hour perusing my pattern queue on Ravelry and looking at my stash options. Turns out that I don’t have as much sock yarn as I thought. Only 24 full skeins and not all of that is suitable for socks (like my Handmaiden Sea Silk!). Then when I had finally settled on my next pair and what yarn to use even though I wasn’t quite feeling the mojo, I rummaged around the craft sack I have down in the living room and found a bag of leftovers. Ta-dah, problem solved. I’ll just keep using up that before I feel like casting on a pair of socks again. No point in casting on a project that I’m not quite in the mood for.

Okay, so I’ve decided to start another long term project. Ever since I finished the blanket out of sock yarn for my grandfather (which I still haven’t given to him! It’s sooooooo late it’s not even funny), I’ve wanted one for me. And I want to use up leftover sock yarn again. But I really don’t want to knit more squares on teeny tiny needles. Crocheted squares it is!

After doing a little bit of math (O did the math, I just showed with my arms how big I want the blanket to be and the size of the squares), he told me I needed to make 864 squares. That means that if I make four squares a day, I’ll be done in seven months. Seven months people. Just to have a blanket. But I’m okay with that. Like I said, long term project.

So far, on Friday I crocheted four and yesterday I made twelve. I’m hoping that I’ll make at least eight today. On the sidebar I’ve added a little entry thing where I’ll be keeping track of how many I’ve made so far.

Oh and I’ve got quite a few FO pics to show you all, but those will have to wait for another day. I need to go crochet me some more squares now.

I’ve finally managed to write up the pattern, get it test knit and then set it up on Ravelry! Awesome, isn’t it?

I came up with the pattern one day a few years ago while I was doodling around and petting my new yarn. The brown was just so luscious that I had to design something with a coffee theme to it. And so after a lot of charting and playing around with gauge, I had the mitts. A fairly quick knit, actually (it helps that I really do love my dpns). Then after awhile, people (and I mean mostly knitters) who saw me wear them prodded me into writing up the pattern. So I did. And then the wonderful Sadie test knit them for me and gave lots of good advice. She got one of her patterns into Knitty so go look!

If you click that little Buy Now icon, it’ll take you over to Ravelry where you can buy the pattern if you’re so inclined (and I hope you are!). No need to sign up. :D

I’ve been doing some more planting again.

O’s dad bought me these tomato plants last week and yesterday morning I moved them into the gro-bag that’s on the step next to the shed.

That little pot next to the tomatoes? I’m fairly sure it’s lettuce. My gardening method (when starting plants from seeds) is mainly along the lines of: seeds + soil + pots + sun + water => see what happens. It’s magic. So yeah, pretty sure it’s lettuce but not 100%. Some of the seeds that I planted in the propagator tray got mixed up so I’m in for a few surprises.

Then I’ve also got two pea plants and now they’ve given me two peapods!

In that second picture you can see the two cucumber plants in the background. Again, surprises. They just appeared in the same square in the tray when I’m fairly sure that I didn’t put them there. So now I’ve got two pea plants and two cucumber plants in one bigger pot. We’ll see how that’ll go.

And then there’s the cherry tree that was already in the garden. It’s coming along quite nicely.

And the strawberries! No idea where they came from. They just appeared at the base of the cherry tree last year and they’re still here. They’re actually trying to take over the little path and just spreading everywhere. I’ve had to pull out quite a few to keep them “contained” near the tree.

In other news, we’ve decided to buy a car in August when the car insurance goes down by quite a bit (turning 25 has its perks). And we’re also going to buy the plane tickets to go see my sister in Chicago for Thanksgiving once we’ve made sure that we can have the time off work.

Gorgeous yarn (Green Sheep Sport in the Nox colorway by The Unique Sheep) + great free pattern (just search for Rainy Day Socks in Ravelry) + 3,25mm dpns = pretty socks that knit up quickly.