WIPs Wednesday

Finished Objects
No knitting FOs this week but I did finish plying the BFL blue/green/purple mix I've been spinning all month. It looks pretty good and seems to have come out generally as a light fingering weight. It's a 3 ply and I think it's a tad over-plied but oh well, it'll still work. I just have to figure out what to knit with it now.

Knitting

I finally finished the front of my East Village sweater. Yay! Now only the sleeves and collar to go. Which could take forever, but that's what sleeves tend to do. I really should start making them first, it's a good way to double check the gauge and then you don't feel like ugh so much left when you finish the body. I'm definitely going to need more yarn though, I've only got 100g left so I'll pick some up and start alternating skeins for the sleeves. (alternating skeins means you attach two balls and do a row with ball 1 then a row with ball 2, repeat. That way the different dye lots aren't as noticeable). 

I finished the knitting on the indifference shrug and I've blocked it but I think I need to add a crochet border to keep it from curling. But I need a break from that project so who knows how long it'll take.

I'm to the heel of the first sock of my Vanilla Latte socks for dad in more yarn that we got in Canada at Romni Wools. I thought it wouldn't look good knit up (the yarn, not the pattern). But I'm really liking it actually. I think I need to find a new boy sock pattern though, this one is getting a little boring. It's been good though, this is my third pair in a few months, which is saying something.

I started the sleeves of my second Towpath Henley, I loved how the first one I made for Alex came out so here comes a matching one. And it just goes so quickly making baby stuff. I'm doing the sleeves two at a time again which is nice because then if I mess up an increase at least it's messed up evenly. Here is the tutorial I use to cast on the sleeves for TAAT.

Planning

I finally got the right gauge for both the Titan Jacket and Willow Creek sweater so I've ordered the yarn for those and bought the pattern for the Titan Jacket. Hopefully I'll get to cast those on soon.

I also pulled out my stitch dictionary and found a lovely lace stitch that I think I want to turn into a scarf for Alex to match his sweater. I'm trying to chart it because it's written out so I'm using excel and we'll see how that goes.

That's all (ha!) I'm working on craft wise this week.

Yay kitties

We took the kitties in today to get neutered as they have finally got all their shots taken care of. It's a pretty routine procedure and everything went totally smoothly. Mostly they were annoyed that I wasn't feeding them (they couldn't eat for about a day including the pre- and post-surgery because of the anesthesia). We've got them on pain meds and they're back to their usual selves. 

Sleeping, getting into my stuff, generally causing minor mayhem etc. In a few days they'll finally be able to go outside on a regular basis.

Fun at the Aquarium

While we were on the coast we took my nephew to the Aquarium. He is almost 18 months so we weren't sure if he would enjoy it or just sorta be meh.

He LOVED it.

He doesn't know a lot of words (or he can't say a ton of words although he understands a lot) but he knows a word that sounds like fish (more or less, if you speak toddler and you see him pointing at a fish). And as we walked around the aquarium he would light up and point and say FISH! and then look at us to make sure we knew that there were these awesome fish swimming around RIGHT NEXT TO US.

My sister and I always love visiting the water mammals: the seat otters, seals, etc. Alex was pretty much only interested in the things that could 100% sustain life under water.

When can we go back to the fish mom?

Our aquarium is pretty cool. They do a different main exhibit every summer, and this summer's is all about ship wrecks and how marine archeologists research and explore wrecks. It was full of really awesome educational info that my sister and I appreciated and that Alex probably would have liked if he were able to read/understand what was going on. We will definitely have to renew our memberships when he gets older.

Alex at the touching pool.

Alex likes to push the stroller, but he can't really steer.

And I even got a bit of knitting done. I worked on my vanilla latte socks when we needed to take breaks from walking around and I got through shaping the sleeves on my East village sweater during the car ride (and at the house on the coast, but it's part of the trip).

Today is also my step mom (one of them)'s birthday. So we went to another local winery for dinner and it was delicious. I borrowed my sister's long fuzzy coat and felt like a russian bond girl all night.

We left the winery right during the middle of the awesome lunar eclipse.

Not a great pic but the best my phone can do with my shaky hands.

And now I'm getting ready to go get Cooper from the airport. It's been such a long boring week without him, I'm so excited to see him again.

So all in all, a very successful weekend.

Beach day!

My sister and I decided we are just done with people this week and we have escaped to the coast. Our parents have a little cottage on the beach and luckily the  weather seems to be cooperating. So it's sunny but still cold and windy because duh Oregon. So off to the beach we went. 

This has to be the only place in Oregon I get better cell service than the rest of my family (who is in Verizon). I guess it had to pay off some time. Thank you hot spotting and family who has a ridiculously large data plan that we don't use so I can stream to my heart's content out here.  

I've hit that wall again

I've hit that wall again, where I feel like I'm going crazy from not having anything to do.

It's weird, I haven't had this much free time in a row where I truly have nothing I'm supposed to be doing in years. Last time this happened (about a month ago) I cleaned basically the entire apartment. But I'm not going to be doing a cleaning spree like that again for a while thank you very much.

I should probably try and doing something productive, like learn a new skill or network or something.

Sir Isaac Newton was way more productive than me.

Butttt I'm probably just going to keep crafting. And blogging. In fact, I volunteered to help my friend write the show notes to her knitting podcast. Because she is someone with actual things going on in her life (full time student in a masters program, podcasting, etc) and I have nothing but time. So if you're bored like me you should definitely go check out her podcast, Stitched in Sweden, shownotes/blog here.

WIP Wednesday

It's Wednesday again (already?!?) so here's what I've been working on craft-wise.

Finished objects
Spiralucious cowl: knit out of my hand spun for me :) I'm happy with how it turned out and it'll be perfect to wear under coats as the weather turns.

I forgot to smile hehe

Knitting

I'm like a half inch from finishing the sleeves of my Indifference Shrug. If I have enough yarn left I'm thinking I'll add a crochet border along the neck because I'm not loving how the edge curls. I'm thinking I'll give this to my mom when it's finished because even though it's hand spun I don't love the way the yarn knit up. It's just not my favorite colors for wearing.

I have barely worked on the East Village sweater for grandpa at all this week. I'm getting close to shaping the sleeves on the front, so maybe it'll finally feel like progress is being made/

I cast on some Vanilla Latte Socks for my dad. I love the vanilla latte pattern for boys. It's simple enough for interesting yarn but but a little more fun to knit than plain socks. I'm using more yarn that we got at Romni Wools when we were in Toronto in June. If you're ever in Toronto, serious check them out. It's the coolest shop, with sooooo much yarn. More sock yarn than I've ever seen in one place. It was heaven.

You can just barely see the start of the patterning

I've also been doing some swatching. Mostly for Titan Jacket for my sister but also for Willow Creek for myself. They take the same gauge so doing double duty. It's a bit bigger than I normally knit, 4 stitches per inch, so it's taken a few swatches and a few types of yarn. Hopefully I'll get it sorted today (my swatches are currently drying after being blocked).

Spinning
I finally finished spinning the singles of my BFL. They're resting now but later today I can finally ply them. I love plying, it goes so much faster than spinning singles and when you're done you get real yarn! I'm doing a 3 ply with this BLF. Maybe I'll do 4 ply with my next BFL that I'm already planning :)

Wedding planning: the search for invitations

So one of the things I've been having a difficult time nailing down for the wedding is invitations. This is for a number of reasons, mostly that I don't want to pay more than $1/invite and I don't like pictures of mason jars. So that eliminates a lot of the options out there.

The other problem is my taste is apparently more expensive than what I'm willing to spend on invitations. I like things in off white with raised borders, not too flowery. So letter press style. Once I figured that out about my style it made it a little easier to search for things and I ordered some samples from Ann's Bridal Bargains.

I loved loved this calla lily invitation. Sadly, it's folded like a card (so kind of small) and the paper is thin.

I love the delicate flowers

It's kind of weird that it's a card.

The size and paper of this invite with roses was nicer and Cooper liked it but to me the roses were just too old lady. I also accidentally ordered a sample with the roses colored yellow and green and that's super weird. 

I liked this invitation with the border but Cooper did not. It's sort of shiny and sparkly so that's the part he didn't like. The size and paper were good again though.

I did some more searching last night and come up with three more invites that I've ordered samples of. This time from David's Bridal (who knew they did invites?).

First, an invite with a raised celtic border.

Second, another rose invite. Not my favorite of the three but I'm willing to see it in person since Cooper likes it.

Last, a plain framed border invite. This is my favorite of the three, hopefully it looks good in person. I like that it's simple with clean lines. I'm worried it's a little too plain but we'll see.