2014

Here is a quick list of everything I got done in the year of 2014

Crochet: 8
~Blankets:
~~~Double Crochet with knit border
~Hands:
~~~Cabled Fingerless Mitts
~Hats:
~~~Extended Single Crochet (3)
~Head Bands:
~~~Extended Single Crochet (2)
~~~Single Crochet with button

Knit: 20
~Blankets:
~~~(Not so) Twisty Turney Christmas OpArt
~Hands:
~~~Do The Twist Mitts
~~~Owl Mitts
~~~Manly Mitts
 ~Hats:
~~~Baby Cat Hat with Vents
~~~Scallop Lace Hat
~~~Lacey Flower Beret
~~~Envelope Hat
~~~Easy Faux Brioche Hat 
~Head Bands:
~~~Daisy Stitch Buttoned Headband
~~~Lacy Buttoned Headband
~~~Swiss Cheese Headband/Cowl
~Scarves:

~~~Honeycomb Cowl
~~~Bulky Seed Stitch Cowl
~~~Easy Faux Brioche Scarf
~Shawls:

~~~Skywalker
~~~Universal Kite Shawl-ette
~~~Cascading Leaves and Vines

~Sweaters:

~~~Very Versatile Top Down Cardigan
~~~Cropped Baby Surprise Jacket

Sewing/Fabric: 4
~Accessories:
~~~Patriotic Flower (4)

Others Work: 6
~Blanket:
~~~Zig-Zag blanket
~Scarves:
~~~Drop Stitch Scarf with Fringe
~~~Broken 1x1 Rib
~~~Faux Brioche
~~~Double Crochet
~~~Hairpin Lace Scarf/Shawl

Last few things

I had gotten it in my head to make a Christmas colored blanket.  I also got the bright idea to modify OpArt so it looked like it was twisting back and forth instead of spiraling.   I even tried to alternate colors on the bind off, but then I would have run out of green before the last side.

 

I think the effect had a bit more of an impact in the larger stripes, but I think it didn't work out as I had thought it would in my head.  I was picturing more of a noticeable different in the directions. 

I ended-up casting off using two red stitches and one green.  I also twisted the yarns in the front almost like an elongated half of a Latvian braid.  I like the effect.

 

 

My Cascading Leaves and Vines shawl.  It was fun to design and fun to make.  I just need to block it out and get the pattern tested.  I'm trying to decide if I should have the ends of the leaves be points or not.

 

 

This thing!  It finally became a hat like object.  I think my gauge might have been a bit tight since it doesn't seem to have as much drape as the one in the picture.

 

 

Though this part inspired one of the other knitters.  She thought that it would be really cool if socks had a similar pattern where the ribbing kind of ends and begins.  I'm excited to see what she makes.  She normally doesn't like straying from the pattern, but feels like she might be able to make her own pattern to match this design.

 

 

I swear I did block t and it was laying flat at one point.  I'm thinking of making this again with another stitch pattern that might lay a bit flatter.  It would also give it more interesting texture where it goes from the ribbing to what-ever I choose to use.

  

 Last, but not least.  Since I took away Mousey's last bed, Mr. Jag had to find a new one.  How convenient was it that there happened to be a nice little Mousey sided knitted hideaway right on the floor?  This is where Mousey has been sleeping the last few nights.

I keep trying to get video of Mr. Jag and Mousey playing but the second I try and record it he just stops.  I even held the camera on him without pushing the button so he didn't know what I was doing, but the second I pushed the button he dropped the mouse and walked away.  He's way too smart for his own good.

Not sure if I will get anything else done before the end of the year since my co-worker and her hubby are coming over right after we are done at work, but who knows?

...and a Merry Christmas to you too.

The bag says "Santa, I can explain!"

I know this blog is all about giving (and food links) most of the time, but I've decided to be a little greedy and show off some Holiday joy.  These are all the presents I got for people who I was going to see today.  My mom, my dad, the Hubby, my co-worker, and her hubby.

 

 

My dad got a small live tree from his sister so we set that up and piled all the presents under there.  The ones from my co-worker and her hubby were missing, but this was most of them.  We all got some pretty awesome stuff.

 

 

I have to say that this little cushion was my favorite present.  Being a Navy brat we moved around a bunch, but I don't remember most of it.  When I was about 5 was when my parents moved us to the house that I did most of my growing up in.  They are still in it.  Not long after we got into the area my dad was going to sell his old Fiat Spider.  I don't remember too much about the car other than I thought it was the coolest car ever.

I was about 6 when my dad went to go sell it.  Since I knew that adults did what they wanted to, I knew that I wouldn't just be able to tell my dad that he could not sell the car.  I knew that if I hid the keys he would not be able to sell it.  I found keys that did not look like house keys and figured that those must be the car keys.  Turns out that they were not.

My dad hadn't know about this until very recently and he wasn't sure what keys I hid.  The little cushion was made from the leftovers from the inside of the car.  The new owner had the inside redone and had this made for my dad. I found this in a large box and was confused until my dad told me about it.  I know I need to find a special place for this little cushion.

I hope everyone else out there had a wonderful Christmas/X-mas/Thursday!

I wonder if I should be jealous...

Mr. Jag found his Christmas present early, it was the little black mouse he pulled out of that bag mentioned previously.  He is still in love with it.  Since Bill came back from his work trip last night, Mousey could not sleep in the bed with us.  I woke up this morning and found that he had moved Mousey from the floor, where it had been hanging around with us to watch a movie, to the yarn that I had left on the couch.  How sweet is he to make sure Mousey had a nice place to spend the night?  I'm wondering of I should be getting jealous or not.

 Though I mentioned in my last post that I have been slowly getting my house into some direction of order, I have also been keeping my other goal in mind.  Here is the Universal Kite Shawl-ette(Ravelry link) that I started a while ago.  There is both a cat and a penny(left corner of the shawl) in the picture for size reference.  I made it bigger than the pattern called for.  I also could not get the top of mine to be straight across, but I am okay with that.

I'm keeping a lookout for other super fast things to finish, but I think I might be getting to things that require me to sit down and pay attention to them.  Going along these lines, I have no idea why I decided to start a large baby blanket instead of something small.  The best part is that I have another big-ish blanket planned to be started after this.
I also have to get some test knitters to try out my owl mitts pattern so I can get that up on Ravelry for all to enjoy.  I even decided to go back and add some charts for the cables and thumb gussets instead of just having it written out.  Good thing about that was that I had about six mistakes in the right mitt.  They were some silly counting things.

Dates that include counting are fun!

I was looking for some yarn that I was 90% sure I knew where it was.  Turns out I was wrong but I did find the hat pictured above.  All it needed was to be freed from the ball and some ends woven in and it was done.

I started it back before there was a blog.  I used the Vogue® Knitting Stitchionary® Volume Five: Lace Knitting for the center and then added some decreases until the lace part became stockinet and then added ribbing to the bottom.

I know I was talking like I would be finishing crafty items left and right, but I have gotten an odd kick to clean up my house.  As you may or may not remember from my NaNoWriMo ramblings, I was complaining about the state of my house.  Since I don't normally get the urge to tidy up, I have been letting that have a say more than finishing crafting projects.

More like it, another thing done!

I can't even remember off the top of my head if I showed this one in progress or not.  It is a cropped version of a baby surprise jacket.  My mom was talking about really wanting to do one but she was feeling unsure if she could follow the pattern or not.  I was going to make one with her then.  She kept working on other things, so I got impatient and started mine.  I didn't have enough yarn to make it full length, but I like the short body with the poofy yarn.
This thing was interesting to add buttons to.  I checked one time and found three evenly spaced button holes.  I then started adding buttons to it.  I found another button hole and had four.  Before adding the fourth button I found yet another button hole.  I think they were just magically appearing as I was adding the buttons.

I also have a cute Mr. Jag story to share!  When I got him some canned food from the vet near my mom's house I met a super nice lady who works there.  She just kept giving me things.  I got some more canned cat food lids and two small kitty toys.  The mouse and the metallic puff ball had been riding around in my car for a few weeks.  I cleared off that seat because I gave a friend a ride and threw them in a bag with random stuff from my car.  I brought the bag in last night when I got home from work.
Around 5:30am Mr. Jag jumped into bed and started doing that scooting pounce thing around.  He would then jump off the bed and start again.  I was wondering if he found some sort of live critter.  I turned on the light and saw what he was playing with.  It was the little black mouse from the vet's office.  He had gone into the bag and fished it out.
He loves that little thing.  I think it replaced the packaged mint as his favorite toy.  He was picking it up by the tail and swinging it around before chasing it again.  If it fell off the bed he would hop down and get it before starting to play again.

In other news, I think I found my first grey hair!  I think it is kind of neat.

Not something done, but something new.

I had a good idea how to knit this slightly differently.  It isn't showing the increases as much as I thought it would.  I've gotten this far in it because I was hoping it would look more like I was picturing in the larger sections.  My new idea will be to have most of it in stockinette with the color changes in seed stitch.  It will make it so that the blanket has more of a right side and wrong side, but I think the effect will be cool.

 I also went to ZooLights with some friends.  I was thinking of bringing some knitting, but the weather didn't agree.  Though I did plan on wet blocking this at some point, I don't think I want to do that while I am knitting it.  It was dark and knitting would have been hard any way.  

Here is the knitting.  It is the blanket I was talking about above.  I already have yarn picked out for the second try at it.  I will have to do some testing before I start it though.

Here is the gallery of ZooLights!  These are not all the lights, but they are the ones that looked good in pictures.

I'm glad yesterday is gone!

Yesterday was just a train wreck.  First I didn't get to go to bed until about 1:30 in the morning because we didn't get out of work until a bit before midnight.  I had to get some things ready to take to work to eat so I wasn't able to just come home and fall over.
I was up again at 8:23am to get to work on time at 10am.  I thought I had grabbed everything until I got out to the car where I saw I was missing my Zipfizz and since I needed that extra pep I went back in to get it.  I thought I had grabbed all my keys, but it turns out I had left my car keys sitting on the passenger seat.  Well, while I was inside I heard my car beep as it relocked itself.  Usually my car might arm its alarm without me hitting the button if all the doors are closed, but it doesn't lock the driver door.  It helps so that you won't lock your keys in the car.  Turns out if you don't put the key in the ignition then it just locks all the doors all the way.
It took me over half a hour to find my spare key.  It was in an easy to remember place, but I had put it there about four years ago.  Now it is in a better place and two people besides me know where it is.
Work was just work so there isn't much to report about that.
At knit-night I discovered that the red crochet thread I got was smaller than the other crochet yarn I use.  This means that my sample and my finished item are not the same color.  I asked some opinions and got mixed reviews on what people thought of the size differences.
When I got home Bill was asleep on the couch with a movie on the TV.  Turns out poor Mr. Jag didn't get his dinner so I went to go get all that set up.  His last needle had been used so I grabbed the box and headed to my local Walgreens.  They have been out of their own brand of the short needles for a few months but they were able to search and told me another store had some.  The store was a 24 hour one, so that was good news to hear at 10pm.  I drive myself out there with my old box and asked for some.  The guy gave me a funny look and made a big deal on how he is going to need more info than "I need more of these."  My usual one goes to check to see if they have them and then ask all the detail before they ring them up.  This guy was super suspicious and said that I needed a proof of use.  I could bring things like a label off of the insulin or something like that.
It was about a half hour drive and I was kind of done for the day.  I got all weepy in the car because I was tired and I felt like I was letting Mr. Jag down because he just had to keep waiting for his dinner.  I finally called home and had the Hubby give him a late dinner at 11pm while I was still driving back home.
When I got home I found that the gallon milk jug Bill was keeping some stuff in had sprung a leak.  This means that used transmission fluid and other things were spreading out on the garage floor.  I grabbed some paper towels and Bill moved one of his bikes out of the way.  I got a good layer down to help soak things up.  Turns out it costs money to get rid of that stuff so it makes sense to hold onto it until you have a bunch.  Well, Mr. Jag was trying to be ever so helpful, as usual.  This means that he walked right through some of the muck.  Since used car fluids can't be good for anyone it also meant that Mr. Jag got picked up and I wiped off his little paws.  Two things he doesn't like.  He didn't get the correlation, so he even did it a second time.
Trying again this morning I went armed with the things I needed.  Today I was told some tips and tricks on things to have with me.  Mr. Jag's information is also all in the system, though I'm not sure why it wasn't already in there from all the other times I've gotten him insulin and needles.  I would assume that the Walgreen's system would be accessible from all locations and not just my regular one, but I could be wrong.
Though something fun happened when I went to Walgreens today.  There was a guy going in the store before me that was wearing a neon pink camo stretchy body suit.  He was also wearing tennis shoes and socks over, but that was all on him.  He got in line behind me at the pharmacy and told me that he liked my speckled nail polish.  I told him where I got it.  I don't know if he was trying to see if I was going to have a big reaction to him or not.  So I'm not sure if I let him down by not looking shocked at him or anything.

I also gave away the Manly Mitts to the homeless guy who hangs around the library not too far from my house.  He seemed kind of shocked that I was giving him something.  I might try and be stealthy and see if I see him wearing them later.

I'm also still going back and forth on what I want to work on next.  I'm worried that the socks I have planned have too side of a pattern to really work for socks.  I have to see if it will work or not.
I'm also debating if I should knit the blanket like I had planned before or if I should crochet it.  Another option would be to do both.  So many options!  I am going to run off and see which one jumps out at my first.

Off to a good start!

Very reluctantly modeled by a grumpy face.

Hurray they are done!  The ends are woven in and everything.  I think they were the perfect length even though I was guessing.  The color is really yellow in this picture.  It is really a more cool teal color.
I'm thinking of trying some "Oh, I heard it is going to get cold and I figured you could use these" kind of thing when I give them away.
I had gotten 2 skeins of this to make these.  It's kind of funny how much I can't guess at yard needs.  I have almost half of the first one left.

I had done a very small load of laundry earlier in the day and later I noticed there was a puddle of water in front of the mess sink/kitty box.  I mopped it up and gave it a tentative sniff.  It didn't smell like it came out of the cat so I figured I must have spilled some water when I was moving a shirt I had been soaking.
Bill got home and dumped all of this stuff in the washer.  I went into the kitchen to get a snack and heard a dripping noise.  I was afraid that my washing machine was broken and saw what is pictured above.  My mom put that lint trapper thing on our hose and it seems to have gotten filled up when we weren't looking.  One of those streams was just shooting over the edge of the sink.