I'm glad I can read my knitting!

  I am done with the knitting section of the Combo Corset-T I vaguely showed before.  Now I have to decide if I want to add the crochet edging or if I want to use frogs to close it.  It was started about 13-14 years ago, so a little more of a wait won't hurt anything.

  I wasn't sure what to work on at K&CC last week, so I whipped up a water bottle holder.  There is a funny story about those.  Many years ago a lady brought a ton of them that her church had made for Claire to bring to TAPS.  She had no idea what she was going to be doing with them, but people loved them and all got taken home.  Now people expect them ever year.
  We don't manage numbers in the hundreds, but we keep making them.  Someone said that they even gave theirs away when they were in Africa.

  I have been watching the vlogs by SV Delos on YouTube recently.  One of the main crew members, Karin has this really cool bracelet that I sometimes see.  Since the focus of the videos is sailing and not so much jewelry, it has been hard to get a really good look at it.  These were my attempts.

  I also have altered a large t-shirt to act like one of those pillowcase dresses.  I cut the sleeves and collar off, then I hemmed the raw edges and made a casing.  Now I need the cord to hold it on.  I have not found any pre-made cord I like, so I decided to make some with kumihimo and chunky yarn.  Still working out how I want to finish the edges.  I'm thinking of gluing some ribbon on.

  Here is the next project from my pre-Ravelry/pre-blog life.  I wanted to make a shrug with a braid cable going down the shoulder/sleeve.  I also added a standard cable on both front edges.  I wasn't sure at that point how I wanted to finish it, so once I added the sleeves to the body I stopped.

  I wanted the fronts to be more narrow at the top than the bottom, V-neck style.  So I did some math (or maybe guessing) and came up with a plan.  I decreases on two right side rows in a row, then one plain front side row.

  I also didn't want the braid cable all the way up the shoulder, so I started this section to form a triangle at the top.  Without being able to read my knitting and figuring out what I was doing before, I would have been lost.  I would have had no idea why I had stopped the braid cable, or how to tell how much to decrease.
  I was also scared that I wasn't going to have enough, but I went rooting around in the box I had all the other projects and found another skein.

   There was also this scarf.  Someone had started it at the Homespun Yarn Party.  Though they started it on size 6 needles.  Way too small.  The project was left to let people come and work on it as they wanted.  Some people did a few rows of stockinette where it had been garter before.  This is normally fine, but at some point someone had dropped a stitch and it had run back.  Then when someone else had also dropped a stitch they tried to pick up back up, but they did it incorrectly.  Claire ended up taking it all out since there were some huge holes and it was way too tightly knit.  She brought the new scarf with her to K&CC this last Saturday and let all of us work a few rows if we wanted.  It was fun.

Road Trips are usually better for knitting.

  My mom is a huge fan of the Free section of Craig's List.  She has found a ton of good deals.  One listing was for a bunch of yarn.  The owner just wasn't finding herself using it as much as she had pictured.

  Both those bags are filled with yarn that she brought to us.  The handy thing about her living where she was is that she was really close to where we meet on Mon nights for knit-group.  She got to see it and we mentioned that it was an every week thing.  Hopefully she gets the crafting bug and stops by.

  Right next to where we meet on Mon nights had been a Handcock Fabrics.  We were all sad to see that they had closed since it was easy to pop over for some buttons or a yarn needle when in need.
  It was really exciting when we heard a few months later that there was going to be another fabric shop moving in.  They missed their projected open date by a few months, but they finally got all settled in.  In fact, The Fabric Place Basement actually opened before we knew it.  Turns out they are only open until 7pm and we usually got there after that.  So it looked like it had not opened yet, when really, we missed their business hours.
  We made a special effort to stop by when they were open one day.  That lovely picture above is their massive button bin.  I want to jump in and swim around.  I also really want to go through and organize them into dozens of tiny bins.

   Last weekend a friend and I had heard that the Richmond Home and Garden show was going to have a tiny house in it.  We are both obsessed with them.  She wants to own one, and I just think the whole concept is super amazing.
  Richmond, in general, is about a two hour drive south of me.  I figured it would give me lots of time to work on a project that I can't show you.  I am testing for a mystery knit-a-long.  It is so darn cute, I really want to show it off, but I've promised to keep it a secret.  We wouldn't want any future knitters to get spoiled on the end surprise!  The funny part is that on the way there and on the way back I didn't knit a single stitch!  I didn't even have anything cast on for it!   There are two things I can show you though.  The first is a link to these really cool crocheted octopi for premature babies.  Reading through the articles makes them make a lot of sense to have.  You can't really explain to a premature baby that their various tubes aren't their umbilical cord and it isn't safe to move around.  I think I will have to make a few.   The other thing I can show you is the video I made from the first half of our Richmond adventure.  The next half will be up next week!  Make sure to watch on YouTube so you can make it nice and big.