Ravelry

I haven't updated here in way too long, but as I've recently discovered Ravelry, I thought now was a good time to resuscitate this blog. Unfortunately, I have not done much knitting in the 15+ months that I have been away, but I think I'm ready to change that. Let's hope.

So quick life update (since most of my friends already know this, and my knitting-only readers probably don't care that much): had a baby in October 2006. Didn't do nearly as much baby knitting as I had hoped because, well, having a baby is a lot of work. Now that he is over a year old, I'm finally getting some time to relax and can think about knitting again. My son is the most adorable little guy ever, and he really loves playing with his mommy :)

Anyway, yes, I have discovered Ravelry recently. Wow. As a borderline OCD organizing freak, I am in love. I just signed up a couple days ago, but I already have all my stash and needles and a lot of my past projects entered. And speaking of stash, if Ravelry has taught me anything so far, it's that I have way too much yarn. Holy crap. Remind me not to buy yarn anytime soon.

So I have a couple projects that I was reminded of while entering my info. Orangina, which I still love and hope to pick back up one of these days. Bad Penny which turned into a disaster and will probably be frogged and re-knit as just a plain top-down raglan with some ribbed edging. A boucle pillow that was one of my first knitting ideas and I think will still be a good idea, but I should really frog it too and start over since there are so many mistakes in it. Oh, I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but those are some highlights.

I also have, like I said, way too much yarn. Luckily, most of it was bought with a specific project in mind. So maybe I will actually use up the yarn someday. Or maybe I will decide I no longer like the pattern I had in mind and will need to find some other use for the yarn. But, man, if ever there was a time to do that, after discovering Ravelry would be the time. I love how you can just look at different kinds of yarns and see all the projects people have made with it. And you can see which patterns actually work with that yarn and also which yarns fall short of expectations. I'm really loving this site.

So now we're on to current projects. I'm working on a knit turtle toy for Zack (my son). It's from Knitted Toys by Zoe Mellor. It's a pretty cute pattern, but there are so many sloppy techniques in it. You can tell just by looking at the picture how sloppy it is. So I've tried cleaning it up a bit. It's still in a lot of pieces right now, so it's hard to tell how well that worked, but I think it should turn out better than the book sample. We shall see. I'm going to have enough yarn left over to do a couple other toys from the book too - the dinosaur, a doll, and perhaps some finger puppets. Should be cute!

I also have the My-So-Called Scarf in progress. Still. I really like how it looks, but it's turning out denser than I had hoped. I'll probably finish it and gift it to someone who lives in a colder climate than me. I still really like the pattern, but I'm getting tired of it.

Also are a pair of socks that I started after taking a toe-up sock class at Stitches West in 2006. I really like them still, but I was kind of making up the pattern as I went and I don't think I wrote anything down, so I'm not sure I will remember what I was doing. I might have to just start over :/

Oh, right. And Buster. Well, let's just say that Zack outgrew it before it was even finished. I could never find the right buttons for it and now it is way too small. But it's almost done, at least. Maybe the next baby can wear it. Don't get too excited; that will be a couple years from now.

So speaking of Stitches West a couple paragraphs back, I signed up for a class this coming year. 2007 there was no way I could get away to do that, and in 2006 I had a severe sinus infection plus had just found out I was pregnant (and was dealing with some morning sickness). Hopefully I will get to enjoy it more in 2008 :) I'm taking The Long & Short of Knit Alterations by Margaret Fisher. I think this will come in very handy for me. I know that, even though I made my Hourglass Sweater longer than the pattern suggested, it's still too short on very tall me. So being able to lengthen it easily would be great.

Anyway, that's the very long update from me. Hopefully I will be knitting more and updating more frequently from now on.