Happy Thanksgiving!!

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Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends. May your pants be stretchy, your wine glass full and your family be well behaved. I’m helping my dad cook this year while my mom chases the tiny humans. I feel like we both scored a win with this deal. No knitting content today as I’m off to start peeling potatoes and mixing up stuffing ingredients.

chicken close up dish food

Photo by Public Domain Pictures on Pexels.com

I’ll see you guys on the flip side tomorrow….probably with actual knitting content. I have some really cool stuff started!!

This Is Real Life

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You guys…I stepped into my kitchen at 8:20 last night after my kiddos were asleep and I was greeted with this sight…dishes (both clean and dirty), dinner leftovers, appliances that needed cleaned. And tomorrow is Thanksgiving…..

I rolled up my sleeves, poured a glass of wine and listened to a knitting podcast for the FORTY FIVE MINUTES that it took to get my kitchen some semblance of clean. This is real life….this is adulting. Shout out to all the moms and dads out there that are up to their armpits in laundry and dishes. It’s a hard job and just know that I appreciate all the unsung hard work!

P.S. The wine was a nice Pino Gris in case anyone was interested. It pairs nicely with dishes 🙂

Halfway Done Zen

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I feel like I need to do a little pat on my own back. I have powered through a whole metric ton of bulky weight knitting. I have reached the halfway point on my Zen Yarn Garden Chevron Baby Blanket.

I have used up just under half of the blue and grey yarn. And then I added in the middle color block of red. Instead of measuring these rows I simply knit until I ran out of red. This took just over 1.4 skeins of bulky red yarn out of my stash FOREVER….bwahahahaha.

I think the solid middle section in that pop kind of color really add to the color blocking of it all. And makes the blanket less sedate and more fun. It kind of blows out on camera but I adore it in real life.

And smart Rachelle decided to start weaving in my ends. I plugged on some episodes of The Good Place and went to town with my darning needle. I got all the loose ends woven but I’ll wait to trim them until after its washed and blocked. I only have four stripe sections left and this blanket will be done!

Happy Knitting!!

Knitting The Card Game

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Ya’ll….I may have lost my mind when I opened this box. Earlier this summer I back the kickstarter for Knitting the Card game and it FINALLY came!! I’ve been seeing this pop up all over my social media feeds and I’m beyond excited to have my own copy.

I immediately ignored my cluttered office and messy kitchen and started the game. I roped my dad into playing with me. He’s a great sport!

Turns out he is also a sharp tactician. He read the full rules and promptly whipped my butt. He knew all the rules and I was too busy fan girling to bother with rules. I was cruising along and I got 100 first but I didn’t know about the pattern deduct. So lesson learned….read all the words next time! We played a second time and this time I won that round. The game was super easy to pick up and I can’t wait to convince more people to play with me!!

American Thanksgiving is this week…..I will have more family around to rope in…..

FO Friday: Dark Side Vanilla Socks

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I have a FO and they are just about the wackiest pair of socks I have every knit. My Dark Side Vanilla Socks are done and ready for their recipient!

Pattern: 72 stitch vanilla sock made from a sock snake/tube

Needles: US 0s

Yarn: Knit Picks Felici in Dark Side and Cascade Heritage Sock in Grey

These socks are one full 50 gram skein of the Felici  split between two socks and then roughly 25 grams of the Cascade sock. I definitely didn’t split these evenly and one leg ended up longer than the other. You can see that one set of cuff ribbing is about double the other one. So the socks are now equal in total length but not in ribbing. I’m rolling with it.

And as pointed out so very eloquently in the comments of a previous post. The stripes are reversed because I knit toes from both ends of the sock snake so when I split in the middle they became opposites. And you can totally see that because the red and purple stripes are exactly opposite one another in each sock.

These delicious socks are bound for Portland Oregon as a gift for a dear friend whom I plan to visit this fall. I have a quick weekend trip up my sleeve to celebrate my recently acquired status as 35 years old. She is a dear friend and VERY knit worthly. Not to mention she is letting me crash for free in her house, so it’s only fair!

And I still have the other 50 gram sock snake in this color to deal with. I need to decide if they will be socks for me or another quick gift pair for Christmas….decisions decisions…..

Crazy Orange

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Jellybean needed to blow off some steam the other day so I took him for a post school trip to Skyzone. He got 60 minutes of literally bouncing off the walls and I got to sit and knit where my project matched the landscape, lol.

I had one other mom ask me what I was knitting. I gladly obliged and told her about my project. I even told her she got bonus points for knowing it was knitting! I’m still plugging away at the brim of my Four Seasons Hat. I am not aiming for any particular length or measurement. Just knitting until it looks good and then I’ll start the main body. Nothing super scientific as this is just my purse/zen project.

See you guys tomorrow with something extra cool!

A Present for My Eyes

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My mother is amazing at a lot of things. And shopping for a bargain is one of her most finely honed skills. She was in Joanns with some quilting friends and spied an Ottlite in the clearance section. This is a RARE occurance and she was intrigued. She asked an associate and they told her it was a old “design” that they were told to clearance because a new appearance/look was coming in. So she got a CRAZY good deal on this light and presented it to me for my birthday.

I decided to put it to good use weaving in the ends on my Dark Side Vanilla socks last night. I just plugged it in next to the couch and went to work! My 35 year old eyes LOVED it. It was so easy to see the dark colors and catch the purl ridges. I may never be able to go back to regular light. I might have hugged my mother extra hard for this one!

Happy Knitting!!

Knitting In The Wild

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Jellybean was due for his semi annual dental cleaning and he CRUSHED it. I was so proud of him because he did the x-rays, cleaning and exam like a big ole brave kid. I managed to sit quietly in the corner and knit on my sock. The dentist was duly impressed with both Jellybean’s performance and my sock knitting.

I finished the last two rows of the cuff and cranked out ten or twelve rows of the first heels on my Dark Side Vanilla socks. Current me was very grateful that past me inserted those needles and cut the work apart so it was ready to go!

Thank goodness for purse knitting!!

First Fire

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Kansas has seemed to skip fall and go straight into winter. We had snow on Halloween for Pete’s sake! I batted my eyelashes at my husband and last night he built a fire for me. My house is chaotic and messy but the kids are asleep and I have knitting and a mesmerizing fire.

I worked on the cuffs to the Dark Side vanilla socks that I separated the other day. Nothing too exciting, just good solid progress on a very meditative project. I even inserted the needles for the first heel so it would be ready and waiting after the second cuff.

Happy Knitting!!

Ready For The Hem

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Hallelujah…I think I’m about done with my Autumn League Pullover! I slipped on the “try it on” tubing and slipped into the sweater. I am pleased with my waist increases and the overall length.

For sure I am going to work the hem or ribbing portion using a split hem method. I will simply divide the sweater into front and back sections and work the hem in two pieces by knitting back and forth. I think that will give me the hip ease I need while also be visually pleasing as it lays against my pants.

The one place I’m not SUPER happy about is the under arms. I can see in these photos that there is a ton of extra fabric in my upper arms. As a volleyball player my arms are in decent shape where as my chest and belly show the effects of birthing two children. I am just a mixed body type and probably should have modified the sleeves.

But at this point I’m going to finish the sweater and see how it looks blocked and finished. Maybe the baggy sleeves will just add to the “sweatshirt-ness” off the project. Or maybe I will hate them and I will rip them back and work in decreases and arm shaping. I’m the boss of my knitting and I get to decide!

Happy Knitting!!