Testers needed

Because it's been raining so much here these days, I've been wearing my mitts everywhere. The good thing is that my hands have stayed warm; the bad thing is that many folks have noticed the mitts and asked that I make a pair for them. The good thing is that the mitts are a super simple project to whip out; the bad thing is that I have been putting aside the tam I've been designing to work on the mitts.
Yeah, that's right, I've been working on a lacy tam. I've decided that it's too soon to submit any of my designs to Knitty or Knotions (my favorite and the least intimidating of the web mags). Both of them have deadlines at the beginning of March, and I'm just barely working on my second draft of this tam. Instead, I've decided aim to either self publish or submit this one at a later date.
I am, however, looking for testers for this pattern. If you're interested in working on a lacy tam that uses fingering weight yarn then let me know. I'm aiming to have the kinks worked out and the pattern ready by the end of this month and testing finished by the end of April. If you're interested, shoot me a message either here or on Ravelry (My username is Shanny) and I'll send you the pattern. The only stipulation is that I ask that you DO NOT post any pictures or portions of the patterns online until I give the go ahead - in case I do decided to submit it for publishing in an online knit mag.

Instant Gratification Achieved

The problem with trying to design patterns is that if I want to try to get them published, I can't post pictures and talk about them before I submit them. With that said, I've been dedicating all of my knitting time to some originals and the lovely Twist & Shout which all in all makes for some lousy blogging! I'm a knitter who loves some instant gratification, so you can imagine how keeping hush-hush about my projects and working on a sweater can be akin to torture for me. The remedy? These simple mitts:


These are inspired by the pair that Stephapalooza gave me during one of the last swaps, which I wear on a daily basis. They are simple and I'm thinking I might need to make a pair in every color! These ones are knit in 2nd Time Cotton by Knit one Crochet two in Scottish Moor colorway (which I also used to make myself a Reasonably Hip hat).

This is what I did in a nutshell:
CO 30 stitches
knit garter stitch for approx. 3.5 inches
k 8, bo 8 sts, k across rem sts
k to bo sts, co 8 sts, k across rem sts
knit garter for 3.5 inches more
bo all sts
use mattress stitch to sew seam.

rinse, lather, repeat. Always repeat.

Rest in Peace

Nonny, I will miss you.

Adorableness in puppy form

Guy and I have been fostering this adorable cutie for the past week.

Our friend found her at a school baseball game but couldn't keep her because her landlord already frowns on the four dogs she currently has, so we said that we'd watch her for a little while. We're guessing that she's a Jack Russell and Chihuahua mix and it looks like she hasn't been fixed yet. She's quite the snuggler and likes to crawl under the blankets - for this reason we've been referring to her as Snug Bug, or Buggy (but that could change).


Brisco and I wouldn't mind keeping her, but Guy maintains that we still need to find her a home (although I've seen some covert acts of cuddling between those two) so let me know if you're interested in meeting her.

The Great Square Extravaganza

As I mentioned before, I've been stuck knitting squares for a group blanket with my knit knack girls. As of last night I am officially done with the knitting. Fina-fricken-ly!
Just gotta ship these bad boys off and wait for all my squares to arrive to assemble my own blanket.

Progress!

I'm working my way through my second sweater of this year, and it's coming along rather nicely. Okay, so technically I haven't blocked the first sweater, but I've finished the knitting and seaming parts. Honestly, I was overly anxious to get started on the beautiful Twist & Shout to take the time to clean off the futon so that I have a large enough space to block sweater numero uno, so that is still stilling in a pile in it's project bag.
It was easy for me to make the jump to the next sweater since Guy, the enabling loving man that he is, had gotten me a $100 gift card to one of the three LYSs. I popped over there to try to find the perfect yarn and with a little help from Mrskitch I picked out some Cascade 220 ins a pretty teal blue/green. I had thought when I was going in there that I wanted something neutral, grey, or black that could go with anything, but Cascade told me different!



I'm truly enjoying this pattern, especially the tapered decreases and increases, which seem so simple and beautiful at the same time. It's funny, I've always openly avoided sweaters but now that I've started doing some I'm realizing that they aren't so big and frightening as they had once seemed.


I was making some great headway on this sweater until I noticed that I had received packages in the mail from fellow knit knackers Fey, SeahagMary, and KrisKnits. With some guilt, I was reminded of the fact that I have a group project that I'm seriously behind on.
Last year my knitting group came up with a great idea: we would make a group blanket for each other, each knitting a 10x10 for the 24 other participants. Once all squares were received, we would all have a blanket make by each other to snuggle up under while knitting. This was a great project in theory (and honestly I am still excited to get to the final project) but has now been dubbed the Great Square Extravaganza (thank you Mary!). I've learned that knitters are fickle creatures when it comes to projects and yarn. We should have known that few of us would have the attention span required to make it through all of those squares, which after a while start resemble swatches (we all know how much knitters love those) without being distracted. This was a lesson learned after three extensions of the deadline. Lord knows I surly wasn't able to resist!
Begrudgingly, I'v set aside my sweater and picked up my squares again. The most recent deadline extension was the end of January so it goes without saying that I've missed that too. But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel - I've only got four left to knit and then I'll be fancy free to do as I please.