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Knitting and Crochet

A WIP, a pic, and an off-topic plug

four green yarns on chopping board
Photo by Surene Palvie on Pexels.com

Sorry for the hiatus, I was at Comic-Con this weekend in San Diego. Such a fun time! Oddly, though, I never saw anyone but myself knitting (or crocheting, for that matter) in the busy hallways of the Convention Center.

I couldn’t bring the log cabin scrap blanket, as it’s getting too big for easy transport, so I grabbed a bag of three balls of Cascade 220 that had already been ziplocked into complementary colors, printed out a copy of the Booga Bag pattern, and threw it all into my suitcase for the trip.

WIP: handbagI didn’t get very far on it–I mostly only knit in the car up and down, and a little between sessions while sitting on the floor of the main lobby–but it was nice to be knitting again after crocheting for so long. I’ll admit I was afraid I’d forget something, but my fingers knew what they were doing as soon as they touched the Addi circs, so much so that I didn’t even have to look down half the time. (This was important when the carsickness hit on the drive back north.) The color is of course slightly off–the green is more of a kelly than the forest that it looks there.

As for finished projects, I was a bad photographer and forgot to photograph the finished blankets for Grace and Noah before I delivered them to their mother on Friday. Suffice to say, they’re adorable with their single crochet borders of pink and green (Noah’s border is pink and Grace’s green, so that they match their sib’s colorway).

That’s all I’ve got for needlework/yarn news.  In off-topic news, check out page 75 of this week’s Entertainment Weekly (the one with The Deathly Hallows on the cover) for a cute write-up of my friend Allyson’s first book, Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?

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Knitting and Crochet

*tap* *tap* *tap*

[Note: HP7 is mentioned in this post, but there are absolutely no spoilers of any kind.]

Is this thing on?  Whew!  I tried posting yesteday, and I kept getting javascript errors that wouldn’t let me into the post field.  Yikes!  Scary!

WIP: Scrap log cabin blanketSo, as I was going to post yesterday, here is a picture of the log cabin blanket I’ve been making with “scrap” yarn, except that it stopped being scrap yarn when I started buying skeins just for this blanket.  I was working on it yesterday during my “day of processing”–that is, the day after I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Some of the blanket’s strips will be getting narrower as I reach the ends of skeins, as happened last night when I reached the end of a blue skein.  Hopefully it’ll all even out in the end.

I haven’t really been working on anything else lately.  I realized yesterday that I miss knitting Booga Bags.  I’d also like to make more of the squares for the Larger than Life bag, but it requires quiet and concentration, which makes it hard to find time to do it.

*sigh*  It’s pathetic, I really should have more to talk about, but really, my head is still trapped in The Deathly Hallows.  So much to contemplate, and revisit, and sort out.  Excellent book, but I’m having a hard time thinking of anything else.

Larger than Life square!

Willow Block, Larger than Life Bag, Interweave CrochetFinally, a picture!  This is the Willow Block square for the Larger than Life Bag, as seen on pages 76-77 of this spring’s Interweave Crochet.  I finished my rereading of the Harry Potter books on Tuesday, enabling me to finally finish this square (that was started weeks ago) last night.  Squee!  It’s not blocked, and I haven’t even weaved in the ends yet, but it’s just so pretty.  I adore the colors, which really can never be fully captured by my Powershot, and look forward to starting the next square.

It was more complicated than anything I’ve done previously, but it wasn’t hard as long as I gave it my full attention.  Thinking back, I think the center circle was the hardest part, since I still suck pretty hard at joining a round.

ION, I worked on my scrap log cabin blanket yesterday, adding another two full blocks (one in red, one in variegated yumminess).  I have it with me today, so I’ll try to take a picture of it at lunch. 

Vampire People @ Barnes & Noble

Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?I’ve been terribly lax in updating this week, for which I’m very sorry.  It’s been a busy week, with both ups and downs, and very little time for yarn work.  The biggest up is that my friend Allyson’s first book, Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?, became available exclusively at Barnes & Noble stores across the country on Friday, about a week earlier than any of us expected.  Friends from NY to Florida, Iowa to Texas and California, have been reporting back with stories on how they found the book, how they chatted up the store employees to generate bookseller interest, how they took pictures (and posted them) of the book on display, and finally how they felt upon reading the essays nestled within the covers.  It’s been a big weekend for those of us chronicled in this book about how an internet community based around fandom (in this case, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly fandoms) can change a life.  Specifically, it’s about how it changed Allyson’s life, but so much of it describes how it changed many lives, mine included.

And if you’re reading this blog, I’d wager your life has also been changed by online interactions with strangers around the world, and if that’s true, you should stop by your local B&N and look for Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? by Allyson Beatrice.  Leaf through it, maybe read a page or two (I’d recommend the chapter entitled “The Internet Wants Your Daughters”), and if you like what you see, buy a copy and bring it home.  And as you’re reading it, everytime you come across a mention of Allyson’s friend Paula, you can think to yourself, “Hey, I know her–I read her blog!”

P.S. It’ll be available in all other bookstores as of August 1st!

Finally, pictures of WIPs

I know, it took way too long to get these up, but I finally got around to it, and now, yay! Pictures!  All blankets below were crocheted in the log cabin style featured in Mason-Dixon Knitting.

WIP: Noah's Buffy Season Two blanketFirst is my favorite, Noah’s Buffy Season Two Blanket, so named because that’s what I’ve been watching while I’ve worked on it.  I picked up the yarn two weeks ago at Handmade–five shades of Plymouth Encore, as it’s one of the easiest yarns to work with, has neato bright colors, and is washable.  There are two blues, one (bright) green, one purple and one variegated.  I’m very happy with it so far, I think the colors work together beautifully.  It needs three more sections to be complete (i.e., the same size as Grace’s).

The second is Grace’s Sorcerer’s Stone Blanket (named for the audio book I was listening to while working on it).  While I adore the bright oranges, yellows and pink of this blanket, I think I failed on the execution.  The problems:

WIP: Grace's Sorcerer's Stone blanket1.  I used the same color for two consecutive sections each, which worked great when I only had three colors, but not so much with five.

2.  Each section is made up of nine rows–way too many, it turns out.  Five rows worked so much better with Noah’s blanket.  This problem, mixed with the first problem, meant I ran out of pink when I was only four rows from being finished, requiring me to buy a whole new ball.  Bah.

 3.  I didn’t order the colors very well, and the two oranges that look really similar–but aren’t–ended up too close in the order, which meant switching things up.  I don’t think this mistake hurt as much as the other two, but it offends my own anal-retentive need for order and symmetry.

This blanket will be finished when I finally get around to adding the last four rows of pink (plus a border, of course).  So, very close now.

WIP: Scrap blanketThe final blanket is just a hodgepodge of the leftover yarn from the other two blankets.  No clue how it’ll look, as I’m really not planning it at all; nor how big it’ll be.  I might go out of my way to make it larger, large enough to give it to my aunt for a lap blanket for Christmas.

I’m really enjoying the log cabin styled blanket, and crochet in general.  However, I don’t think I’m spacing my stitches very well when I’m picking up along the edges, hence the weird puckering in all the blankets.  Just when I think I’ve figured it out, I lay it flat and voila! Puckers aplenty!  Fortunately, I don’t think the babies will care.