Craftier news

After my last post, which was all about the new house, I’m back talking about knitting and other things I do (or try to). 

First, let me show you the new yarn I purchased: 

Messa di Voce, hand-dyed by my friends Elizabeth and Debbie (My knitting idol and friend Elizabeth, whom I keep talking about on this blog, has 2 equally talented sisters, who she works with on all kinds of knitting and crochet projects, including an internet business Elizabeth, Debbie and and Elizabeth's husband started a few years ago). They just published a new collection of patterns worth taking a look at! Meanwhile, I'm telling myself that if that yarn doesn't inspire me to learn how to knit socks, nothing will.

I had to take a short break after a few intensive sessions of baby-knitting (2 2-hour bus trips on the same day...) gave me what I think is a tendinitis (burning sensation from the neck down to the thumb - oh, the pain!). But after a lot of ice, some rest, a little weaving and 15 minutes with my chiropractor, I was able to finish yet another hat I had promised a friend last year. That friend lives in Detroit, and I will see her this weekend, so I had a deadline to respect! (Next time I see her after that will be in July, so she has to get it this weekend if I want her to wear it this year!). 

Yes, another Fisherman's wife beret, once again with Cascade's Lana Grande, but this time in brown.

I’m also quite advanced on my seamless baby cardigan. For once, the mother may receive her present BEFORE the baby comes! Although I’m going to have a lot of extra yarn left, so I’m planning to add little Mary Jane booties to the package, and the last time I knit them, I had to restart the 2^nd one several times before I could just knit it and finish it, because I lost one (LOST one, how can that happen?) and somehow, I kept making mistakes in that tiny thing I had already knit several times without any problem. I hope this time, everything will go smoothly!

It is an easy knit, and I love the way the pattern is written. It is weird to just knit, and not be  preoccupied by mistakes, because they happen less and less often. Now, I stop knitting because I’m tired, not because there is a mistake that I can’t fix and have to take a break from it. 

Although it happened once so far in this project; I never realized that I became an expert at picking a dropped stitch when knitting stockinette, but I have absolutely no clue on how to pick a dropped stitch in garter stitch. What a mess I managed to make! And no video was helpful; as soon as it looked good on one side, it looked bad on the other one. I asked a member of my craft circle to help me, but it is still not perfect. But it’s going to have to go, because I didn’t want to have to wait until I go back to Montreal again to fix something that will be hidden by a button anyway. 

 

And my last news is that I finished the R2DTuque again. But it’s not even worth talking about it, other than to say that sometimes, you should not let your mother jump on your projects before they are even started, if she doesn’t knit with the same tension than you do. My man calls it the Gilligan's hat. The main problem is that the ribs are much more loose than the rest of the tuque, so I would really have to restart it from scratch to give it its right shape. Next winter, maybe.