Startitis and Yarn obsession

Still "thinking" of organizing my yarn stash, well, I started, and then stopped because I found some interesting UFOs.

Oh, and started knitting those Baby Surprise Jackets.
The socks are waiting.

Well, would you like to know what in the world I did this morning?

I went to WalMart (opens at 7 a.m.) to get BUTTONS for the two BSJs.

I got the buttons, BUT, about a week ago I had bought some Bernat Wool
Blend in variegated naturals (taupe, cream, light brown, and some other color which I don't remember right now). Therefore,
I just haphazardly looked around if they had more of that variegated yarn.
No, of course not, so I decided that taupe would go with those colors, and creamy white, too. Isn't that obvious?

I have no idea what happened then, in my brain, but I took all the white skeins and decided
to make an Aran sweater with it (of course I need more of that white). I bought
5/100g skeins of Bernat Wool blend (80% acrylic and 20 % wool) in natural white,
and one skein in Taupe.

Then I decided that I needed those 5 mm needles (I might have some at home, like 100 sets) and some
3.5 mm needles (those I might only have 2 or 3 sets)

Anyway, I know that now I need to go to an other Walmart to see if I can get more of
that white yarn, if I decided to make an Aran sweater, with all those cables, and bobbles and seed stitches...
I might not. Cable sweater sounds good enough.

What do I have with me to work on my lunch hour? A start for a baby hat to go with the BSJ I made for my grand son, same yarn. I knitted about 2 inches and need about 7 inches.
I also have a skein of Novita Nalle Colori sock yarn and 5 sock needles. Not started.

I must have a brain cramp some sort, this is not good, not good at all.
Is there a medicine for startitis and obsessive yarn shopping?

One more BSJ

This is the last of the Baby Surprise Jackets. This one is missing the buttons, and hiding the yarn ends.

I am now ready to finish some socks, unless something else comes up. My sister has sent more yarn for my Joyella (Berroco) sweater, but that yarn won't be here until next week.

BSJ - again

Here we go again. I made another Surprise Jacket. This one is for my nephew's baby who is due at the end of November.
All I have left to do is find buttons. I have a box full of buttons, but not five of the same, or suitable for a baby's jacket, or not the right color, or whatever.

I am also working on another jacket, for our grand daughter, but that is just in the beginning. I started it on Sunday.

Buttons on BSJ

The Baby Surprise Jacket is now done. I found some cute Teddybear buttons and they look nice, don't they? I also added edging on the jacket and now it's ready for my grand son.

Baby Surprise Jacket

I cannot believe I did this jacket in such a short time. It would have been finished sooner if I didn't work on other projects, too.

The jacket does not have buttons, but I will go to Michaels tomorrow and get some.

The yarn is acrylic ww. The pattern is from "The Opinionated Knitter" by Elizabeth Zimmermann. I also have the DVD by her daughter Meg Swenson, and the DVD was a great help, because I got confused a few times. You see, I rarely follow a pattern completely, but this time I did.

My next BSJ will be with one color with some stripes in a darker or lighter shade of the main color. I like the one that is shown on the DVD: Light yellow and cream.

This jacket might be too big for our 2 month old grandson, but I am sure he will grow into it, around spring time.

Whipping up WIPs

All right, I have not started anything new since my last post.

I finished one skein of Novita 7 veljesta yarn and now waiting for more to come from my sister. I am really excited about this pattern. It's Joyella from Berroco. See previous post.

Here is the picture of the three hexagons I made already.

I need to work on something simple, so I think I will knit some more of the Baby Surprise Jacket tonight. Or Jaywalker socks.

Bad case of Startitis Syndrome

Good Monday Morning.

That is a picture of the most recent WIPs. I am not quite sure if I should be happy about this or should I weep. In any event, this is how my mind works these days: jumping from one object to another. I don't think this is very healthy for my hands, knitting so much. However, I am obsessed now.

The picture contains following projects:

-Jaywalker socks with Tofutsie yarn, just started
-Jaywalker socks with brown shaded Super Soxx yarn
-Joyella sweater with Novita 7 Veljesta yarn, pattern from Berroco book, number 266
-The Baby Surprise Jacket with variegated blues and solid blue ww yarn
-Gloves with red and grey yarns, plus one finger with yellow yarn which doesn't show in the picture.
-And finally, the blue sock in the middle is my Campanula sock, I have both socks in the same state. All I have to do is spend one night and finish them both.

One day I will finish these projects, because at this very moment all of them are my favourites.

The Charcoal jacket is not in the picture because it's in my knitting bag, and I forgot about it. The hot pink cable socks are in a plastic container with all my sock yarns. I have been sorting some of my stash, and some of the WIPs ended up in with yarns. On purpose. If I don't see all the WIPs I don't feel quite as bad, as I feel looking at the projects that are in clear view.

I think I need to talk to someone about this "startitis" (remember, this is the word that my friend, Sherri, uses.

Super thick socks

Can you believe this, I finished the thick socks for hubby.
I was going to make them for Christmas, but now is a good time too. He's wearing them already.

The jacket for DIL is in good shape. both fronts are done, then comes the back, and sleeves, and finally the front band with button holes.

I just can't understand why my fingers hurt.

Oh, and did I mention that I received Elizabeth Zimmermann's book "The Opinionated Knitter".





There is a pattern for a Baby Surprise Jacket. Ssshhh, don't tell anyone, but I went to Wallyville today during my lunch hour and bought some variegated yarn, and circular needles, and started knitting, um, casting on stitches (160), it took a while to do, because somehow playing cards (at lunch) and counting stitches don't go well together. I am not telling anyone that I had bought yarn today, because I am literally drowning in yarn here at home. BUT I don't have the right colors to make the surprise jacket. At least in my opinion.

I came home and started knitting and did the first part of the Surprise Jacket.
That means that I knitted the first 8 rows.

Now that I am in the mood to finish some projects, I think it's time for Campanula socks to be finished.

Time to start gift making

The pile of yarn on the living room floor looks depressing. The fact is that it's only a small pile compared to what is in the other room. How did I do this damage?
It's been ongoing ever since I started seriously knitting and crocheting. I believe there were times when I didn't do neither. Those times were for drawing and painting.

I found many interesting yarns, and UFOs in the stash room. One of them was a cardigan start for my DIL. I had gotten 1/4 of the back done. Knowing that I had enough of that yarn for almost anything, I decided to make a smaller jacket. I found a pattern in Knit and Style magazine, Jazzy Kimono Jacket, on page 59. It was done with different yarn, of course, but the stitch count and gauge suited me just fine. I did 10" and I need 13, or maybe 15" because she's a tall girl. The jacket is done in one piece until the armholes. I am so excited that I finally thought of something nice to make for my DIL.


The yarn is Patons Shetland Chunky, in Charcoal Heather. I added some Symphony yarn to make stripes at the edges. The stripes will be also in the front, unless I change my mind. The jacket in the magazine is variegated reds with short sleeves. I don't know just yet, how long the sleeves are going to be for this one.

Oh, almost forgot. I frogged the start of the original project. It didn't even hurt.

Sock knitting

It's autumn:




I will take a break from my stash organizing. My Campanula socks have a sad look "did you forget us". Well, I didn't, they are sitting on the table, on top of everything else. I have some books and magazines and other projects on the table, too. I knitted one row last night, but got really sleepy. The pattern is one of those that you really have to follow each stitch, so I stopped, before I made a mistake. I have had too many of those already.

I also made a 6" square, but I think I will make it bigger, to make a small blanket, or otherwise called "lapghan". I just have to find a yarn to compliment the one I used. It was a lonely ball of dark violet color, and suspect it's something to do with Red Heart yarns.

I was browsing some blogs today, and found this great Guitar Man Sock pattern.

There are several men's socks to be made for Christmas, so this might be one of the
patterns I will use. None of my family guys play a guitar, but the pattern is nice regardless. My hubby has a guitar, somewhere, but he gave up learning. I work in music field, but that doesn't make me a musician, which is a pity, since I love music so much, and wanted to learn to play piano, when I was younger. I even had one a long time ago, but had to part with it.

I have decided to take it easy today, since it's Thanksgiving Day, here in Canada.
I will make the sweet (yam?) potato casserole, my own recipe, which has not come up yet, it will be an inspirational thing. A roasted chicken, and some corn, and salad with tomatoes and cucumbers. I think that will be just enough, don't ya?
For dessert we will have frozen yogurt, or jello.










Look what I found in my stash, I made this one a long time ago, when I was teaching knitting for a local yarn store. Now I need to make the other one:

Stash Organizing

After getting in to www.raverly.com I decided that it was time to clear my stash room.

The pictures show only a minuscule part of the yarn collection. Let's say that an hour has 60 minutes, and a minute has how many seconds? so, imagine all the seconds in an hour, and we can start talking about the quantity of my yarn stash.

I have done a lot of freeform crocheting and knitting, thus I have many odd skeins of yarn, also odds and ends, so no real selling possibilities here. I was dreaming about e-bay, but then remembered that Revenue Canada is after e-bay sellers, so forget that one for me. I just organize and weep. There will be some yarn donated to my craft groups.

I looked at the piles and wept. Took some bags into the living room, dumped the bags on the floor and started. I got "all" sock yarns into two plastic containers.
Well, today I found some more sock yarn. Somehow I feel that I will find more, although I have not been a sock knitter until this year.

The title of this yarn is "Stash Organizing" Organizing being a word that hardly ever appears in my vocabulary. I have had amazingly frustrating moments with this stash, but also amazingly happy moments, specially when I have found yarns that I forgot I had. As in Lion Brand Suede, which had cost me a small fortune, because I was going to make a Desert poncho, some time ago.

I am sure I have done quite a bit of it, because I only found half of the yarn I had bought. I will find the WIP of the poncho, as I sort out the mess.

Right now I am seriously thinking of going to Zellers and getting some of those not so expensive plastic containers, because plastic bags just don't stack nicely.

Hat and Scarf

The hat I made yesterday looked so lonely so I decided to make a scarf tonight.
The scarf is quite long, although in the picture you can't tell, because it's wrapped around the neck of the "head".

The yarn is very soft chenille, and that's all I know about it, because it was in a bin as "unknown fibers". The fabric feels like velvet.

Big Sock

I took a break from thin yarns and thin needles and started socks with Lion Brand Wool-Ease Super Chunky yarn, the color Wheat.

Here is the first sock which I started on Saturday and finished on Sunday.

More later, have to get ready for work

Addition to the morning post:

I started making a beret from a pattern that is in Knitty.com Fall 2007 issue.
The name of the pattern is Urchin by Ysolda Teague




I used Moda Dea Tweedle Dee in Sagebrush color.

I made another Urchin Beret tonight, using unknown Chenille yarn.