June: Finish it or Frog it

My goal for the coming month is to have less Unfinished Objects around. The two best ways to take care of this: finishing or frogging. Officially, I'd like to frog all the items in this post, and finish four WIPs.

The WIPs in the running for finishing:
Sock Yarn Wrap
This has to be done by the end of the month.

Mandi's socks: two pair
Ideally, I will finish both pairs by the time I go visit Michigan at the end of the month. But I will finish one for sure. The all purple pair will be done by then; the cool spectrum pair might not be.

 

Slippers for Mer
I'm using yarn that I salvaged from my secondary mom's sweater to make a pair of slippers for my best friend. I plan on giving them to her for Christmas.

Spa Goodies
I am hosting a spa-themed bridal shower for one of my best friends at the end of June. We will be playing party games. I want to make 20 assorted pieces as prizes.

Items for frogging:
Swiffer Cover
One of my first pieces of flat knitting, it is too big for my swiffer and slides around. Since I can't use it, I will frog it and make a new cover.

Mara's slippers
She didn't really like them, and now her feet are bigger. I will frog the yarn and use it to make squares for the schuyler blanket project.

Christmas socks
The heels on these socks are too big, and the ankle is too small. I will be frogging these, then remaking them.

Gabriel's Hat
This was my first attempt with striping in a hat. Somehow I messed up the stitch count on the first several rounds, so there is a huge bump at the back.

A pictural tour of my last few days

Never fear, I have been making awesome stuff the past few days. I just haven't gotten around to blogging about it. Until now, of course. 

First up, a swiffer cover. I FINALLY used up the last of my disposables last week (because it would be silly to just throw them away, or something...). I made a swiffer cover a few months ago, and received one a few days later, so I had two. Ideally, that would be enough: one for the kitchen, one for the entry/bathroom. Launder, then reuse. Great. Until I don't do laundry for a couple days (sometimes the babies and I make very little laundry) and the swiffer covers are still dirty when I need them. This happened, so instead of doing laundry when there wasn't enough to make a full load, I decided to stash bust. You might remember that I mentioned buying a bunch of cotton yarn in my first entry. I grabbed a ball and improvised the cover below. it is made with alternating rows of hdc, sc tbl. Gabriel thought it was so cool that he did the swiffering for me. 

 

Then I made a crochet hook holder for one of my awesome blog readers, to go with the My Little Pony tote.

 

Then there was middle of the week grocery shopping, and I picked up some clothes pins for the lines I have in my backyard (even though I am not supposed to dry clothes outside; I think that is a silly rule). My mom gave me the clothes line and some plastic clothes pins at a baby shower I had when I was in my last trimester with Gabriel. After more than three and a half years, only one plastic clothes pin remained. (I snapped it this morning when I tried to use it to hang up a pair of jeans).Well, I needed something to hold my new bamboo clothes pins. Conveniently, Gabriel wanted some juice, which emptied the bottle. 

To make the clothes pin holder, I removed the label from the bottle. Then I cut one of the sides to make a flap (cutting three sides of a rectangle, and leaving the top attached) using a box cutter. Then I stabbed two holes near the top with the box cutter. Using a tapestry needle, I threaded yarn into the holes and tied knots to secure the ends. Then I hung it on my clothes line. 

So far, it works great. When I want a pin, I grab one through the flap. When I am ready to put all the clothes pins away, I unscrew the top and drop them all in. It's so easy, Gabriel figured it out all by himself.

I also decorated some envelopes using colored water and sprinkling them with my fingers. 18 of 52 envelopes decorated.

I also finished making Becka's garb. I think the dress turned out really well, especially since I didn't use any sort of pattern at all. Too bad all my hard work will be hidden under her armor :(

Now I am working on the third rag rug. Below is what it looked like last night. Today, I have covered about half of one of the rectangles. My plan is to finish one rectangle every two days. If I manage that, it will be finished before the end of the month! Expect a long blog post full of pictures when it is done!

 

Also, a garden update: all my pots have sprouts! Yay!

Of Yarn and other things

I joined Ravelry just over a month ago, and I'm pretty much obsessed with it. Currently I am a part of 3 swaps - a sock yarn shawl swap, a granny square swap, and a holiday recipe swap. Of course, it couldn't be as simple as that. The sign up for the shawl group is until Nov 15. The lady in charge pairs people up shortly after they sign up, though, because a shawl can be a big task. I signed up early October. I messaged my partner. No answer after 9 days, so I sent another message. Still no answer. The tenth day, I messaged the moderator. She gave me a new partner. I messaged the new partner. No answer for a week. Sent another message. No response. Day 9, I messaged the mod again. She assigned me a different partner, but told me that she would have the newest partner message me, that I shouldn't make first contact.

Ok. So the wait. Not bad, the next day. But I had TWO messages in my inbox. 2nd and 3rd partner both messaged me. So I messaged the mod to let her know. I told her I was fine to partner with both of them, but she told me that a new person was in need of a partner, so she took away 3rd partner. I'm kinda sad, because 3rd partner is from Farmington Hills, MI. Even though I know it doesn't matter, really, I liked the idea of having a partner sort of from home. Now I'm waiting for 2nd partner to get back to me on some specifics...

My other two swaps' partners are on top of things, though. My recipe partner and I message each other once a day, which is nice. She is a 20-something, married, in Georgia. I feel that if we lived nearby, we'd hang out and knit/crochet together (she does both, too). Ok, so I have a bit of an e-crush on her. Not like creepy, or anything, but I get a little spark of happy when I see that she wrote me back. My squares partner is in Texas. I picked up yarn yesterday to make her squares, so I'll be starting on that shortly. I don't have to send anything out until December, but I'm too excited to wait!

Finished a couple of projects in the last couple days. I know you are dying to see them.
Stephen's socks. I'm pretty proud of them. I figure if I keep pushing the complexity of pattern in each sock I do, I will be able to make the socks I want for myself at about pair 7. So... who would like some socks? :P

Swiffer cover. I followed the pattern, but it seems a little big. I'm going to make another one using smaller needles and see how that works out.

I really want to make a sock yarn blanket. It takes a lot of sock yarn, though. I don't want to buy yarn specifically for it, though. I want to use leftovers from other projects. Which means I need to make a TON of socks. Rox is going to send me her leftover scraps of sock yarn, so that will help. I know she makes several pairs a year.

I made a square out of cotton, too. I'm thinking of making a cotton blanket using the sock yarn pattern so I can have a summer weight blanket for sitting on my back porch.


Onto other things...

I'm about halfway through my paper journal! How exciting! I'll be sad when this one is full, but I've got about 10 waiting to be started. Of course.

Mara figured out straws over the weekend. Yay! She hasn't quite gotten down swallowing the last mouthful before letting the straw go, though...

I'm sure there was more non-yarn stuff... Oh, well. I'll just put it in later.