Fragola

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I know, it was way overdue, but getting on Pricipessa's schedule for a shoot is not easy. Here is a back shot:


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Details:
Sizes: 26 (28:30:32:34) inches chest circumference
Gauge: two versions available, DK weight for a gauge of 24 sts/4", and worsted weight for a gauge of 20sts/4"

So, is it available? Well, it is being tested as I write, so it will be soon.
In the meanwhile, if you are dying to have it and you are willing to test it, just email me and I'll send the pdf to the first five people who ask.

Let's shake things

Last night I casted for OSW with Bernat Cottontots.


I mailed my contributions for the new moms at Camp Pendleton on Saturday: two pair of baby socks and one baby sweater. I am going to focus on afghans for Afghans now.


Soleil is done and I am very happy with it - if my friend sends me a photo of her wearing it I'll post it.


Two more pink projects done: Soleil and the quickie baby sweater. The only pink project I have on the needles right now are the Branching Out Handwarmers, and yes, I worked on them a little.


8 summer projects done (SnB Little Top, Knee High Socks, Striped Toe-up Socks, Fragola, baby tank top, Matilde, Kidlet Tank and Haiku) and 2 on the needles (NBaT and Soleil).


I just finished one Quickie Baby Sweater and I need to make another one pronto.


I think the scale is broken, or lying ...... it seems I am stuck ay my starting weight. I am telling myself that since I am exercising, I am loosing fat and build up muscles, but my clothes do not feel any looser.


I re-casted last night - gauge issues.

I joined two more knit-alongs:

Of course

She is Progressive Girl Click on the picture below to read more: Take the 'What Kind of Girl Is She?' quiz at CookingToHookup.com

Who does not like a quickie?

I do, not one, but two:



I knitted this in a day. That is, I started in the morning, had my usual Saturday of running around with the kids, fixing breakfast, lunch and dinner, doing laundry and such, still it was done last night. I used about two balls of Sugar'n Cream.

Oh, and I finished this:



And this as well:



So I can state that I do not like mercerized cotton and I am not going to use it ever again, that is until I see a pretty color that makes me forget. Please remind me. On the other hand, $1.99/ball Sugar'n Cream, who would have said it is so nice?
When I told my husband he shot me a very worried look, like that time he thought I said I was going to Target to buy shoes.
So now I am wondering, have I been missing out on a bunch of stuff only because I did not even consider them? Never set foot in a Taco Bell, never used Lion Brand Wool-ease.
Well, maybe I'll give Lion Brand a shot - Taco Bell? I think I'll keep the way it is.

It's back!

The three curses of knitting

1. The curse of the circular needles - you never had the ones you need
2. The curse of the gauge - you never have the yarn with the right gauge in your stash, and even if you do, your gauge is off.
3. The curse of the yarn - you never have enough.

Really, never. The only person I know that maybe, and I stress maybe, has enough yarn, is Hollis, just because her entire store inventory is sitting in her living room (and guest room, and children's room, and family room) right now. If you thought that Kristine's story about her opening an online store was a saga, get Hollis to tell you hers: it's longer and way more entertaining.

But the particular annoying lack of yarn situation is when you are just this short from finishing a project. Since the deadline for the new moms at Camp Pendleton project is today, I hurried to finish my second pair of socks. So I casted off the fist one and looked at the leftover yarn:


!@#$%^&*
Hint: slide your mouse on the photo to see how much the sock weight.

Plan A: I buy another ball of Lion Brand Magic Stripes, but even crazy me thinks that it is way too much to buy 100 gr of yarn because I need 2.
Plan B: Frog the damn sock and make another pair of these instead:



I like plan B better, especially because baby socks and cables? Very bad idea, someone should kick me in the head next time I say that these



are cute. 4 tiny needles plus a working tiny needle plus a tiny cable needle?
Did I mention "tiny"?

New obsession

Probably you need to know this as much as I did, but well, here it is:



It is way worse than eBay, check out the Craft supplies - Yarn category, if you do not believe me. You have Knitterly Things and Midnightsky Fibers Shop , and you can RSS feed the shops in your bloglines. Who the heck came up with that idea?

So I am here, looking at yummy yarns. And the other thing is, I am so over summer knits right now. Not that I am going to have a winter anytime soon, unless I travel someplace, I can just wait and wait for the winter that will never come, but early in the morning you can smell the fall coming. Then at lunch time, reality sets in and you realize that you were hallucinating and no, it is still summer. But still I crave thick handspun warm yarn. After all, I can always let the guy from Minnesota win our termostat war and have freezing temperature in the office.

Tuesday is knit-along day

I haven't started myAugust stashbuster project yet - how many days I have left?


I am still working on the second pair of baby socks for the new moms at Camp Pendleton - I finished the first sock but I am not sure that I have wnought yarn for the second! I'll need to weight the yarn and the sock and see. But I started a Quickie Baby Sweater - we''ll see if it is a fast knit as they say.


Soleil is done. I tried it on and it is too big for me - good because my friend is bigger than me. The v-neck is pretty deep and the armholes are kind of loose, but I think the crochet edge will fix that.


8 summer projects done (SnB Little Top, Knee High Socks, Striped Toe-up Socks, Fragola, baby tank top, Matilde, Kidlet Tank and Haiku) and 2 on the needles (NBaT and Soleil).


I need to make a couple of baby sweater, hats and socks, and a blanket. Everybody is having a baby right now! My collegue had the baby today and I have't started on her sweater yet!


Nothing new to report on these.


I think the scale is broken, or lying ......

Celebrating freedom

How did I celebrate freedom yesterday? I did not shower nor get out of my PJ all day long. And I knitted, of course. A tablemat:



Yep, I am not a kitchen cotton virgin anymore. I must say, I liked better than I thought. I picked out some Sugar'n Cream in Minneapolis, no idea why. It was on sale, I thought I never knitted a dishcloth, maybe I could try. But then it occurred to me that I do not do dishes, I have a dishwasher. That reminds me what else I did yesterday to celebrate my freedom, I left dirty dishes in the sink, knowing that nobody would shoot me a dirty look that reads "You are an horrible wife and housekeeper" after only five minutes to then sigh loudly and say "I'll wash these now". And yes, I did pointed out to her that we have a dishwasher and that as soon as the load was done I would hurry to unload and reloaded it. You see, she says that if you wait the food and grease and whatsnot will be stuck on the dishes forever, making it impossible to wash them. She lacks the college experience, where among other things you learn that you can have the dirty dishes wait for weeks and still be able to clean them. We had a party today, and I have plenty of dirty kitchenwear right now around the house - I plan not to wash any of it, just load and unload the dishwasher until everything is clean. Or until the cleaning lady comes, whatever occurs first. Yes, amazing as it is, I do not clean so that the cleaning lady does not find a "too dirty" house. If she thinks it is too much, she'll ask for a raise I'll happily give her.
But I digress, back to knitting. As you see, I need more then one ball to make one tablemat, so I have three, I need three more to make four. And that is where shopping online comes handy, Herrschners has it on sale, and now that I do not dread coming home from work anymore, I really don't care to go hunting around in craft stores to see if they carry the shade I want.
More knitting news, I finished the back of Soleil:



Made a mistake in the fronts, I need to frog ten rows or so.

Peace, at last, peace

Want to know what I am doing right now? Whatever I want to. You know why? They are gone, as for this morning at 6 a.m.
So I am knitting, blogging, reading, doing whatever I want without listening to any comment on my activities. And not good comments, you can count on that.

So, you may notice I cleaned up my blog a little, the sidebars, and I added those cool badges - I am mesmerized by my own stash.

One thing saved me these last 6 weeks. You know what it is, knitting. She used to knit, so I gave her an afghan to finish. It worked, I have now this



and as Principessa stated, "Gramma is turning into you, she knits all the time and is actually nice". Well, I won't go that far.

I am a believer now

Click here.


edit on 8/20/05: or maybe not.

Let's start Hopeful

Hopeful was scheduled to be casted last night, but the curse of the circular needles struck again - Soleil was on my US #6 24". So I knitted and knitted Soleil until I got to the "Divide Back and Front for Armholes" and put Soleil on straight needles - I need to tell you, nothing gives knitting momentum as an accusatory look of Principessa's face while she asks: "You don't have more #6?" Luckily for me, I bought her this from Elspeth, that gave me some brownie points.

In the meantime, I found a knit-along for it:



And I joined. Yes, it is Principessa's project - even if, I am asking myself now, why did I pay for the yarn? - but I am doing all the purling.

Bookbookbook

On August 2nd (yes, I remember the date) I was supposed to go to Stash with HoJo and Amy for an appearance of the Yarn Harlot. I could not go and I was so disappointed that I did not even blog about it. Thing was, a friend of mine got married. So what, people get married everyday. Yes, but we never thought that he would get married, and the ceremony was in Italy so we missed, but then since he had met his wife here while they were both at Stanford, a friend of them was throwing them a party while they were here - passing by to go to Hawaii and then Bali. So I went to the party.

But then, look what HoJo got me!




Hint: slide your mouse over.
It almost makes up for not being there!

And next time she is here (there will be a next time), a natural disaster won't keep me away.

Knitting news: I finished Haiku, so happy about it, finally a FO.



I am trying to finish Soleil now, before casting for another project, either OSW or Quickie Baby Sweater.

Tuesday is knit-along day

See Haiku gone from the sidebar? Yes, it's done!


I am still working on the second pair of baby socks for the new moms at Camp Pendleton - I turned the heel!


Haiku is done, Soleil is on the needles.


8 summer projects done (SnB Little Top, Knee High Socks, Striped Toe-up Socks, Fragola, baby tank top, Matilde, Kidlet Tank and Haiku) and 2 on the needles (NBaT and Soleil).


I need to make a couple of baby sweater, hats and socks, and a blanket. Everybody is having a baby!


Half done!


Nothing new to report on these.


I think I lost 2 lb ......

Mini de-stashing

I have way too much yarn, so I should be de-stashing.

Problem is, I can't part from my yarn!

But I have managed to muster the courage to part from three yarns:

- Lion Brand Wool-Ease, 80% acrylic, 20% wool, 435 yards per ball, 5 sts / 1" on US #5, color: Autumn, SRMP: $2.77 per ball, 4 balls, $8 including shipping in the US.

- Endless Summer Collection Sonata, Fibre Content: 100% Mercerized Cotton, Made In: Brazil, Care: Machine Wash Cold/ Dry Flat, Gauge: 22 st/4 inches on 4 mm (US 6), 50g (1.75 oz) ball, Yardage: 106 m (115 yards), 2 balls in pink, 1 ball in Capri Blue, $5 including shipping in the US.

- Peruvian Highland Collection Pure Alpaca, 100% Alpaca, 109 yards per ball20 sts/4" on US #6, 6 balls (3 green + 3 ecru), $10 including shipping in the US.

Photos here.

Paypal only - email me with any question.

Che gioia!

Now that there is happiness in my life, I can't knit anything else.