#WIPWednesday : The Event Horizon Pi Shawl

I love this shawl, and learned a lot from knitting her. I'm finally in the home stretch,  and ready to bind off. I cast on New Year's day, and was supposed to finish on Pi Day, 3/14, but that obviously didn't happen.

The Event Horizon Pi Shawl , by Donna Druchunas, was featured in her book, Stories in Stitches 2, and is only one of many projects, along with accompanying stories, that can be found in this lovely little book.

More information on designer and author Donna Druchunas,  can be found on her website,
Sheep to Shawl

Free Pattern: The Brainless Cowl

I'm happy to say, the Brainless Cowl is just that, brainless.  I was looking for a way to use up some of my many skeins of handspun yarn, and sometimes I could knit on autopilot while I read a book.  Hence, the Brainless Cowl, a giftable project you can complete in an evening while sitting in front of  movie or reading a book.

This cowl is simplicity itself. For the cowl pictured,  I cast on 80 stitches on a set of US 10, 16 in circular needles, and I knit for 5 rounds, purled for 5 rounds, alternating as I  went, ending on a knit set, and bound off loosely when I ran out of my skein of worsted weight handspun yarn.

This pattern is very easy to adapt to any weight yarn. If you are using fingering weight, go down to a US size 6 needle, and increase your stitch count to 120.  If you want a longer cowl, kust add more stitches.

I hope you enjoy this fast, stress free knit.

I Think I Will Take Up Sewing

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I think I'm going to take up sewing.  This has been something that has nagged T me for years,  which is a bit absurd.  After all, I own three sewing machines.  Yes, three. They keep coming into my life and my home,  and amazingly enough,  no matter what I do, I can't seem to make those suckers work.  They always end up with a tangled mess around the bobbin,  or the whole thing just sort of seizes up. At first,  I thought it was the machi2 that were at fault.  After all, I'm a pretty crafty girl. I'm a more than competent knitter. I make my own yarn. Really,  what could be so difficult about running a sewing machine.  Even kids do it all the time.

In an effort to get these machines working,  I had some sewing friends of mine take them for a test drive.  I was completely disgusted to hear that the machines were just fine, and actually worked very well.  Hmm.

Further proof that I'm supposed to be sewing something lies in the fact that I have multiple totes of beautiful fabric,  and by multiple,  I mean no less than five. If the universe didn't want me to do this, I can't imagine that so much sewing paraphernaliaon would have been dumped in my lap to steal space in my house.

So, in the face of all of this evidence,  I think it's time to put some of these lovely fabrics to work decorating my home. If I can ever figure out how to make those stupid sewing machines work!

An Eventful Year

I  couldn't believe it when I saw I hadn't posted in almost a year. Most likely because it has been, long, stressful,  terrifying,  and  more than a little eventful. Last summer,  my husband was diagnosed with cancer,  which announced itself with a seizure.  He went from being relatively healthy,  active,  and working full time,  to being a cancef victim in the hospital over the course of one day.  It totally blind sided us. We had no idea anything was wrong.  After the seizure,  he was in and out of the hospital for several months,  one admission being the result of a heart attack about two weeks after the cancer diagnosis,  almost certainly brought on by stress.

In the meantime,  my son was holding down the home front,  while I stayed at the hospital with my husband. Four days after we found out about the cancer, on the day they started  the preparation to start radiation treatments,  my son called to tell me my dog passed away.  He'd taken her to the vet the day before because she was feverish and wouldn't drink. I was completely devastated.  I literally  cried for two hours.  I'd worked so hard to hold it together for my husband's sake, and this completely put me over the  edge.  I was so bad,  they had a staff person following me around thinking I was having a breakdown.  I probably was.

I think knitting totally saved my sanity. I dragged it to the hospital,  to the oncologist office, pretty much everywhere.  Even though I didn't ever seem to make much progress,  it soothed and absorbed me enough to get me through.

Time just seems to get away from me now.  I'm working part time,  mostly from home, and my husband is popping in and out of work as he's able.  We just seem to live in a whirl wind of  doctor appointments,  chemotherapy,  and down days to regroup.  One thing is for sure,  no matter how crazy life gets, or how much time I spend sitting in doctors offices and hospital rooms,  my knitting will be a constant.   Right now, I'm working on my Event Horizon Shawl by Donna Druchunas. Definitely an absorbing knit.

Below is a small sampling of some of the things I've knit over the past few months.

The beginning of my Event Horizon Pi Shawl

Easy Handspun Cowl: Cast on 75 stitches on size 10 circular needle. Join in the round. Knit 5 rows, purl 5 rows, until the cowl is the size you want. End cowl with 5 knit rows. The handspun was a heavy worsted weight. Easy enough to read while you knit.  A definite winner, and you can finish it in a sitting! 

Baby bonnet. I've knit several of these now. Threaded with pretty ribbon,  it makes a great gift.

Socks I knit from one of the Jane Austen Knits magazines. 

Yarn Tastings and New Babies

Things have certainly been exciting around here. After a long and difficult pregnancy,  my sister Brittany has mad me an Auntie again. Ireland Ellen made her appearance on Monday with great fanfare.

Me and Ireland

While waiting for her arrival,  I spent some time working on my entrelac baby blanket for my cousin. I'm working on weaving in the ends as I go. Hopefully it will save me some serious hassles later

Weaving in ends as I go. Yay me!

Last night I attended a yarn tasting at Common Thread in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Common Thread is right on the main drag in downtown Saratoga  Springs, NY

 It was hosted by Cascade Yarn, and let me tell you, it was a full house.

You can see that it was tight around the tasting table.

The shop employees were kept busy with all the purchases and prize drawings

The yarn and projects were beautiful, there were some great door prizes (I won yarn and a pattern), and there was wine and yummy snacks. They also had color cards there that they let you look over and place orders from.  That was an especially nice feature.  You weren't limited to the stock at hand.

This was the tasting table. They had mini skeins wound up that you could do a little test knitting with.

I did purchase some yarn, but honesty,  it was almost too crowded to shop effectively,  and some of the people there weren't always polite enough to move out of your way. Consideration is everything in a crowd.

#Knitchat and Entrelac

Since my last post, I'm feeling much better and am back to knitting comfortably.  Mom's cataract surgery went well.  I finished my potato chip scarf, and it turned out beautifully.  The picture really doesn't do it justice, but things have been crazy busy, and I haven't had a chance to set up for some good shots.



I started an entrelac cowl in preparation for doing a baby blanket.  Entrelac is one of those
things that I've wanted to try for a long time, but for some reason, it really intimidated me.
I finally decided to be bold, and just do it, and discovered that plain entrelac is
simple and makes great tv knitting.  I can now knit backwards as fast as I can purl,
and aside from left hand triangles and picking up stitches on the wrong side (for
some reason they both freak me out, I don't know why), I love it, and truly enjoy
it.  This is a picture of the start of the baby blanket.  Shown are the base triangles and the first row of right side rectangles.

My other new knitting related project is helping to revive #knitchat on Twitter.  It died out a few months ago when it became to difficult for Natalie to host every week, so a few of us have banded together to take turns hosting.  If you are interested in joining in #knitchat, head over to our all new #Knitchat-ter blog for all the details.  You can check out our recent #knitchat activity there, or you can go to Twitter.com and search #knitchat. I hosted my first chat about lace knitting, and despite being crazy nervous, it went pretty well.  I need to figure out the best way to keep track of the chat, and post, and remember my hashtag, and... And I guess I loved it and had a great time!

WIP Wednesday: Therapy Knitting

So, here I am sitting at the hospital waiting for my mom to go in for her cataract surgery,  working on a potato chip scarf I'm knitting it in Manos Maxima on size 10 needles. This is a super fast relaxing knit that I will probably do again with my handspun. It's very portable and doesn't require dragging a pattern around.

While I probably have ten projects on the needles right now, most of them involve lace, and beads, and small needles, and at times like this, that's not what I need.

My fibromyalgia, or whatever it is, is acting up, so I went with big needles and soft wool yarn.

After I get over my ouchies, I would like to get going on another baby bonnet,  and maybe an entrelac baby blanket.

Until next time, may your yarn be plentiful and your needles nimble.