Mickey Mouse!

(Me and the family at the Magic Kingdom)

We took a vacation to Walt Disney World last week. It was the boys' first time. I don't have much knitting to show you in this post, but I did get quite a bit of knitting done on my mom's sweater during the 9.5 hour drive each way:

(Mickey nails!)

We all had a blast. We woke the boys up early Thursday morning, hit the road by 7am, and drove straight down, with really very few stops along the way. We got to Orlando by 4:30pm. We had to wait for our room to be ready (they dropped the ball on that one!) but we had plenty of time to explore around the hotel, giftshops and pools. Friday was spent driving over to near Tampa to visit with my grandmother (she's 88 and still hanging in there!) and take her out to lunch. Then we headed back to Disney to meet my in-laws for dinner at Downtown Disney.

(My grandma!)

Saturday morning started with a wake up call from Stitch, and we did the Cafe Mickey Character breakfast where the boys got to meet Mickey, Minnie and the gang up close and personal. Then pretty much the entire day was spent at the Magic Kingdom, including the 10pm fireworks at Cinderella's castle. I'll tell you what, I got quite teary eyed holding up my youngest and watching those fireworks with my boys, seeing how captivated they were with it all. sniff

(Alice, wondering if the boys are Tweedledee and Tweedledum)

Sunday was split between Hollywood Studios and Epcot. The Toy Story ride in Hollywood Studios is AWESOME! We got the boys passports in Epcot, and they loved getting them stamped and signed at each country. We also saw some of the Chubby Checker concert there - boy can he still rock it!

(Chubby Checker)

Then we hit the road for home on Monday. Overall it was a fantastic trip, but over way too soon! Although, my feet took a few days to recover from all the walking we did! The only downside to the whole trip was getting home and realizing we left my youngest's blankie in the hotel room. :-( Lost and Found doesn't have it yet, but we keep checking. We're hoping it turns up in a few days once all the laundry has been sorted through, but I hate to get my hopes up. We'll see.


Now I'm just trying to get back in the swing of things. I'm hoping to have some good stuff to show you in a week or two. In the meantime - Happy Knitting!

Stitches South

I spent this last weekend in Atlanta for Stitches South 2010. I stayed with my parents (who live south of Atlanta) - which is better than a hotel, since not only do I save on lodging, but I get to hang out with them and watch Dr. Who! :-)

First off, I won the "What will you be Wearing?" contest that Kimberly, aka Somebunnyslove, was running leading up to Stitches. I posted my two Aeolian shawls, and my blue one won! So I got two tickets to the Friday night Fashion Show and Dinner. There were some lovely and unique sweaters that I saw at the Fashion show - many of them upcoming in the summer edition of Knitters Magazine. And a couple of them from 'Swing Swagger Style', among some others. The dinner was nice - the food was quite tasty (steak! and the dessert was to die for!) and the wait staff provided some humor (if you were at my table then you know what I'm talking about!). It was a very nice evening - I was very happy to have won the tickets and to meet Kimberly!

Then Saturday was the Marketplace - I overdosed on yarn fumes! It was fantastic. I ran into several of my Charlotte Knitting Guild friends on Saturday, too. I ended up only going a little bit over my budget:

(The Haul)

My first purchase (made within my first 10 minutes of being at the Marketplace!) was a sweater's quantity of The Sanguine Gryphon's Bugga! in the color 'Polyphemus Moth'. It was my only pre-planned purchase - I wanted to see the colors in person before I bought a sweater's quantity, and I fell in love with the pale, peachy browns in these:

(Bugga!!! The photo really doesn't do it justice.)

I then swung by The Knit Witch's booth and walked away with one skein of Boo! in 'Misty Moor' (the green one) and one skein of Celestial Cloud in 'The Crab' (the brownish one), plus some just scrumptious fluffy and soft Merino/Bamboo roving in the color 'Babylon' - I can't wait to spin it up!

(My purchases from the Knit Witch.)

I also swung by Dragonfly Fiber's booth, and got one skein of Djinni sock in 'Spring in Washington' (the pink one) and one skein of Naiad sock in 'Bad Moon Rising' (the awesome copper/bronze/blue one)-

On top of all that, I picked up a couple of heavily discounted bags of SWTC yarn, a shawl stick, some highlighter tape, some nail polish pens, and my mom got me the honey jade Purdy Thangz shawl pin as an early birthday present. I bought the girl scout cookies to distract my husband from all the other stuff I bought. hee hee!

Lots of great memories. I knitted a bit on The Big Sock, and got to meet Jess!

(Jess, aka frecklegirl, founder of Ravelry - and her husband, Casey, is behind me)

After an awesome lunch at The Real Chow Baby restaurant, my mom and I swung by my brother's place to visit with my nephew. He's gotten so big!

(Look at those feetsies!)

Overall, a fantastic weekend vacation! I had a lovely time with my mom, and looking at all the fantastic yarn and fiber. Now to just save up some more money before SAFF! :-D

Happy Knitting everyone!

It's too hot to wear these, but...

...here are some mittens I finished a bit ago. They only took me a little over a year to finish. o.O


Pattern: A Bird in the Hand Mittens by Jorid Linvik
Yarn: Noro Silk Garden Sock in a variegated blue and a variegated beige.
Needles: US 2.5
Started: January 16, 2009
Finished: March 9, 2010

I really enjoyed working on these. The only reason they took so long is because I kept setting them aside to work on other things. They were the red-headed stepchildren of my project basket, poor things. But now they are done, just in time for...summer! Doh! Oh well. At least I'm prepared for this next winter!



I have yet to duplicate stitch the bird on the palm (hence the 'bird in the hand') or the red heart, but that's because I haven't found the yarn I want to use to do that yet. They are nice and toasty - the silk garden sock yarn is very silky and scrumptious - the perfect yarn for mittens!

Happy Knitting!

Ravelympics/ Knitting Olympics Gold!

I finished my sweater in time to cross the finish line! Yay! It was finished at 4:35pm EST Sunday.

So, here it is - my finished Ravelympics Sweater!

Pattern: Autumn Rose by Eunny Jang
Yarn: Knit Picks Palette in 11 colors
Needles: US 3 for most of it (and US 2,1 and 0 for neck ribbing)
Size knitted: size 37 (with alterations - see below)
Started: Feb 12, 2010 at 9pm EST
Finished: Feb 28. 2010 at 4:35pm EST
Total Time: 90 hours

Modifications:

• Changed the color palette (I'll list the exact colors I used below)

• Added length to the body - extended the pattern down to the bottom of the chart (12 rows), and kept the decrease rate the same (12 extra stitches for cast on).

• Raised and narrowed the neckline. I raised the neckline to the same row as the sleeve division, and narrowed it by 4 stitches each side.

• Lowered the yoke to the smallest size's height. A lot of previous knitters noted that the yoke was too deep when worked as written.

• Lengthened sleeves and worked sleeves one size up, per the 39 size chart. Started sleeves on same row of chart as the body started. Charted out evenly spaced increases to decrease down to 35 stitches on chart (69 stitches total including the seam stitch). Mirrored bottom corrugated ribbing on the sleeve cuffs. Worked the rib over 64 stitches and then increased to 69 stitches before starting chart.

• Adjusted the raglan decreases (since I altered the neckline and the yoke height along with the sleeve width). Worked 5 sets of decreases every third row, then 10 sets of decreases every other row, then 14 sets of decreases every row. I did this on both the body and the sleeves. The sleeves ended up with a stitch count of 19 at the neckline.
  

• Kept color change in neck ribbing to mimic the bottom and cuff ribbing.

Overall I am extremely pleased with how this turned out! It fits like a dream now that it's blocked. I was concerned about some bunching that I was getting (pre-blocking) in the sleeve cap area, but it all blocked out and the raglan sleeves fit wonderfully! The Palette yarn is very soft, especially after blocking - yet it has the sticky quality that you want in fair isle. I did not reinforce my steek at all prior to cutting and it's holding together just fine.

Sleeve seam detail

My Color Palette:

Old Gold = Ash
Bracken = Marble
Pistachio = Fog
Yellow Ochre = Mist
Scotch Broom = White
Shetland Black = Asphalt
Pine Forest = Ivy
Admiral Navy = Clover
Peat = Spearmint
Sunrise = Celedon
Madder = Edamame

Here is what I came away with this time around with the Ravelympics:

I was crazy to pick such an ambitious project. Next time around I will not be so crazy - in order to save my sanity and the sanity of my entire household. I was determined to not 'fail', so housework and homeschooling and anything other than knitting was put on the back burner. Not a bad thing in and of itself , but I think next time around I'll take things a bit easier, and hence have a cleaner house and less rambunctious children during the games. (Really, who cares that my house was a mess for two weeks? And the kids were really great the whole time - they just watched a bit more tv than normal.) As proof of how much knitting I was doing each day - I even dreamed about knitting on this sweater several nights there!

I am very proud of myself - I proved to myself that I could, in fact, knit an entire fair isle sweater in 17 days. Because, I guess, I needed to prove that to myself for some strange reason. Now that that is done, I am going to take things a bit easy on the knitting front - well, for just a day or two anyway!

Happy Knitting everyone!!