FNSI results

Friday was a Friday Night Sew-In  over at Handmade by Heidi.  I brought my machine over to my friend Taylor's place and worked on my Arrow baby boy quilt.  I got the little arrows sewn together and the big arrows halfway sewn together.  I'm going to try to finish the piecing this week and quilt it next weekend - we'll see if that's too ambitious!

CMS/Colloquium knitting

Here's a photo of my progress in Thursday afternoon's seminars.  The picture doesn't show how long it is, but it's about 12".  The only problem is that even with the smaller needles, the think is still a half inch too wide.  I might have to start over again ...

Grey Sweater progress

I've been steadily knitting away on my grey sweater.  This week I joined the sleeves and body together.  I can't wait until it gets far enough to try it on!  I'm mildly worried about the size - I played pretty fast and loose with the gauge - my reasoning at the time was that the listed sizes for the sweater seemed kind of large, so it would be okay if my gauge was a little small. 

I just went and measured my gauge and did a back-of-the-envelope estimation (thank you Frontiers of Science) and my gauge is 24 sts/10cm.  The recommended gauge is 22 sts/10 cm, so with 230 stitches around the middle, my sweater's circumference should be right at about 96cm, a.k.a. 37.75 in, so it should fit perfectly!

CMS/Colloquium knitting

I re-started the strip for the big kid afghan on smaller needles.  It's going pretty fast - I've got about 6 inches done  of the first 30 inch strip.  It's actually still a bit more than 6" wide, but my mom said the strips she's making for this are about 6 and a quarter inches wide and she decided that's ok.  Yay!

CMS/Colloquium knitting - a false start

This is what I worked on in CMS and Colloquium last Thursday.  It's an afghan for my cousin's son.  He's getting a new sibling in a few months, and my mom and I are making blankets for him and for the baby-to-be based on the same pattern (Vexillo by Berroco).  The blankets are constructed by sewing together a series of 6"-wide garter stitch strips.  I wanted to make sure my work turned out the correct width, but I didn't have my measuring tape with me, so I used my pro geometry skills to create a 6" square of printer paper to check.  Unfortunately, as you can see in the photo, the strip is about an inch too wide.  My gauge is way off, so I'm going to start over again with smaller needles.  Luckily, it goes fast!  What you see in the picture is less than an hour and a half of work - it took me half an hour and about two inches of knitting before I figured out how to slip the edge stitches the right way to get a nice selvedge edge for seaming.

CMS/Colloquium knitting

 I made pretty good progress on my second embossed leaf sock in CMS and colloquium this week. 

Robert harvested the last of the basil on Saturday.  Here's what the plants looked like - they were getting pretty sad-looking, but Robert picked every single last leaf and we had enough green leaves to make a good-sized batch of pesto, and then we tossed the purple leaves whole into our pesto and homemade pasta.  Delicious!

Robert planted new plants from seed, so in a couple of weeks we should be eating lots of basil again!