What's on the needles?

So in trying to get back into posting more regularly and getting back to more knitting I am here with my most recent project the 'Tiger Eye Lace Scarf'. The pattern has been a breeze thus far and the scarf seems to be growing rather quickly considering I am using fingering weight yarn and size 5 needles. The upside is it does not have be be knit super long as blocking will make the scarf grow about 20%. I must admit that I had sworn off scarves for a while, but this was one that I have been wanting to knit for a long time. Not one that someone wants me to knit for them. "Hi, my name is Brandy and I have a hard time saying no". Yes, this is my problem. I don't like to let people down and when I tell them I can't do something I feel like I am letting them down. What happens? I am overbooked and hate knitting. So here is a picture of the scarf so far about 30% done at this point.

The yarn is a beautiful aqua blue and lime green dyed on a surge base by the fantastic Julie!!

I also still have Walt's stripped socks on the needles. I really want to finish these for him, but they have been such a challenge. This is my 3rd attempt at knitting them and hopefully it will be right. I had to go buy another set of US 1 DPNs because I had lost one and could not knit them.

I also have some yarn on the spindle. That I have been spinning for what feels like forever. I know there have been weeks where I have no touched it which is why it is not done, but also because I was aiming for a lace/fingering weight. So more yards = more time! My right shoulder has been killing me lately so that kind of detracts from the whole spinning thing. Although, I did spin 2 sections of roving last night.

So this week I spun 3 sections of roving & knit 10 pattern repeats on the scarf. Oh yeah, I did some math on the scarf. If I knit 30 repeats that will give me 60" inches pre-blocking. That will be  480 rows knit, which amounts to 14,880 stitches.

Lace Lust!

It has been a while since I talked about knitting on here other than just in passing. I started this blog expecting it to be a knitting only blog because that was really all that was going on in my life at the time. Life sure has changed a lot in the past year. Well, I am dedicating this post to knitting only. I recently completed my first lace project. I have always found a lot of lace shawls and scarves really beautiful but I was so intimidated by the charts. I think the charts scared me because you read them from right to left which is not how we are used to reading things. I guess though when you are holding you needle up in front of your chart your are reading in the direction that you are knitting. The chart for the pattern that I was working was pretty simple and I did write it out just to ensure that I wouldn't mess it up too much. So here is a crappy cell phone picture because I forgot to pull out the camera while it was blocking.

I am really proud of it and it was such a fun knit. For any knitters out there who might be reading along you can find the pattern for this shawl the anti-craft blog. I have also finished another small project recently, but I am unable to share because it will be going into a swap package as well. I feel like I have so much knitting to do, but I am kind of uninspired by anything lately and when I am inspired I just don't have the materials available on hand or the time. I think in the new year I will be taking a break from swapping and focusing on knitting and spinning for myself and loved ones. While I truly do enjoy swapping it has just become very time consuming and overwhelming. It will certainly be hard to stay away. I still need to finish my Gail which was going so well and then just crashed and burned. I think I will frog the whole thing and start over. I also need to find a size 1 dpn to finish Walt's socks that are so overdue. I have some yarn I need to finish for a swap package. Hopefully, there will be lots of photos of finished objects in the near future.

Loss

So I guess I have been thinking about loss a lot lately. It has been a year since we lost my grandfather on my mom's side of the family. It was really tough for most of us as my grandfather has always been really active and spent lots of quality time with all of us. Especially for my sister and me. We both grew up not spending much time with our fathers so our grandfather quickly took over that role. We were always his babies. I remember taking summer trips in the RV to New Jersey, North Carolina, & other places. I remember him at all of my soccer games cheering me on. I remember all of the amazing stories he used to tell about when he was a kid. My grandfather was always there to help when you needed it. He was a strong and gentle man with lots of love to share. One of the things I always admired about my grandfather is that he never dated anyone after my grandmother passed, which was 17 years before my grandfather. He never took off his wedding ring either. I hope to find the kind of love that he had for her. I hope to have his kind of strength and his amazing character. He taught me that life can teach you so much more than any book. My grandfather who only had a 6th grade education was one of the smartest people I knew. He had lived life. He had seen so much change in the world. My grandfather was born in 1927 so you can imagine all the things you read about in history books that he was actually around to see and experience. I can't think of a day in the past year that I have not thought about him. I know there is so much of him in me and I am very thankful for that. I know that I am a better person because of him.

With that said we are now dealing with the possibility that my mom may have breast cancer. I can't think of anyone other than my mom who has had more of an impact on my life. We are still waiting to hear the results of a mammogram she had this past Friday and I am hoping for the best, but I am expecting the worst. My mom is the most amazing woman I have ever known. She is strong, loving, funny, beautiful, & so much more. She taught me how to be me and that it was okay to just be me. She has allowed me to express myself even if it meant I would have green hair and black lipstick. I love her for that.

BIRTHDAY!!

Yay! It's my birthday! I am officially 25! Had to share some of my birthday awesomeness! First, Walt got me a new cutting board ( I desperately needed a new one) & a set of Paula Deen Santoku knives like these:

I also got some awesome penguin cupcakes from Amanda!

I have received many 'Happy Birthday' wishes from my friends and loved ones! So far it has been a great day!!

Help My Friend

Please help my friend Crystal win the Florida Etsy Street Team contest by going here and voting for her copper shawl pin. The poll in the side bar to the right. Her shawl pins are beautiful! You can find Crystal's blog here and read more about the contest and see some more of her beautiful work.

All At Once

So a lot of things have happened in the last 24 hours. Most of which were bad.
1. Found out yesterday that I will no longer be doing the cleaning for the company I work for so I will be losing about 250.00 a month.
2. Came home from work to find that our refrigerator had quit working. ( I went grocery shopping Sunday night.)
3. Went to work on my secret knitting project to discover that my Zephyr knitting needle had broken.

All of that in 24 hours....really! Well, I can't do anything about number one other than try to find a way to make up for that lost money every month. The good news is our landlord is on his way to look at our refrigerator, bad news is our apartment is a MESS! Which, means Walt has to try and clean before Jack arrives, I am pretty sure this is the 2nd time Walt has cleaned since we moved into our apartment over 2 years ago. Other good news, KnitPicks is going to send me a replacement needle. The only downfall was that I really needed to be finished knitting this project tomorrow and well I probably won't have my needles until at least Thursday. Seriously, though I originally thought that our refrigerator was not covered by our landlord so I looked for a cheap used one. Yeah, they don't exist. They cheapest one I found was $195.00....OMG!! That's it for today. Let's hope the next 24 hours get better. 

Art!

So as most of you know Walt is an artist and has been struggling for a while to make his mark in the local art community. Well, I think things are finally starting to unfold for him and I am starting to unfold.

Two weekends ago we attended/participated in Platform Art Party, which is probably one of the biggest art shows in Lakeland aside from Mayfair. Well, of course Walt being who he is waited until the day before to start building his display for his art works. Granted Abby was kind of an unexpected distraction from preparing for Platform, but still I am sure he would have procrastinated. So here it is the day before Platform and we have 3 (8x4) foot pieces of Styrofoam that needs to be painting black, and then attach boards & hinges to it. Of course, it is also First Friday which means that we need to go check that out. So we were up until about 2 am Friday night working on the display, then we had to get back up at about 9 am Saturday to finish. So by this point Walt is stress and I am tired. Walt is really cranky which I am not used to at all so what might have been a fun team building project really became a nightmare. Fortunately, we have amazing friends like Marty Jones who helped up transport this massive piece. So then we are trying to find time to shower and make ourselves presentable and we still have no idea what we are going to do with Abby, we can’t possibly leave her home by herself yet. So we get ready and go to the venue and I finally just decide that I am tired, stressed, & over Platform. So Abby and I went home. We felt bad for missing Dad’s big event, but he didn’t mind. He even won a ribbon!!

Last weekend we had Walt’s Artist Meet and Greet at The Gallery at Lake Mirror. Which didn’t start out so stressful and I am not sure that the event was ever actually stressful. I think it was that Abby was very restless in the Gallery because her Daddy was moving around and talking so much so she took lots of extra attention. We had also been up for quite some time and the event went a bit late and we also went to Starbucks afterword. It was really nice to have lots of our good friends show up. Some that we have not seen in a while, we also met some new people and made some new friends. Most importantly thought, WALT SOLD HIS FIRST PAINTING!!! Yay! I was so shocked and so very proud of him. 

So as you can see it has been an adventure these past few weekends and well I am sure there will be more adventures to come!