1/3 Done is Still Better Than Zero Done!

It seems that professing on my blog my non-desire to knit this blanket actually was the kick start I needed to finally get my butt in gear and KNIT THE BLANET.

Yay... progress!

The last part of the story is finall depicted on my "Magnum Opus" project for Brandy. (I have to knit from the end to the beginning... so last parts first.)

I am, as usual, full of self loathing and doubt, on this project. I'm not happy with my chosen colors, (especially since this is for a girl) and I'm feeling like this is a rather stark, BLUE! then WHITE! blanket and there's not a smooth "color transition". (How is that for anal retentive?) The blue yarn is also pilling. I'm really not happy about that. This might be the Knit Picks project that ends the new "blanket yarn standard". Pilling does not a pretty project make.

Okay. Enough fussing. I am trying to love this blanket past it's faults.

Let's look a little closer at the designs, shall we? (There is NOTHING wrong with those!) (Please also be patient with me, when this blanket is done, I will do close up shots of the BLOCKED finished pictures and they are going to look so much better... but no sense blocking this early in.)

First up, representing "and then they had a baby" in the story of my friends, Lisa Vienneau & Allison Barret's design "New Arrival Stork Washcloth".

Second, representing their two very special furry family members, (Benny & Teddy), Lisa Millan's really cute "Puppy Love Dishcloth".

Thirdly, and designed by special request by Lisa Millan (WHO IS AWESOME, by the way...) the Toronto skyline, representing where the couple moved after they got married.

So yes, I can say that progress is finally under way. I am almost certain that I'm going to run out of yarn into this project so I may have to lift my promise that this blanket will be finished before 2010. I will say, instead, that I will work on this project and this project only until I run out of yarn and have to order more. Fair?

Okay- off to re-work part 2 of this blanket so that we can keep this progress train chugging along!

MOTIVATE ME

Oh people. The last blanket. The LAST blanket remains. And I could not want to knit something less. I am in full procrastination mode.

Here's the thing, for Baby Beef, I had to work from a dishcloth pattern and modify it so that it would turn out right. It involved effort. I couldn't just look at an already there pattern, I had to make it up and it was hard and it required brain power. But, once I figured out what I was doing, I sat down and just DID IT.

For this next blanket, I've committed myself in a much larger way. The blanket is for one of my best girlfriends. I was there when she and her husband met and I thought "wouldn't it be nice to tell their story on the blanket?" And with that thought, my brain stuck to the idea like glue. Yes there are million "already there" beautiful blanket patterns, but I really want to do my idea. Using dishcloth designs, each square represents something significant about their life together.

Everything started coming together really nicely when the SUPER AWESOME Lisa, of Digknitty Designs responded to a small question on Ravelry by offering to really help me out. I decided to use all of her patterns for consistency, especially after she offerred to alter one of her designs to accomodate my needs and design FROM THE GROUND UP, a special request. She didn't have to help me nearly as much as she did... but she did and for that she will always be awesome in my books. (I will also be pimping her site here during the duration of this blanket- so PLEASE, go order something from her. She has a million designs, and I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but she's AWESOME!)

But now I'm in the planning stages and there are so many reasons why I keep telling myself that I'm not getting this blanket done.

1) I hate the yellow I ordered. HATE IT. I have changed my mind and decided to knit the blanket in blue and off white only. EXCEPT, that I ordered yarn with a whole blanket in mind and now I'm pretty sure I'm not going to have enough of either color to finish. That's not a big deal, I can call Knitpicks and place another order, but there's no guarentee on dyelots and I can't get more off-white until Dec 18.

2) The baby was born yesterday. (I can't even comment on the level of guilt I'm experiencing over not having a baby blanket for one of my BEST FRIENDS. I am a terrible person.) It's a girl. YAY... except that I was knitting blue and white. The baby room is blue too. If I'm making a knitpicks order anyways, should I just change gears mid go here and order pink?

3) Lisa's patterns are awesome. But they are designed for dishclothes and I am one of the most anal retentive people alive. I am rewriting every one of them, so that they are all the same size. This involves going through every pattern, re-writing it and adding or subtracting (or both at the same time) stitches to make every square, well, square. It's tedious, time consuming work and I just want to knit, not think.

I've had more than one instance where it dawns on me that what I've done is wrong, and had to throw out the entire set up and begin again.

4) I do have the cast on number, and 10 rows of the border knit, but the minute I'm done the border I have to commit to how I want the "story" laid out. And I can't make up my mind at all!

5) I told myself that my father-in-law would disown me if I didn't get him his mittens. (NOT TRUE- I wanted any excuse I could find to knit with the soft alpaca.) And so, instead of working on this pattern earlier, I finished a pair of lovely mittens for him in the SUPER lovely alpaca yarn.

Pattern: Cruiser by Cailyn Meyer

Yarn: Jubilee Alpaca from the Wool Emporium in Saskatoon
Needles: US 5 & US6
Notes: LOVED the yarn. ADORED the yarn. Have maybe thought about rolling around in the yarn more than once. I liked the pattern too- a great easy knit, although ABSOLUTELY would knit a thumb gusset instead of doing the afterthought thumb. A gusset would have 100% satisfied me.

Father in law seemed to like them a fair bit, and so at least that's one issue off my conscience.

So now, I find myself running out of procrastination excuses. The baby is HERE, the patterns are purchased and half written out, I won't allow myself to cast on ANYTHING else until I make some progress on the blanket- so really that just leaves me to actually KNIT THIS BLANKET. Except that I don't want to.

My Tuesday knitting lunch crew, (Anne & Mel) and I have been jokingly calling this next blanket my "Magnum Opus"- because it's such an undertaking. For me, I haven't even started knitting it and I'm already struggling with my desire to knit it.

That's where all of you come in. I need you to hold me to this- I need you to ask me about this blanket... OFTEN. I need you to suggest finishing techniques, and ideas to help combat procrastination. I need to finish this blanket, and I'm hoping that you, dear reader, can help carry me there. We can get through this together- hang on tight!

Where's the Beef?

It's the moment we've all been waiting for! Beef is FINISHED! (I'll give you this moment to throw confetti in the air, pop a bottle of bubbly and hug your closest relative, preferably a knitter.) It's off the needles, and after some soul searching I decided it was okay with out any additional corrections made to the center.

Pattern: Modified Hay, Baby! Cloth by Elaine Fitzpatrick and my own chart for "Li'l Beef with Star" for the center square

Yarn: Knit Picks Comfy Sport (10 balls) in Ivory

Needles: US size 5

Notes: By keeping the color simple, this turned out simply lovely, and after some careful blocking the little beef faces really "popped" off the blanket. The only disappointment I have is that the center square didn't turn out as I had hoped.

You can tell what it says ("Li'l Beef") if you look at it long enough and in the right light, but I wish I would have just done a stocking stitch center and top stitched over it after. Oh well. I hope the parents will forgive me and focus on Ms. Fitzpatrick's cute little cows!

What I did do right- was the picot crocheted border. Yes. I just used "right" and the "C" word in the same sentence. Check out this EXTREME CROCHET CLOSE UP! (Sensitive knitters may want to look away...)

After picoting the pink sweater last year, this crochet thing might have rubbed off on me because I was quite pleased with the finish on this blanket... even if Crochet is the craft of the devil.

It feels so good to have this blanket off my plate, I'm actually ready to start thinking about the last and final blanket of the year. (Which I swear to myself and my readers that I will do everything in my power to finish before 2010.) I've even started to put together the idea and the story for what I'm doing. You'll be hearing a lot more of that in the future though, so I won't discuss it now.

In the mean time I've been biding my time with small projects... I even finished up one of the purse socks and have started #2! {new record?} (My office can't seem to capture the color right, they look so dark here, but alas... it's this lighting or nothing!)

And hats! In counting my documented hats on Ravelry today, I realized that I have shorted myself in hats on this blog. I should have shown 41 done prior to this blog post- and now I've got FIVE more to make it 46 hats done. I'm actually on track and where I should be for the 52 hat goal! Go ME!

To celebrate all of this progress I did the one thing I've been dying to do. I cast on the Cruiser mittens for my father-in-law with some of that dreamy alpaca I bought the last time I was in Saskatoon.

The mitten knitting is glorious, (just as I remember), but this yarn... there are not adequate adjectives to tell you how much I love this yarn. I LOVE THIS YARN! It's so soft and dreamy to knit with. There seems to be a little oil left from the processing, just barely any at all, but it's making my hands so soft while I knit with it. I LOVE THIS YARN! The next person making a trip to Saskatoon may have to bring me more. There are so many things I want to make with this stuff. Did I mention that I LOVE THIS YARN!? Because I do. I love it with my whole heart and soul. I love it enough that my husband should be mildly jealous. I wonder how he'd feel if I started cuddling up to the second skein instead of him? Hmmm....

While I ponder what to do with the second skein of this wonder fiber- I think I'll got back to knitting the mitten and enjoying the first. I can't decide if I'll be happy or sad when I knit this stuff up.... stay tuned I guess.

That's A Whole Lotta Yarn!

Faithful readers and those looking to keep me honest will note that recently my "Days gone without buying yarn" haven't been getting very high. In fact, it seems recently I've gone on a bit of a yarn bender.

We were in New York this last weekend and part of my pre-New York preparations involved making a WEBS yarn order. I love WEBS. I love ordering from WEBS. I hate paying shipping charges from WEBS to Canada. SO- when the opportunity presents itself, I decided to take advantage of really great shipping costs and ordered up some yarn.

First up I bought yarn for my "Mystery Stampede Project". A little "Shepherd Baby 3 Ply Wool" in this lovely color of "Baby Pink".

But I couldn't just stop there, not when I've been longing to make this sweater FOREVER. Say hello to my new friends "Valley Yarns Berkshire Bulky" in Grey!

I'm actually quite proud of the restraint I showed when faced with the selection and awesome prices of WEBS! I could have done a LOT more damage.

I didnt stop there- although I will admit that this next purchase was more out of necessity than stash vanity. Here we have the yarn to knit up the last blanket of the "YEAR OF THE BLANKET" in Knit Picks Comfy Worsted in Marlin, Creme Brulee and Ivory. (Creme Brulee is a little disappointing color wise, I hope I can make it work with the rest of the blanket.)

I've made room in the stash boxes and told myself that I will be busting this out by the end of next year. What I love about new stash is that it represents new beginnings. This yarn has the potential to be so many pretty things, and I can't wait to show them off in 2010.

PS: For those of you wondering about the status of Beef, it's done. I'm just waiting for a day when I have the right sunlight to photograph it and that's been a challenge. I'm hoping this weekend I can give it a proper photo session and can show it off to you all very soon!

PPS: Since the time change, I've lost daylight hours to take photos at home- brace yourselves, I'm going to be taking a lot of project/stash photos at work while I can still maximize the sunlight that I get in my office. The light is right- the setting is less than desireable. Bare with me!

PPPS: Hey co-workers! YES, I'm taking picturesof yarn in my office. YES, I appreciate that this is a little odd to you. NO, I'm not going to stop and quite frankly, for the amount of time it would take to explain why I'm taking photos of yarn in my office, it's probably best not to ask. Let's just all pretend that seeing my photograph yarn in my office is very, very normal.

PPPPS: I knit 6 more hats. I'm almost back on target again!

Monkey Off My Back

The latest marathon purse project is done! The monkey socks have graduated from my purse to my feet!

Pattern: Monkey Socks by Cookie A.

Yarn: S. R. Kertzer On Your Toes Bamboo in "Iris Multi"

Needle: US size 2

Thoughts: I started this sock on July 19, and despite some pretty faithful lunch time knitting sessions, it took me until the end of October to finish. This is the most popular sock pattern on Ravelry. Apparently it has been knit 10,396 times by Ravelry members!! Those are some pretty amazing stats but it's easy to see why people knit them so much. They look complicated, but they aren't. This is a relatively easy and enjoyable knit and the perfect break "just interesting enough" pattern that is good to give the brain a break. If you haven't knit these, what are you waiting for!? (*cough* ANNE *cough*) ;-)

I'm going to be honest, the Monkey pattern is a great knit, quite frankly, this particular yarn and it's pooling are leaving me somewhat underwhelmed. I had to shorten the leg repeats by one just to have enough yarn to finish the project. (I do suspect that I may have had enough to knit the additional repeats, but my heart couldn't take the pressure.) To celebrate the end of the monkey sock- I cast on a new project right away.

I love Cookie A sock patterns so much- I'm knitting another one. Meet Marlene!

I started Marlene last Thursday. She looked like this:

I am so enchanted by Marlene that by this Wednesday she looks like this: (color is more accurately represented in the above photo.)

This is SUCH A GREAT PATTERN! It's just fun to knit and it really makes a yarn pop! I'm just chomping at the bit to sneak in a few rows here or there. It's the perfect purse project. (I also see to be going through a "purple period" at the moment... please bear with me!)

All this new and exciting sock progress has you worried doesn't it? Well fear not- I have not abandoned Beef.

Look what's off the needles and blocking! I blocked this blanket meticulously. I measured each "beef circle" so that they'd all be the same. I measured border. I measured everything. I used 90 zillion pins. But it's so satisfying knowing I can't do anything on it while it's wet!

And tonight? I'm facing my old foe "crochet" and we will battle to the death until one of us comes out triumphantly. (Read: I'm crocheting a picot border onto the blanket.) Notice all those who are in my vicinity- I may be uttering words my mother didn't teach me this evening while I attempt to vanquish the crochet beast.

I'm so close to finishing this blanket, I can practically taste it!!

These Are My Confessions...

There is something so exciting about doing something you're not supposed to. There's the thrill of the new experience, the rush of the way something new touches you and with your heart racing and adrenaline pumping you don't care about the consequences, you enjoy the moment, no matter what it brings.

I confess, I had an affair....

... I cheated on the Baby Beef Blanket.

And it felt so good!

Those slippers were simply too magical to resist. I had to make them. I HAD TOO. It was a deep, primal urge I simply couldn't ignore.

Pattern: French Press Slippers by Melynda Bernardi

Yarn: Patons Classic Wool (100% wool)

Needles: US 15

Notes: If I was a smoker, I would totally light up having completed these. This is an incredibly easy item to knit- and felting wasn't nearly as terrifying as I thought it would be. What's even better- I used nearly the entire skein, I have MINIMAL leftovers, I can't make anything else! You can knit these in two evenings, or if you're me, a whole Saturday. If, and WHEN, I make these again, I would felt the shoe parts for longer and the strap for shorter. But in general I am extremely thrilled with these.

It went from looking like this pre-felting (pardon my iphone photo):

To this- post felting.

In a word? AWESOME.

But once I allowed myself to cheat on "Beef"- I couldn't stop. I just couldn't.

Does it help if this is intended for his little head?

Pattern: Hat (my own = CO 48 sts and fake it like you know what you're doing!) & Booties #7 White Booties from the ...baby...bebe...bambini book.

Yarn: Classic Elite Jil Eaton "Minnow Merino" in white and blue

Needles: Hat- US 8, Booties- US 7

Notes: This yarn is SO yummy. If I had a mint, (which is what I'd need to afford a shwack load of this), I would buy it and dive in like Scrooge McDuck used to with his money. This stuff is made of yummy and possibly kittens.

As if these distractions weren't enough- I kept it up. I confess I also knitted up a baby hat to add to my pile waiting to go to the hospital, giving me three more hats to add to the running total.

Yes. I know. I'm sick. I should be ashamed. I shouldn't be flaunting this blatant affair on this blog like I am. But I cannot help it. I NEEDED a break from the blankets. And, lest you stay up at night worrying yourself about my Beef project... I thought I'd let you know that I spent my entire Sunday knitting on it. (Yes, all this casual knitting took place on Friday and Saturday- perfect knitting weekend!)

Behold... Beef progress!

I'm nearly done the fourth section- just one more after that. I'm hoping for a reprieve from this bad boy by the weekend. There are two things I'm considering; outlining the words "Li'l Beef" which is barely recognizable right now (dammit!) and the cow eyes with a light brown color, and secondly, potentially adding a crochet (*VOMIT) border. I feel like the blanket is going to need some loving finishing and I worry that I don't have the patience to see it through. But let's get there and cross that bridge when we need to.

It felt good to cheat. I know I can't always allow myself cheating like that, but it was so satisfying to do something, ANYTHING, other than a blanket that I was more than willing to break my resolve. Having had a little distraction, I'm ready to keep on tackling Beef. Hopefully next week we'll be "oohing" and "aahing" over my FINISHED blanket.

Bless me knitters for I have sinned.

(and I still don't feel bad about it!)

Daydreaming

Mother Nature delivered the cold air and snow quite a bit earlier this year and we celebrated CDN Thanksgiving with snow on the ground and warm sweaters on to protect against the chill. Apparently there was no time for fall- we went straight to winter. The minute the air changes outside, my mind begins to wonder, and daydream about all the projects I’d rather be knitting than the ones that I am currently knitting. This year is no different.

Here’s the thing, Mother Nature not only delivered snow early- she also brought Baby Beef early. I’ve quickened the pace on my blanket knitting as I am now overdue on delivering it too it’s rightful owner- but I can’t help but look ahead to the finish line and see hope for a new and exciting projects...

... AFTER the last blanket is knit. Yes folks, there is STILL ONE MORE to go. JOY! /sarcasm.

Since there is progress on the blanket, but none that is particularly picture worthy- I thought I’d use this space to publicly daydream about the projects I’d like to knit up this fall/winter.

I just saw these yesterday and it is EVERYTHING in me not to run out and buy the pattern ASAP and abandon everything I’m working on and just KNIT THEM ALREADY.

French Press Slippers. (All pictures here are property of the designers and not my own!) I want one in EVERY color! (And I can’t promise that I won’t attempt to sneak a pair in the near future!) Oh I hope that these are as fun to knit as they look!!

Of course because there’s snow on the ground, I have renewed desire to knit these socks!

Snowflake socks!!(Rav link only) So pretty! So delicate! So wintery!

And then, of course, Cookie A tempts me with her socks… I have the perfect colors of Kai Mei in my stash!!!! And don’t even get me started on Marlene and my desire to knit that pattern!

But of course it isn’t just socks and slippers that call to me. It’s mittens. Mittens still seem to be my obsession ‘du jour’ and I cannot seem to quell the need to knit them.

First of course, I owe my father in law mittens from over a year ago. He has every right to kick me the butt and insist I drop everything and knit these all ready. He hasn’t done this mind you, but he wouldn’t be without cause is all I’m sayin’.

Cruiser, coming soon to a blog near you!

Then of course my need to need to faire isle is out of control suddenly… with Bird in the Hand and Kiss the Frog mittens. And lately, for unknown reasons, I can't stop thinking about how warm and cozy my hands would be in these two beauties:

Bella’s Mittens

and All the Water mittens:

And, since I'm going to be in NYC in early November, I got to make a WEBS order. I love WEBS, but their shipping to Canada is just too high, good thing their shipping to NYC is entirely reasonable! Yesterday I ordered yarn for my Stampede entry this year. (Let's leave it a mystery for a little while longer...) I also managed to coerce the husband in to agreeing I needed yarn to make this
sweater...

Doesn't it look cozy? Don't you just want to wrap yourself up in a sweater like that on a cold day? Me too.

So with all these knitterly distractions, (curse you Ravelry and your inspiring patterns!), you can imagine why I'm trying to knit just as quickly as I can so I can get going on some of these other, more interesting pursuits.

See? Wasn't that more fun than seeing the Beef blanket look virtually the same as it did last time? I'm so looking forward to moving past baby blankets for awhile!

Drano for Knitters...

My friend Erica and I have this joke that always makes us giggle. It's not a particularly witty or sophisticated joke, but it makes us laugh. In a lot of ways, that joke can be applied here.

What's this?

It's a whole bunch of these...

Hmmm... on second thought, that might actually only be funny when cocktails are involved.

Either way- my incredibly bad joke serves to show us one thing, I HAVE UNCLOGGED THE KNITTING BLOCKAGE and finally made some decent progress on the blanket. It's basically taken a month of hmming, hahing and second guessing myself, but I've finally started to dig in and start making progress.

After my last blog post, where I confessed my disdain for the pattern, I did some soul searching. I even had the mother in law search too- and got the honest opinion. That blanket was not good. I was fooling myself. After hearing the truth and saying it out loud to myself, I knew there was only one thing left to do. Go back to the drawing board.

I ripped out three skeins of knitting...

It was actually a very good decision. Not only did I discover that I had miscalculated my gauge along the way and had FIVE extra inches in width that I didn't want, but looking at all that garter stitch I just couldn't care about it at all.

Some careful math later and realizing I was over-complicating something very simple, I adjusted my border to five stitches on each end and JUST KNIT THE PATTERN five times over. It maybe took me 5 minutes to plan out. Considering it took me close to 2 hours to write everything out on the wildly disappointing version, I took the ease to which this came to me as a very good sign.

And so I'm knitting a blanket finally. And just in time too! By my calculation this kid could show up anytime now! I began knitting in earnst on Friday, Oct 2. Today is the 5th. My big goal is to have HALF this blanket done by Friday. That's 2.5 patterns. I'd appreciate any and all positive thoughts you could send my way! :-)

Blockage

I don't know where to start with this blog post. I'm blocked.

September knitting has been slow. I could blame the 2 weeks in Europe for being a decent distraction, I could also blame another weekend in Chicago, keeping me from my needles. But truth is- I'm just blocked. I can't bring myself to knit the next blanket. I am BURNED OUT on knitting blankets.

I can tell- because usually I go full steam ahead on blanket projects. I select a pattern, I knit the swatch, cast on and then devote myself almost religiously to seeing the blanket to it's completion. I'm usually pretty faithful too- opting to knit that and only that.

You can tell I'm blocked becase projects that I wouldn't normally be working on are seeing progress!

MORE HATS-- for example.

Suddenly I am drawn to the baby hats like a moth to flame. I must knit them. I cannot successfully sitch anything else- not when the hat seems like such an appealing project. I assume it's the instant gratification and widening gap between my "hats knit" and "hats that need to have been knit by now to stay on target".

And, if that weren't enough, I've even made decent purse sock progress- allowing myself a few indulgent stitches when I should be knitting the blanket.

I'm just not interested in anything else, but I think I've figured out why:

I don't like what I'm doing. I'm not confident AT ALL with this pattern. Oh, it's easy enough- just look at all that garter stitch! This blanket is for some of our closest friends in Calgary, who are expecting their first baby in a mere 18 or so days. They have seen me churn out blanket masterpieces. They have seen me do intricate and complicated things- and I feel like this blanket doesn't embody any "excitement".

I chose to knit cows on the blanket because they've been calling the fetus "Little Beef"- I thought it would be cute to give them a blanket with cows.

The way I see it, I have three options, and I can't make up my mind. I can:

1) Keep knitting this blanket even though I feel like there's too much garter stitch and not enough cows. (The plan was to have them 3 across and 3 up, to give me 9 faces but I feel like the faces might be too small for the rest of the blanket.)

2) Go back to the drawing board and figure out the pattern incorporating less garter stitch and adding 2 more cows into the mix, for a total of 5 cows accross and potentially 5 cows up, for 25 cows.

3) Quit beating this cow theme to death, find a pattern and get knitting already!

I'm leaning towards option 2, even though it means ripping back three balls worth of work and starting again. I need to make a decision soon as the more time I waste trying to figure it out, the less time I have to knit the damn thing.

And so- faced with all this pressure and my non-desire to do anything with this blanket, I knit my distractions instead. Productive huh?

What I Knit on my European Vacation...

Sorry for the lull in posts there- I was on a glorious two week European vacation. I felt it best that I didn't just announce to the world, including it's very talented home invaders, that our house would be empty for two weeks. So instead, I'm telling you now, after a short hiatus, that I have returned home safe and sound, and maybe still a little bit tired.

Packing for vacation knitting is always stressful for me. I try to avoid the worst case scenario, where I run out of yarn and knitting, but also have to be smart in my packing. An entire suitcase of yarn, needles and notions is not the most ideal scenario for schlepping across Europe. For two weeks I brought along the travelling monkey sock and planned to cast on for the teddy bear blanket. Feeling highly optimistic, I brought 4 balls of blanket yarn with me, just so I would be sure not to run out.

The trip itself was wonderful- but on the knitting front I was one big fat FAIL. It was like Europe sucked away my mojo. I should have known I was in trouble, because it began early. On the flight from Calgary to Barcelona- I cast on for the blanket FOUR times, running into trouble every time. Not enough yarn, too much yarn, dropped stitches in row 1... I couldn't for the life of me get it right. So I put my knitting in my bag, pulled out my book, (Gone With the Wind for you curious people), and didn't look back.

When we got to our hotel outside of Figueres in Spain we had a few days to relax and unwind. Except Gone with the Wind was turning out to be a really fun read, and I kept saying to myself "I"ll work on the cast on tomorrow". That never happened.

EIGHT DAYS LATER... (I know, that has to be some new personal record for me, I can't believe I didn't think about knitting for a whole eight days!) I accidentally wondered into a yarn shop in Barcelona. We were walking in the Gothic district and all of a sudden I look to my left and say "YARN SHOP!"

(Let's pretend I don't look 9 months pregnant in this photo. I need to work on my unflattering posture!) Of course I went in- and was surprised to see almost everything we can get at home, including English books. Very cute shop with a very helpful gentleman who figured out pretty quickly that I didn't speak a lick of Spanish. I wish I could remember the name now- but it was nice to have a little reminder of my hobby that I had all but forgotten.

I had seen SOME things that made me think of knitting while in Spain, for example this really cute Sheep chess board.... (can you see the black sheep in the back? So cute!)

To be fair, it's hard to think of knitting when you need to see stuff like this in Barcelona. (Gaudi's Sangrada Familia- it is all that AND a bag of chips!)

The next day we left for France- and I think wondering into a yarn shop in Barcelona was what I needed because I actually picked up my knitting needles again. We were staying with friends in their MONSTER Paris apartment (not normal for Paris at all... they lucked into some pretty great circumstances). I finally got the cast on to the blanket started and even knit the entire border.

However, the sights of the city distracted me again.... and that was all the progress I made. Not even HALF a ball in.

It wasn't until we got out to Beaune (in the Burgundy wine region), that I even thought about knitting again. Picture it, we're in an incredibly quaint and charming French town, cafes and delicious foods are beckoning and every corner has a wine shop- and out of all of this- I find a Phildar store!!

I was pretty stoked to check out their shop. It was not a typical yarn shop- there's a clothing store in the front, and Phildar yarns and patterns in the back. (You can see the wall of yarn just behind me in the photo.) I was smart this time and didn't buy any French pattern books, knowing full well I'd never figure them out! Phildar had some pretty nice silk yarn that I "hmmed" and "haaed" over- but ultimately decided that the precious room in my suitcase had to be allotted to other souvenirs... like wine. :-)

Beaune also got me thinking about knitting again, in a rather odd place- the Museum of Wine. While we were wondering through the exhibits, I got all excited- as one of them featured tools and clothing worn by early harvesters. And there- before me, were handknit socks.

Pardon the photo, seeing handknit socks in the wild apparently excite me a little bit too much!

As you can probably tell I had a wonderful trip, even if it meant very little knitting was done. On our last day in Paris, as I was doing my hair, and thinking that I was actually looking forward to knitting on the plane ride home, I had an epiphany. Teddy Bears on the blanket was ALL WRONG for the couple I was knitting for. They've been calling their fetus "Little Beef" (in context it makes sense), and I really should be knitting COWS. Of course I couldn't pay sky high prices in the business center to spend some time on Ravelry looking for cows to knit on the ride home, so I had to put my blanket on pause until I had internet access.

I packed the monkey socks instead for the ride. But, I was too distracted by my first class pod and all of it's exciting features to even think about knitting- and once again, as the theme of this trip seems to suggest- I got not a single stitch knit.

Fear not gentle knitters- my arrival home as put me back into regular gear. With the help of this very cute swatch I am once again ready to pick up the needles with avengence!

This is the swatch for the "Little Beef" blanket I'm planning on knitting. The math and figuring out were done yesterday and I even had the MOST SUCCESSFUL CAST ON EVER! (One try! I'm taking it as a sign that making the pattern change was the right call.) I promise that updates and blog posts will return to their frequency- and hopefully soon, we will see another blanket completed.