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.