Judy Pascale Yarn Purchased!

Ok, I GOT IT! Decided on the Gloss yarn from KnitPicks. I figured this would be a nice departure from my normal Blue/Green/Purple colors :) Will still have to hunt down/purchase some beads to go with it, but I think this will be a GREAT yarn for a lovely vest. Perhaps I'll wait until I have the yarn to pick out beads...so I can see how they interact with the color.

Ok, back to Guidepost sweaters...#2 is almost complete now. Plan is to finish #3 by the end of October then I can move on to other projects...

Busy Fingers

SOOO Sorry! I know I said I'd try really hard to do some blogging while I was away...but every time I tried to contemplate what to write, there was SO MUCH to say that I couldn't possibly figure out how to consolidate it into the short period of time that I had available to me...

I did get quite a bit of knitting done - mostly while sitting in airports!! Here's my first day of travel! I finished it up just a couple of days later - ok, well, not FINISHED...still need to actually tuck in the ends...but the way I did it, I didn't have to sew ANY seams!! Knit in the round up to the sleeves, backwards loop cast-on sleeves, knit to top. On the back, pick up stitches from the existing side of the sleeves, knit till even, cast off both shoulders together! Super simple.

So, that was the first one. In between I ended up knitting two Mason Dixon Dishclothes and a Mason Dixon Hand Towel. Sadly I forgot to take pictures of those, and no longer have them...more on that later.

On the way home, I started my second sweater when I arrived at the airport at noon...and had a LOT of time to knit. I finally arrived home to my apartment at two minutes after Midnight! Here's what sweater #2 looked like by the time I arrived.

In other news, I decided while I was away to participate in a Secret Pal exchange, so I'm eagerly awaiting my SP Downstream assignment!! The theme for this is Spooky/Fall/Spring SP. Ok, so the spring part is for those "down under"...actually I think I might enjoy doing a spring theme. Fall would be nice too...actually picked up a couple of things while I was away in the event of a fall themed DS. Also just "got back" from setting up a SP email address too :) Can you tell it's my first one and I'm a little excited?

LOTS of vacation news, including Fiber Festival and Baby Shower to come...soon, soon. I need to also make a decision on yarn for the Judy Pascale vest and get that ordered as well. While I found some great stuff at the Fiber Fest, the person who suggested I was unlikely to find the right thing there for my vest was totally correct. Tons of GORGEOUS hand painted wools, alpacas, even llamas....but not a lot of cottony yarns.

Important Knitting Lesson of the Week

• Knitting while Walking - Good!
• Having a free glass of wine on an airplane (while seated in First Class!) - Good!
• Knitting under the influence - OK
• Knitting while Walking under the influence - NOT ok!!

Done!!

I am DONE!! Everything has been finished, it all looks beautiful! I'm packed and headed out in the next few minutes, but in the meantime I wanted to leave you with this:

ARGH!! Planning, packing, and finishing!

Ok, well, I haven't started physically packing yet...but I'm mentally packing...now I just have to get it down on paper so I don't forget all of the things I want to take with me!

• Camera and battery charger
• "Pixie Dust" for baby shower
• Genealogy research docs to work from
• All the knitted baby stuff
• My Grape Arbor shawl (checked baggage)
• New projects (checked and carryon)
• Books to read
• My drop spindle for the Fiber Fest
• A photo that I want to do the Felted image of
• ...

And I'm sure that's just the partial list! Also cleaning, have to check in with my cat sitter, drop off my ball winder for knitting class prep at the end of the month, do a whole bunch of laundry, including the baby gifts...would really like to do a test wash so I can see for myself that they're not going to all fall apart!! Bibs are done, buttons installed - they look GREAT! Will try to work in a picture in the next day or two... Started curlique's for the tops of the hats finally...about half done on that...they go quick though...

Finally decided what to do next... I wanted something relatively small and compact that wouldn't be too intensive, since I have the Judy Pascale class/vest coming up soon, don't want anything too large... So, the West Orange Knitters had previously decided to do Guidepost Kids Sweaters as a charity project for the year. We had the great fortune to have several different people donate a couple of bags each of acrylic yarn - some of it pretty ancient. Since the patterns are very basic, and very straightforward, these will be a great project to take home with me.

So, I have 4 different sets of yarns for four different sweaters.

• Solid teal, teal/peach/white variegated, white
• Dark peach, light peach, cream
• Bright green, green/yellow/white variegated
• All sorts of ends of blues and a cream

I'm sure that will be plenty to keep me busy!! I might not actually take all of it...will decide probably based on the fullness of my luggage!

Quick Update!!

THE KNITTING (and cross-stitching) IS DONE!!!

Finished burp cloth #7 last night!!

Now I just have a heck of a lot of finishing to do! Will be tucking, snipping, and buttoning tomorrow...