Countdown to September

Last, um, October or November I went to my LYS and picked out some yarn to go with the PERFECT pattern for a wedding present for my brother-in-law's wedding this September. Last Wednesday, I went and picked it up (there was apparently an issue with the yarn companies shipping services, it's not an issue for me- I still have 9 months to knit this thing). The beaver has kind of taken a back seat, partly because I know my husband will still love me if I give him a birthday present with dpns still in to, but my future sis-in-law probably has higher expectations for a wedding present- and rightly so- and partly because I am over the circular linen stitched tail.

So I've been working on the blanket for the wedding. My goal for now, is to post weekly updates, mostly to keep me coming back here and posting. They may end up just being photos, but hopefully I will be inspired once I am here, because....I also got wool combs! But that is another post, or two.

Anyway, since last Wednesday, I have been able to get all 164 stitches cast on (with a knit-on cast on) and I am 20 rows into the 24 row seed stitch boarder. I had originally (on Wednesday) considered starting the blanket now, thinking that 4 rows won't make much of a difference in the look of the blanket, it will save me 8 rows total knitting, more importantly it will save 8 rows of SEED STITCH, and will save me some yarn since I had irrational fears of running out. But now I am thinking that it's only 4 more rows, the seed stitch hasn't been terrible (far better than the linen stitch beaver tail in time out), according to the estimates on the pattern I think I have about an extra 300 or so yards, and the extra 4 rows, in a chunky yarn on size 10 needles will make enough of a visual difference, that I should just do all 24 rows. Whew, so much information that no one ever cared about :).

Anyway here is the first of hopefully many photos...

The needles are very curly, I'm hoping that works itself out as it gets longer and more blanket-y.

Hopefully I will have some more time this week to fill you in on the wonders that are the wool combs, so until then...thanks for reading!

A Beaver for A Birthday- The Ultimate Free Gift

So a couple of months ago, my husband and I were bored and on Netflix, so we decided to watch this documentary on beavers. Hey, they're cute, fluffy when dry, and build crazy things. What better show for an engineer and his wife? So after this viewing, my husband became pseudo obsessed with beavers. Nothing major, he just makes frequent remarks about wanting to get one for a pet, though not as often as his remarks about wanting to get a bobcat, but that's another story.

So fast forward to this year, and I am killing time one night on Ravelry or Pinterest, or someother place with way too many choices and ideas than could ever be finished, and I found this beaver pattern.  It called to me, so I decided that I had to make it for my husband for his birthday. I started it on January 7th and figured that would give me plenty of time to get it done by May 1, his birthday. I originally planned on just working on it at my Friday Night Knitting gatherings, but between my daughter having dinner issues after Friday gymnastics, and general socializing, not much knitting was getting done.

Luckily, I am currently home most of the time, as my main employment is home based. So the beaver came out while he was at work, and wow, between its general small size, largish gauge and the fact that my daughter considers it playing as long as I talk for the toys, I was able to make some great progress.

As I was working, I found it odd that the pattern starts with the body, then you leave live stitches for the tail on waste yarn, and go back and pick-up stitches for the head. After a few more seconds of actually reading the pattern ahead of time, I soon saw that you stuff the head and body before knitting the tail, which explains the segmentation. I still don't understand, however, why you don't just start with the head and knit from end to end. Maybe the designer didn't think that a cast-on would be secure enough to hold the stuffing at the nose... Oh well.

So here we are, January 21, and I am on the tail. To be fair, it is going much more slowly than the rest, but I feel very comfortable with my progress.

So it's a free pattern, I used stash yarn, and I stuffed it with some of those fleeces I got for free. I guess I did spend money on the yarn at some point, but not recently, and since my husband is horrible to get gifts for, I figure this is as good as just about anything else.