Selfish Knitting & Ravelympics

Wow! It's been AGES since I wrote something here. At least I can be rest assured that there aren't throngs of people who have been chomping at the bit to know what I've been up to :)LOL

Anyway...since we last met our "hero"
(term used EXTREMELY lightly :)

I've started dyeing with professional acid dyes and had great response in my etsy shop.


I got a spinning wheel...a used Ashford Traveller, single drive, single treadle.


We had another handmade Christmas this year...which meant I was knitting for other people for MONTHS.


And now I finally have knitted something for ME...my first sweater! To top it off, I "competed" in the 2nd Ravelympics and have received my first "medal" for finishing my sweater.


I mentioned to dh last night that my wrists needed a break so I wasn't ready to start my second Ravelympics project yet. He said, "I guess knitting isn't an endurance event." I said, "Yes it is...but I was sprinting." I knit my sweater in 8 days! If you don't knit, trust me...that's fast :)LOL


Pattern: Amused by Jordana Paige (with mods to collar & for cardigan)
Yarn: 6.5 skeins of Cascade 220 in "dark plum"
More notes on my Raverly project page.
I ♥ Ravelry

Thank you, Ravelympics. The burden has lifted!

It's a bit delayed but...

Here is the medal I received for competing/participating in the first ever RAVELYMPICS!
See Ravelry for more info.

The major project that I worked on in order to be a "Ravthlete" in the WIPs Wrestling event was...the Torturous Baby Blanket. I had not touched it since the linked blog post was written...3 months ago. Here it is. Finally finished!


The actual finished size of this blanket is ~24" x 36" so you can see how tiny the stitches are.
I had to mess with the needle size before I could get a nice even fabric. The end looks SO MUCH BETTER than the first 2/3, but I DON'T CARE!.

It was hand delivered to Karen and is GONE!!

The one thing that makes me a little remorseful about my negative feelings is that Karen told me that the couple who lost the baby that this was intended for (their 3rd loss) is going to have the wife's sister carry a baby as a surrogate. That made me feel bad that I had all this negative energy attached to it as I knit it. But I am happy for them and wish them a healthy baby to love and wrap up in this cute little blanket...well other people think it's cute.

Universal Soaker Pattern? It's almost done, I swear!

Wow, I'm pleasantly surprised.
I've had a few people contact me about my soaker pattern & ask when it will be ready :)
It's almost done, HONEST! I just have to do some final tweaking to the layout & calculations.

I'm planning on having two version available. One will be in MS Excel available for email delivery through my etsy shop. For this version, you will enter your gauge and desired measurements and it will do all the calculations for you. The other will be a pdf file available through Ravelry. I will have to rewrite the pattern for this format and calculations will need to be done manually.

As soon as the MS Excel version is ready, I will go ahead and have it available rather than waiting to finish the pdf version (I was hoping to have both at the same time).