Monday, July 23, 2012

Stitching Red

I came across this pattern on ravelry recently and it was love at first sight . Having just done a stash cleanup I knew that I had the perfect yarn for it, so I quickly bought the pattern and cast on immediately . I love, love , love these socks ! One is completed and I'm almost half done with the cuff on the second sock .

An added bonus is that part of the sales of the pattern go to the Stitch Red campaign that is putting the focus on heart disease which is the number one killer of women in the United States . After doing a quick search , apparently the same is true for Canadian women . This is something close to my heart , pun intended , I have high blood pressure and have made some lifestyle changes , lost some weight , exercise more , but I'm still not at the point that I can do without the pills .  My goal to be keep plugging away at it till the rest of the weight comes off . I'd like to be around to enjoy my grand kids for as long as possible .


Speaking of which , here's a recent photo of Mason . He was recently diagnosed with having a condition commonly known as lazy eye . He has a followup with the ophthalmologist in a couple of months to see if there is any improvement  in his vision . He's been pretty good at keeping them on , for the most part . To me he's just adorable , with or without the glasses , but he sure looks more little boy than baby with them .

That's it for today , till next time ...have a great week !

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Pink dragonflies

Doing the happy dance because the Dragonfly socks are finished ! They were the perfect project to get my knitting mojo back on track . I'm pretty happy with them overall . My only reservations have to do with the yarn (Wendy Happy 4 ply ) , which is made of 75% bamboo and 25% nylon . It is  incredibly soft , the colour is very pretty , but knitting with it is a pain in the a** . It's very splitty , you have to be super careful so that you don't have any errant threads hanging loose . I've also found , now that the socks are finished , that there is very little stretch with this yarn . I don't have any more in my stash and probably wouldn't go out of my way to buy more . Thank you Dee for hosting this KAL !

Last week I did a stash assessment and reorganization . It was getting so that I had bits and bobs of yarn spilling out of bags and storage containers . It was driving me crazy looking through it to find something for a specific project , so I didn't bother and just went out to buy what I needed .  The sock yarn was fairly well organized but the rest was a disaster . Lately I've been considering joining the Come - Blog -Along and their Year of Projects on ravelry . I've hesitated because my blogging has been rather haphazard since last Fall . My life these days doesn't lend itself to that kind of commitment , so I 've decided to just KAL with them informally on my own . Having gone through and reorganized the yarn and then assessed the ravelry queue I've come up with a plan to reduce both the stash and the queue . I've almost 500 various projects listed there and given that I generally complete an average of 20 to 30 knits in a year its seems to be an overly optimistic queue . I'm using it as more of a wish list than anything else . I've got some patterns and yarns matched up and I'm eager to start knitting . It feels good to have a plan and we'll see where it takes me ...