Jennifer's 365 Project

When I picked up a scarf I had started 5 years ago, Quinn immediately asked me to make him one. While I enjoy it, I don't tend to knit because it's painful from tendonitis and if I have to pick between knitting and gaming, I'll pick gaming 99.9% of the time (they're both repetitive motion activities).

Still, when your kid asks you to knit him something, you KNIT HIM SOMETHING. So he picked out the color from a stash of yarn I had and I set to knitting. I knit at home at night, I knit at lunch. I tried to take breaks and then I'd just enjoy the grove I was in and overdo it.
I made a fair number of mistakes, like forgetting you don't make a stockinette stitch unless there's a border or pattern to prevent curling, but he loves it anyway. He's been excited for me to finish and tried to get me to stop when it was just half as long as the finished product.
Now I can wait a few weeks or months and rest my arms before hopefully starting back in on this project from pre-kid.

I started knitting Quinn a scarf last night. He selected the color and asked me to do it after he saw me trying to finish something up from 5 years ago. So looks like my own scarf is on hold until this one is complete, which is slow going when you have tendonitis.

I'm taking a short break from knitting my scarf (which is almost now half way done) to knitting a blanket. I'm sure normally a blanket takes a long time to knit, but with size 50 knitting needles and 4 strands of bulky yarn, this one shouldn't take too long. Specifically it's the 6 hour afghan pattern from Ravelry.

And yes, it's the same basic blanket that I made for my parents last year.

I think the next year I try this I'll try some bulky wool yarn as opposed to the Lionbrand Homespun. I just know the yarn I want is a lot more expensive and this pattern takes about 8 skeins of yarn total.

So here's one of those times where I read a pattern, figure I don't need a gauge swatch, and start knitting away. It's just a scarf, right? Exact measurements aren't important.

Except when your pattern takes exactly two skeins of yarn and that's all you have.

I realized after I was a quarter of the way done that I was knitting just under a 3/4 of an inch for every inch I should be knitting. That doesn't seem like much, but that means I'm either knitting a very short scarf or I don't have nearly enough yarn. Since I don't want a super short scarf, I ordered two more skeins of yarn (although I should only need one more) and they arrived today. They're from a different dye lot but close enough that I don't think anyone will notice.

One skein got me to almost a third of the length I want. So I've started on the second skein and I'm just over a third now, as you can see.

At this rate it's going to be very fat in the middle. Hopefully with the super tight knitting I apparently do it will be warm.

Next time I make this I'll have to try larger needles to compensate for how tight I knit.

I'm making progress on the Shizuku scarf I started a week ago. I'm enjoying the pattern a lot more than the scarf I made for Chris, but I'm not so keen on the how the color is turning out. It's a little lighter than I would have liked.

I suppose I'll see what it looks like once I get into more of the blue and purple in the rest of the first skein and into the second one I'll need to use shortly. Maybe it will look nicer against a black jacket.

Alright. I don't feel 100% but by the afternoon today I felt a lot better. It probably helped that I took half a day off of work and rested.

Plus soup. Tasty soup.

I felt well enough that I finally started in on the Shizuku scarf I wanted to make back in February. I'm glad I finished Chris's scarf for this winter season and I look forward to having this one in progress for 6+ months.

The scarf is already more fun to knit, but also a lot more painful on my elbow and wrists. There's a lot of twisting to do knitting front and back in the same stitch, turning needles a lot and so on to gradually make it wider and to keep adding drops along the way. This one is going to take me a long time. Heck, I could probably knit another blanket before I finish this thing. That thing was so chunky and fast to knit.

Today started out kinda blah. Having a cavity filling done first thing in the morning is always the most fun.
Finishing the first Dalek washcloth, however, is.

I'm pretty sure I have enough yarn left over to make another in off-white, plus I have a whole thing of green.

I'm going to make bunches of these and practice getting more even stitches. I also think I might try blocking this, just to try that. From everything I read it sounds like blocking can help even out stitches, and as you can see, there are some tight and loose areas in that stockinette bit.

This knitted up fast, once I got started, and I had a lot of fun. Maybe because most of the time I just had constant Doctor Who episodes in my mind while knitting.

I'm enjoying these quick easy projects. Poor Chris's scarf gets no love. I'll finish it eventually, I swear! I only have like another foot I need to knit on that thing...

A little over a week ago after finishing up my first knitting project (blanket), I decided to try a Dalek washcloth. Yes, I do still have a scarf in progress for Chris, but it's been so warm this winter, he doesn't really need it anyway. Besides, that thing is taking forever.

This washcloth, however, is knitting up quick! I've completed the skirt and soon it will be onto the eye-stalk and finishing border.

I'm totally going to make another one of these in green.

I've been working on and off with a few different projects, but mostly knitting a blanket. Using bulky yarn and big needles gives the feeling of making progress quickly, which I like.

I ended up knitting about 6 extra inches (which honestly, I think is fine) before I realized that I was actually done with the blanket. I mean, I guess I could make it whatever length I want to (done is when I decide it's done) but if I was going by the pattern, I went too long. 
Anyway, it took me another hour or so to do the frills on both ends. Mostly because the cat really, really likes new things. Especially new things that involve yarn.

I'm mostly happy with the finished product. The ends to curl a little bit, which I read later is an issue with the stockinette stitch. If I make another blanket I might try to make a border so it doesn't curl just to see how that works.

But, it's the first actual knitting project I finished. Poor Chris's scarf is feels like it's taking forever compared to this blanket. Two feet is long enough for a scarf, right?

One awesome thing about knitting this blanket is how much progress I feel like I've made after just a few rows. Knitting with bulky yarn and thick needles is like magic!

The gray scarf on the other hand, feels like its taking ages...

It's Tuesday, the weather is crappy and did I mention it's only Tuesday? I mean seriously, those fading mounds of snow were snowmen created yesterday. Yesterday! With the snow melting so quickly I lament all the missed opportunities to create snowscapes worthy of Calvin.


With such crappy weather we didn't go anywhere. Not that we were really planning to, but I'm just going to say the weather cemented it.

I decided to spend my time working on crochet and knitting. I worked a little on a door hanger for the cat which is what that hideous blob of bright colors are to the left in the photo. I'm not sure how much he understood my telling him he could play with the yarn AFTER I knotted it into weird loops. And if you are wondering about the choice of colors, well, they're to match a Thing One toy he likes.

I'm making some progress on the scarf for Chris. You can see a few inches up on it when I started getting more comfortable (and wearing my wrist braces) which I think changed the stitching.

So a quiet night all in all. I should do the dishes but I'm pretty sure the crappy weather is preventing me from doing even those. At least that's what I'm going to tell myself. And avoid looking in the kitchen sink for the rest of the night.

Oh, one last thing! Adam and Comfort, creators of The Uniques and Rainbow in the Dark comics, have drawn Chris and I in their upcoming Rainbow in the Dark issue!

If you had difficulty spotting us here you go!

Chris made dinner tonight, which is awesome because I was way too lazy. Plus, that meant I got to entice the cat with string while I messed with the knitting needles.



I decided I was going to start in on a scarf for Chris. He assures me he will wear it, but honestly I think he should wait until there's a finished product before making that kind of commitment. Why a scarf? I read those were a good easy beginner project. I did pick a scarf pattern that I needed the knitting book from the library to decipher. K2og. What? After casting on 60-some stitches over and over only to discover I didn't have enough thread and having to start over, I finally got on the 92 loops. Gah. My wrists hurt now.