Exciting stuff

Well hello again. It's been a while, hasn't it? We have some exciting things going on at chez Tinks and Frogs.

First off, I thought I'd start a new feature: Tadpole Tuesdays. My knitting is not nearly as prolific as it used to be now that I'm back at work so I figured it's time to spice things up on the blog front. Every Tuesday I'm going to comment on some aspect of knitting for baby. What this really means is that you'll probably get lots of cute pictures of Tadpole wearing handknits that I made a while ago but didn't have any modeled shots to show.

For today's Tadpole Tuesday, I'm debuting my second pattern: the appropriately named Tadpole's Purple Sweater, which you may remember from the summer.

Tadpole has gotten quite a bit bigger since the first photo shoot (she was four and a half months old at the time) but the sweater still looks great on her at almost nine months old. Quick digression: when did that happen?!?!

The pattern is available as a free ravelry download here.

One final bit of excitement - I'm on twitter! Disclaimer: what I mean by "I'm on twitter!" is that I've signed up and haven't done anything else at this point.

Why am I telling you this? Jacey, Phoe, Lauren, Erin, and I are doing a knit-a-long for Stripe Study. Since the other four ladies were already on twitter (and since it can take a while to get up a blog post - I'm looking at you, cat sitting on my lap where the computer should be), I thought I'd take the plunge and tweet the KAL. That's not to say that I won't blog about it, too, but this way I can talk about what I'm doing without worrying so much about pictures during the week. And that's really nice when I can only try to get good shots on the weekends these days.

Wish me luck!

Slow and steady

See that? Catkin is seven rows father along than I was this time last week. I'm making progress! Maybe I'll have this finished by Thanksgiving. Maybe.

And I'm almost done with the first skein on Tadpole's new blanket. I'm so close, in fact, that I need to wind the second skein today. I may not get to it tonight but at least it'll be ready.

I'm actually spinning more than I'm knitting these days. Tadpole and I can both play at the wheel (admittedly in different ways) on weekend mornings and I get a surprising amount of spinning done. Hmm, maybe I should sit us down this afternoon since we didn't get a session in this morning. I bet Tadpole would like that!

Distractions

You know that point in a project where you feel like you're never going to finish? That's how I feel about Catkin right now. It's gorgeous, really gorgeous. The yarn just glows - something that Madelinetosh seems to manage better than any other yarn provider out there right now.

But I finished chart B the other night and now I'm stuck. It's not that chart C looks particularly difficult, it's just that there are a few new stitches I'm going to have to memorize and I'll need to pay attention during the set-up row. So I probably should do the first row of the chart all at once and I just don't have the energy (or time) for that right now.

The textures in this little shawl are just so interesting (and really perfect in the Tosh merino light) that I'm pretty motivated to find some time this week when I can sit down with an audiobook and get through the first row or two. Mr. Tinks and Frogs is doing NaNoWriMo again this year so I should sell this to him as "writing time."

My seat-of-the-pants hap blanket project has been a good companion these past few weeks. I'm still working on the garter stitch center square, which means I have plenty of mindless knitting. I'm working the square on the bias - increasing one stitch at the beginning of each row until the triangle looks big enough. In this case, "big enough" will be whatever size I have when I run out of yarn in the first skein. Then I'll decrease one stitch at the beginning of each row until I'm back to a single stitch. The next step is to pick up stitches around the edges and work a border in the round. I'm using the guidelines for proportions set out in the book "Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls" but otherwise making this one up as I go.

I bet I'd make more progress on these two projects if I didn't keep getting distracted by other "quick" projects for Tadpole. Like this one.

It's getting cold here and Tadpole needed a pair of mitts. I figured it would be easy enough to whip up a quick pair and secure them with a crochet chain. It only took me four tries to get a size that I thought looked appropriate. They'll fit this week but she'll definitely need bigger ones soon. And I'm having fantasies of whipping up a little pair in stranded colorwork. That'll be quick, right? No more than 2 hours tops?

I finished up another aviatrix hat for her three weeks ago and finally put buttons on it last week. Maybe by the time I get pictures of it she'll have grown into it a bit more. It's enormous on her right now but perhaps that means it'll make it through the winter.

I was going to tell you about all of the really nifty yarns and patterns that I keep drooling over instead of working on my current WIPs (Loft, anyone?). But I've got work stuff I need to do this weekend so that will have to wait until later. Instead, I'll just leave you with my latest exception to the stash diet:

Stripe Study just got bumped up in the queue.