To date, I’ve used approximately 0 scraps.

I seem to lack that gene that allows you to be inspired by your scraps, and to see where they would fit appropriately in with other scraps to make something Super Fantastic. I’ve come to realize that unless I have a specific plan for fabric (or even for yarn), I’m going to end up getting frustrated and quitting the project, whatever it may be. I have to have a clear plan in place before I start something, and the scrappy quilt movement is much more freeform than I can handle.  I’m sure there’s some deep seated psychological crap going on with this somewhere, but for now I’m going to try to combat it by reviewing the fabric I have in my stash and assigning it to particular patterns so that I’m not floundering when I want to start a new project.

Knitting, to me, is easier to stash for, at least with the type of knitting that I do. I stick to socks and lace; these are predictable yardage projects, as I generally know that one skein of yarn will equal one pair of socks and that 400 yards of lace will whip up a small triangle shawl. I don’t enjoy knitting sweaters or larger projects, so I don’t generally have a leftover skein of yarn to contend with and try to work into another project.

Speaking of knitting, I’ve got a finished object blocking in my office – my Peacock Tail and Leaf Scarf finally caught my attention long enough to finish the body, knit the other end, and then kitchner them together. Let me say that again – I kitchnered 182 stitches of sticky lace yarn together without cursing, crying, or throwing it across the room. Matter of fact, it turned out rather nicely in the end. The scarf is a little over 5 feet long, and that’s with extra repeats being knit into the body beyond the 30-someodd repeats it required. Once it dries, I’ll snap some photos of it in all its glory.

But now I have this leftover tiny ball of lace yarn….

Anyway, the past few months have been crazy busy, both with work and quilts (and hey, what’s that, some actualy KNITTING?!).

The hand sewing caught my eye again, and I knocked out a ton of flowers for the quilt that time forgot. Or maybe I forgot. Whatever. Don’t judge me.

People are STILL HAVING BABIES and I’m still having to knock out quilts for folks who refuse to find out what flavor of baby they are having. Like, seriously, how hard is it to sneak a peek during an ultrasound? Ask the doctor to slip you a strip of paper detailing the bits of your baby? I guess it did give me the opportunity to use up the rest of the strips I cut up for the Flower Quilt pictured above (I had about twice as many as I needed), so I can’t complain too bitterly.

This is the Peacock Tail and Leaf Scarf from Nancy Bush’s Knitted Lace of Estonia, which I adore both for the eye candy and the patterns. This book is full of nupps; I’m not a huge fan of knitting them myself (note that the scarf above is cleverly utilizing beads in place of the dreaded nupp), but hoo boy do I love the effect they have when knitted by someone who has a good grasp of how to do them. That book is a must have for any lace knitter, if for nothing else than inspiration.

And finally, the always happening sock – there is one around the house at any given time, in some stage of being knit. I’m not huge on following sock patterns for some reason; I have some lovely ones, but I tend to enjoy mindless knitting with my socks, and dragging a pattern around doesn’t really make that possible. I didn’t want to break up that girly swirl I’ve got going on in this one, so I knit in some waste yarn and then I’ll go back and do an afterthought heel on this one (and it’s mate).

Beyond those things, a couple of momentous things occurred: I ran a 10K and another 5K, my daughter turned 3, and I turned *mumblemumbleglurg* another year older. I passed a Macroeconomics class with a 101 average, which I wasn’t actually sure was possible but the grade my instructor gave me assures me that it IS possible, and I’m starting on the Microeconomics class in two days hoping to maintain this streak of A’s. The class I took in the spring, Intro to Marketing, ended up with a B average, but I’m not upset by that at all. I’m just glad that I never have to step foot in that professor’s classroom EVER. AGAIN.

Running is actually going really well, and I’m about to start working on a 10K training program to get my endurance up – that 13.1 mile run is creeping up on me in 6 months, and I’ve got to get my tail in gear if I don’t want to, you know, DIE. Also, apparently my cholesterol is too high, so more exercise and eating less meat is in store for me. Sadly. Because steak is delicious.

Anyway, still alive, still crafting, still schooling and working and doing all of that. And parenting. Don’t forget that one.

While I type this, I’m watching an informercial with Billy Blanks and some weird English guy hawking some power tool, and all I can think about is that Billy Blanks had drugs in his system when he died. Is that why OxyClean yanked all of his ads and replaced them with Generic Blonde Motherly Type? I refuse to believe they did it out of any sort of respect for him.

Randomness. Anyway.

With the liberal application of air conditioning and 44 oz iced teas from Sonic I’ve been getting back into the groove lately.

Hello! I'm Cassidy!?

What? You don’t immediately want to knit a sweater in the middle of summer, too? I’m not really a fan of knitting sweaters, but about once a year I get the bug and I have to knit one to get it out of my system, and this year is Cassidy’s turn. My progress is slow, due to the aforementioned BLAH going on, but the b/4 ack is done. Now I have to figure out how to shorten the sleeves to 3/4 length (math is not what I’d call my “strong point”) and I’ll have something useable by Christmas.

I am also working my way through a quilt. I saw this awesome tutorial online (which I now cannot find, but a search for Half Square triangle shows me that it’s not like this is a NEW idea) – you take two squares, draw a diagonal line down the center of one of them, and then sew a quarter inch seam on either side of the line. Then cut through the line, flip open and press seams in any direction that you would like. I won’t judge you if you like to press them completely open, or press to the dark side, or whatever wackiness you’ve come up with. I accept you, whatever your pressing style.

I’m not sure what this is going to turn into in the end, but I’ve had some pretty awesome inspiration. I’m sure I’ll come up with something. In the meantime, I’ll continue making half squares until I’ve exhausted my supply of charm squares, or until I’m sick of making them. Whichever comes first.

Yellow:

Orange:

Pink:

Green:

Blue:

Purple:

I've cut the sashing for them, and I'll start putting it together tonight. I need to go buy the backing and the batting for it since I'll probably be quilting it by the end of the week. I'm loving how the colors are bright and happy. This will be perfect for Sarah's room! The only change that I'm going to make is that I'm not going to put the extra blocks into the back of the quilt; I think I'll use them as artwork in her room. I'll have them matted and framed, and I'll hang them above her bed.  I'll also have to make her curtains and a pillow or two, but that's why I bought double the fabric. I'm thinking string blocks for the two pillows. 

On top of that, I have been knitting:

That is a feather and fan scarf made with some of the SAFF yarn that I picked up last year. It had two random knots and a large section of unspun yarn which I cut out and had to spit splice together. On one hand, yeeeech, and on the other hand, it totally worked. The yarn is very thick/thin so I didn't want to use it for socks. Still, it was calling to me, and I think this shows off the yarn to the best advantage. wouldn't that be a great color for a cardigan? I need to investigate getting a bunch of this in DK for a sweater….

It's good! I mean, I know it was getting a little long, but I really want to use all of the yarn. See? Here's a picture.

Whoa! What the…don't you think it's long enough? I mean, at some point, you have to stop! Put down the yarn! BACK AWAY!

Yeah, maybe you're right. 

Maybe?

All right! I'm finishing this repeat and I'll kitchner in the other end. I didn't think there would be any harm…

You're scared of kitchnering that many stitches. 

Not scared, exactly…

Chicken. 

What?

You heard me. 

Uh, okay. Didn't realize this was going to turn all third grade. 

How many times did you knock over that cup of beads while you were knitting?

Twice. 

*crickets*

Okay! Eight times! EIGHT TIMES! Is that better? 

Anyway, how are the kids?

Doing great! I mean, don't you see the joy on their faces?

Not really.

Seriously. They are doing great. That is just ONE picture, I've got tons more where they are totally jazzed.

I see. Let's move on…are you going to be doing anything crafty anytime soon, or are you just going to continue to bore us with pictures of your kids and blahblahblah house junk?

I've been busy! School, work, house - 

Yeah, we know. I wasn't asking for justification, Captain Defensive. Just if you were going to, oh, I don't know, get more INTERESTING any time soon.

Yeah, I'm going to start a quilt for my daughter's room. I'm just dithering over the color scheme. I'm going to start it when we get into the apartment and school is over, so give me two weeks. 

We'll see. You'll update? With pictures?

I promise!

That remains to be seen.

This is approximately 19 of the 31 repeats done, although I will be doing as many repeats as I can get out of this yarn because I do not want to waste one spare inch of it. The pattern is extremely easy to memorize, so most of the time the pattern stays in my knitting basket. What I am NOT looking forward to is kitchnering all of the stitches across this shawl; the bottom border is stitched to it like closing the toe on a sock, and I manage to screw THAT up enough that it should be very, very interesting to complete the same maneuver on something like 100+ stitches. Of lace. Maybe I should just give up while I'm ahead. I did manage to finish a sock:

Only one, though, so don't get too excited. I haven't even cast on for the second sock. I'm loving the colors, and there is something about the red toe that just delights my little sock knitting heart. They are totally obnoxious and loud, and they will be put away to be used as my Christmas socks. I try to knit a pair of socks for myself for Christmas morning every year. I obviously got a jump on it this year, since it is only Spring (as is evidenced by my AWESOME PLANT THAT I NURSED BACK TO LIFE AFTER ALMOST KILLING IT).

I'm just a leeetle bit proud of that damn plant. I bought it, transferred it to that pot, and it promptly lost all of its flowers. Since I absolutely suck at plants, I figured that I had killed it, but I kept tending to it anyway, and it absolutely exploded into flowers last week. I will take it with us to the apartment that we'll be living in to decorate whatever patio we have, and then hopefully it will make it long enough to get transferred into our new home sometime later in the year. This gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, I can keep other plants alive, too. I've managed thus far with kids; plants shouldn't be all that much harder, right?

(For those of you not up on knitting lingo, that's like trying to build your house out of toothpicks. It would take forever.)

I have the perfect yarn (the pattern calls for Cashcotton, but I have cashsoft, which is the same yardage just swapping wool for the cotton content), I have the pattern, I have the needles, but I have apparently lost my mind and decided that this is a good idea. I like the fact that it uses a relatively thinner yarn and that there is some lace on the pattern, making it less warm that some of the worsted weight sweaters that I've made, but again, I live in Texas. Thank God that we are as active with the A/C as we are, because otherwise most of this stuff would never get worn. I am doing some modifications to the pattern, though; I'm not making the hoodie, and I'm shortening the sleeves to 3/4 sleeves, since I end up shoving the sleeves up anyway. And I want to add some length to the body, so I'll have to figure that out, too. I'm not all that great at making modifications to existing patterns, but I'm determined to make it fit the way I need it to, so that will take a little a little extra effort on my part.

On the house front, we're still on the market, getting 1-2 showings in a week. Spring is starting to peek through, and we're hoping that will drive people out to find their perfect starter home so that we can get this one sold.  But for right now, we're still in a holding pattern. I'm trying not to think about it all that much; I know it will sell at some point, but I'm very impatient when it comes to this type of thing. Send good house selling karma this way, if you please!

As my husband pointed out, I apparently talk about yarn a lot.

Luckily, they seemed okay with me thrusting Sarah into their faces, and the kid herself happens to be a camera ham, so it all worked out well. Note that Sarah is clutching her very own Ravelry pin, which she demanded the second she saw everyone else getting one.

So, yeah. I had a great Valentine's Day. What did you do?

That is six repeats completed on the center panel of the body; the pattern recommends 31, but the plan is to just keep going for as long as the yarn will allow. I promise that there really are beads on it, but they get lost in the mess of the unblocked lace. And to be honest, that is the point. I don't want the beads to overpower the lace. My goal here was to add just a touch of sparkle to the already lovely yarn, and they do that rather well.

Don't adjust your eyes – it is a bit blurry. But you can see the beads a little bit better, no? And that's not all that has been getting a little bit of work around here:

In order, that's my crazy-ass socks, which I plan to finish off with a plain red toe just for fun; my master bathroom, which needed a serious makeover and now matches the bedroom; and the pictures that now reside in my master bedroom that I have been asking to be put up for months. This moving thing has so far included cleaning, decorating, putting things in storage and preparing to live in as sterile an environment as possible. See that silver speaker in the last picture? Going to storage. The candles? Storage. The weather alarm? The blue plate with change in it? STORAGE. Clutter is the bain of the For Sale home, and I am determined to boot it out of my home.

However, it is eating into my knitting time. I am not sure this is acceptable.