It's Wednesday again and that means it is time for the weekly Yarn Along.  I"m joining with Ginny and everyone to share yarn and books.  I had to wrap my nephews Ravenclaw scarf with the needles still on it but I was pretty close to finishing.  He handed it back to me and I knit all Christmas Day.  I finished that night while watching the Broncos lose to the Chiefs.  He loves it and was very excited by it.  My niece LOVES her Hufflepuff bag.  She wore it everywhere.  Even in the house.

I did a bit of a year in review on Ravelry.  And quite frankly it left me a bit anxious.  I have quite a few unfinished projects that will be my main focus in 2017.  I have cancelled my subscription to YarnBox for the time being so I can focus on current projects.  In a way I"m going to be doing some stash busting this year.  In order to save some money as well, I"m going to try to use only yarn on hand.

These are the projects I finished in 2017:

• 8 Colorado hats & 2 Colorado headbands
• 8 Starbucks cups sleeves
• 4 hats for the Seaman's Church
• 1 Ravenclaw scarf
• 1 Hufflepuff bag
• Pacifica- a shawl
• Fahrenheit 113- a scarf
• Handbrake- a cowl
• Pretty Palette- a cowl

And that doesn't count the five projects currently in hibernation!

Happy Yarn Along Wednesday!

It's Wednesday again and that means it is time for the weekly yarn along.  I'm joining with Ginny and everyone to share yarn and books!  Ever since B. shared his Colorado hat on Facebook, I've had an assembly line going.  I've had orders for nine hats and seven of them are paying for their hats!!

It's Wednesday again and that means it is time for the weekly yarn along!  I'm joining with Ginny and everyone to share yarn and books.   On Sunday I worked on the Maisie sweater (for C's school) while watching the Denver Bronco game.  Let's just say that since it was not a good game for Denver fans it was not a good night to knit.  I ended up ripping back about an inch of knitting because I knitted on the purl side and purled on the knit side.  Once I fixed that mistake I cast on for the other front piece and had to rip that out as well.

This week I also worked on the blanket for my cousin.  I am almost out of baby yarn but what I have left is a lot of different shade of blues!  But I feel like I accomplished something by using up almost all of my baby stash!

Two years ago I was a part of a square swap group on Ravelry.   I never did anything with my squares, mostly because the colors didn't mix and most squares were not 12x12.  Over the last couple of months I have unraveled almost all of the squares to use the yarn in various scrap projects.  These are the last three squares to rip apart.  The periwinkle one was pretty hard unravel and out of frustration I threw it away!

A couple of weeks ago I went through my stash because I was looking for a new yarn color for the Log Cabin Blanket.  I realized that I should have gone through my stash at the beginning back in January when I signed up for this challenge.  I kind of did.  I organized the yarn by color and put it back in the tub.

Fast forward almost a year and it is clear to me that I put a small dent in the stash.  But if you were to look at my stash on Ravelry you would not get the same picture.   The big problem here, is that I did not put my stash on Ravelry back in January.  I did it about 3 weeks ago.  It was a cold, snowy day and Corrine and I hung out in the basement.  She played and I puttered about with my stash and my computer.  It's kind of nice to have the yarn organized.  There are 36 yarns in my stash and it shows I've used 3.

I made the Radiating Star Blanket and that used 6 skeins of yarns.  I made two Miranda hats and that used a skein each (both were partials anyway).  I crocheted the crib blanket using all scrap baby yarn.  I should be able to make another baby blanket with all the yarn left over.  I'm working on the log cabin blanket and that is using more yarn as it gets bigger.  And I should be able to finish it without using any color twice.  There are some that are close in color, but not the exact same.  I've probably used ten skeins of yarn in my challenge.

I didn't buy any yarn until the end of my challenge.  And that is mostly because I wanted nicer yarn to make some presents and make the vest for Corrine.  I will continue to use the stash yarn to make blankets for Project Linus.  But I'm excited to move on to other projects and use yarn that I buy specifically for those projects!

I'm calling it finished!  I have been crocheting this baby blanket out of scrap yarn from years of baby blankets that I made for all of my friends.  I made up the pattern.  Really there is no pattern.  It is a single crochet row of color.  The tails at each end make fringe.  I put the colors together however I felt like it.
There is no more than four rows of the same color at any given time.  Typically I put two rows together.  It fits perfectly in Corrine's crib.  That is why I decided it was done.   There is a lot of baby yarn left over so I'm certain that a new charity project will be on the hook or needles soon.  I am donating this to the Linus Project.

Actually one of authors I love to read, Debbie Macomber, has a charity project that she collects knit and crochet projects for.  It's called Knit 1, Bless 2.  She collects completed projects that her readers send to her and she donates them to three different charities and the Linus Project is one.  I signed up to donate several projects last year since I had so much yarn and was at home for the first three months of the year.  But having a new baby and trying to knit did not go so well together.  That is why I'm excited to be able to send her two blankets this year. 

Several weeks ago I read about The Aviatrix on The Knitty Gritty Homestead blog.  Since both my husband and I work in the aviation industry I thought it was the perfect hat to knit for Corrine.  I printed the free pattern from Ravelry, found the correct knitting needles in my stash, bought some yarn and got to work.  The hat knits up real fast and had I had more uninterrupted time I would have finished in just a few days.  Of course had I not made a mistake in the chin strap and had to rip it out and start almost completely over...
I added the flower to make the hat more girlie (especially since I made it in blue).  The flower is crocheted in the following pattern:
Chain 5 and form a ring with 1 sl st in first ch.
Round 1- 8 sc in ring, finish with 1 sl st in first sc from beg of round.
Round 2- 4 ch, *1sc in next sc, 3ch *, repeat from *-* a total of 7 times.  Finish with 1 sl st in second ch from beg of round.  (8ch loops)
Round 3- crochet at follows in each ch loop- 1 sc, 4 dc, 1 sc.  Finish with 1 sl st in first sc from beg of round (8 leaves)
Round 4- Fold leaf towards you and crochet from the back as follows.  1sc round first sc from round 2, 8ch, *1dc round next sc from round 2 5ch* repeat from *-* and finish round with 1 sl st in third ch from beg of round. (8ch loops)
Round 5- Crochet as follows in each ch loop- 1 sc, 6dc, 1sc.  Finish with 1 sl stitch in first sc from beg of round (8 leaves).
I think the pattern sounds difficult (but I don't read pattern all that well), but it crochets up in about 20 minutes.

I just signed up for the 2012 Stash Busting Challenge as posted by the Creating A Family Home blog!  I'm excited for the challenge, but now I am feeling a bit overwhelmed.  I mean, I still haven't finished the project I started last October for a Christmas present.  (It's almost finished, Wen, I promise!).  And then I just started the Aviatrix hat for Corrine.  (that will be a whole other post someday).  Not to mention I've got second sock syndrome.  Poor Bryan.  It's a good thing he really didn't want the socks anyway, it's been three years since I started them.  Plus it's hard to get in some good knitting and crochet time with a one year old.

I have a whole tub of yarn in my craft room/office that was given to me by the local chapter of the Linus Project.  I am officially going to clean out that tub and make blankets for the Linus Project.  I made one blanket a year ago while I was on bed rest.  I used size 11 circular needles, cast on a lot of stitches (125 or 150 I don't remember) and used double yarn.  I just randomly picked colors and changed them when I felt it was time. I made a border of K1, P1 all the way around and basically knit until I thought it was done.  I do that a lot when I make blankets...make it up as I knit along!
This is what is left of the stash.  Not the best photo, but there is a lot of yarn.  I have eight skeins of light blue.   I think that will make a nice baby boy blanket.

I have 11 months left to use all of the yarn I can!  When it warms up, I don't have too much time to knit or crochet.  Time to put yarn back in my suitcase for layover projects!