Knit-along Little Doggie!!

Finally!

I got my last packages over the last 2 days and now i have my lace weight bare merino from Knit Picks for my shawl, my blocking wires, my ball winder and my umbrella swift!  I set them right up and wound up a couple cakes of my Cascade 220 to work on the Central Park Hoodie.  As soon as I get a chance, I'm going to take apart 3 sweaters that no longer fit well, or are just worn out, and wind them into cakes too.  I think there's still enough life in the yarn to recycle it, and it's in the theme of Earth Day so that works too! 
I also got this in the mail:
Socks That Rock lightweight sock yarn in Pond  Scum for my Ghostbuster's inspired socks.  I wound it up into a cake today and it's ready to go.  I also got this:
Socks That Rock lace weight Silky Thread in Tlingit (from the Raven series) for another Ghostbuster's inspired project that I have yet to design.  I've never used silk yarn, let alone 100% silk so this should be a real treat.
I'm making good progress on the Central Park Hoodie.  Working the shoulder decreases now and hope to be on the fronts very soon, as my current work sweater blew a hole in the elbow and now is among the pile to be recycled. 

I'm alive.

I've just been trying to study for my final in this class, deal with an almost 2 year old (not fun) and waiting for my yarn to arrive.  The socks that rock order should be here in the next few says so I'm really looking forward to that.  i need to knit the sample for the "slimer" socks and then get the pattern out to the Ghostbusters group.  today I'm heading to the library to pick up the copy of Barbara Walker's treasury of knitting books that i had on order and I'll see what i can do about the Zuul shawl.  (My hubby got me a action figure of Gozer on Monday... too cool!)

On the knitting front, i cast on for the Central Park Hoodie and have reached the first section of shaping the armpit.  the fabric is coming out really nicely and i have high hopes for this sweater.  right now I'm working on the work vest again because I'm just too lazy to roll another skein into a ball without my ball winder.  maybe I'll get over it and my yearning for the sweater will overcome my laziness.

More sock progress:

so i worked out the written directions only to discover that i had the decreases incorrect.  (i may have mentioned this already...)  the chart helped me to see where i had made the mistakes.  so after correcting the chart, and copying it into paint to draw in the pattern repeat, i cast on for the sock and started knitting. i've worked out how many rows of ribbing i like for this pattern, and then started the pattern only to discover that the chart is basically upside down.  i need to either knit this pattern toe-up as written, or flip the chart to be knit from the top down.  personally, i prefer to knit toe up, but i'm not really comfortable explaining that in pattern form so i'm going to flip the chart and try again.  in the meantime, i ordered the yarn yesterday so hopefully i'll be done playing around with the details by the time it arrives and i can just get right to it.

Boy!  Designing is really tough and a whole lot of work.  I'm working on a pair of socks for my Ghostbusters group on Ravelry and it's not as easy as it seemed.  After some searching, I found a pattern that I thought would be perfect.  I wrote down the pattern to take home and play with, only to find that the pattern was written to be knit flat.  that meant that i needed to tweak it a bit so that it could be knit in the round.  i worked on that part yesterday and emailed the final results to myself at work to be printed down.  later today after i finished my work, i sat down with excel to see how it would chart out.  good thing that i did, because i found that my "in the round" directions were not exactly correct.  i had to adjust some of the decreases so that they formed the shape i was going for.  then i took that info and input it into the MSPaint program so that i could crop it and draw in the pattern repeat.  i saved that and printed it out to take home.
after doing homework and some other stuff, i finally sat down with some left over Socks That Rock (as i'm going to knit the pattern from their light weight yarn) and knit a swatch with the flat directions to get an idea of the gauge in the pattern, and also knit in strait stitch to gauge that as well.  so far i'm hitting 7 stitches per inch on 2.5mm needles.  tomorrow, i'm going to cast on with some other yarn that i get the same gauge with to see if my in the round directions will work and if they make sense.

another finished object

Earlier in the week, I finished my mom's Boyfriend socks.  I made sure to take photos this morning (they will probably look like crap) and will post them when I get home have finally posted them.  I made the just to the ankles as my mom requested and not I want a shortie pair for myself from alpaca.  They are the softest and warmest darned socks ever!

Yesterday I finally decided to cast on for a Boogie Vest.  I need to use up my Gjestal Naturgarn that I have left over from my friend Tiffany's wrap and I think it'll work out nicely as the first time I ever knit this pattern (which came out great) I used a yarn that was too loose and it draped over every imperfection on my body.  I just hated to wear it because it made me look fat (at a size 6!).  It wasn't the pattern by any means!  It was my poor choice of yarn.  So I'm giving it another go.  I also plan to buy some yarn from Knit Picks to knit a Magical Earth shawl from A GATHERING OF LACE and to knit a Hug for myself (the straight stitch/cable version).  I'll keep you posted as I go.