Bloglovin

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

As I am researching replacements for Google Reader, I came across Bloglovin and am claiming this blog over there.  Otherwise nothing to see here.

Progress

Well, over the past few months, I have been focusing most of my non-knitting time on my podcast, and less time over here on my regular blog.  Part of me feels that if I talk about something here, that means it'll be redundant to talk about it again on the podcast and vice versa.  The other part of me told that part to shush! and here I am.

On last week's episode, I laid out several mini-deadlines within a few of my WIPs to keep myself on track.  As of today, it's looking good so far!

Dark & Stormy sweater:

Knit with Madelinetosh Tosh Vintage (Short Skeins - 190 yds/skein instead of 200) in the Night Bloom colorway
US 7 needle

Short Term Goals: Finish bottom ribbing by this weekend. Finish sleeves by end of June.  Finish the rest of the sweater (collar/button band) by June 15th
Long Term Goal: Finish sweater by June 15th
Reality: Just finished binding off the ribbing before sitting down to the computer.

I may switch the sleeves and the collar order.  The pattern calls for working on the collar/button band next and the sleeves last. Initially, I was going to do the sleeves next since I knew those would be the challenge for me since they are the more boring parts.  However, after thinking about it, I am going to do the button band/collar first to see how much yarn I have left.  Reading through others' project pages on Ravelry, the button band and collar eat up a lot of yarn since they are so wide.  I still have plenty of yarn left, but I also want to have longer sleeves, so this way I'll be able to just divide the remaining yarn left and knit the sleeves from what is left.


Granny square blanket: (surprise for Carlos - good thing he's occupied with the Portugal/Netherlands game of the UEFA Championship and not looking at the computer so I can post the photo)
Crocheted with Knit Picks Wool of the Andes
G/4.00 crochet hook

Short Term Goal: At least 12 squares per week.  I was at 130 as of last Sunday
Long Term Goal: Finish squares by end of August
Long Term Goal: Finish seaming by September 25th
Reality: Completed 10 squares this week and the afternoon is still young - 140 complete, 112 more to go.


(and why, yes, that is an original NES hooked up to the TV)


Not too shabby if I do say so myself.  Deadline knitting/crocheting and I do not normally play well together.  That seems to be a general theme over the last several years.  Taking smaller bites appears to be working so far.  Let's see how long that lasts!  Happy knitting!

(Belated) Congrats to Ravelry for 2,000,000!!

I am a week and a half late with this post, but just wanted to say a huge CONGRATULATIONS to Jess & Casey for reaching TWO MILLION Ravelers on February 29th.  To celebrate, many of us made special Ravatars to appear on the front page starting the minute that the two-millionth Raveler signed up.  You can pick out your own Ravatar by the bright pink border and the order shuffles with each refresh of the page.

I'm not going to lie - I refreshed a few times to get this screen shot of mine:

I used a photo from last year's Connecticut Sheep & Wool festival and jazzed it up using the Picnick option in Flickr (how is it that Picnick is going away in April?!?!)

Alternatively, you can click on the link further down on the front page and Casey has the Ravatars sorted by the order that the users joined Ravelry - this only includes the people whose Ravatars have the 2million file name, not every member.  I first joined Ravelry during the early days in May 2007 right before graduating from law school (post here).  Back then the site was still in beta and they were only sending out a invites in small groups at a time to manage the traffic.  It took about a week from the time I signed up until I received my invitation, which was fairly quickly because shortly after that it the word spread like wildfire and the list was a few weeks long to get an invite.  To think that just under 5 years later there are 2+ million of us out there (as of the time of this post, there are 2,023,634 people signed up).

Here's to the next 2,000,000 and beyond!!

I Podcast!

Popping in to say that I uploaded the pilot episode of the Commuter Knitter podcast to libsyn last night and woke up to find it was also accepted to iTunes - so exciting!

You can find the direct feed for the podcast here

I also started a blog just for the podcast show notes at: commuterknitter.blogspot.com

And you can follow me on Twitter at CommuterKnitter

Enjoy!!

FO Friday

I have an eloquent post all written out that I composed during lunch earlier this week, but I've been to tired/distracted/busy at night to type it up and post it. Yes, when I say "written out" I mean by hand. With pen and paper. Shocking, I know. Sure I probably could have done as I'm doing now and posted it using the app, but I had all sorts of links and snazzy stuff in that post that it would have lost it's pizazz if I did it here.

So instead, as to not prolong my blog-absence, I present to you a not-so-great phone picture of the husband's finished pair of socks. Details to come.

Happy Friday everyone and happy knitting!!