What I Knit During Summer Vacation

Hello friends! Thank you to my sweet commenters--you made me feel welcome back to the ole blog again. I love you.

The last time we visited my Barn Raising Blanket in progress was about a year ago. I was deciding whether to keep it in the blue/green range or to add some warm tones. I have made a lot of progress since then! You can see I made the decision to add warm. I even made a dark brown! (2nd row center of the photo below). I added several very light squares, which are washed out in the photo but mostly pale purples and blues, and some murky greens. There's even a little orange.

I have "refined" my goal (I almost used the word: downgraded, but we'll be positive) to 7x 7 squares, so I need 49 total. I have 44 completed, and one on the needles. One is iffy, but I am considering overdyeing it, so the total fluctuates a bit, but I am VERY CLOSE.

I mentioned before that I love to knit these little squares while on vacation. I make a goal of one square a day. It is so relaxing to get up and start a square with my coffee in the morning. It takes a little more than an hour to knit one of these--and sometimes I race to see if I can complete it while still in jammies. (Vacation is about the ONLY time I can knit for over an hour in the morning without feeling like I need to be getting ready to do something.)

Some squares are solid and some are a square-within-a-square. The way I knit those is this: I knit until there are 14 stitches between the "spokes" and then change yarn. I change yarn on a plain row so it doesn't mess up the yarn overs. That's it.

I don't have any formula to how many of each I'm going to do, I just do whatever the yarn moves me to make that day. Sometimes I'm feeling plain, sometimes I'm feeling fancy.

Highlights/Lowlights

First Day of School, 2009

Hello my friends! I hope I still have a few readers left, after I accidently took the summer off. Thank you for sticking with me! Even though the kids have been in school for a month now, I have been afraid to touch the blog, not sure that I still remembered how to do it.

So this will be a quickie. A test. Just a few highlights (and a few lowlights) of the summer months.

We had a busy and fun summer--we went on several trips. One that will forever be lovingly referred to as "Barf-fest 2009".

I participated in Dye for Glory and WON! Making the summer even busier for me as I wasn't really planning on dyeing much yarn. But I don't mean to complain! It was good.

In the knitting category: I went on a scarf kick, a sweater kick, a Barn Raising square kick, and a Magic Ball kick.

In the kid category: a much anticipated event...my youngest is now in (half day) kindergarten! While that doesn't give me any more alone time than I had last year, I have been very excited for all 3 to be at the same school. I love our elementary school and do a lot of volunteering there. I intend to savor these next 2 years.

We got a puppy!

I am tired.

But...I'm slowing getting back into the swing of things. I think I am better with the routine that school brings, and fall is my favorite season. I'll be back in a few days with some knitting to report.

xoxo