Early Resolution?

I was shying away from blogging for a while, but I want to catch up!

To sum things up: I finished my cardigan and wore it a ton before it got too chilly, it's perfect. I'm working on Mike's Wash Sweater and the blur of lace which has turned out to be much easier now that I have the hang of it. Both I hope to finish before the end of the year.

Fosters:
I've had tons of kittens - here are a few:
Mercutio and Taffy. We almost kept Mercutio because he was so awesome. We had them for nearly a month while they recovered from URI and Conjunctivitis. These were the first (and only so far) that I had to bring back and put on the adoption floor myself. I'll admit it - I cried! I miss them tons.

Bumble Bee and Beatle Juice. They were my first kittens who didn't need to be bottle fed. They were super sweet and loved each other soo much. They were super shy at first but soon were sleeping in our bed with us. Ended up going home together which warmed my heart to no end!

My latest kitten was Ninjaa who was a girl. She was super sweet but had a really messed up eye so I don't have any good photos of her. She's out with another foster mom for a couple weeks then her eye will likely need to come out.

Lastly, I had a puppy foster for about a week! Her name is Snookie (but we called her Molly). Her front legs were deformed from being confined in too small of a crate for too many hours a day and we gave her physical therapy as often as she would let us. She's now completely back to normal and is waiting for her home at the shelter!

She's a little hellion, but she's awesome. I can't wait until she finds a permanent home. No puppy should have to grow up in a shelter. And she's so cute! I don't get it. She's like a little cow/pig cross.

Anyways, there are a few knitting projects I've made that I won't post about because this would end up too long. And I don't have decent pictures of them anyhow. I'll start posting them on here again from now on!

Promise.

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Second Chances

I was getting really far on both of my projects when disaster hit.

My Safire cropped cardigan was zooming along, I was almost done with the shaping and about ready to start the bottom ribbing when I realized... it seemed rather large. I had been trying it on to make sure it wasn't too small, but I didn't stop to think about if it was big. And it was. By many inches. I decided I needed to start all over. :(

But, I learned my lesson and -actually did a gauge swatch-! I went down 2 needle sizes and thought it'd be perfect. But oddly, it wasn't..I was still too big. Either I'm the loosest knitter ever or my yarn is thicker then the recommended yarn. So I'm now down 2 needle sizes and making the smaller size. It should end up just about perfect if my math was correct.

I finally restarted it today on the bus and it's already coming along nicely. After a very crazy day at work it was nice being able to turn on my podcast and just mindlessly knit on my way home.

My second disaster ended up being a very good thing. I was working on my shawl when....the last stitch slipped off the needle when I was moving the project to a different location. It was completely and totally unfixable. There had been bind offs and adding stitches, not to mention the sheer size of yarn and complicated stitches!

After making sure everyone in the house knew what a terrible thing had just happened to me, I ripped it out and started it all over again (it was only 18 rows. But each row is taxing!) But this time around I knew what I was doing! So I cast on much looser and did the first row correctly and man, you can tell. It looks a lot better and I am really glad I ended up restarting.

Oh, and I already want to start another project. I found a pattern for the sweater Wash wears in Firefly and Mike wants one!

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The instructions for my latest project. o.O The blur of letters is no trick of the eye. It's a bit daunting, but I'm confident in my abilities. The hardest part for me has been getting used to the size of the thread. I mean yarn.
Eventually I'm hoping it'll look like this:

It's a beautiful pattern by Anne Hanson. I've probably wish-listed half her pieces already. The yarn I'm using is an alpaca blend from Knit Picks (my fav company ever) in a really beautiful purple.

To give me some sanity breaks I'm restarting my Safire cardigan. My gauge was waaay off. I figure I should finally learn the gauge lesson. Luckily it's a super easy knit and I will bang right through it again!

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Baby Bundles

I can finally post photos of my latest creation! I've been working on it for a while and the wonderful Kendra now has it in her hands. It was really fun to make and the yarn is beautiful.

Hopefully I'll get a picture of a real baby wrapped up inside!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

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I had my first kitten foster the last couple of days! They were so young that they needed to eat round the clock, so someone had to take on such a hard task ;) Started off with a little 3.5 week old boy and then added in a 4 week old girl (who was actually smaller then the boy). The girl was very helpful in teaching the boy how to eat on his own! The 2 days of fun culminated with us all falling asleep on the floor together. The girl on top of my arm (I was sideways) and the boy curled up between my chin and shoulder. It was heaven.
Mike agrees:

They are now out in permanent foster for a few weeks.

While waiting to order more yarn I was going through my stash trying to figure out what I was going to do with some of the different yarns I had. I came across this on Ravelry and it was perfect! I usually shy away from such plain patterns, but I've been in the mood for something simple I can knit on the bus without referring to a pattern every other row. I'm making it in a really beautiful heather green that I got for Christmas.

I just placed an order for yarn to make 4 different projects! I'm so excited. 2 are very complicated patterns that will be a lot of fun to work on. One is a very simple pattern similar to the Safire I'm making now. The last one is an easily memorized lace pattern to make a tank top. It's going to be a great summer. Hopefully they last me all summer. I have some fall projects planned too once I bang out these 4 summer ones.

In closing, this is how hot it was today:

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