Mission Accomplished

It's been a busy day here. I started off my morning by finishing the little house shawl. Yay for cleaning out the WIP pile. Here it is:

I still need to block it but it's off the needles & ends have been tended to. I have to work tomorrow night so maybe I'll spend my day blocking the shawls (Daybreak still needs to be blocked as well).

Then after I bathed my bully boy and cleaned the bathroom I headed in to the craft room to give it a much needed clean up. Our basement flooded earlier this month and B boy used my craft room for a bedroom for 2 weeks while we got everything cleaned up down there. The boys have their room down there so until it was clean they had to stay up here. As well as kiddo camping out in there things also got stored in there that didn't belong. Here is a before picture (I forgot to takes pics until after I had already gotten started):

 And here it is all clean:

I did have help - A came up and moved anything I needed him to & took care of moving the stuff that didn't belong back downstairs. It feels good to finally have my craft room back how it's supposed to be.

WIP Wednesday

Here's what I've been working on this week. I just posted a pic of Pterotactyl a couple days ago so here are the other things.

 The Little House Shawl & the hat for my moms husband. The hat is almost to the decreases so it won't be much longer before that's done and in the gift drawer.

 Once I'm done with the hat I need to make a blanket square for Potions class. I'm going to make an S square to send in for the Slytherin baby blankets being made for the pregnant members of the Slytherin house in HPKCHC. Then I can hopefully get my Little House shawl done & turned in to Detention before the end of the month. That's a reasonable goal for 14 days right? Maybe.....

Adding to the Stash

So I may have gone yarn shopping on Friday....

 This lovely purple is going to be used to make this sweater.

And these 2 yarns are set aside to wait for the release of a lovely cardigan by 1 of my favorite designers which uses 2 colors. The 2nd color is so much more lovely in person...my camera will not capture it accurately *sigh*

Meanwhile I'm slogging along with my 3 shawls and this hat. Itching to cast on something new but behaving myself. Hey Auburnchick aren't you proud of me?

Oh My Wow

Will you just look at this shawl....

I have to say I am pleasantly surprised at how much I love this color combination.  I've been alternating between this shawl, the Cotton Candy Sunshine & my Little House shawl that I dragged out of the WIP basket. I'm trying to make more of an effort to finish my WIPs these days. I also have a regular beanie hat otn for my moms husband. I plan to make her a Saroyan for Christmas so I know in order to keep the peace I'll need to do something for him. He gets a hat knit with leftover acrylic yarn b/c it'll make her happy. This is my go to pattern for mens beanie hats. I've knit several of these for the hubster & boys.

I wish I could come up with more to post today but it was a really long and very busy weekend at the clinic and my brain is fried :-(

WIP Wednesday

 Ah here we are at WIP Wednesday. So I have some shawl pics to share :-)

First up is my "Cotton Candy Sunshine". Named such because this yarn makes me think of cotton candy.

The free pattern can be found here.  It actually calls for DK weight yarn & is a baby blanket pattern. However some of her test knitters discovered it's a great size for a shawl. I decided to use fingering weight yarn b/c well I have a handpainted sockyarn addiction to go along with my shawl addiction. This yarn is Paca-Peds HT which is a wool, alpaca, nylon blend & comes with a mini skein of a solid color for the heels & toes (mine is purple). So my shawl will be variegated for the body & solid for the border.

Up next is my "Pterotactyl Gone Barbie". Why did I name it this? Because of that pink yarn. I joked with my girls at knit night when I bought it that whatever I made with it I was going to call it something with Barbie in it. Wonder if Mattel is gonna sue me now? How was that for a totally random thought?

As you can see I've only cast on & worked a couple of rows so far. I really can't wait to see how this is gonna look once I start the stripes!

I also got some new yarn in the mail. This is some hand dyed sock yarn I found on Etsy. Colorway is Gryffindor Roar. This I am sure will be used to make a shawl.

Summer is in full swing and Regal Cinemas is doing the Summer Movie Express which means $1 movies every Tues & Wed. The kids & I went to see Monte Carlo today. Afterwards we had to stop at the store for a few things. Happened upon a nice shoe sale while we were out and the entire family got a new pair of shoes. Here are mine:

That's right.....Gray with really bright Orange :O Now this is not something I would have thought to see myself wearing but darned if I wasn't lured in by these bright shoes. The boys even told me they looked good on me. Coming from the eldest especially this means a lot since normally he isn't one for compliments. He's quick to tell me when he thinks something is "lame" but not at all quick with compliments. Now I'll be stylish when we go hiking. B boy got black with bright blue same style as mine. Hubster & A boy got a different style in black/bright green and black/red. 

Oh I also have 2 quick FO's to show off. Just a couple of quick washcloths.

Free pattern can be found here.

As the Garden Grows

Well at least the garden is happy about all the rain we've been getting lately. The basement flooded (read ankle deep water throughout) so everything down on the floor is now trash. Thankfully there wasn't much on the floor. But we're still working on cleanup. Everything is being taken outside 1 section of the basement at a time and then the floor is being hosed off. Next the floors will get a good bleach mop to kill any fungus that might think about growing down there. Then things will get put back in an organized fashion. I suppose in some ways this happening was a good thing since we really needed to clean up & organize the basement. This happening just means it can no longer be put off. In the mean time the teenagers are back upstairs temporarily. B boy has taken over my craft room (his mattress is on the floor) and A boy has taken over the living room.
Back to the garden.....

Everything in this box was planted as seeds 1 week ago Sunday. Yep all that rain was good for something.

 Happy tomatoes - check

 more happy tomatoes & happy peppers - check

 Happy chickens? Yep! They just got fed so they are certainly happy. During all that rain.... not so much

And the lettuce, parsley, strawberries and peppers out front are growing like crazy as well.

FO Saturday?

Well I meant for this to be an FO Friday post but alas work interfered with my plans so I suppose an FO Saturday post will have to suffice. I finished a slouchy hat for myself yesterday. I've used this pattern before & really like the fit. It fits pretty much like a typical beanie except there's extra room in the back for me to stuff all my hair up in it which means my hat actually stays covering my ears. Here's my B boy modeling the hat for me.

Next up? I need another shawl on the needles. No really I do  ^ - ^
And conveniently enough I just signed up for a KAL of this shawl. I wanted to post a pretty picture here but since none of them are mine I better just link it. My colors? Malabrigo sock in Dewberry (dark purple) and Light of Love (bright pink). Not sure what possessed me to buy pink yarn as I am so not a pink person but for some strange reason this yarn just kept speaking to me. But now that I think about it perhaps it was just for the purpose of knitting this shawl. Who knows?  No time like the present to get started on it.....

Making Progress

I may not have been good about keeping up with my blog but I am proud to say I was very good about keeping up with my knitting last month. I knit 940 yards in the month of June! :O Holy Smokes!! 400 yards of that was finishing my Daybreak Shawl:

I am in love with this shawl! Youngest boy picked my color combo and boy did he ever do a good job.

Why did I knit 940 yards in 1 month you ask? Well because back in May I joined the Harry Potter Knitting/Crochet House Cup group on Ravelry. I have really been motivated to get things done like never before. Which is a really good thing for me since I'm normally lil' miss ADD, let's cast on all the things, oh hey look yarn. I am not proud of this fact but I've learned to admit it. But with this group and the Gryffindor group which is a spin off of the House Cup.. I have turned into a knitter that actually produces finished items! It's such a great feeling to get things off the needles. I'm fully prepared for all the upcoming baby showers at church. Oh yeah baby hats... they are already done. I also already have a collection of baby hats to send out to my friends mom for the babies on the reservation. I'm currently working on my first sweater for me!! The pattern is Elfe and I'm using Ella Rae Lace Merino in Blue.

 I don't wear stripes but I like the look of this top and the local knit girls are doing this as a kal so I jumped in but stated from the start that mine would be solid. I'm also using some yarn I dyed to make a slouchy hat for me. I'm not sure I'll get much else done this month due to trying to get a sweater done in 31 days but we'll see. I promise I'll be back soon with some sweater progress pics....