Molasses!

I am petitioning to rename "Via Diagonale"..."Molasses", cuz it's as slow as molasses in January!

Here is my progress to date, after some pretty serious knitting.



Still 1.5 inches from completion. I shouldn't be surprised, the slipped stitches over two rows cause the knitting to be very vertically compressed (?) and the gauge does state 11 rows per inch on 4 mm needles! (Another way of looking at it, almost 200 stitches per row and about 100 rows to complete a medium-sized bag.)

I'm pretty happy with the appearance of the bag. If I don't botch the I-cord or the gussetting, it should look very nice.

On other, more instantly gratifying fronts, I am ready to stich the flower to the front of the Flower Power Bag that I'm putting together for the school fundraiser.




As an aside, I am once again in the running for Worst (or at least most neglectful) Mother in the World.

Gillian's teacher called me today at recess. Her assistant was getting the kids ready to go outside when she noticed that "Gilly had no knickers!!". Yikes! (FWIW, Gilly started the school year off with a demonstrated tendency to remove articles of clothing both at school and on the school bus. The teachers and I have worked hard to eliminate this behaviour and Mrs. C was giving me a "heads up" that the "stripping" might have returned!)

Crisis (or at least public humiliation) was avoided as I always send a complete change of clothing to school with Gillian in her backpack. I did search the van and house after Mrs. C called. I found the offending garment in the wastebasket of the bathroom, so technically, although I dressed Gilly appropriately this morning, I did send her to school "commando".

Bad mum...

On the Needles...

So, now that the Alphabet Baby Blanket is finished, what am I doing?

Well, the girls' school is holding their fundraiser on June 4th, so I'm trying to finish up a couple quick felted bags for the silent auction room.

This...


will be...the Flower Power Bag



I have a partially completed Perfect Pouch and Flappy Bag to finish as well before the fair.

Not sure what I'm going to do with this, but I was dying to try it out:



It's the Via Diagonale bag from the current issue of Knitty

I'm using some dark navy and camel Butterfly 10 cotton that I had in my stash. It looks very nice so far...fingers crossed! It's sort of a mosaic knit, in that while the two colours appear to be used on the same rows, you actually knit with only one colour at once and slip the contrasting colour stitch from the previous row. Nice effect, but it does mean that the work takes a long time to "grow". This definitely WON'T be a project for the fundraiser!

Anyway, that's what I'm up to...how about you?

A Finished Object...

But no photo... :(

I finished the Rowan Cotton Tank Top (minus extraneous boobage detail) and neglected to take a photo before sending it off...DOH.

You'll have to take my word for it that the tank top is complete.

I'm having a love/hate thing with Rowan Cotton Tape. It has a very interesting texture and comes in lovely colours, but it can be really tricky to work with. Because the tape is so thick, (I believe that it calls for 9 or 10 mm needles) it's difficult to make tidy seams that aren't bulky. If I made the tank top again, I would use circular needles to avoid the side seams. That would lead to another problem. Weaving ends in is an unavoidable fact of circular knitting and I haven't met anyone who has worked with Rowan Cotton Tape that is completely happy with the results.

However, I have made a handbag from Rowan Cotton Tape that was very nice, but lining the bag solved the bulky seam problem.

This is similar to the Rowan Cotton Tape bag (cheap acrylic substitute!)




I got a new toy today!!



Yup, a yarn swift! I've been winding up some of my Cascade 220 in preparation to whip up a couple Flower Power Bags for the local school fundraiser and this will definitely speed the process!

And since I was at Knitomatic, I did pick up a few balls of Safari in a warm gold colour. It's a tape yarn that resembles colourful strips of Tyvek. I think it will be great for straw-like summer bags!

The Finished Alphabet Baby Blanket! Woo Hoo!

Ta Da!



With almost three whole days to spare! Geez that was a lot of work. There isn't anything really technically difficult about it, but it does require some care to follow what is really just a great big chart! So, like every pattern I make, I have loads of ideas about what not to do next time, but I have no desire whatsoever to make this blanket again.

I found a couple little boo-boos, which certainly aren't obvious from a galloping horse, nor even to a casual inspection, but my eyes are drawn to them like a magnet! Be a sport and don't look too close, K?

Frustrated....bad knitting week....

I killed my computer. Some sort of Master Boot Record malfunction which necessitated re-formatting the hard drive. Yikes! Fortunately, I was able to remove the hard drive from the computer before reformatting it and use a second computer to retrieve email, photos and other important files. The big pain was the hours it took just to get back to where I was days before.

The timing was particularly awful from a knitting standpoint, in that my SIL's baby shower is the weekend of the 14th. Working backwards, I figure that I will need two days to block the finished blanket and a few hours to weave the ends in neatly...I still have about 12 hours of solid knitting to get to this finishing point. I have finished the body of the blanket and am knitting the eyelet border and saw-toothed edging. It isn't difficult, but it's not quick knitting, mostly because of the awkwardness of jostling the entire blanket on your lap while working on an eight stitch section.

No pictures of course. I'm not trying to keep you in suspense until I have a finished object, I just haven't gotten around to re-installing the camera software and I can't afford much more non-knitting leisure time!

On a non-knitting note, Gillian's IPRC meeting was last Tuesday. I was prepared for the worst, but it is always disheartening to read reports and hear "experts" discuss your loving, treasured child in terms of her "glaring" deficiencies. Disheartening isn't really the feeling...crushing is closer to the sensation. Anyway, the upshot is that she was recommended for an appropriate, supported Grade 1 placement, which I will be allowed to visit before accepting for Gillian. I am cautiously optimistic.



Apologies to the members of the Scarborough Stitch N Bitch for being such a wet blanket on Tuesday night. I had expected my spirits to be more buoyant after the meeting.