Check it out – there’s even a video – it’s a knitting machine made out of legos!

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/lego-knitting-machine-v2

Not much to post about. I haven’t really been knitting. I mean, I’ve had yarn in my hands, but I have been mostly frogging, and otherwise not accomplishing anything.

so here for your viewing pleasure, it’s a photo of Jon & I down in CT yesterday. We went with both sets of folks for Jon’s birthday – a little buffet place we like to eat at. Good times which ended with much cake.

Yes, this photo is me as a kid – not sure how old I am. That’s the first cat I ever owned, who died when I was like 4 or so, so that dates the photo a little bit. Back then, my mom still crocheted every day, and here we are playing with yarn on the floor. Kind of dates how long I’ve loved yarn!

The original photo, btw, was a slide – my mom just took a photo of the slide, so that’s why the date is from 2007.

The latest baby knits are done! I finished the white & purple BSJ & finished one more 5-hour sweater, motified for a smaller gauge so it was more like a 7 hour sweater… I made the sweater out of a tweedy white superwash wool, and the other one was a wool/acrylic blend, also from the stash. Though I didn’t join the stash-alongs this year, I mostly knit from stash anyways. I don’t buy a lot of yarn, except at yard sales, thrift stores, etc., and am only rarely gifted with yarn. I have a big stash of acrylic from yard sales that I use for my nursing home afghans, which I’ll be getting back to sometime. Right now I’m having fun with the baby knits, but I think now that 5 are done, I’ll stop for a while. The other babies aren’t due for a good while.

So, another 2 sweaters for the sweater KAL! I’m having a ton of fun knitting sweaters, and I look forward to lots more! I’ve been kind of dreaming about what to make, I need to play with the yarn a bit.

The baby surprise jacket is finished. I believe I finished it on Friday, but haven’t taken photos. It’s modeled on a Garfield teddy bear my aunt Laurie made for Jon a few years ago.

I made it out of worstened weight acrylic baby variegated yarn that was hiding in my stash. I used a slightly different version of the jacket than EZ’s original. I made on with EZ’s original, and knitting as tight as I could, I couldn’t get it baby sized out of worstened weight yarn. I think it came out toddler sized. This one looks much more “baby”! And the variegate yarn, which normally I’m not a huge fan of, actually looks really cute in this jacket.

I still need to add buttons to the jacket, which I’ll do one of these days!

I’m also counting this as my “official” January sweater.

These are 2 of the baby sweaters I am knitting for various babies.
 
Julie & Brian, my sister-in-law & her hubby, are expecting in late March & they DON’T want to know what they are having. When Julie told us they were expecting, my typical knitter’s response was “Yeah! I get to knit baby things!” I’ve knitted a few things for them so far, but frogged or donated elsewhere everything I’ve made, at not being good enough for them (these are the people that had a $40,000 wedding mommy & daddy took out a second mortgage to pay for, while Jon & I paid for our own wedding, and we spent less than $5000. That includes borrowing a wedding dress, and $4 shoes I bought on clearance at Walmart. Most of the money went towards the reception for 150 people – mind you, 135 of them were my relatives/friends). Anyways… at Christmas Julie & Brian bought me several skeins of variagated acrylic yarn, because they said they knew I liked lots of colors. Yes, I do – but not necessarily acrylic variagated! They then ammended their statement by saying, “We know you wanted to knit for the baby, so we picked a girl color, a boy color, and a neutral color.”

Well, put it that way, and I had to knit something out of acrylic yarn! So these are the 5 hour baby sweater.

I wasn’t very happy with the pattern, and sort of changed it up a bit & didn’t leave in all of the lacey yo’s, but it’s the same basic pattern & they look like they are about the right baby size. The seams under the arms sewed up well (though I did a better job on the boy version than the girls), so they will definitely go to Julie & Brian. I’m debating about making some matching booties or a matching hat or something with the leftovers; I’m just not sure I have enough yarn.

I still have 3 more babies to knit for: a friend from church, my cousin’s wife Anita, and my cousin’s daughter, Shawna, who’s barely out of high school & not married (just like her mother, her mother’s mother, and her mother’s mother’s mother. Yes, that’s right folks – my grandmother will be a great-great-grandmother when this baby is born, and my parents will be great-great-aunt & uncles!

I’m currently knitting an Elizabeth Zimmermann’s baby surprise jacket, paired down a little in size. I made one already & knit as tight as I could, and I still ended up with a toddler size. So I’m making this using less stitches & not knitting as tight. I’m hoping it’ll be newborn size; if it’s too small, I’m putting it on one of my naked Cabbage Patch Kids! I’m using variagated baby yarn that’s been perculating in my stash for several hundred years. If it comes out well, then I’m planning on making one more at least. Then it’s off to knitting another EZ pattern, her baby sweater pattern from Knitter’s Almanac.

So since I joined the sweater-a-month KAL, this is officially 2 sweaters towards the KAL! Or do they count since I finished them BEFORE I signed up?

I just joined my first official KAL of 2007 & my first KAL with my ”new” blog. It’s a sweater a month KAL.

I just about knit a sweater a month anyways, but I thought it would be fun to track my progress a little bit, and of course it’s always a lot of fun watching what other knitters are knitting.

My goals for the year:
Knit an Anastasia sweater out of the Anastasia yarn I got out of Christmas, since my name is Anastacia

Knit matching his & hers sweaters, probably out of the pattern I saw from KnitPicks & Wool of the Andes yarn

the rest right now will probably be CIC sweaters 

Of course, after I signed up for this, and added the link to the sidebar, I realized this may be difficult to do when I’m trying to only knit 3 projects at one time! Since I’ve only been knitting one at a time lately (very scary), I think this is still realistic, but we’ll see what happens. I do know I’ve been struggling not to cast on for a hundred projects. I keep saying I could cast on for one or two things, and still be in my challenge rules, but I’m also enjoying getting projects done in a timely matter.