Knitting, Sci-fi and other stuff...

Last weekend got away from me and I forgot entirely to write a post.  I washed and blocked my Unicorn Cowl.  I've been wearing it since it dried.  I like it overall.  The alpaca has a fair amount of guard hairs so it's a little itchy, but not terrible.  I've been plucking them out whenever I see them.  I even took a nice action shot when wearing it the other day.      I've been working on a project a coworker requested me to make.  She wanted it out of acrylic for easy care.  I very rarely work with acrylic anymore.  It causes all my issues to flare up because of its non-elastic properties.  I've been working slowly to minimize my back and wrist pain but I have a deadline.  I just finished the ensemble.  The pattern is okay, probably not something I'd knit again.  I used the free pattern from Lion Brand  Holding Hands Mitts .  The decreases in the franken mitt are a little wonky in my opinion....

I finished my Unicorn Cowl last evening.  This was a fun pattern and one I'd have no problem knitting again. I've woven in the ends since I took this picture.   I had a pretty normal week.  It was stormy at the beginning of the week and very cold for the remainder of the week.  We have a warm front moving in.  It was a balmy 29 degrees F when I left for work this morning.  After experiencing negative digits earlier, near "freezing" is a veritable heat wave. We've had three new people start at work all within the last three weeks.  It's great to have some more staff, but training can be very tiring.  Thursday and Friday we're busy and I felt like I was pulled in all directions; especially Friday.  I'm looking forward to the future.  We have a lot of changes coming to this lab and I'm excited about them.  Just gotta get through this little sludge patch. Until later.  Happy crafting. -Q

    I started a new project on Monday.   I've been working on  Unicorn Cowl  by Casapinka this week.  I'm using Cloudborn Fibers Alpaca Sport as my base yarn and Passion Yarns sock minis for the contrast colors.  I got the Passion Yarns when I attended the CNY Fiber Fest back in 2023.  The pattern calls for 7 contrast colors but I decided to use only the minis I had and not any other left overs.  I didn't think I had anything else bright enough to go with these, so I'm modifying the pattern to account for three contrast colors instead of seven.  I also went down a needle size to compensate for the Alpaca Sport being sport weight instead of DK that the pattern called for.  So far I'm very happy with the way its coming out.  It's a nice simple pattern repeat and I like the way the colors are playing together.  So far the most tedious part of the pattern was casting on 300 stitches.  Even doing five rows of the cont...

     Happy New Year!  I've been under the weather, but I'm starting to feel better now.       The yarn I ordered from the Miss Babs sale arrived last Saturday.     Then the yarn I ordered while I was in Syracuse arrived during the week. As well as my swap package from the Hot Beverage swap: I hid all the goodies so my kids couldn't eat everything while I was sick.  My appetite still hasn't returned so everything remains hidden.   I also got some more Malabrigo Mechita in a destash and that arrived as well.  I didn't do any knitting while I was sick but I finally felt good enough to do a little knitting last evening.  I was able to finish my son's socks. He was very excited for them to be done. I wove in the ends but didn't trim them yet. I'd like to give these a quick bath before I call them 100% done.  My son already put the socks in his sock ...