Archive for the ‘traveling scarves’ Category

Knitters are cool

What can I say? Knitters, and I shant forget, Crocheters, are so cool!

I have received 2 completed Traveling Scarves groups this week, both are beautiful.

First is my SO’s scarf, all in really nice black and gray colors.

To all the gals from my TS#25 SO group, THANK YOU MUCH FOR adding your wonderful knitting to my SO scarf!

Next is my NORO scarf

It is so pretty, and I love all the different NORO additions. THANK YOU TO all the members of the TS#37 NORO group, I really really enjoyed Mod’ing the group. It’s been a pleasure and I’m sad to see it coming to an end. Everyone is getting their scarves in the mail soon, I was lucky enough to get mine’s last week.

And now for a Knitter who can really put a package together! This is my package for my Harry Potter – A little bit of everything swap. It comes from the wonderul Minerva Wood.

She knitted me “Habitat” from Jared Flood, my absolute favorite designer. I love the red and the pattern. Everything in the package was perfect, and I got goodies for my dog and cat too, which they’ve loved playing with.

THANK YOU Minerva a.k.a. Yogaknot on Ravelry.

~R

Bocce Ball

Tonight I went out to a get together after work with my boss and team members. This is our very first outing since we formed our group, which is entirely new to the company. I got to suggest the first outing adventure, and I choose Bocce Ball. We have Campi De Bocce in Los Gatos, Ca, and I’ve went to it before with a previous company.

It was a fun evening, unfortunatley no knitting 8(, but alot of game play. Bocce is an age old game, similar to bowling and or pool. The goal of the game is to get your balls as close to the main ball, closer than your opponents. Each ball you have closer than your opponent is 1 point for your time at the end of the game when all balls have been thrown.

First I should say the scenery and ambience is very nice, in fact this is the first time I’ve went to play Bocce in about 8 years, and last time was indoors, outdoors is way more fun. I had 2 glasses of a delicious red wine Merlot Lael, very smooth. Everyone else had their own choice of beer, we had Fried Calamari, Lamb Chops, and Tenderloin (YUM-O!).

Here’s the gang I work with..

From left to right, it is Rich (my boss), Ernest, ME, Leslie, and Mike. Gosh looking at this, I seriously need a new hairdo, and need to shed count it, at least 20lbs, oh well, guess that’s what New Year’s Resolutions are for, right?

Sad to say, I have no new knitting, I’m stuck in this odd purgatory knitting this cable beanie, that’s turning out to be my worst nightmare. I can cable wihout a cable need now, but I’m not happy with it, and it feels uncomfortable, and too tight. At what point do you give up on a WIP? I’ve yet to encounter one like this, that for some reason or another just isn’t satisfying, but I so desperately want to finish to have it as a present to my hubby. I think I’ll give it one more day of knitting it, and hopefully, it will end!

By the way, I also have to start a new TWEED seedlet for my Traveling Scarves 42 Tweed Heads group, because I found out from Cpurl17 that my poor little seedlet was stolen from her doorstep when she left it there to send out. The nerve of people! What a dissapointment they’ll get when they open the package to see it’s yarn and a journal. It’s kind of sad because it has more emotional value than monetary value, I can’t imagine they’d get anything for it, it will probably get tossed in the trash. 8( Poor scarfy, I’ll send it my best wishes and will start a new one to send off this weekend. ::Ok, I know I sound insane, sorry::

I’ll share more with you later on “As the Knitting Turns”, (LOL), have a good weekend! TGIF!
~Rocky

And I’m off!

The De La Hoya vs. Pacquaio boxing get together party Saturday went great. We BBQ some marinated carne asada and chicken, I made a fresh macaroni salad. For orderbs we served Garlic & Cheese Toast with fresh Spinach Dip, BBQ Hot wings and Chips & Salsa. For desert, I whipped out my secret weapon.

I made some Cranberry-Pumpkin bread that I make every year around this time, it’s delish!

It’s a combination of fresh cranberries and pumpkin puree with seasonal spices. I know the recipe by hard and right smack in the middle of it, I realized I was missing my key ingredients, FUDGERS! Well, not wanting to waste more time, I decided to improvise and make my own combo of spices, and boy, what a great thing that was, my bread came out better than it’s ever tasted. So good in fact, I’ll stick with my new combo of spices and will no longer make the original recipe. My bread was a complete hit and before I could snap any fresh out of the oven baked pictures, it was almost all gone! Here are a few left over morsels…

I’ll be making more later this week because I still have 1 bag of fresh cranberries left. I shared the original recipe click here if your interested

Our get together was fun and relaxing, but the event we all gathered to watch, De La Hoya vs. Pacquiao turned out to be horrible. I was hoping that De La Hoya would pull it off, but he did such a horrible job, in fact he didn’t even fight? Pacquiao had such an easy job to do and win when all De La Hoya did was just stand there and get hit. I never saw De La Hoya do this before, it was so upsetting. He may just be done with boxing as a fighter, but as a presence and force in the sport, he’ll be around forever.

Friday evening before the party, I finished off the last 3 Traveling Scarves I had, which I had one from each group.

Here is Purpleturtle’s scarf from Group 25 SO, I added the top brown section using Lamb’s Pride Wool, I strung 2 ends of the yarn together to get the right gauge for the section. I went with a Box Stitch.

A full shot of the scarf

Here is Mspalmtree’s scarf from Group 37 Noro. My section at the top, using Noro Silk Garden in 245 & 279 knit with the Box Stitch.

A full view of the scarf

Finally here is Adore1’s scarf from Group 42 Tweeds. I added a Mock Cable stitch using O’Wool 100% Organic Brown Tweed yarn.

And I’m off finally knitting my Christmas gifts, starting with my husband’s beanie that I’ve been improvising the design on. It’s nothing fancy and nothing cutting edge, a Cable beanie.

I’m slow at cables, it’s annoying, and I can get slower if I let the cables annoy me. I need to get this done by Tuesday, if I can without wanting to kill the cable needle.

Last, I’ll leave you with a snugly picture of my doggy sleeping by our Christmas tree, she looked to precious to not take a picture!

My Friday

For today, I just need to get through this early but short day. All week I’ve been working 6-3, and it’s nice getting off at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, but just tiring getting up to be at my job at 6 a.m., but not too bad considering I have about a 15 minute drive, if not less. I have no issues getting up early, but this week has just been tiring for me. I do feel I was very productive this week though, with all my personal stuff that is.

I got all my 5 swap packages out to all my spoilees, this was a task in itself. Just packaging everything making sure I had all the requirements for the swaps and also making sure it catered to my spoilees preferences. I hope the packages are greeted with acceptance and glee!

I also sent out 2 Traveling Scarves packages, one for my Group 37 Noro Combo, which was Gramma’s gorgeous scarf and also for my Group 42 Tweed, which I totally flaked on, well inadvertently.

I had finished Cristi-Lael’s pretty tweedy scarf weeks ago, put my notes in her journal, packaged it and left it on my desk in my office to send out the next day. Well my son or daughter, one of them, both won’t own up to it, moved the envelope package and covered it with my son’s binder. It was out of sight out of mind for me, and the other day when I was going through my office I came across it and was just in complete horror! I immediately updated my post for the group’s tracking thread with an apology. I think I’m going to have to buy a lock for my office cause my kidees seem to like being in there and also using it to discard of unwanted things.

One cool thing I found out from a awesome Mod in my RR group on Ravelry (I apologize I don’t have her Rav ID), which if you don’t know, you gotta try, is being able to ship First Class Mail packages from your doorstep without having to actually visit the Post Office.

You say how is this?

Well if you have a PayPal account, then you can! Logon to your PayPal account and go to Products & Services, select Multi-Order Shipping Labels, from there Create a New Order, I use a fake Order #, like for Group 37 Noro, I used 37-1, 1 signifies my first package sending out, the next Noro package I send will be 37-2 and so on. Fill out all the info, and weight, and delivery confirmation, then do Pay and Print, and voila, you have a valid, paid for, label printed for you from your printer. Tape to the package and put in your mailbox for your Post Man to pick up. I just love this! It’s so much easier than having to go down to the Post Office. If you need to ship a package and don’t want to be hassled, this is a pretty easy way.

So, speaking of my TS Groups, I also finished another scarf, Purpleturtle’s Group 25 SO, but still need to weave in ends and package. It should go in the mail tomorrow, which will leave me with only 1 TS scarf! WhewwHoo! (can you feel my joy?) I do love participating in the TS groups, but sometimes it can get just a wee bit overwhelming, especially when you start getting a bunch at once.

Contest info to share, I submitted my comments and post to “The Nautical Knitter’s” site the other day for the Snowman Stitch Markers Contest she was having and guess what, I visited her blog again and found out that I was one of the lucky winners! Thanks so much DK! I can’t wait to use them. Congrats to Deb (aka iaisknitter on Ravelry) and Yvonne from Purlin’ Goldens who also won some cutesy stitch markers.

These are the cutesy Snowman Stitch Markers I’ll be getting soon!
Photo courtesy of DK the Nautical Knitter’s blog

Now onto some gritty stuff, this weekend is going to be a huge boxing fight, yes the De La Hoya vs. Pacquiao fight!

I’m pulling for the cutey, De La Hoya, I’ve always been a fan of his. I must admit though, I am not a 100% convinced he can beat Pacquiao, who himself is a very strong boxer. Pacquiao is fast and has good stamina. In De La Hoya’s 24/7 series, he says there will be a knock out, I’m thinking it will go 12 rounds. I’ll be having a nice little boxing party get together at my house Saturday for this, complete with dip, spicy buffalo wings, pizza, and of course beer and wine. Only dilemma I have is choosing what knitting project to do during the fight, needs to be something I can do blind.

There are many other things going on for me this weekend, but none as exciting as the De La Hoya fight. I hope you all have a good weekend! **Go De La Hoya!**

I’m getting there

Things have been very hectic, as they probably are for everyone else during this time of year. I actually believed that over the past holiday I would get a ton of knitting time in, when really I got almost none. Since this is my first holiday season knitting, I’ve never known how to balance my holiday tasks with knitting and I failed, obviously, because I knitted nothing. I did however manage to send out a total of 5 swap packages to 5 of my spoilees. Yes, you read it corectly, “5″! I had signed up for some swaps without knowing the due dates for at least 3 of them. 2 I knew of, and one really wasn’t a swap, more of an exchange of gifts. You can imagine my alarm when I found out the due dates for all of packages and looked at my calendar to realize all were due within the same week, and that week happened to be Thanksgiving!

I didn’t have the heart to drop out so I forged on stalking my prey spoilee and chatting it up with them. I knew getting out these packages last week would be almost impossible so I made sure to keep my spoilees informed that I would send out this week and YAY! I did! I dropped all of yesterday nice and snug at the post office, PHEW! This is the last time I’ll balance that amount of swaps I tell you, it was pretty crazy there for a minute especially when a few of them had some pretty specific requirements for knitted items or type of items, etc. I am very happy though with how each turned out and I’m hoping all my spoilees like the gifts I choose for them, including the yarn I scored for them too! Now I’m down to just 1 wee bit swap, which thankfully isn’t due until the middle of January. It is a secret swap so I can’t say who my victim is, but my stalking has already started.

Now that’s done, I had 3 Traveling Scarves in my posession from 2 of my groups and new these were next on my list to finish and send on there merry way, but as fate would have it, I received another scarf yesterday, this time from my Tweedy group, and AHH! Now I really have to start moving my booty. I finished Gramma’s Noro scarf last night, I had this done prior but I didn’t like the way it was looking for my addition so I frogged and started over and am happy with the turnout. Gramma’s scarf is really turning out pretty indeed!

The end with the brownish color to it is my addition, using a Box stitch pattern. It’s hard to discern from this photo what the pattern looks like, but it kind of looks like a checkerboard effect.

I’ll weave in the ends on lunch and mail this out today and quickly finish the other 3 I have so that tomorrow I can start my vastly late knit gifts for my family. I’ll be making a pair of fingerless mittens for my daughter, a scarf for my son, and a “Che’” hat for my hubby, which about 30% done. For my compadre, Lynda, I’ll be making some cabled socks (unless I find a different pattern), and for my godson I’ll try to make him a blanket, a blue and red one at his request. He said to me, while touching my own knitted blue wave blanket knit in Alpaca mist blue with Blue Hand-maiden silk, “Nina, I, um, I, can you make me one? But, um, with red and um, pink?” to which I said “Are you sure pink or red?” to which he said “Um, yah, yes, red, ok thank you Nina”. How could I turn down a request like that? He’s so adorable and looks like a 2nd grader who’s really only 4 years old. Or maybe I knit the blanket for his birthday which is in January, and knit or crochet him a Scooby-Doo with a toy gift for Christmas? He goes bonkers for Scooby-Doo, can’t say I blame him, Scooby-Doo is my fave of all, and I can still watch the cartoons if there on T.V.

I got me some knittin’ to do…

~Rocky

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