BSJ 4

Another hibernating project down. Not long ago, there was a pile of 30 unfinished projects. Then I finished the Aestlight shawl, then the Morning glory shawl, and now the BSJ 4...I should be down to about 27 projects left to finish? *Chills*

My little Jakie is the model for the day (even though it will probably be Sam who will wear it since he is a little smaller). Such a cutie. He's sporting his 2 bottom teeth now for his photos.

This thing has almost been hibernating for 1 year. I started this October 21st 2010 (1 week before the boys were born. Prematurely.)

This BSJ is different from the last because it only has 2 yarns that are striping, but because the yarn's colorway does striping of its own, it does the work for me. The last one was a tangly mess while working with it.

I crocheted around the collar and to bind the sleeves together. I purposefully crocheted so that the wrong side faced the audience because it looked different. Fluffier. It meshed well with the garter stitch more in this particular project.


Project: EZ's Baby Surprise Jacket
Needles: size US6 circulars
Yarn: Paton's Kroy socks, 1 skein each of "Clay" and "Cadet" colorways
Project Started: Oct. 24th, 2010
Projected Finished: Sept. 24th, 2011


Here's a good picture of the yarn I worked with. I did about 4 rows per color.

Stunning cute results, in my book.

Jake's favorite "no-no" toy. When he is free to "roam about the cabin" (or house), he always crawls across the the living room, into the front entrance and into my music den to get at the guitar. He loves using his pointer finger to push buttons or strum in this case. It's really a good picture of this little boy who will probably end up being a guitarist, and not a pianist like mommy. Funny, he never goes for the piano pedals on the floor or anything else in that room but the guitar. And boy does he crawl like no tomorrow when you are chasing after him when he's heading that way. lol. I'm thinking about buying him a kiddy guitar for his 1st birthday. Can you believe it, the boys will be turning 1 in about a month?

I'm just gonna leave you guys with this last pic. What a close call, wouldn't you say? Let's not cut it soo close next time...

Summer of lace

It really has been a summer filled with lacy projects. Boy do I have a surprise for you since I kept this project hush-hushed, unintentionally. After I finished the Aestlight shawl, I felt inclined to pluck another shawl out of hibernation to click away at. It took all my moments of freetime during nights or their naptime when chores were mostly done-which isn't a whole lot of time-but here be the "Morning Glory" shawl. Fitting, huh, with all of this Fall weather? Boy am I ready for some cool weather (and apple cider, and nutty carmel apples, and hot pumpkin lattes, and.....eek, it never ends).

The thing about this shawl is that I had an idea about what lace would look good next to the stripes (that would also be a no-brainer, cause goodness knows we like those types of lace), but the rest sort of morphed into this sun-ray like shawl that I adore. I was mostly freestyle-ling it. I started mentally taking notes of what I was doing, pattern-wise, but it wasn't too long after that I just decided that this shawl will just be mine and "screw" the pattern. It really is much more enjoyable when you aren't worrying about getting the correct pattern down or thinking you missed jotting down an important step somewhere in the middle of the pattern.

The shawl is knit from Alpaca "FrogTree" yarn from a little knitting shop in Prairie Crossing that sadly went under I think maybe a year ago. I bought a lot of orange and several other colors thinking I would do some cool braided scarf with multiple colorings, but I vetoed the idea not long after and it has been sitting snuggly with my other stash in a bookshelf. Luckily, I almost horded the color because I really went through a lot of skeins for this size of a shawl. I think I was on my 4th ball by the end.

Remember how I mentioned that I picked a simple lace along the striping edge? Well, I really think that it helps the overall impression to being a stereotypical ray pouring from the sun. The edging on the shawl was another easy-schmeasy pattern. Really. It was almost as easy as garter stitch itself for the effect it gives. It has the same starting instructions, but because a certain yarnover, you are knitting just one more stitch after each increase row. It took nearly one minute to etch into my brain and I didn't even need the chart after that. Love it. Plus, I think I would use this edging pattern for my "Ripples" Reading Afghan as soon as that beast is done. Will we live to see that day?

PATTERN: Morning Glory Shawl by KUAS
(won't be available though)
NEEDLES: set of US5 circulars
YARN: FrogTree yarn, sportweight alpaca, in orange and yellow
Started: Oct 28th, 2009 (and put away soon after several inches)
Finished: September 14th, 2011

If you look closely, the point of the "star" on the bottom of the shawl is cabled and has a little bit of beading. It's really hard to see in the photos, but it's there. I did a little bit of crochet around the edge of the point. In retrospect, I would have done a line of eyelet holes in increasing sizes on the point of the shawl, instead of just 1 hole. Oh well. I enlisted my husband to help me block the shawl. We went through quite a lot of pins. In case you were wondering, he was happy to help, but he was happy to hurry the process up so we could get back to our HBO show.

My son Sam

My son Jake, the little "chief."

Jake blocking the shawl.

Messy style.

Hope you like it.

Look familiar?

This is one of the oldie-moldy ones from the college days, but I was asked permission a bit ago from the editor of allfreeknitting.com if she could post patterns, like this one onto the site. Of course I said yes, so here's at least one of them. If you happen to spot anymore KUAS patterns on there, let me know. :) Neat!



Click HERE to see the pattern on their site.