Purple Knitting

While I have been continuing to work on the Gray Spiral Blankie, I have also been able to make a bit of progress on the Purple Swing Cardigan as well as on the Lavender Lace Cardigan,

I love the moment on top down sweaters when you separate the sleeve stitches from the body stitches. Suddenly it starts to look sweater-like. There are still a lot of stitches on the needle, but not nearly so many as there were. It is in a good place for my road trip on Thursday down by St. Joe. Straight stockinette for several inches. I think now this project will be sitting out week, waiting for the ride down to help my friend prepare her classroom for this year's crop of first graders.

The Lavender Lace Cardi is going to be my "go to" knitting for this week, supplemented by either my car sock project, now on magic loop, or the Raspberry Creme shawl. That hasn't see a loft of action with the baby knitting going on, but it is also easy and would be a good back up knitting for Knit Nite or road trip. The Lavender Lace requires a bit of concentration and is sometimes a bad choice for Knit Nite.

As the mother of the forthcoming grandniece said today, I hope the sonogram tech didn't misread the signs. Me too. I don't think a little boy would be able to pull off the purple and lace.

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Keeping Busy

Between the heat and life, I know I missed posting for a stretch, up until yesterday. I hadn't been knitting a lot, because the weather was cooled enough to turn off the air conditioning. But it was still too warm to stand a lap of wool. I am so ready for winter.

Progress is being made though, on both purple sweaters, as I mentioned yesterday. I need to count stitches right now on one to see how close I am to dividing off the sleeve stitches. Progress!

But the main reason for few posts was the fair. The good old dairy show was last Thursday.

I always get there in time for the last minute grooming, and of course the showing. So many families that I know and love had children out there leading their cattle.

Tiny ones making their first appearance in the show ring and old hands at showing.

And so serious.

Many with cute little Jersy cattle.

Others with big Holstein heifers.

They did great all through the dairy show.

I may have found time for a farmers muffin or two as well.

Yum.

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Quick and Easy

I needed a break from all the purple of this summer's knitting. The placemats are done, but the baby sweaters continue along. And the gray blue Spiral Blankie is not a big break from purple.

So I turned to something I had been thinking about knitting for awhile: a soap sack.

It was definitely quick. I finished the whole thing yesterday from cast on (twice!) to cast off. And that was after tinking back to fix a lace mistake in one sweater, and switching my car sock project to magic loop.

After poking around, I found this in my stash room and decided it was the perfect worsted weight for my soap sack.

I rifled through my patterns and found Sudsy Soap Sack on Ravelry. It called for size 10.5 needles but I really dislike knitting on large needles. I used size 7 needles, and cast a extra 4 stitches to compensate. Well, I first tried a extra 8 stitches. And after a couple inches, decided that was too big. So I ripped that all back and started with only 4 extra stitches. I also grabbed a bar of soap to measure it by.

It went much better the second time. Magic loop again. I decided I really do like that method.

I may make more. They would be nice gifts with a bar of fancy soap, but need to tweak the pattern more I think. It drives me crazy that the stockinette strip on either end spirals around the bag. I know, as someone said at Spin Guild today, that it is just going to hang in my shower. But that spiral is driving me crazy. I may also try a finer weight yarn.

The finished sack shown above has a bar of Dial, and two more soap slivers. It's is a bit long, but bigger bars of soap may need the length. I think I can live with it. If I don't look at the spiral.

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Summer Under the Stars

My favorite movie time of the year is August. Turner Classic Movies spends an entire month devoted to one star a day, 24 hours each. Yesterday was Gene Tierney all day. (The Razor's Edge, Laura, The Ghost and Mrs Muir.). Today is all Olivia De Havilland. (Robin Hood, Dodge City, Elizabeth and Essex.).
Upcoming stars include Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, Groucho Marx, Monte Woolley, and 27 more.
For an old movie buff like myself, crazy good times. I'm almost giddy.
And luckily I am able to multitask, watching movies and knitting at the same time. August is a good month.

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Summer Goodies

The garden is starting to produce.

Yummy! Cherry tomatoes. Sun ripened and sun warmed. One of them even made it into the house. Um, that would've been the one Hubby picked.

We also found this.

It may have been a bit small, but I couldn't resist picking it.

And we will have fresh green beans for supper too!

Only thing I really like about summer. Fruits and veggies.

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