Happy Birthday, Sesame Street

In honor of Sesame Street's 40th anniversary today, I thought the Pointer Sisters could teach us all how to count to 12.

I already loved the Pointer Sisters because they had sang "I'm So Excited" and without that song you could never have one of the most classically over the top moments from Saved by the Bell. Jessie and the diet pills of quick addiction. A few years ago, I found out that they were the ones that sang the pinball counting song and that love grew exponentially.

To mark the occasion , the Vine Yoke Cardigan got to pose with my rubber ducky today.

Look, a bit of sleeve!

Right Face!

Right front of the sweater is done and I'm very glad that I had the foresight to photograph it this morning before work.

I didn't leave work until after 5:30 and it was pretty well dark by then, forget about what it was like by the time I got home. Since then, I've managed to start the right sleeve. After a few rows, the yoke stitches get put back on the needles and the sleeve is knit right along with it. I'm very excited for the minimal amount of seaming that will need to be done on this cardigan. Just a little under the underarms, and grafting down each sleeve. Raglan shaping is made of win.

Vine Yoke Cardigan

Now that my new sweater project has progressed past what was essentially an 85-stitch garter stitch strip, I feel a little better taking a picture.

In addition to the button band, I've also finished about three pattern repeats on the right front. There's an i-cord edge that runs along the neck and the yoke shaping is done by short rows. The beauty of the background of this cardigan being in garter stitch is that all of the wrap and turns blend in with no need to pick up the wraps.

The chicken soup has been made, a bowl has been eaten, and the rest has been divided into single portions and split up between my fridge and my freezer. I'm glad I have a little back up because the worst part of getting home when it's dark is that it's a lot more difficult to motivate myself to prepare dinner.

Actual Knitting Content

I have been knitting, I swear. For whatever reason, I just haven't been able to motivate myself to blog about it until now.

Around the beginning of May, I started knitting a circular lace shawl. In one month, this is how far I've gotten.



Not bad, huh? I've got about four repeats of the last chart left before I start the border. I'm only on the second 50g skein of KnitPicks Shadow. Lace weight is amazing.

An even greater yarn conservation method is to knit with something that's not yarn. When sorting through some old shirts for donation or rags, I decided to cut some up and knit a market bag.



It only took me two nights which is good because it was kind of hell on my hands. Granted, I also stopped as soon as it was anywhere close to a reasonable size.

To make the strips, I cut the hem off the bottom of a shirt completely. I then cut around the whole shirt in a spiral ~1/2 in. wide all the way up to the armholes. At least, that was my intention. There's a reason most of the stripes are pretty short and it wasn't the shirt's fault. Fat girl=plenty of t-shirt material.

I used US13 needles. Instead of fiddling with knitting a handle, I cut three more strips and braided them together and then tied them through a yarn over on each end of the opening. I'm not entirely thrilled with it and might at least go back and knit an i-cord to fasten to it in a similar manner as the braid.

Red Scarf Project

I finished knitting my scarf for the Red Scarf Project here. It's an annual project organized by the Orphan Foundation of America. You can find out more about it here (Warning: link opens a .pdf file).

I made the scarf from Patons Shetland Chunky Tweeds in deep red. It's 85% acrylic, 15% wool and I found it pretty easy to work with. I got the pattern from the free patterns on Lion Brand's site. My only complaint was it was one of those dreaded skeins with two ends knotted together.

Right towards the end of a row and not long after I had started the second skein, I came upon that blasted knot. I generally like Patons, but that made me a little sad.

Overall, I think the scarf turned out OK. It's currently pinned out on my floor in my itty bitty apartment to block. I'll weave in the ends once it's dry and send it in next week with some added gift of some sort.