Another Blanket

So much for my attempt at being a one-WIP gal. I started a new project today at work. I’m working the Tiramisu using TLC Essentials in Dark Thyme that I have in my stash from a previous granny square project I’ve decided to quit working on. 

I’ve been doing so much knitting that I didn’t realize what I was doing and I grabbed the yarn with my right hand. I knit English and it was a habit. Then I realized what I did and decided to try to crochet that way. It worked, as long as I remembered to wrap the yarn opposite of how I would wrap for a knitted yarn over. Now I can say that I can crochet with yarn in either hand. :)

I’ll post pics of the project and add it to Ravelry once I have some progress made. So far I only have 2 rows, but I can already see that this project will go fairly quickly as long as I work on it regularly.

In other news, I finished sock one of my Handspun Campfire socks. Must cast on the second sock this weekend so I don’t fall into SSS. 

The Big Merge

Over the past few days, the husband and I have merged our music and our photos. Gasp! Combined we now have over 7000 images in our iPhoto library and our iTunes library ridiculously large. Unfortunately, he never really kept his music organized, so now there are a bunch of file with no album, track #, genre, etc. That frustrates me because I like having all that data in the music file. It makes it easier to create smart playlists for syncing to the iPod. So this weekend I will be spending some time trying to clean up all the music that he imported to my iTunes library.

We definitely have a variety of music styles in there from alternative to rock to country to jazz to kids music for Amelia. We even have some latin music and hip hop. And don’t forget all my podcasts, audiobooks and holiday music. There’s a lot in there that I have to weed through now.

Thankfully, merging the photo libraries was easy since he didn’t really use any of the “features” of iPhoto. I use keywords heavily and I give most photos titles. I use smart albums and create descriptions of the albums. All this makes it easy to keep track of what’s been exported to Amelia’s photo gallery. So importing his pictures was easy. Just exclude all duplicates and we’re good to go.

The only issue with merging iTunes, is that only one account can have iTunes open at a time (we’re storing the library in the /users/shared folder). So anytime we use it, we have to make sure we quit when we are done, so it doesn’t get locked in case the other person needs to get in.

I know what I’ll be working on this weekend. Organizing our music library. Fun times! Of course he’s out of town on his annual guy trip, so it’s just me and the baby for a few days. I’ll have plenty of quiet time after Amelia goes to bed to work on that between knitting and catching up on All My Children.

Card Carrying Addict

I’m officially a card-carrying addict of Starbucks coffee. We had our weekly knit night at Starbucks and I took the plunge. I got a Starbucks card and put $20 on it. I figured why not, since I’m there every week and some times I just don’t have the cash. I did this time, so now I have a little stash of coffee money I can use when I go knit. woohoo!!

More Lace

I sat down yesterday and made some more stitch markers for my shawl project. Then last night I worked on the shawl some more. I absolutely love working on it. Wrong side rows are all purl except the 2 end stitches which are garter stitch. It’s coming out so neat. I love watching the lace form as I work the chart. I’ve completed one repeat and am working on the second. I even added a lifeline just in case, although so far I’ve been extremely careful to not make mistakes. Each repeat of the rows adds two more stitch repeats on either side of the center, so when I’m done I’m going to have a ton of stitch markers on my shawl. LOL! But it’s coming out gorgeous! At least I think so.

Lace Shawl

My Water Girl

We bought a small pool for Amelia this weekend. It’s big enough for the three of us to sit in so that’s nice. Amelia had a blast playing and splashing. She even laid down in the pool with her head just above the water. She did really well. She’s our little water girl. We had such an adventurous day on Saturday that she slept til 9am Sunday morning!! It was a nice morning of sleeping in for us. We went swimming again on Sunday and she went to bed 30 minutes earlier than usual. We definitely wore her out this weekend. But I know she had a great time.

In other news, sis and I got our tickets this morning to the New Kids on the Block concert. We’ll be in Atlanta Oct 29 for the big event. Woohoo!! I’m so excited!

We went to Birmingham this weekend as well and got my new iPod Touch. yeah! It’s awesome. I love it. I just wish I could get online more. I only have online access at home so far. We don’t have wireless at work and I haven’t yet tried taking it anywhere else in town to see what it will connect to. But so far I really like it. I had trouble with my user account though. iTunes wasn’t recognizing my iPhoto Library so I couldn’t sync pictures. I ended up having to create a new user account and move all my stuff over to the new account. That took forever to get it all moved over and working again. But I got it all fixed. I created 3 smart albums in iPhoto. One of them uses keyword Amelia, since I tag all of her photos with that keyword. Then I also added a date range of the last 3 months to it. So I can always have the latest 3 months worth of photos of Amelia on my iPod. The other 2 smart albums were similar except using keywords knitting and handspun. Even with all those photos and several new podcasts, I still had a bunch of disc space left. I’m not used to having 8GB of space. My Nano only has 4GB.

The Lace Shawl

I’m really enjoying working on the the lace shawl, even though I rarely actually sit down and work on it. I have been a bit hesitant because I don’t want to mess up and I haven’t had a chance to go get something like a magnetic board to hold my place on the chart.

But I sat down in my office during lunch to work on it and found a great way to keep track. I have a row counter to keep track of the rows I’ve completed. I blew up the charts from the pattern and re-printed them so that I can see them better. That helps. I placed them flat on my desk and used a ruler to "underline" which row in the chart I’m working. I’m using stitch markers to mark the repeat section because I know if I don’t I’ll get confused.

One thing that is frustrating me though is that I keep forgetting to work the chart left to right on wrong side rows. So I start counting to make sure my stitches are correct and they aren’t. I freak out, rip back to the previous row, then realize they are right, I’m just looking at the chart backwards.

I haven’t placed any lifelines yet. I’m not sure where to put them, plus I’m not sure what yarn to use. I’m working the shawl in DK weight yarn on size 7 needles, so I guess fingering weight sock yarn would work. I’ve also been holding off because I ordered the Options set from KnitPicks (woohoo!, happy birthday to me!) and I’m sort of waiting for those to come in. They have those little holes that you can thread some crochet cotton into and lifeline as you knit. I think that would make it easier. And I have loads of crochet cotton I can spare.

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