yet another baby blanket

Once more I am working on a baby blanket.  I feel like I have spent most of my crochet/knit career working on baby blankets.  At least this one is a challenge in that it is a cable knit baby blanket.  When I snagged the pattern at Michaels (it was one of those freebie ones they hang up in the yarn aisle), I seriously wasn't planning on ever really using it.  A friend had previously taught me to cable knit but I was pretty sure I could never do it on my own.  But I'm now about twenty rows in and while it doesn't look quite like the picture on the pattern, it doesn't look bad.  I did cave and buy actual cable needles.  Must faster than simply placing the stitches on a straight needle like I had been doing.

SAFF (Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair) is coming up next month and a friend and I are planning on heading back up.  Last year I took about $75 in cash and thought that would be plenty of spending money.  Ha!  The bad thing about the fair is that it makes me a yarn snob.  It's hard to go back to the local craft shops to pick up acrylic yarn after you have tasted the pleasures of real wool.  And the spinning wheels?  I'm surprised I wasn't helping my friend try to get one in her trunk.  I think it would be amazing to learn to spin, but I can just see the look on dear hubby's face if I showed up with one.

Since I've been getting hyped on the coffee I've been sipping while typing this, I think I'll go work on more knitting projects now.

The Case of the Gauge Swatch

I was so thrilled to see the Japan-inspired patterns in the latest issue of Crochet Today!. I was even more pleased when the dear hubby said I could order the yarn needs for the "Lantern Pullover". The yarn arrived last weekend, but I had major jitters about starting such a massive project, so it wasn't until Thursday night that I decided to start by working up the gauge swatch.

Normally I crochet rather loosely and several projects have taught me to automatically start with the hook size down from what the pattern calls for. So I picked up the B hook (cringing at its smallness) and worked up the swatch. What should have been 4 x 4 was 4 x 3.5.

Okay.

So I decided to actually use the size C hook that the pattern called for (feeling more than a little surprised). The resulting gauge was 4 x 3.5.

The stupid things are identical. Absolutely identical (well except where you can see I accidentally added a stitch).

At that point, I was getting more than a little frustrated, so I have yet to make a third swatch (my next plan of action is to use a size D hook), but I am seriously perplexed as to why the gauge is identical even though the hook size was different. Did I really crochet that differently in the span of a few minutes? And it definitely doesn't really inspire me and get me exited about doing the whole darn thing when I'm having so much trouble with the gauge swatches! So any words of wisdom would be appreciated. Otherwise, I'm going to just keep plowing on.

she's baaaaack

Yep, so I finally decided to update this blog again. I'm pretty sure I'm going to let my other blog rest in peace though...well, maybe.

So, what has been going on in my yarny life? The baby blanket from hell, that's what. Minus the whole how-does-the-woman-struggling-with-infertility-manage-knitting-baby-blankets angle (that might be a whole post to itself) there is the whole knitting the stupid thing in and of itself. I'm not a fast knitter as I only took up knitting about a year ago, and everything I know is self-taught. But I was pretty confident I could do this. And the pattern is completely super easy. I was even able to successfully rip out stitches when I did mess up (before I have just been restarting the project or ignoring the mess-up). It's just going so sloooow!!! I've tried listening to music and podcast sermons and watching my current fave TV show (Sherlock...just in case you are wondering) and nothing seems to help the time go by. So, what have I done to cope?

Started a new project.

Kind of counter intuitive, I know, but I was getting desperately bored with the baby blanket. So I've started a cute little turtle pillow pet which is kind of like amigurumi on a grander scale. I want to make one for each of my nephews (I have three) and I've already started thinking about how I can mod the pattern to make a unicorn for my youngest niece. So hopefully the baby blanket won't be completely forgotten because it was actually a commission. That is if the person decides to pay me. This time, no money, no product.