11/13/06 WIPs

I can't believe I have made little progress in the hat dept during the past few days. I frogged the blue hat I started last Thursday because I cast on the wrong number of stitches and didn't discover it until after knitting 8 rounds. I started a purple hat on Friday and cast on the wrong number of stitches, so I had to start that one over. Haven't made much progress on that one, I've knit about an inch of ribbing... it takes a lot longer to finish a round using DK weight yarn compared to WW weight yarn! Then I decided to give 2-color knitting a try, since I needed to do something with the odds & ends I had that weren't enough to make solid colored hats. I sat down with my Peaches & Creme yarn label and translated the "ballband" cloth pattern for kniting in the round, then started my ballband hat in pink and white yarn. I got about halfway up the boby of the hat and then decided that the hat was way too large. I didn't notice that before because I was too caught up with knitting the pattern. So I frogged the hat and started over with a different pattern. Yes, I could have started the ballband hat pattern again, but I got bored with it and wanted to do something else instead. You can see the latest incarnation above. I've already had to correct a booboo in this hat where I had to frog 4 rows. I'm normally a tinker, but this time, I actually removed the needles and pulled the yarn until I got to the row I needed to go back to, then picked up stitches with my knitting needles. It always makes me nervous doing this.

Other WIPs include 2 dishcloths, one which I started a few weeks ago, and the other I started 2 days ago. I know, it doesn't make much sense to start a second dishcloth when I haven't finished the first. And I still have a scarf in progress.

I spent a bit of time rewinding yarn into balls. I really don't like those burrito shaped skeins with the center pull skein. If I work from the pull skein, the yarn collapses on itself near the end and sometimes ends up in a big tangled mes. I also don't like working them from the outside because they "roll" funny. What I need to get a better feel for is how much yarn I need to finish a hat. I've got balls of different sizes from the odds & ends. Maybe I need to get one of those little kitchen scales so I can see how many ounces a ball of yarn contains. I think I can make a hat out of 3.5 ounces of yarn, definitely 4 ounces. I'm thinking that I should be OK if I combine two balls which are the size of a 10 ounce jar of Classico Sun Dried Tomato Pesto.

Teatime ... I made another pot of tea today, Lupicia's Ming Jian Jin Xuan Oolong tea. I love the flavor of Oolong teas. Since it is cold over here, I've been giving M some tea as well. I pour a bit in her sippy cup and then add some room temp water so she won't find it too hot. She loves tea, perhaps because it is something different from her usual milk or water.

I mentioned stains on my teapot in an earlier post and received some wonderful suggestions: white vinegar; oxyclean; chlorox bleach; coca cola. I'll have to try the vinegar method first. The inside of my teapot actually looks pretty good. Most of the tea stains are around the rim where the cover meets the pot, by & under the spout (where the tea dribbles down the outside), and underneath the teapot (I'm guessing from when the pot sits in a "puddle" of tea?). The stains aren't that noticeable because of the color & pattern of my teapot (you can see part of the teapot in a picture from this post here), but I would like to clean it up...


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