Eyelet & Bead

Just a couple more dishcloths knit in Eyelet & Bead. Can you tell I really like this lace pattern?

Pattern: Eyelet & Bead Cloth
Yarn: Lily Sugar & Cream, Midnight Magic color, 1 ball
Needles: 4.5 mm (US7)

I knit this one way looser than the others I made, however I know it'll all "settle" after I give it a wash. I seem to have a knack for shrinking my dishcloths. Miss M helped a little with knitting this one. She wanted to try, so I sat her on my lap and we worked the knit rows together. I like this colorway because it's a little different from the usual ones, but I was a little disappointed that I couldn't get away from the ubiquitous zig zag pooling I often get with the variegated yarns. I was hoping for the kind of pooling I got from the red/white/blue one I made last July. I really love the results of this cloth and I think it looks good in both solid and variegated yarns. The only thing that kills me are the P2Tog-TBLs on some of the wrong side rows. P2Tog-TBL is not difficult to do, although it is a bit more challenging on cotton yarn. (Click here to see video for doing P2Tog-TBL)

Pattern: Eyelet & Bead Cloth
Yarn: Lily Sugar & Cream, Country Sage color, 1 ball
Needles: 4.5 mm (US7)

Same pattern, different color. You'll get a better look at the pattern from one knit in the solid green colored yarn.

I don't use these as dishcloths like most(?) people do. They get used around the house. Wiping the kitchen counter. Tea mug/teapot coaster (the reason why my used cloths have dark tea stains on them!). Cleaning the window blinds. Stuff like that.

Yarn info:
Fibre Content: 100% cotton
Made In: Canada
Care: Machine Wash and Dry
Gauge: 20 st/4 inches 4.5mm (US7)
Yardage: 95 yds
Size: 57 gm (2 oz)
Price: $2.29

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Back in December, I noticed that the T-pins I picked up some months before that from one of those big office supply stores (Office Depot? Staples? Office Max?) turned rusty on me. I got some great suggestions for blocking pins, and one of them was quilting pins. When it was mentioned to me, I had no idea what that meant or how they were different. Then I stopped by Jo-Ann and looked at pins in the sewing aisle, an aisle I had never looked at before because I don't sew. I saw T-pins in little packages of 40 pins. I would need 5 or more of those packages. Then I looked at some of the other pins hanging on the wall. I saw "crafting" pins in 250-pin packages, which came in round multi-colored heads. I saw "quilting" pins in 175-pin packages, all yellow colored heads. Both of these were exactly the same as far as I could tell, the only difference was the pin head color. So I'm not sure why the crafting pins are marketed differently from the quilting pins. Both packages even listed them as being the same length. I was going to go with the 250-pin pkg of crafting pins ... until I looked down and saw this box of 500 quilting pins:

Well, the decision was a no-brainer at that point. I came home with this box of 500 pins which should be enough to block any project. I am a happy camper again. :-) I just hope these don't turn rusty on me. The label says they are "nickel plated", does that mean "rust proof"?

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This is the vest I've been working on (forever), for my mom. You last saw it here. The photo above shows the back section almost complete, it's about 8 rows short of bind off. I'm a bit worried about the vest being too short. But I couldn't lengthen each block section by 4 rows each (a total of 20 rows) because the vest might end up too long. I'm hoping I can lengthen it a bit during blocking. I haven't yet figured out whether I should block first then seam, or seam first then block. The armhole shaping was a bit tricky for me since I can't quite focus on following the block pattern AND working the decrease instructions concurrently. It was hard to keep track of so I wrote down the block row instructions with the decrease sections next to it so I'd know which rows to do the decreases. Yes, checklists work well for me.

I feel like I've been knitting this vest forever because I kept frogging and starting over. I am so sick of this yarn color.

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IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ ABOUT TODDLER BODILY FUNCTIONS, YOU SHOULD STOP HERE. :-)

Ok, we've been trying to potty train Miss M for quite some time. It's only been in the past month or two when we made the most forward progress. We've gotten to the point where she can pee in the toilet and sometimes tell us when she needs to go, but usually we have to keep checking with her or encourage her to go anyways. She's gotten very good at holding it in until we make it to the toilet. Now the frustrating part is the poopoo part of potty training. She doesn't want to do it in the toilet. So for a short while she worked it out so that she would go in her pull-up diaper during naptime or just before we go get her in the morning. Now she insists on wearing her panties during naptime, no pull-up diaper. And for several consecutive days, I've gotten her from naptime with poop in her pants AND nuggets scattered all over the carpet in her room. Ugh. This gets old fast. I'm thinking we should have gotten linoleum in her room, and also added a drain hole in a discreet corner so we can just hose down her room, lol.

I hope this isn't going to take too much longer to completely potty train...

Ok, I'm done ranting about this. :-)

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