idle hands are the devil's playground

Growing up Catholic, one is bound to hear this at least once in their upbringing. I've never been particularily religious, but I've heard this often muttered by my teachers when going to Catholic grade school, not fully knowing what that ever meant.

It is, though, something that I often think about while knitting or crocheting. I've always been, by nature, fidgety - so knitting & crocheting was just naturally a hobby that I'd fall in love with. There's a certain satisfaction in accomplishing the large projects like afghans or sweaters, but the small portable projects are great too.

The top I'm working on to wear this summer is still in progress, I'll post photos of that later. What is keeping me busy on the weekends are the itty bitty projects. For example, I finished four duduza dolls (queuable here on ravelry) that were mailed after the weekend was over. This past Easter weekend, I worked on some toe-up socks that I want to finish before Halloween, since they're in Halloween colours.

I weighed myself this morning - despite the holiday over the weekend, celebrated twice - once on Friday with my DB & SiL, and again on Saturday with DH's family - I still lost 1.2lbs. A great accomplishment, despite the weight being minimal!

The unfortuante thing with holidays is that there are sweets everywhere - and I had my fair shair of cheesecake and chocolates! I was sure I wasn't going to lose anything, but the fact that I did was awesome. I wasn't about to bring that big top to knit when DH & I went up north to visit the inlaws, but having my toe-up socks came in handy to keep my mind occupied enough. My hands were busy knitting stripe after self-stripping stripe in my socks to avoid having that third peice of chocolate or that extra handful of chips.

Having some kind of mindless knitting that's easy and small enough to carry around - like socks - are a handy thing to help keep the excess snacking at bay!

start of week two

Well, I've started my diet with a bit of a rocky road. As it turns out, last Monday I started my diet, and last Thursday at the last minute, my brother and SiL have invited us over for dinner to celebrate them selling their house. DH & I were careful in monitoring what we ate and at what volume, and I think we were pretty good about it, although it was hard to calculate our points on things like dessert, which we didn't have a lot of but we also didn't make, so I've no idea what went into it. So, I've a feeling that our points were thrown off a bit because of that. But, we also spent this past weekend at my parents-in-law's place, so the diet went thru a loop there. I like my inlaws a lot, but they tend to always try to feed me, so it was difficult to keep telling them that I'm on a diet and I can't have more food, and they kept trying to give me more food. Eesh.

As it turns out, DH lost about a pound this past week, but I gained two pounds. Go figure.

So, this week there should be no distractions. In fact, if I'm lucky, there should be no diet-distractions until Easter.

I did get my yarn last Friday, so I've started knitting my top for this summer's wedding. This is it so far. It's hard to tell from the picture, but it is a very dark blue. I'm using Cotlin yarn from knitpicks in the colour Plantation for this one. It's a really easy knit, and at the rate that I'm going, I should be able to finish this one plus a black one as well for the wedding. The top is called Vintage Love Summer Top (ravelry link & pattern) and is made from the top down. I can't wait to have it finished! Although I can't model it until I've lost the weight I need to; there's a good chance that I'll have this top done before the weight is lost. Nonetheless, it'll be a good distraction to keep my hands busy knitting instead of snacking, and it'll give me the motivation to stay on track with this diet so I can fit into it for August!

going on a diet...

Well, this summer (August) my brother's getting married. (yay!) I've decided that what I want to do is knit a top - or more specifically, knit 2 versions of the same top - to wear to the wedding. DH has been asked to be one of the groomsmen, and I've been designated as a greeter.

The problem is, I'm larger than the largest size available for the top I want to make, even though the largest size is a 3x. I am 3x sized, but that really varies from one brand to another. Bustwise, I'm actually 1.5" larger than what's asked for in the pattern. It wouldn't be difficult to just add a few stitches to accomodate my size, I've done that before. But what good would that be, really?

I've always been overweight, ever since I was little. My weight has never really been an issue for me, I've never been teased for being fat or anything like that. I was always fine with what size I was. Because I was never really one of those 'girly' kind of girls (obsessed with clothes, make up, etc) then fitting into little cute outfits was never much of a concern for me.

What made my weight an issue was when I started knitting for myself, and wanting to knit sweaters. Even though a lot of great patterns come in my size, buying enough yarn to make these largest sizes can get expensive, even if I go the more economical route.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to knit a sweater for myself and not have to buy more than 10 balls of yarn?!?

So, I've decided to put myself back on Weight Watchers, I've still got all of the points calculators and work books from when I last did it a few years ago, but didn't stick to it for too long. I've joined the weight watchers group on ravelry. My goal is to knit this top (ravelry link) twice, and I've ordered some knitpicks yarn in two colours.

The top two sizes are for a 48" bust and a 52" bust, and it looks like it's a negative ease top... so I want to fit in the 52" bust size comfortably. If I can get myself down to a 50" bust or so, that would be great. That's my goal for August.

DH wants to lose a little too, although he really doesn't need to lose a lot, but he's going to do WW with me for a bit. :) We'll officially start on Monday, which will give us plenty of time to lose the weight we want to for August!

I'll be (hopefully) blogging and knitting to help me keep on track with this diet. It'll motivate me to stay on track, get my projects done, and blog on a more regular basis!

queue the owl cup cozies!

I think that out of all the (meager) patterns I've designed, the best and most popular one to date is my owl coffee cup cozie ... so far 393 made on ravelry and 921 in queue, to date.

For some reason, though, I've gotten mildly obsessed with checking out its queues more so than any other design I have. The highest number of queues in a day has peaked at 10, over the last 180 days (back in September) and peaked at 5 in the last month.

It's a given that this is a small project, and many have posted that it's a great, easy way to learn cables.

I would love to have another day of queues peak at 10, or even beat that record. I've no idea how to have that happen, but it would be stellar. Valentine's Day is a week away... I wonder if this would make a great gift for that occasion?

collecting dog sweaters for local animal shelters

I started doing this a bit last year, but really didn't keep up with it, I think partially because I started too late in the year. But, this year, I think I'll need to start a bit earlier.

I've got three very local animal shelters, who would gladly take in knitted or crocheted dog sweaters - one that is local to me in Mississauga, and two others that are local to family members who live within Ontario but at least an hour's drive from me. I'd like to be able to collect @ least 20 sweaters per shelter - so a total of 60 at least. Although knitted or crocheted sweaters are prefered, any sort of dog sweaters would be greatly appreciated, as long as it's warm.

The sweaters must:
- wrap around the dog's front legs. No cape-style sweaters.
- made from a warm, machine washable yarn or fabric. If it’s not machine dryable, that’s ok, but at least machine washable. Many dogs are rescued in the winter and suffer from frostbite and hypothermia, so a warm fiber content would be needed for these dogs
- fit a 60lb dog or smaller. There's no minimum size, but anything that would fit up to a 60lb dog would be ideal.
- knitted or crocheted doesn't matter, but please nothing lacey or with big spaces in them. If you're making something with granny squares, make sure that it's a more 'closed' pattern. We're aiming more for warmth rather than pretty. 
-  All sweaters must be submitted to me by September 30, 2010.

To get my mailing address, please email me at purplespirit1 {at} hotmail {dot} com ... or via ravelry - I'm knitphomaniac there.

Some examples of this size dog (up to 60lbs) can be found here and here.

Thanks. :)  

too long between posts... :(

It feels like forever since I've last blogged. I've been so distracted with a thousand other things, lately, that there are days where it seems my brain, my hands, and my feet are each going their separate ways.

I've pulled another all nighter Sunday night to work on that knitting pattern that I wanted to submit for publication. Still under wraps atm - I want the big reveal of it to be when (or if!) I manage to get it published. I really need to get it done this week.

I've also been updating my etsy store like crazy... I haven't been paying enough attention to it for a very long time, so I've spent the last month or so concentrating as much as I could on it. It's paid off so far - I've made 2 sales this month (actually two sales within the last week!) which is a new record for me!

Plus I've been hanging around etsy a lot - and for the first time since I joined for that matter. I've discovered treasuries, and have so far created 2 this month. I've been hanging out in the etsy chat rooms too, and have met some great new people because of it. It's always awesome to get some great advice from fellow etsians, and to explore their shops as well.

Have I mentioned that I'm going to a knitting group two Tuesdays a month? I think the next meeting is tonight. It's out in Port Credit, which is only about 10 minutes away driving, but since I don't drive, it's in fact 2 buses away. Not far. But it's fun, and it's great to hang out with fellow knitters, something that I've never had a chance to do before. I'm getting a lot of great advice there too, and it's a fun group to hang out with too.

Well, I'm off to loiter on etsy again... will blog more frequently, I promise...

Yarn Karma - paying it forward

I've recently come across some very generous knitters on ravelry - there's a huge community of knitters and crocheters there that swap yarns and knitting supplies, and some are generous enough to send yarn or supplies one way w/o charging for them or for shipping.

Due to this, I've built a good collection of yarns and supplies. Most of which I was able to use for some design ideas I've had in mind and some other projects. Unfortunately, there was a stash of yarns I couldn't find a use for.

My neighbor is a high school teacher in Toronto, and we got to talking today on how there's a knitting club at the school he teaches. A knitting club! How lucky! I asked him if they could use yarn, and he said absolutely!

An hour later I showed up @ his place with a large Ikea bag full of the yarns I can't use - some were yarns shipped to me, others were yarn from my own personal stash - for this knitting club. He was so happy, and commented on how a lot of students are shying away from the group - despite the group being relatively new - because of the cost of yarn. Hopefully this bag of yarn will get a generation of knitters more enthoused about their projects!