TARDIS Shawl Progress

I've made great progress on my "Bigger on the Inside" shawl. I'm five rows from the end of the TARDIS section; after that there's a fairly mindless two inch wide border of ribbing. Then I'll be ready to block it. I'm really looking to blocking it to see how it REALLY looks. Most of the shawl has been knit while watching episodes of Doctor Who. I started the shawl with the Ninth Doctor, went up through all the episodes currently available on Amazon Prime, then started through the classic episodes on Prime. The classic shows are campy and fun; I LOVE the low-budget special effects! I've also developed a nearly-50-years-too-late crush on Jamie McCrimmon (portrayed by Frazer Hines), a companion of the Second Doctor. It's been a fun experience, with only one glaring error so far. It's one that I'm sure I can repair, though, so I'm not worried about it. I don't think anyone but a knitter who has already knit this shawl would notice, and I don't know anyone locally who has knit it. :-) Well, lunch break is over, so back to work!

The TARDIS Shawl Adventure

Fall is in the air in my little corner of the world....there's a nip in the morning, warm sunny afternoons, and cool crisp evenings. I love Fall, and always have loved it. I love the look in the autumn sky after the August haze lifts. I love watching the trees for that first hint of color. I love being able to sit comfortably on my deck in the evenings after work, knitting until it gets too dark to see. *Happy Fall Dance* A lot of my knitting time in the past couple of weeks has been in waiting rooms (Daddy's having some back issues), so it's mostly been relegated to what I refer to as my "Waiting Room Socks". I always keep a pair of "plain vanilla" socks on needles in a little bag that's easily carried into waiting rooms. The pattern is so simple that I don't need to carry it with me (except for a little 3 x 5 cheat sheet that I still use when I turn the heel to be sure I don't make a mess), and it's a great conversation starter. At home, though, I'm working on my "Bigger On The Inside" shawl, because I want to have it finished by the Doctor Who 50th anniversary celebration on November 23. I've now completed the Time Vortex Lace section and have completed 8 of 41 rows in the TARDIS section. The yarn is as close to TARDIS blue as I could get, and so far I'm very happy with my progress. As with most shawls, I won't really know how it looks until it's completed and blocked. I'm anxious to see how it finishes up!

August Already?

It's hard to believe how quickly the summer can get away from you! Especially when you start to think about holiday knitting. You see, hen you're a slow, easily-distracted knitter like myself, you have to start your holiday knitting early. I've got some of mine finished, believe it or not. Still have a few things to do, but not many. I stopped on my holiday knitting to make a "Regular Guy Beanie" for a young distant cousin of mine who was fascinated by my knitting during a recent family visit. Since I made a beanie for him, I also had to make one for his younger brother. Which meant that I needed to make something for their sister as well. Both beanies are completed, and I've finished about a mitten and a half. I should be able to finish those up this week. Speaking of mittens, have you discovered the Cloisonee pattern by the Yarn Harlot? It works up pretty quickly, and I love that it looks more complicated than it really is. :-) I'd started a "Bigger on the Inside" shawl for myself, but laid it aside to get these little "cousin projects" finished. Then I have another UFO that I promised a friend some time ago. I really need to finish that up before going back to my shawl. But I wanna work on my shawl. It has little TARDISes (TARDIi?) On it and is just the thing for a Whovian like myself. So many projects, so little time!

I'm Baaaaaaack!

I've been away from my blogging for so long that you probably thought I'd fallen off the face of the earth....I have been spending most of my online time on my Kindle Fire, and I'm just too slow keying on the onscreen keyboard to enter long blocks of text without getting frustrated. But I ordered myself a bluetooth keyboard, which arrived just a few minutes ago. It works like a charm, so I'll be better about blogging now. :-) I've been working on some Christmas gifts; Saturday I completed what I've been calling "hideous mittens". I love the pattern (The Yarn Harlot's "Cloisonne"), I love the yarn (good old dependable Cascade 220 superwash), but the colors are truly hideous! I made them for my supervisor at work; she's a big fan of the Baltimore Ravens, and their colors are purple with black and gold accents. Yuck. Oh, well, she'll like them and that's all that matters. I've ordered the yarn to knit myself a shawl called "Bigger on the Inside"....you guessed it.....a Doctor Who shawl! *LOL* I actually ordered some nice Cascade, but when it arrived it's much darker than I thought it would be. It's actually navy blue; that's okay, though. I'll make something else from it. Okay, I guess that's enough for my "return" post. :-) Have a great evening, and keep knitting!

Waiting for Yarn

How insane is it that I'm waiting for yarn to be delivered before starting my next sizable project? I have BASKETS full of yarn. There's a term for this that I read on the Yarn Harlot's blog called "SABLE": Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy.

And, even though my stash has come dangerously near SABLE status, I find myself checking online to see when my next KnitPicks order is due to arrive. Hopeless, I tell you, I'm just plain hopeless. Oh well. A yarn addiction is a relatively harmless one.

The yarn I'm waiting for is to knit a TARDIS. For those of you uninitiated into the world of Doctor Who, a TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space) is a time machine used by Doctor Who and his companion(s) to travel through time and space to provide assistance to others. The TARDIS looks like a 1950's London police box; if you've never seen a photo of one of those, it looks something like a large-ish blue old-style telephone booth. You know, the kind that Superman used to change into his tights and cape back in the day.

Back to the knitting issue: I HAD some worsted yarn on hand that I thought would work, but this proved to be problematic on a couple of counts. First of all, it really wasn't the right color. I needed some dark blue yarn and some darker blue yarn, along with a small bit of white. As it turns out, the yarn I thought would work was MUCH too light, and it just didn't look right at all. Additionally, the worsted weight yarn was going to make this a BIG ol' TARDIS, much larger than I'd intended. So, KnitPicks to the rescue. I went online and selected some fingering weight yarn that I thought would be a better color. As always, the price was very reasonable and I had enough stashed on my Wish List there to bring my order up to the minimum order for free shipping. (I ALWAYS have something on my Wish List there....*LOL*)

And now I'm waiting. I have plenty to keep me busy until the new yarn arrives, of course. Actually I guess I SHOULD be working on some decluttering I'd promised myself I'd get finished.

But then again, there's a pair of socks I want to start.....