Work in Progress Wednesday v.112

*Glub*  That, my friends, is the sound of me coming up for air.  I really thought I'd have so much more time to blog and knit and do fun things when I wasn't working a full time job and commuting back and forth from the big city.  Not so much, I'm afraid.

Mr. Right was away for a week again, and I was running around like a crazy person getting his house ready to go on the market (So we can actually live together!  A month after we got married!). Once that was done, we decided to take an impromptu camping trip to the mountains to see the fall colors, Colorado style.  We haven't done that before, and well... wow.  Behold:

and

and

See?

Really, we had a blast and got to explore part of the state we hadn't seen much of before.  Sorry blog, it was totally worth being away for a week.

Speaking of sorry...  I'm *still* knitting that little lace scarf.  This is how much yarn I have left (it's about the size of a quarter):

(Apologies for the crap pics, it's late on Tuesday night and the light just isn't.)

Don't be fooled, the stupid ball of yarn has been this size for a week and refuses to shrink.  It's like an everlasting gobstopper or something.

This is the scarf as it stands:

I borrowed a set of blocking wires from a knit night buddy and hopefully I'll get it off the needles and onto the pins and wires tomorrow.  There's a teensy chance of an FO Friday appearance this week, but don't get your hopes up too high.

In other news, I finally caved in to the urge and started swatching for Idlewood.  My swatch:

Yeah, it didn't go too well.  I got 2 or so inches into the swatch and realized that the fabric on the suggested needles looked like honeycomb.  Boo.  Going down a needle size will throw my gauge off, and so I find myself in the market for a fun-but-simple (style, not necessarily construction) sweater pattern that I can knit in a size 38 with 1100 or so yards of this pretty brown Cascade 220.  I'm open to suggestions, so take your best shot in the comments. 

S'all I got for today.  For newer and more exciting projects, check out all the other WIP Wednesday entries over at Tami's.  See you there!

FO Friday -- Bulky Baby Blankie Edition

Great news, y'all!  I finished the baby blanket I'd been working on at breakneck speed last week!  And only 5 days after the baby shower!  Oops.  I tried.  I really, really did.  But apparently I brought some sort of exotic cold back from Costa Rica with me, and then had to ship Mr. Right back off on the Business Trip That Never Ends (...it goes on and on, my friends!) and all of it slowed me down just a smidge.

But!  All flimsy excuses aside, here it is:

I loved knitting this blanket.  For reals.  It was fast and easy, and the pattern was both well-written and very intuitive.  After a bit, I only had to glance at it occasionally.  And that doesn't happen for me very often.

If you're interested, I modified an afghan pattern to shrink it down to baby-size, and knit it in Knit Picks Brava (acrylic!) Bulky.  Details on my mods are here.  And I gotta say, the yarn was surprisingly soft and squishy.  I'm not a fan of acrylic at all, and I'd totally use this again for something like a baby blanket that needs to be both washable and generally mistreat-able.

It's an all-around Woot! project, I'd say.

In other news, I'm still waiting on the rest of the wedding pictures so I can write up a proper post or two.  Soon!  Promise!  I did find one picture I wanted to share with you all:

Remember Wendell?  He's my ridiculously adorable and incredibly reliable wedding assistant, sent by Kathleen to help me wrangle all the details.  He totally came to the chapel with me and hung out in the dressing room while I was getting ready.  He stood watch over the bridesmaids bouquets and just generally made me smile.  Wendell rocks.

Speaking of things that rock... (smooth transition, no?) Go check out FO Friday and Fiber Arts Friday for lots more yarny goodness.  They're all kinds of awesome.

FO Friday - Wedding Puffs Edition

Happy almost-weekend, guys!  I'm still digging out from all the wedding debris around here, and knitting my fingers off on the baby blankie for *gulp* tomorrow night, but I wanted to take a quick minute to share a fun pre-wedding FO. 

I mentioned once or twice that I wanted to knit some hexipuffs in our wedding colors to hang in the apple tree for decoration, and then eventually work into my beekeeper's quilt.  Sentimentality and all that mooshy stuff.  I showed you a pile that looked like this:

And then like this:

And then things got super crazy, as they tend to do in the week before a wedding, and I didn't manage to knit the puffs with our initials on them like I wanted.  Fortunately for me, I had 6 (!) good friends staying at my house with me during the wedding weekend, one of whom is my bestest knitting buddy (Hi, BB!).  Bless her heart, she spent a semi-frantic 15 minutes on the night before our wedding embroidering our initials onto two of my wedding puffs, and then stringing them all together into a happy little garland.

On the big day, they hung on the gate leading to the reception:

And they looked pretty freaking awesome, if you ask me.  I'm SO happy with the way it all turned out, and with the helping hand I got in getting them all finished. 

The other wedding FO was the groom's socks, which I posted about before, but here's a shot of them in action on the Big Day:

That's a wrap on the wedding knitting, stay tuned for something new and exciting coming soon to a blog near you -- just as soon as I figure out what it is.  Meanwhile, go check out all the fun stuff happening at the other FO Friday and Fiber Arts Friday blogs.  They're pretty much guaranteed awesomesauce.

Work in Progress Wednesday v.109

Dudes!  I'm totally home. And totally MARRIED! (Eep!)  I have oodles of stories to tell about the last couple of weeks, but we're only just back from our honeymoon and haven't even managed to put our houses back together or open our wedding presents yet.  Scandalous, no?

Anyway, I wanted to pop in to say Hi!  I SO missed y'all!  (really), and share the little bit of knitting that I managed to do on planes over the last couple of weeks.  Behold, the Bulky Baby Blankie:

I'm 2+ repeats in now and it's about 15" long.  Baby shower is this Saturday and I need it to be about 36" long, so hold your breath for me.  It's knitting up pretty quickly, and the pattern is actually sort of fun so I think I have a decent shot.

My Nympheas scarf is still hanging around too, but the only action it saw while I was away was to have its Addi Turbo needles angrily ripped from it by a VERY unhappy Costa Rican security agent.(More on my career as an international criminal later.) Yikes.  I'm hoping I'll be able to salvage it, but haven't been brave enough to take a  peek at it yet.  We'll see.

I promise to be back in the next few days with lots of posts about the rehearsal, the wedding and the honeymoon.  Pics, too!  Until then, I'm going to concentrate on growing my little blankie and catching up on all my blog reading -- especially with my WIPW peeps.  See you there!

To help tide you over until then, here's my favorite picture of our ceremony...

And one of my incredibly handsome groom...

*sigh*