Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Almost Ready for StashDash!


StashDash is almost upon us! Which means that starting Friday I can start finishing projects again! :)

To explain, Stashdash is an event arranged by The KnitGirllls vid-cast that runs from Memorial Day weekend to Labour Day weekend (I think... this year it starts May 22nd and ends August 14th, both days inclusive). To enter, you set a goal of how many meters you intend to knit, crochet, spin or ply. This year they have a 3K, a 5K and a 10K event. I'm signing up for the 5K. So that's 5000 meters worth of knitting, spinning and crocheting. However, WIPs count! So as long as I have at least the bind-off to do, I can count all the yardage of that entire project!

So with that in mind, I'm getting all my WIPs in order so I have as little as possible to do on as many projects as possible :) So if you think some of these things have been underway for QUITE awhile, and I should just finish already... you'd be right! ;)

The first one is a new cast-on though :) I came across the Avery Pullover by Nikki Van De Car, and just couldn't resist it. Such cute cables! I'm knitting this out of Drops Extrafine Merino in the 18-24mo size. I don't have an intended recipient yet (although my youngest niece is a definite possibility ;) ), but I absolutely love the knitting, and it's going VERY quickly. Should be able to finish within the week, unless I start procrastinating on the sleeves ;)

Next up is the Conjunction Cowl by Susie White. I've finished the handspun rainbow yarn, and only have another repeat of the light blue to go before finishing! I miscalculated terribly and started the rainbow way too late - I'd hoped for it to be centered a bit more. But oh well - I still love the way it looks :) As does a friend of mine, who was so enamoured by it, that I may just have to give it to her once it's done ;)
Shouldn't take me more than an hour to finish, but I'm saving this for June 1st, so it'll be eligible for the AroundYourNeck-KAL as well :)

I haven't gotten nearly as far with my Spotted Socks as I'd hoped to - knitting with two yarns slows me down quite significantly - but I've finally made it past the first heel (the OMG heel... I think I like it better for toe-up socks than cuff-down) and am rushing down the foot... and then I 'just' have the other one to do ;)

Finally, and this is the biggie, I am ALMOST done with the Cozy Baby Blanket I'm knitting for my niece. In fact, I only have one square left to do!
Yes, this was supposed to be my "One a day in May" project, but as I got closer to the end they became extremely potatochip'y (=must have one more!), and Sunday I finished the second to last one, and threw it in the wash, so it'd be ready to finish on Friday, and hand over to my sister on Saturday!

Unfortunately, using scrap yarn came back to bite me here, as I'd lost the labels of some of them, but assumed they'd all be superwash. Yeah... I was wrong :-P The pink yarn especially felted something awful, which made for a rather interesting result. One of the whites and the light blue felted as well, although not quite as bad. I briefly considered cutting them out and exchanging the squares for something else, but honestly I'm afraid I'll just mess it up even further... and at least it's usable the way it is now! ... Even if slightly more asymmetrical than before I put it into the wash! ;)

So that's my lesson learned to check yarn before starting a project... coming hard on the heels of the felted swatch of last week, I hope it'll stick!

All put together, this should put me at about 2000-2200meters pretty quickly -- not a bad start to StashDash! :)

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