Three week’s progress: 86 fish for a total of 176 fish completed at this time.

Fish Joining the Fishbowl
3 chocolate brown, 6 grape, 6 dark country blue, 6country blue, 6 gray heather, 6 berry blue, 6 violet, 6 blue mint, 6 autumn red, 6 pink, 6 orchid, 6 iris, 6 sundrop, 6 sping (green), 6 aqua mist

Previous Fish
90 fish: 2 red from stash, 6 orange from stash, 5 yellow from stash, 1 chocolate brown from stash, 1 purple from stash, 6 cream/off-white from stash, 6 watermelon pink, 6 limelight green, 6 lemonade yellow, 6 dark sage green, 6 forest floor green, 6 mango orange-yellow, 6 truffle heather (brownish-purple), 7 soft blue, 5 red, 6 light country peach, 6 bone (khaki), 3 chocolate brown

This post was supposed to appear December 4th, but I was too busy knitting fish, laying them out and knitting more fish. I have pictures, but again, I need to finish this by Saturday, ACK!

when public add tags: tessellate, fish, blanket

This week’s progress: 29 fish for a total of 90 fish completed at this time.

Fish Joining the Fishbowl
29 fish: 2 truffle heather (brownish-purple), 7 soft blue (oops), 5 red, 6 light country peach, 6 bone (khaki), 3 chocolate brown

Previous Fish
61 fish: 2 red from stash, 6 orange from stash, 5 yellow from stash, 1 chocolate brown from stash, 1 purple from stash, 6 cream/off-white from stash, 6 watermelon pink, 6 limelight green, 6 lemonade yellow, 6 dark sage green, 6 forest floor green, 6 mango orange-yellow, and 4 truffle heather (brownish-purple).

when public add tags: tessellate, fish, blanket

Fish count Friday?

It’s still not Friday, but it is time for a fish update. As previously stated, this post is protected until after Christmas so the recipient won’t accidentally spoil his surprise.

This week’s progress: 29 fish for a total of 61 fish completed at this time, not quite the halfway point, which concerns me. I needed to be at least halfway through the fish making process by now. I need to find my muse earlier in the year or choose quicker knits. On the brighter side, I have the fish pattern memorized and I almost doubled my total. After 52 fish one would hope so.

New Fish (29)
1 more limelight green, 6 lemonade yellow, 6 dark sage green, 6 forest floor green, 6 mango orange-yellow, and 4 truffle heather (brownish-purple)

Previous Fish (32)
2 red from stash, 6 orange from stash, 5 yellow from stash, 1 chocolate brown from stash, 1 purple from stash, 6 cream/off-white from stash, 6 watermelon pink, 5 limelight green.

when public add tags: tessellate, fish, blanket

(a la Laura Numeroff style)

If you give a girl some yarn, she might stare at you questioningly, then ask for a pattern to make.
If you give a girl a pattern, she will most definitely ask for needles or a hook.
If you give a girl some needles or a hook, she might need instructions (to learn how to knit/crochet).
If you give a girl instructions, she may ask about videos to better understand the technique.
If you give a girl the url to videos, she’ll see others working on interesting projects and will ask if there are free patterns online.
If you give a girl pattern urls, she’s bound to discover a podcast or two about yarn and ask for an mp3 player.
If you give a girl an mp3 player, she’ll download podcasts and is bound to learn about Ravelry. She’ll ask for an invite.
If you give a girl a Ravelry invite, she’ll probably ask for more yarn.
If you give a girl some yarn . . .

Threaden (a.) Made of thread; as, threaden sails; a threaden fillet.
Yarn (n.) Spun wool; woolen thread; also, thread of other material, as of cotton, flax, hemp, or silk; material spun and prepared for use in weaving, knitting, manufacturing sewing thread, or the like.

Threaden Thursdays are a review of my knitting, however, I can’t write too much because I am exclusively Christmas knitting right now. I can tell you that it’s coming along nicely. I like that in these initial stages, the project is entirely portable. Since the weather is cold, I’ve been wearing my hoodie nearly all the time. A skein of yarn fits perfectly in the pocket and I pull the yarn from the center and walk around knitting. I’m sure people think I’m a bit weird, but I’ve been weird most of my life. While visiting with friends in GR who understand my quirks, I was able to make a little progress.

My second post for today will have Christmas knitting updates, leave a comment here if you’d like me to email you the password. Please don’t post your email address in the comment area, just fill it out in the name/website/email area of the comment form.

I designed a coolie yarn ball graphic for Threaden Thursdays and that’s about it for today. Well, actually I designed it twice, I had it near perfect and forgot that my computer doesn’t like to multitask. GIMP hung and I lost most of it, but I had enough saved to try again. I liked the first one better, but I couldn’t remember what I actually did. .I tried to find a tutorial online, no such luck. Then I tried to find a nice clipart type graphic, no luck there either. I did find a graphic that I could purchase the rights to for almost $8, but I can’t rationalize purchasing something because I’m too lazy to do it myself. Have I mentioned how wonderful GIMP is recently? A simple circle, then a few paths converted to curves and ta-da!

I would much rather title this post “Festive Fish Friday,” but that would give away the project to someone and it’s not Friday. Here are some current photos of fish.

I have a total of 32 (35) fish in the following colors: 2 red from stash, 6 orange from stash, 5 yellow from stash, 1 chocolate brown from stash, 1 purple from stash, 6 cream/off-white from stash, 6 watermelon pink, 5 limelight green, & 3 too big and armor-like burgundy fish. I am not going to be using those last 3 burgundy ones, but they still count ’cause they’re fish.

when public add tags: tessellate, fish, blanket

I have been working on my super secret Christmas Elf project, knitted of course, and am discovering interesting things about my knitting. My gauge(yarn tension) is not as consistent as I would like, but I did know that already. What I didn’t realize was what I did at the end of rows while knitting flat. Most of my projects of late have been in the round, hats & socks, so it doesn’t come up often. I tug a bit too much on the stitch I am knitting into with my right needle. By the time I get to the end of the row, I have large stitches on the left needle waiting to be knit off, so I have to tug back the extra yarn through the row I just knit. A bit of a waste of time in my opinion, so I started watching what I was doing. I am still knitting too tight, who knew. In order to retrain my brain to stop tugging on the stitches, I rip out the row if I get to the end and have too much yarn tugged out of the row. Extreme, yes, but something must be done. I am committed to knitting correctly so that my projects don’t have extra holes or uneven stitches. I am constantly holding up my little knitting to the lamp so I can see if I’ve created silly holes. So far, it’s working well. The other benefit to knitting with care is that I put myself closer to doing the Master Knitter classes.

really, I’m not! I never would have considered myself a yarn snob. I’ve been using up stash yarn and some of it is Red Heart or Caron One Pounders. I had no problem knitting projects out of this the first time, but my hands do not like it lately. I had no problem knitting with the Caron Simply Soft yarns, but my problem arises when I look at the large bag of Red Heart that I purchased this weekend to make my super secret Christmas Elf present. I dreaded touching it, what little I did knit from my stash this time stuck to my hands, dried them out and made me miserable. I argued with myself for days about replacing it.

I made an unscheduled trip to GR yesterday and threw the Red Heart in my car. I decided to check out the local craft stores. Simply Soft was on sale, making it very attractive, I want my gift to be washable. So I began to hunt colors. I wasn’t able to find all the replacement colors that I originally found with Red Heart, but I think I found enough to make it worth the exchange of yarns. The photo on the left is the set I returned, the other two are the new colors. According to Caron’s website, I think there may be two or three more colors I can get. I may hunt the stashes up for sale or trade on Ravelry to discontinued colors. I debated trying to find Lion’s Wool-Ease, but I’d have to order it all online because the stores don’t carry a wide variety. It would be difficult to coordinate colors from online, so I settled on Simply Softs.

I am knitting a blanket for Christmas Elf prezzie. The pattern is called, “A Recipe for Fish,” but I am using this redesign because the fish are supposed to lay flat. I made a mistake in my first few fish, so they don’t lay as flat as I’d like, but I’m going to try to knit it correctly with a brown one and see if it lays flatter. The design I am going for at this point is a square color wheel. Think about opening your favorite graphics program. When you open the color picker tool, you see an image like the one in the middle and that is how I plan on laying out the fish at this point.

Here are the search terms you can search to see completed fish blankets shown on Flickr:

• +fish +knit +blanket
• +fish +tessellate
• “a recipe for fish“

when public add tags: tessellate, fish, blanket

My goal is week is to start checking off my 101 things in 1001 days. While the list itself is not posted here, there is a 101 in 1001 category attached to any post discussing my adventures. In November, I plan to tackle reviewing websites, reading/reviewing biographies, reading/reviewing classics and any art/craft ones I can reasonably complete. I say reasonably complete because I am heavily into Christmas knitting, which I am unable to blog about much because my Christmas Elf recipient has been known to read here. I may post anyway, but mark and private/password. This will allow me to let non-husband-family to track progress. Please leave a comment if you find a password/private post you would like to read. Use a valid email address in the email box and I’ll gladly send it over to you.

101 in 1001 progress:

• #25 on my art/craft list: calculate number of yards in stash ~ this was complete until I purchased yarn for Christmas projects, but that is Christmas/Charity stash. I don’t want that mixed in with my everyday stash.
• #23 on my art/craft list: sort Ravelry queue, prioritize into realistic time frame ~ I haven’t attached a time frame, but I’ve cleaned up the queue and tagged it to make it easier to find projects.
• #18 finish and document instructions for R2D2 beanie hat modifications ~ completed!
• #21 I frogged the blanket I wasn’t going to finish, but I haven’t made the hoodie yet.