love is all you need

The other night at Knit Knite, I was happily chugging away on my ripple afghan when it started to dawn on me that I had a very small amount of the yarn I was working with left. I crocheted a few more inches and then finally admitted that I would not have enough pink to finish out that row of the ripple. That's when it also dawned on me that as it was my fourth stripe of that color, I wouldn't have enough of any color to finish an entire stripe since they've all been used three times as well. That meant either buying 17 more balls of Cascade 220 Superwash, making this the most expensive blanket I've ever owned, or it meant that my blanket was done. Which do you think I chose?

I'M DONE, Y'ALL!!
Final dimensions are 67" long x 50" wide, when I originally was planning on 67" wide x 70" long. This, of course means that my ripples are rippling vertically instead of the typical horizontal ripplage. I have to say I am completely fine with this.

I haven't knitted on my sock at all since I've been back from my trip and my Thermal is still languishing in my unpacked suitcase. I did manage to crochet a couple of rows on the Ripple Afghan, but that's about it. This morning was a very rainy one here in North Texas, but it was also pleasantly cool- perfect weather for knitting while sipping home made apple cider. I stopped by the grocery store on my way home from work and picked up some of the ingredients for the cider- cloves, allspice berries, cinnamon sticks, oranges and apple juice and threw them into the crock pot so I could savor the aroma as I arranged my newly purchased pumpkins on my kitchen table. Fall is here and it is just the kick I need to get my knitting groove back.
Oh, and Joey told me that when he was taking the dogs outside this morning, Daisy chased down a squirrel and caught it in her mouth. He spanked her and got her to drop it, but then Henry went and picked it up. After he got Henry to let it go, the squirrel ran off. I'm hoping the squirrel wasn't too badly injured- I didn't see any dead ones laying around when I got home from work. Then I heard that familiar pitter-patter of squirrels in the eaves of my house, and when I looked up a few of them were watching me.

I'm just treading water, slowly making progress on my ripple afghan. I really wish I could crochet faster- each color (two rows, about 1") takes me about an hour and a half. My goal this weekend was to get past the halfway point- but I didn't quite make it. This blanket is 67 1/2" (171.5cm) wide, so I want it to be at least 70" (177.8cm) long. That is 70 color repeats, and so far I'm at 30. I'm still really enjoying this project- I've gone back and seen pictures from the start and I really have made quite a bit of progress. It's starting to get heavy, too- so far it weighs just over 2 pounds!

I’ve finally figured out a good reason to have multiple projects on the stove at the same time: when you stall out on one, you can just pick up one of the others for a bit. I’m stalled out on my quilt- I need to figure out what to do with the border. The kit I bought comes with border fabric, but you have to cut it into many thin strips, sew their ends together at 45-degree angles to make one long strip, then attach it to the quilt, doing some weird foldy-thing at the corners. I dunno, sounds like a lot of work to me. Or, I might just see if I can just fold my backing fabric over the edge to the front, and that might be a little easier. But for now, I’ll just sit on my bum and add some ripples to my afghan while I think it over.

I should've known that quilting is hard, especially when you've never had a sewing lesson. I've finished sewing the quilt top and have basted both the top and bottom to the batting. The fusible batting didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped, so I'll have to do some pinning before I can start the quilting process. I'm completely worried about the quilting- it was hard enough trying to maneuver the top toward the end- hopefully I'll get up the nerve to do it soon- I'm ready to have a new quilt to snuggle under!
And speaking of things to snuggle under, the ripple afghan is still coming along, row after rippled row.