I'm still here

It has been a long time since my last post. What can I say, but life got busy.

It is almost Christmastime and I'm still busy. I hope to write more in 2009. I finally got a digital camera and have lots of photos to post.

I'm still knitting the Great American Afghan. We did 9 blocks in class. My last class was in October and my next class will be in January. I had five of the blocks to do on my own during the hiatus. I have four done and the fifth one is on the needles.

In April I will be starting the Great North American Afghan classes. I already have my yarn and book for this class. This afghan will be more difficult. Most of the squares are multicolored. A few are one color and we will not be having classes on those.

I also knitted a baby kimono, hat, and blanket for a friend. The kimono is from the first Mason Dixon book. It was a fast and easy knit.

Classes continue...baseball is starting

I just got my homework assignment for my fourth Aran afghan square. The square is by Suzanne Atkinson and has a picture of a church, tree, birds, and the sun depicted on it.

In our previous classes we were only to have the border finished before class and then we continued on with more of the square during class. The problem with this is, class is only 1 1/2 hrs long. We didn't get too far on our squares until class ended. The next class was a new square. If we had a problem we had to either wait until the next class (a month away) or come to one of the other classes that she was teaching. Now with the fourth square we can knit as far as we can. This way if there is a problem, we can address it in the class that the block is assign to. I think this is a much better arrangement.

Today I was busy copying and enlarging the charts for the next three squares. I like the format of this afghan. All the blocks are different so I don't get bored knitting them. I did two baby afghans for my aunt last year. I had to force myself to get them finished because I got bored with the patterns.

Baseball also starts in April. The Reading Phillies and the Allentown Pig Irons had and exhibition game on Tuesday night. The R-Phillies are the AA team and the Pig Irons are the AAA team for the Philadelphia Phillies. Allentown is a new stadium. The fans picked the name Pig Irons. There is a story behind the name but you would have to check out their website for that info. Last year the AAA team was in Ottawa. It is nice that they are now only about an hour or so from Reading. There are several bus trips planned to go to Allentown this year. I doubt if we will be going though. All the trips are on Saturday's and that is a work day for me. I must earn money to enlarge my yarn stash.

The big trip is to Chicago during the Labor Day weekend. I signed up for this one. We are going to see a game in Cleveland and Chicago but these will be with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Hey, It's St Patrick's Day

I'm not a big fan of St Patrick's Day. First, I'm not Irish and secondly, I don't drink beer no matter what color it is. Most times I don't even remember to wear green. Today I wore a rose colored top.

So for all you celebrants of St Patrick's Day, may the luck of the Irish be with you.

Now onto something I do like to do and that is knit. I almost finished my third square for the Great American Aran Afghan. I am waiting until class on Saturday to finish it off with four bobbles. I have never done bobbles and thought that I should get the teachers input. I did start the next square. It is a plain square with an Aran sweater sewn onto the square. I thought that I could at least handle the plain square without the instructors input. How could I possibly mess that up. Well I didn't read the instructions for one of the rows and had to frog already.

Knitting charts and the Great American Aran Afghan

I'm taking a knitting class at my LYS, Yarn Gallery. It is The Great American Aran Afghan. There are twenty blocks in the afghan. Four more can be knitted as pillows or whatever. I've completed the first square, but I had to do it twice as the first one was too big. I have this problem with gauge. I went down one ndl sz., reknit it, and blocked it. Now it is the correct sz, 12" square.

For the next square, I have the first 6 knit rows done. That was our homework for the next class. Yes, I said homework. I used a ndl that was 3 szs smaller then the what was requested in the instructions. I'm working on a guage swatch for the afghan, so I can get a better idea what my guage is using several ndl szs.

The book has charts that can be used but they can be confusing. It will say to knit 12 stitches from chart A starting on row 1, knit 33 stitches on chart B starting with row one, then go back to 12 stitches on chart A but start on row 24. This can be confusing, so I copied the charts and laid them out according to how they are to knit.

So, now I have two weeks until the next class. I better get working on some of my other WIP's.