Friday Ketchup

I've been busier than appearances on this blog would readily indicate. Maybe it's indicated by lack of appearance on the blog? There's even MORE than is shown below, but here's a little Friday Ketch-up.

Went to the Empire Quilt Guild Show. Here's my favorite, total size approx 14"x20".



Got some yarn. And some more yarn. Lots of yarn. Mostly cotton. Lots of summer babies to knit for this year.



Swatched.



You know what gets me about the swatching? Using the yarn. I totally don't mind doing some pre-knitting, I knit because I like doing it. Why would I be mad about doing more knitting? And if I'm all excited about a project, it's really easy for me to be excited about pre-project experimenting. In fact, I think I often conceive of experiments first and it's only the utilitarian in me that makes me want to create a "finished object" sort of project to use the experiment. But then, the utilitarian in me RAILS against using the "project" yarn, the precious, yummy, paid-good-money-for-it, but-i-LIKE-it-so-much yarn for a swatch. Like there will never be enough of it. Like if I use it now I won't have it later. I know. There's a lot of great yarn in the world, I will always find a new other yarn I like and if I won't use it now so that I can use it later, when will it be time to use it? Why have it if I can't use it? I know.

Anyway, I dodged that particular pathology this time 'round by not cutting any of it. That's right. Those swatches are connected to each other and also connected to SIX separate balls of yarn that I schlepped around while I worked on them. The very same six balls of yarn in the yarn photo above - see how the yarn is all trailing off-camera? Yeah. I actually intended to wash the swatches (while still connected to the balls) to see how everything would behave, but then I was really too excited to get started and figured I had enough worked out to just get going.

In even MORE yarn news, there are co-worker babies again this summer. This year, the plan is to knit several small individual items, rather than repeat the blankets from last summer. They were lovely but required so much seaming (98 total squares!), it's almost all I can remember about them. We picked colors together so everything will coordinate, and we can share half-balls for accent colors, etc. We started with the baby-item patterns from Mason-Dixon Knitting: the baby kimono, burp cloth, and bib.

This is the beginning of burp cloth #2:



Tune in this weekend for a Knitting Revelation - from the swatches, of course - and the beginnings of what will be a truly fantastic baby blanket. With a lot fewer than 98 squares to sew together.