WIP Wednesday – Orangina

I have a terrible habit of starting projects in their appropriate season, and putting them in hibernation once the season has passed. Take Orangina, for example, which I abandoned last August after starting it just a few weeks earlier.

Right around the first day of summer, I remembered it. If I ever want to wear this thing, I should finish it when it is hot out.

So here we have the second half of Orangina, about 75% of the way through the lace portion. Once the two halves are the same length, I’ll put them together and do the ribbing in the round so I can try it on as I go. This thing WILL be finished when it is still warm enough to wear it. Those crocheted blankets can wait.

Summer!

The northernmost sunset of the year.

Happy summer solstice! Enjoy that daylight!

Not so bad

I’ve been studying for the bar exam for a few weeks now. This is my summer:

You see a BARBRI video on the computer, the BARBRI notebook ahead of me, and some crochet to keep me from losing my sanity.

The good news about BARBRI is that 1) it’s very thorough and 2) they provide you with fill-in-the-blanks outlines, so I can get a lot of crochet done while watching the videos.

What do I mean by a lot of crochet? I mean that so far I’ve made 176 little 2-row circles for the hexagon blanket, and I’m well on my way to making them into 3-row circles.

I’m using 22 colors – all 20 colors of KnitPicks Simply Cotton Worsted, plus two of the undyed organic colors. To ensure that the colors are used evenly, I made 8 center circles of each color, then made sure that each color was used 8 times making second rings. Now I’m doing third rings, again making sure that each color is used 8 times.

So far, with the crochet to keep me company, bar prep has not been so bad. Yes, I do have to put down the crochet for several hours at a time to do practice questions and refine my notes. But I’ve been doing a lot of studying at the lake, and I’ve been able to spend a lot of time outside. I even give myself the occasional break to watch the sun set.

WIP Wednesday – Getting There

I’ve finally started finishing Babette.

I tried sewing the edges together, but I didn’t think it looked good unless the seam matched one of the edge colors. With 12 different colors, and some squares only 4 rows wide, it just wasn’t working out. I decided to switch to crochet seams, all with navy blue.

I think this is working out a lot better. The darker, unified color highlights the individual squares. And it’s MUCH EASIER, so it will actually get finished some time soon!

Oregon Berry Crumble

From this…

to this.

It’s Falkland in “Oregon Berry Crumble” by RogueAdventures. I got about 475 yards of light fingering from the 4oz of fiber. I’m pretty happy with it. I definitely have room for improvement, but I’m a new enough spinner that my first thought is still “look, I made yarn!” I really enjoyed working with it, and I love the colors.

I think it would look really nice with some gray fiber I have.

Hmmm… what to make?

Color Options

So, as I mentioned, my sister recently earned her Master’s. I’m making her a graduation present (or maybe housewarming, if I take long enough that she’s moved by then…)

I decided to crochet Hexagon How-to. Caroline likes funky retro.

I’m struggling to decide on the color scheme. I feel like I have four main options.

Option A – Solid background color, circles in the same color family. See rettgrayson’s blog (or ravelry).

Option B – Solid background color, circles of many different colors. See Annerosemary’s on ravelry.

Option C – many colors, different colors for each segment. See Knitting Nonni’s blog.

Option D – many colors, but the center circles all match. The original pattern photos show this color scheme, and a lot of people seem to have chosen it.

(Yes, I used PowerPoint to make knitting diagrams. No, I’m not ashamed.)

I started out thinking I would do Option C. Hey, Caroline likes bright colors.

But wow, those colors are bright. Maybe not in a good way. I’m leaning towards Option A now, with the dark purple you see above as the background color, and circles in shades of pink, yellow, tan, and orange.

So, what do you think?