Gifted Gorgeousness, Faithful April #1, and Some TUSAL

Well, hidey ho~ Thank you for all the well wishes for finding more huck towels! I did manage to get two -- the only two they had. I don't know if more will trickle out from back stock but here is hoping! Three more to go so please share all your well wishes again haha. :D

click me!

Now on to the crafty things! I have joined in Justine's Faithful April, where we devote our time on one project. I have shoehorned it as "finish one project at a time" as I really wanted to join in but the local knitting guild decided this was the month to knit some squares for a baby afghan! These will also work for Jo's Gifted Gorgeousness as they are not baby afghan squares for me (thank goodness not ready for that haha :b). They needed to be done this month and I got the boss-lady's approval since knitting doesn't count anyway LOL. :D

Here are my two squares!

Well, here is where my two squares WOULD be but I completely derped out and didn't take a picture before taking them in to the lady finishing the blanket!  We decided to make a sort of sampler afghan with different 8" x 8" squares in yellow and white as the baby gender is unknown. Some of the less adventurous knitters will make some stockinette/garter squares for the corners. My squares are a triangle (yellow) and tile (creamy white) stitches. I am well known in the group for being a tight knitter (if you knit please be amused/horrified that I cannot slide my stitches on aluminum! needles without great effort!) so I was asked to do the tile square after one of the ladies brought her completed one in and was unhappy(?) with it (I thought it looked fine). She had four repeats of the stitch to my six.

I am unsure about the yarn. It was my first foray into using a merino/acrylic blend. The white in particular seemed to be prone to slubs (I haaaaate slubs). Otherwise it's very, very soft and lovely to hold the finished product. It splits like crazy.  At $8/213yd skein, I am not sure how comfortable I am using for baby items though it does make for a lovely gift. I would not recommend it for a beginner yarn unless one is willing to not stab people with needles after all the splitting and slipping and slubs.

Technical Details

• Baby Afghan Squares, tile stitch (example pattern here), and triangle stitch (example pattern here)
• Yarn: Cascade Pacific, 02 white and 12 yellow
• #7 (4.5mm) needles
• Finished size blocked: 8" square (20ish cm square)
• Started: March 31, Finished: April 10, 11 hours.

before

Also for Faithful April and GG, more progress on Final Fantasy III, YAAAAAAAAAAY.  When I was originally planning to just work on this (pre-baby squares) I was thinking how to squeeze it in for GG as I wanted to remain faithful to that too!  So, how did I plan it?  Well, FFIII is the only project I have that is stitched on the floor stand -- gifted to me by my mom.  The needle minder (my very first!) solely for this project is the adorable Chii from Justine!  The fabric for this piece was found in a thrift store, "gifted" by some random stranger, how nice of them!  So, there you have it.  I am Faithfully Gifted Gorgeousness-ing.  tucks away shoehorn

still not curved

As you can see, not a huge amount of progress but the squares had to come first. Since they are faithfully finished, I can devote the rest of the month to this! It's nice not having to put away the stand after every session haha.  Also, I swear this is the hardest thing to take a picture of!  If I'd take it off the stand (not happening until it's finished), I imagine the images would be more consistent.

safety first

Here is something I saw shared on Stitching Lotus; how one organizes WIPS.  I absolutely adore these plastic folders.  They're large enough that patterns don't have to be folded and are clear so I know what the heck is going on in them.  I keep the DS case from FFIII in there too so when I run into a weird spot on the pattern I can refer to the original (though tiny) image and make adjustments if necessary.

click me, too!

April strings

And lastly, TUSAL! There's a healthy layer of black in there this time. I find that DMC 310 is somewhat of a pain to pick out if a mistake is made. It always seems to fray and break no matter how careful I am. I usually don't like Sullivan's floss but black is the one color I prefer, though 310 is much more readily available.

Mkay, I have rambled enough and didn't have enough pictures. Shame!  I'll continue working on FFIII for the remainder of the month, ignoring my other projects and a crochet pattern that presented itself in a completely untimely manner and DEMANDED to be made.  An army of them, really.  I was really excited when it was uploaded to ravelry, and just as excited when I saw Snowflower Diaries May freebie.  I admit I squeak delightedly at the computer at any given chance.

Have a good'n!