I’m making a baby blanket out of Crystal Palace Mochi Plus in the “Intense Rainbow” colorway, and I couldn’t think of a better stitch pattern for this yarn. My stepsister is having a boy sometime around June 12, so I needed to get cracking on a gift! The Mochi Plus seemed like a good choice, as it’s machine washable, really colorful, and gender-neutral. I had four skeins to begin with, but had to order two more after I realized the initial batch would make a pretty small blanket. Right now, I’m almost done with the fourth ball:

I know it will look a lot better after blocking!

Unfortunately, they’re blocking on a mattress over 200 miles away.

I’ll explain:

I went to Fresno for a hometown visit this weekend, and got the brilliant idea that I’d block my pieces while I was there. My mom has all these spare beds lying around that are perfect for blocking. At my little one-bedroom, big-city apartment, I have very little open, flat space on which to block. Also, unlike me, my mom doesn’t have two cats with a deep, yearning desire to destroy all knits at first sight. This was a plus.

The downside is that the wool took way longer to dry than expected, so I had to leave Starsky sitting on her guest bed while I traveled back home to Los Angeles. Luckily, I’ll be back up for Thanksgiving in just about a week, so Starksy will be retrieved in due course. Hopefully by then I’ll have the sleeves done so I can start seaming this bad boy up!

Last night, I stumbled upon the Ravelry page for Absorba, The Great Bathmat and something snapped in me. I just had to knit it. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have the yarn or the book containing the pattern. So, I jumped in the car and headed to Michaels and came back with this:

I’m knitting with 3 strands of Sugar N Cream held together on size 15 needles. Needless to say, this is a fast project. Since I don’t have the actual pattern, I’m just ad-libbing the log-cabin technique. Maybe not the best idea, since my colors are coming out kinda wonky:

But, meh, who cares? It’s a bathmat. My current bathmat is kinda disgusting, so anything will be an improvement.

I’m using a pattern by Debbie Bliss called (appropriately) “Ribbed Baby Jacket” and using some stash superwash wool I’ve had lying around for over a year. I think it’s turning out very adorable, and it’s super fast to knit. It’s also enabled me to watch a lot of Battlestar Galactica, so I’m grateful for that. (I’m still not caught up, though, so don’t tell me who the final cylon is!!!)

I just realized, though, that I think I placed the buttonhole too far down the front. I’m planning on creating an icord flower to substitute as a button. I figure it’ll be cute, and it won’t be a choking hazard for little Piper.

After this is done I’ll have to finish Danielle’s iPhone mittens, lest she freeze her fingers off in Chicago. Sorry, Dani—I swear I’ll get those done, soon!

It’s going to be a purse for a 3-year-old girl. It’s also a great project because I’m stashbusting! Yay! The pink yarns are leftover from the pink hearts baby dress I made a few months back, and the mosaic, upper part is some Noro Kureyon I had laying around. I couldn’t let Kureyon gather dust, so I drafted it for this project.

I got the dot pattern from kelp!’s dotty cat bed pattern, which is absolutely adorable.

Speaking of my stash, I got kind of obsessive a few nights ago and decided to catalogue what yarns I had hanging around, and exactly how much I had left of each. Here’s what happened:

1. Blue Sky Blue Sky Bulky (100% Alpaca; 45 yds/100g), Orange, 200 grams remaining.
2. Lion Brand Wool (100% Wool; 186 yds/100g), Goldenrod, 146 grams remaining.
3. Lion Brand Wool (100% Wool; 186 yds/100g), Pumpkin, 278 grams remaining.
4. Rowan Classic Bamboo Soft (100% Bamboo; 224 yds/100g), Cream, 215 grams remaining.
5. Rowan Classic Bamboo Soft (100% Bamboo; 224 yds/100g), Bamboo, 273 grams remaining.
6. Koigu Premium Merino Semi-Solids (100% Merino Wool; 350 yds/100g), Black, 230 grams remaining.
7. Koigu Premium Merino Semi-Solids (100% Merino Wool; 350 yds/100g), White, 39 grams remaining.
8. Koigu Premium Merino Semi-Solids (100% Merino Wool; 350 yds/100g), Red, 263 grams remaining.
9. Cascade 220 Plain (100% Peruvian Highland Wool; 220 yds/100g), Various, 552 grams remaining.
10. Noro Kureyon (100% Wool; 219 yds/100g), dark purples, 100 grams remaining.
11. Nashua Creative Focus (75% Wool / 25% Alpaca; 220 yds/100g), Zinnia, 780 grams remaining.
12. Blue Sky Brushed Suri (67% baby suri / 22% merino / 11% bamboo; 284 yds/100g), Pink, 97 grams remaining.

Of course, this was just the yarn that wasn’t already in my closet, so I have much more to catalogue. Also, being the nerd that I am, I created an excel spreadsheet that automatically calculated how many yards I had left (based on the weight remaining), and what weight the yarn is based on the gauge. I’m a dork. Oh yeah, and then I put it on my personal website as a database-populated (MySQL for those who care) list. So as I add new yarns to my catalogue (or delete them, hopefully), the list will automatically update.

I told you I was a dork.

The one thing I haven’t told you is who I actually am. I’ve tried to stay as anonymous as possible in the blogging world because it’s a) easier and b) safer. You know, if nobody knows who you really are, nobody can kidnap you in the night.

But now, the benefits of staying anonymous are outweighed by revealing my secret identity, so here goes.

My name is Laura Birek.

Whew! That was easier than I thought!

The main reason I want to reveal my identity is that I have a forthcoming knitting book to be published by Chronicle Books in Fall 2008. I hope to encourage readers of my blog to seek out my book when it’s finally published, so I decided to come out of the closet!

And, now that I’ve revealed that bit of information, you can possibly understand why I haven’t been posting for the past few months. Everything I’ve been knitting is going into the book, and is thus top secret! Oh, how I wanted to blog about my projects, but you’ll just have to wait to see the fruits of my labor.

I turned the first draft of my book into Chronicle yesterday, so now I’m free to knit whatever I please (for a short time, at least). Check back soon for more updates. If you want to know about new posts right away, subscribe to my RSS feed!

I hope to see you back soon!

Sincerely,
Laura