World Knit in Public Day on June 14! Join me!

Click HERE to visit the official website :-)

I’m looking for someone to join me that day somewhere in Metro Manila… :-) it’s a Saturday! Payday weekend, so lots of folks in malls.

Possible venues, a bit halfway between people from North and South (and east) of Metro Manila, and they usually have a lot of traffic on weekends:

SM Mall of Asia
Greenbelt Mall, Makati
SM Megamall

Suggested time: it would be nice to do this almost all day, from 11 a.m. to 9 pm.

Or we could move from one venue to other, like maybe spend 2-3 hours in Mega, then another 2-3 hours in Makati, then 2-3 hours in SM Mall…

I’m open to suggestions :-)

Dreaming daily

I have been knitting daily for quite a number of weeks! Sure, some days I just knit only two to four rows, but otherwise... it's such a habit, to start my day's routine in the morning, while brewing my coffee in my French press, to knit a row or two, then letting the pressed coffee cool a bit...

Then after a hard day's work, while I run my anti-malware program on my PC, I knit again. Sometimes, when I have a hard time falling asleep, even if I'm already in bed, I get up and go downstairs to knit until I feel sleepy.

And on the days that I don't do any ESL writing work, that's when I have more time to knit, to clean up my knitting table, and to check all works in progress.

I can't imagine not letting a day go by without knitting. It relaxes me and it grounds me.

These days, when the rains bring thunder and lightning too, I turn off my PC right away and knit instead. This is primarily why I was able to finish the blanket's Pattern 5! Yup, as of midnight, I was able to start Pattern 6, which is Diagonal Seed Stitch (supposed to be Caterpillar Stitch but I liked how the pic for the Diag Seed St looked). Pics to follow soon :-)

Pattern pics

I felt like goofing off today because my period has just arrived, which makes me really lazy since all I wanna do is sleep. But if I were to sleep during the day, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night! So... with such bad concentration, I just chose to do stuff I had to do... like take progress pics of the blanket... which is all I've been knitting lately.

First, a close up of one of my favorite stitch patterns, Ripples (Pattern 4 of Strip 1)





Then, see how Ripples segues upward to Pattern 5, Woven Texture:



Here's Pattern 5, Woven Texture:

My nephew's hat

Photo-0107
Originally uploaded by Dreaming Knitter

Almost done... ready for binding off sometime today. Was able to use some leftover purple yarn for the accent... nice combo.

Pattern is a modified version of Pi Topper hat, will someday post the pattern which starts from the top down.

I'm still deciding if the last 2 rows will be done in 1x1 rib or also in garter

May is official HAT month

Last night, when the rains brought in thunder, I had to stop my writing job and switch off the PC. Sure, that kinda ruined my deadline-meeting plan, but it also gave me the excuse to knit instead.

What to knit... I went through all my WIPs and decided, nah, I gotta do what I promised to do. So I sat and started to knit a cute little hat for my godson Anthony, now in the Bahamas but maybe will winter at my sister's in Connecticut, if his family can afford the airfare. Still, I heard it can get cold in the Bahamas, so he could still use his cute blue-and-purple acrylic hat there.

I'm about 80 percent done with the hat. Then I'll make him another one in green. Then I'm gonna knit hats for the rest of his family... that would be a total of 5 hats to knit.

So yeah, for May, I think I'll just finish the hats even if they'll get to the intended recipients in December. At least they'll all be done and washed by then.

I love knitting hats from the top-down. I like experimenting with the design as I go along... do I make the hat just one solid color, or add stripes from some left-over yarn, for some color? Do I make it all stockinette, or make it ribbed?

After this batch, I also have one more hat to make, ordered by my friend Melis, for her niece in Indiana. Frankly I have no idea how cold it gets there, I'm still gonna make the hat. I already got the order, and the yarn.

Personal projects for May

It's kinda impossible NOT to have any project, since I've got all the materials and tools I need, and I need to knit to relax from my work. It's a life, and I like it.

My cousin Sonia wants a purple shawl, and that's now in progress. I also promised my cousin I'll knit for her and her family a bunch of hats, which I can do between projects for instant gratification. Since I can only get them to her sometime December, I can space out these family projects with my professional ones.

I'm still working on the hemp blanket, almost done with third pattern, and excited to start the fourth one. At the rate I'm going I should have Strip 1 done maybe in a month or two.

I'm also knitting myself a simple garter stitch shawl. Just a way to love myself :-) it's triangular and I've got 10 percent done.

Need to finish the magenta mug rug and take pics soon. But I want to have reasonable progress with Ate Sonia's shawl and finish at least one hat before I do another mug rug. I guess that means foregoing mug rugs for this month.

Color Therapy thru Knitting: Magenta this time

Having done my GREEN mug rug, I had to balance its energy, which is about loving others, with MAGENTA, which is about loving myself. After all, one cannot truly love others without loving oneself first.

When I guide others in color meditation, I always balance the colors since making the client focus only on one color would of course lead to imbalance.

I actually finished the MAGENTA mug rug last night, but I still need to weave in ends and take pics. I had to adjust the number of rows to make it match the size of the green rug.

Here's a pic of the magenta WIP on my circulars:



And a nice shot of the green and magenta (WIP) mug rugs...



This is such an unexpectedly nice color combination. In terms of color theory, they were supposed to match, being opposite each other in the color wheel :-)

So how do I feel, now that I've knitted green and magenta? I do feel better. No more crying bouts for more than 24 hours, I think I have my appetite back and generally, I am in a better space compared to last week :-)

I have always been resilient, and I have more to write about my reflections in my other blog.