WIP and Crochet Stockinette, 2.0

Check out the progress I made on my afghan! I love it. It's getting so big and cuddly and warm. I'm only starting in on the 4th ball of each colour now, so it's about half the size it will be. Plus I have 4 more balls of yarn in my cubby at work, although it might be big enough after these in which case I will have to make a matching pillow.

I mean, we're getting a new couch soon, and this afghan tossed artfully over an awesome new couch with a throw pillow to match would seriously elevate our living room from college-y to kinda grownupish.

I started working on these half-finger mitts, because my knuckles are always super cold. Especially at work in the back room. I really need something to keep me warm, and regular fingerless mitts just don't have quite the coverage.
I started these working bottom up, but realized that the palm section would be much more strechy and comfy if I worked it sideways along with the cuff. So I pulled it out and started again. Much better, I was right.

The top part and fingers I'm really not sure about. It's a nice stitch pattern, but I think it might be a little bulky for the fingers. When I go into work, my coworkers will be forced to try them on to give me a second opinion.

The rainbow stripey pullover has progressed! The body is finished. It's time to start on the sleeves now, then all the pieces will be joined together at the yoke.

I even got some spinning done this weekend. I know, right? I had a long weekend because of Family Day Monday. Since I usually have Mondays off, my boss was nice enough to give me Tuesday off too so I still got a long weekend. I did nothing and ate yummy food and spent time with Andrew and it was wonderful.

Ok, I didn't do entirely nothing. On Sunday, I walked to a yarn store that opened in my neighborhood recently. It's called Ladeebee and it is very sweet! It's on the bottom floor of another store, but has nice natural lighting and a small but sweet selection. I was pretty good with all the shinies, but I had to get something! Four balls of super cheap sock yarn, little paper cut out hearts, awesome labels to sew into gifts and a totally sweet handmade project bag. I was really tempted by some of the fantastic deals on cotton she had, but I have so much cotton already.
Sundays are sit and stitch day there, and the group was small but really nice. I had a good time and will definitely be returning- but when it's warmer. I was bundled in two hats, a neckwarmer and scarf, two sweaters and a jacket, two pairs of mitts, wooly legwarmers and wool socks in my snowboots and my thighs were frozen by the time I got there. It was a much longer walk than I expected. Spring will be here soon, right?
Speaking of that walk, I saw the most hilarious and very Canadian thing (or just cold weather area thing, I suppose) on the way back. I had gotten all the way to my townhouse complex and looked up to see a guy in shorts and flip flops carrying his laundry down the sidewalk to the laundry room. Reread what I told you I was wearing and think about it being -20 C with the windchill and that insane man was wearing shorts. And flip flops. Bare feet! In the snow and ice! I'm cold just thinking about it (says the woman who eats frozen yogurt outside in January).

I also published two more patterns today! Yay! One of them, my Sophisticated Chevrons Cowl, has been done for ages. I just need to make a gauge swatch because the yarn I used was a mystery skein.
The other was just a simple freebie pattern for the scarf I made Andrew for his birthday- Basket Weave Slip Stitch Scarf.
It's a really simple pattern using slip stitch front loop only and slip stitch inverse back loop only. The little picture above is the photo tutorial I made to show the inverse back loop stitch.
If you remember, I posted about crochet stockinette quite some time ago. I used a technique I figured out because I had no idea that iB (inverse back loop only) existed. It totally works, but it's not useful if you want to do something like basket weave where you have the front and back of the stitches showing on the same row. Using iB is way better, and while it takes a bit of figuring (make sure the yarn is in front- that messed me up for awhile!) it ends up being so much easier. It's really freed up my design in slip stitch crochet.
I owe a lot of what I've learned about slip stitch to the group on Rav, and the tutorial on the yarn guy site- Slip Stitch Crochet. I've come a long way since my crochet stockinette "discovery", but I'm still proud I figured that out independently, even if it wasn't exactly the smartest technique!

Alright, time to go have some lunch. I think we still have leftover potato pancakes (so good!) and maybe some other yummy leftovers from our delicious weekend off cooking.