Still Relaxing

Since I've been trying to relax so much (to keep my BP down, of course) and knitting is the ultimate for me, you've probably noticed an absurdly abundant focus on nothing but knitting lately. But hey, I'm eight months pregnant so standing around cooking or digging in the garden (in February) are just not options right now. I really hope I get over this after the baby comes. (Doesn't anyone want to come over and cook something for me?)

I've finished a pair of socks for myself...

But, I'm sad because they are a wool/nylon blend and they're very itchy. Bummer dude!

Since I finished them in record time and didn't really feel quite ready to work on something new since the BFF's baby blanket still needs hours and hours of work, I decided to organize my knitting needles.

Well, that was fun...but I was already missing knitting so what did I do? Go back to the blanket? Of course not, I cast on another pair of socks for Hubby.

These are an Acrylic/Nylon blend and oh boy are they soft and surprisingly thick. Yeah, I know they'll get all pilled up eventually, but oh well. Really these are just for relaxing and mindless knitting, so of course I wanted something else to work on. So I tried a little swatch of something else.

What's it gonna be? When I got pregnant, BFF got me a super great gift of High Tea here. So when we were there a couple weeks ago finally enjoying that tea (thank you again!), I saw a scarf that had this great puckered (read billowing) effect. I tried this swatch with a bit of Aran weight acrylic yarn just using various sizes of needles (thus the organizing of my needles above) to get that bulging effect. It worked, but the yarn is hideous for it. I'll have to find something else. 

In the meantime, I finally got the urge to start blocking some of the pieces to BFF's blanket. I've blocked them to 6.5 inch squares. That's a bit of a stretch for some, but others open up beautifully. 

Oh, seeing them laid out like this really put some fuel inside me to get back to this blanket. Yeah! So a day later I found myself piecing them up. But first, I thought I better sketch out the placement just in case I go brain dead and try to sew them in the wrong order.

June bug helped color it in. So here's how it's coming together. 

By the way, since BFF is about my most loyal follower, this will be the last sighting of the blanket until she sees it at her baby shower at the beginning of April. Sorry. But don't worry, I'll take pics and post them later before it's gifted. Hopefully later there will also be some pics with it cutely flung over her crib or something nice like that (not sure how she feels about pics of her baby being posted on the Internet yet, so I can't promise you'll ever see the baby nestled inside it). Oh, and since these pics were taken some days ago, I now have 7 pieces sewn together and 5 more blocked and ready to sew on today... 

...wait where are my knitting needles? I think I know what yarn I want to use for that billowing scarf :)