Happy Bunker Liberation Day!

First of all, if you have no idea what Bunker Liberation Day is, that's okay. Just bear with me. It's a new holiday for a certain group of my friends, who are all members of a private website. A year ago, most of us were banned from a knitting website. The banning was undeserved, and was very hurtful at the time to all of us. I'll spare you the whole sad story, since I prefer to focus on the positive, but the main issue was politics.

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The reason I'm wishing Happy Bunker Liberation Day to my readers is that the majority of them are BunkerBabes. ☺ I participated in a really fun swap, to celebrate BLD. It was a UFO Swap, and I've mentioned it here before. I sent my Un-Finished Object and yarn to Angela, and Cathie sent her yarn to me. I can finally post pictures! Here is what I made with Cathie's yarn:

It's a scarf. The first picture is a closeup of the cables and lace.

And here's what Angela did with my yarn! It's Tunisian Crochet Entrelac! This makes me want to try both Entrelac, and Tunisian Crochet.

Angela also made some fingerless mitts to match!

And here are pictures of me, modeling Angela's masterpieces!

I know, being banned doesn't seem like something to celebrate. But that's only if you don't know how close-knit(pun intended) our group has become as a result. When we were banned, we were hurt, saddened, angry and depressed. With time, we began to realize that we were knitting and crocheting more now that we weren't distracted by that other site. And we even became more creative than we had been; several of us decided to take the first steps into designing our own projects. We've done multiple swaps, as I've mentioned before here on my blog, and with each one we get to know lots of little things about the person we're spoiling. We've made use of the chatroom on our site, even having online parties! Our New Year's Eve party was wild!

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All that to say, I love the BunkerBabes (and the one BunkerDude) like family. I'm glad we have each other. So Happy Bunker Liberation Day, Babes! I'm looking forward to many more years with y'all!

A whole lotta knittin' goin' on.

I finished this yesterday morning, with grafting the strap stitches, and Princess wore it all day. Turned out yesterday was a good day for it; warm, humid...we actually had to make use of the air conditioner in the van. Anyway, here are pictures of Princess, in her new tank top.

Here's a closeup of the front. The cables continue up the straps, and connect to the cables on the back.

Here's the back. Can you see where the stitches were grafted? The only problem I see is that the last cable, where the straps meet the top of the back, is a little longer than the rest. I should have done one less row on the straps before grafting. Oh, well, you knit, you learn. Two more girls want tank tops....and my sister wants me to design a "romper" with the same cables, and make them for her girls.

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I'm also working on an extremely boring pair of socks. I'm using a variegated yarn, so I decided that I wanted it to be a pair of plain socks. To keep me from sticking my US2s in my eyes, I take a break every few minutes, and look at sock patterns that are not plain and boring. I've fallen in love with a bunch of cabled sock patterns. And I'm planning on sticking with solid or semi-solid sock yarn after this, so that I can do the more fancy designs, without worrying about the cables fighting with the color changes in the yarn.

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I haven't done much work on Surf. The long long long rows were wearing me out, and I wanted to do some projects with shorter rows, or rounds. I need to get back to it, so that I can send it to the friend I'm making it for.

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Adamas is still languishing in my other knitting bag, next to my chair. I really want to work on it, but I agreed to wait. I'm doing a lot of waiting these days.

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I got my box yesterday, from my friend Angela. If you remember I posted about our UFO swap in January. I sent her a bunch of fingering-weight cotton/bamboo/silk, and she stitched it up for me. I have to wait until Sunday to open it. The suspense is killing me. ☺ Okay, not really. I love surprises. And I even enjoy waiting for surprises. The anticipation is half of the gift, for me. I will post on Sunday afternoon, and let y'all know what she made for me....and what I made for Cathie. I'm not sure that Cathie reads my blog, but I know that she could find it pretty quickly if she wanted to. So that's why I haven't yet posted pictures of what I made for her.