Sticks and Thread

On my feet (Or, my accomplishments look very impressive when I only post a few times a year!)

2008-08-22T23:11:00.000-07:00

Here a sock

There a sock

Everywhere a sock,

Sock

From top to bottom (also in chronological order of when I knit them):
1) Bellatrix socks (by Monkey Toes, RIP), knit toe-up in Koigu KPPPM US size 1.5 dpns
2) Basic stockinette toe-up socks, knit in Vesper sock yarn in Tartan, US size 1.5 dpns
3) Springrass socks (by Craftoholic), knit toe-up in Dream in Color Smooshy in Beach Fog, US size 1.5 dpns (sensing a theme?)
4) Monkey Socks (by Cookie A.), knit toe-up and knit the purl stitches, in Sophie Toe's yarn in Harvest, US size 1.5 dpns.

Phew!

I've had a delightful 35 minute train ride back and forth every day to work this summer and have gotten lots of sock knitting done.

Next time, neck wear! I'll try not to make it several months from now.

Giftsies

2008-05-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

I have this vague idea about catching up to my WIPs on this blog. But it's clearly not going to happen any time soon. I apparently need to start a really complicated project, then maybe I'll catch up.

Anyway, here's a little cutsie little baby sweater I made, for some good friends who are going to pop in the next month or so. And their offspring is to be named after J., so really, how could I not knit something for them? (Actually, maybe J. should have been the one to knit something for them, come to think of it.)

Awww.

Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket, by Elizabeth Zimmerman
Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug, in Moss (sent to me by Colinette as a replacement for this crap skein - I must say, aside from all the dye lot, knotting, and fading issues, this yarn is pretty awesome. Of course those are some pretty major asides. I certainly won't be spending actual money on this stuff again. This replacement skein was knot free, and therefore (I'm assuming) all one dye lot. And I think it's light enough that there shouldn't be severe fading issues.)
Needles: I forget.
Completed in a few days on a trip to NY. This is one awesome pattern.

I used snap tape instead of buttons, in case li'l J. is a button chewer. Snap tape rocks. I want it on my clothes too.

I gave the sweater to my friends at their baby shower last weekend and it seemed to have been well received.

So, the other giftsy.

I have this friend, that I met this year. She saw me knitting these socks a few months ago and apparently really liked them. Anyway she has not stopped harassing me about knitting her a pair of socks ever since. She keeps telling me I can make them for her birthday, which is coming up in a few days (well, when she first started bringing the issue up, it was coming up in several months). Needless to say, this drove me crazy. I told her how long it takes me to finish a pair of socks, thinking that would shut her up. I told her I only knit for myself and immediate family, thinking that would shut her up. I told her to shut up, thinking that would shut her up. But nothing shut her up.

So I gave in and knit her a pair of socks.

It's leftovers from the Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Happy Stripe from the socks she liked.

Think they'll fit her?
(Hint, she's not a doll.)

The thing is, I thought these socks o'spite were hilarious when I first knit them, especially since I was planning to wrap them so they looked like an actual pair of socks, with a card that said something like "I finally gave in and knitted you a pair of socks, but I had to guess at your shoe size." But since then I've felt kind of guilty about it. I haven't given them to her yet. I'm thinking I might accompany them with a gift certificate for an actual pair of knit socks, in the yarn of her choosing (to be rescinded upon any harassment on her part and with no deadline on my part). I mean, she is a sweet person. And it is kind of rare to gift a non-knitter with a knitted object that you know they'll really appreciate.

And, I'm going to be taking a 30 minute train ride for my commute this summer, which I think will be the perfect place to finish at least one pair of socks.

P.S. We are moving back to San Francisco in June, albeit probably temporarily. I can't believe this year is almost over! Especially given that it's only included what, like four blog posts? Bad, bad blogger.

P.P.S. Guess whose else's birthday is coming up in about a week! Yours truly! I will be turning the big three-O, yikes.

Dems ma calves

2008-03-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

Last time, I hinted at the question to which the answer is, about 15 inches.

This is a question that has been haunting me for a while:

How much basic sock can you get out of your average amount of sock yarn? Sock yarn generally comes in 100g skeins of approximately, or slightly more than, 400 yards. Sometimes you have to buy it in 50g skeins of approximately, or slightly more than, 200 yards. The notable exceptions being rebels such as Colinette Jitterbug and Koigu, who shortchange you on the yardage, but we forgive them, especially the Koigu.

So, I set out to knit a pair of toe-up stockinette socks with 1 skein each of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, and I knit until I couldna knit nae more (that's my fake scottish for ya).

Turns out, 215 yards of fingering weight yarn will get you quite a lot of sock, even on a tallish, big calfish gal such as myself. For someone short or with skinny legs, I'm betting you could get a good pair of knee socks out of two skeins of this stuff no problem.

See? It's about 15 inches from ankle to cuff (of course, your mileage will vary based on gauge, pattern, and yarn). Now that's alotta sock!

Pattern: Basically following Ann Budd's On your Toes socks from IK Summer 2007
Mods: Used magic cast-on instead of Eastern, and stockinette instead of ribbing
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, Happy Stripe (happy indeed!)
Needles: US 1.5 DPNs
Verdict: I love lorna's laces. This yarn is so squishy and nice, and a pleasure to knit with. My other lorna's laces socks have also held up remarkably well.
Drawbacks: They end at the fattest part of my calf, so they don't stay up so good. If I ever get around to it, I might put some elastic in there.

More pics:
Feet:

Toes:

I'll spare you a close-up of my calves.

Cuff:

For reals this time

2008-03-27T17:08:00.000-07:00

I think I'm feeling intimidated by the fact that I have such a backlog of FOs to photograph. But instead of being all wishy washy, I should just get off my ass and show y'all something, right?
Right.

Knucks!

Yarn: Alpaca/silk, handspun by J's mom.
Needles: size 3
Made: in like, January I think.
Usage: tons
Pleasure at having warm hands but usable fingers: loads
Times a pen got wrapped in the gloves' fuzz when trying to write with Knucks on: about a million.

Me hand:

Twisty ribby:

These are my knuckles:

Next time, the age old question to which the answer is, about 15 inches (no pervvies, I'm not THAT lucky a young bride! Actually, that sounds pretty unlucky)

Not quite knitting, but less whiny

2008-02-03T19:51:00.000-08:00

Man, yesterday's post was pretty whiny, wasn't it? Well, this blog is called Sticks and Thread, not Fingers and Keyboard, so enough about my homework.
J. and I went to his folks' house (isn't it cool that their place can be linked to?) for Christmas, where I once again tried my hand at spinning.

You may recall my last attempt:

This time went a little better:

I even plied! Go me! The white is merino, the gray wool. I did the white one first. I think the gray looks much better, personally. I think I have about 30 yards of the white, and about 80 of the gray. I can say with confidence that they probably range from laceweight to superbulky. Hey, at least I avoided cobweb!
I'magonna make me a hat, with a hemmed brim out of the white part.

Alternating between panic and avoidance

2008-02-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

I have some major deadlines this week and I'm stuck in a vicious cycle of panic, procrastination, more panic, exhaustion, and denial.
I don't usually participate in blogging-things, like KALs and color themes and memes and what-all have you. Nothing against them, I just usually either don't remember to do them when I'm supposed to, or in the case of the KALs, I'll start something and then get distracted.
But I like the idea of the Silent Poetry Reading.
Here's one that captures a lot about my current state of mind:

Against Pleasure
by Robin Becker
Worry stole the kayaks and soured the milk. Now, it's jelly fish for the rest of the summer and the ozone layer full of holes. Worry beats me to the phone. Worry beats me to the kitchen, and all the food is sorry. Worry calcifies my ears against music; it stoppers my nose against barbecue. All films end badly. Paintings taunt with their smug convictions. In the dark, Worry wraps her long legs around me, promises to be mine forever. Thugs hijacked all the good parking spaces. There's never a good time for lunch. And why, my mother asks, must you track beach sand into the apartment? No, don't bother with books, not reading much these days. And who wants to walk the boardwalk anyway, with scam artists who steal your home and savings? Watch out for talk that sounds too good to be true. You, she says pointing at me, don't worry so much.
Ps. There will be knitting pictures at some point. Promise.

Breaking the ice

2008-01-30T21:53:00.000-08:00

Young lady, do you have any idea what time it is?
I've been away so long I couldn't remember how to sign in to my blogger account.
Funny, because I've certainly been reading tons of blogs, but apparently I haven't left any comments in the last five months either.
I miss you, blog.
I miss you, blog readers, if any of you are still out there!
I've been thinking about my "re-entry" blog post for MONTHS now. But as I'm sure many of you know, the more you put it off, the more stuff piles up until it seems like you're going to need an entire weekend just to photograph and chronicle everything you've been doing. Not to mention the fact that it seems like months since I've been home during daylight hours where I could take a picture.
So this re-entry will be photoless.
But cheer-full.
I've been doing so much writing over the last 5 months, but dang I miss writing a) about knitting and b) for a non-critical audience.
So, details to come*. I have been knitting plenty since I last saw you, no fears. Unfortunately much of it was given away during the holidays. But I might have a scrap of knitting here or there to show off.

*Did you know that in journalism-speak, there are all these specific words that are deliberately spelled wrong? "To come" is abbreviated TK (I guess for "to kome"?). A lead, the beginning of your story, is spelled lede, and the "head" (title) and "deck" (subtitle) are spelled "hed" and "dek." Isn't that byzarr?

le sigh

2007-09-05T23:02:00.000-07:00

I've finished/started a bunch of things and just don't seem to have the energy to blog about them. I've even finished some things I never told you about. Well, you'll just have to wait a little longer, because I've got the end of summer blahs.
This summer was awesome and a much-needed respite, I did a TON of knitting and some writing but not a whole lot else. I guess that was sort of the point. Less than 3 weeks and we're moving to Santa Cruz. I will really miss San Francisco.

I've got the blues

2007-08-24T17:58:00.000-07:00

Eek! Giant blue fuzzy toes!

I don't know how noticeable it is to other people besides me, but I am sort of limited in my color choices. I own clothes in plenty of colors, but most days I clad myself in some combination of blue and green. My wedding ring has blue and green stones in it, and I always laugh when I put it on in the morning because it looks like I planned to match my ring to my outfit, but I really just like blue and green.

Anyway, I made some blue things:

Pattern: Embossed Leaves Socks by Mona Schmidt, from IK Winter 2005 (and from Interweave favorite socks, which is where I got it)
Yarn: KP Gloss in Dusk, less than 2 skeins
Needles: size 2 DPNs
Dates: 7/20/2007 - 8/20/2007 (?)
Modifications: I did a long-tail cast-on instead of the totally weird cast-on in the pattern, added a pattern repeat to the cuffs to make them longer, and reversed things on one of them to make them mirror image of each other:

This was kind of an accident. My one complaint about this pattern (well, besides the unnecessarily confusing cast-on) is that the foot is supposed to be exactly X pattern repeats long (I can't remember exactly how many). I must have had a much looser row gauge than the designer, because I was making bigger socks than the designer and mine were the right size half a pattern repeat short of hers. So I had to futz with the star toe to get those purls to line up with my leaves. Then when I started the second sock I thought I would just start with the second half of the repeat so I could do the toe as written, and then they would be reversed.

I am a big fan of both the garter stitch border of the heel flap and the purl edging of the instep pattern. The garter stitch border nicely hides where all the stitches are picked up, which to my eye always looks icky on plain stockinette. And the purl stitches on the instep nicely hide how parts of the foot are always a little stretched out looking.

Verdict: love these socks. The toe was a bit uncomfy at first but I'm used to it now. The gloss started out deliciously soft and has softened up even more with a bit of wearing. I haven't tried washing it yet, so far I haven't noticed any stretching out, and there is some pilling on the bottom of my foot but doesn't seem any worse than any of my other socks. (I feel like ALL my socks pill at the ball of my foot. Maybe I'm just using wimpy yarns.) Anyway part of the point of these socks was to see if I like Gloss enough to make a Thermal out of it. I'm kind of thinking not. I'm still a little wary of the pilling and stretching that other people have talked about, not such a big deal in a pair of socks, but that sweater looks like it will take a lot of effort. I'm not so sure I want to make it anymore, period.

Here's blue thing number two:

P.S., I have short(er) hair now!
P.P.S., I always think I'm smiling, but clearly my pictures prove me wrong. What am I so pissed about?

Pattern: Hourglass sweater by Joelle Hoverson, from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
Size: the one that claims to be 37" bust, it really came out more like a 40" bust - about 2" positive ease, exactly what I wanted. Thank goodness I have learned to wash my swatches.
Yarn: Noro Cash Iroha, less than 10 skeins, plus some nameless wool/silk blend for the edging - I had made some very ill-advised wrist warmers out of this stuff and don't have the band anymore, I was only too happy to frog them when I thought of using the yarn for the trim.
Dates: 6/2007 - 8/2007 (I need to get better at keeping track of my dates.)
Modifications: You may realize that I am once again a total copycat. I loved the contrast trim and rounded yoke neck of Diana's version, so that's what I did. I also made both the body and sleeves a titch longer than the pattern called for, and added more increases on the upper arms because I really wanted to make sure this sweater was baggy and comfy, no negative ease anywhere.

Here's a better look at the rounded yoke and contrast trim:

Verdict: Love. It. Have worn it every day since I finished it about a week ago. Has FAR surpassed the cabled turtleneck as the best sweater I've ever made. This is due to several factors: the delicious cash iroha is much softer than Cascade 220, the sweater is looser and comfier, and those dang cables are HOT. I forgot about how cables were originally designed for warmth, they weren't kidding! I think the cabled turtleneck is in the closet until the coldest days of winter (which, around here, means in the low 50s).

Here's the back:

Yes, my jeans have sparkles on the back pockets. Quit looking at my butt.

Learning new things

2007-08-03T19:39:00.000-07:00

The summer of Rachel has been going swimmingly for the last month or so, but I think I'm starting to get a little antsy. Knitting is so slooooow. It doesn't help when you have a jillion things on the needles, a deadline of a few months after which you will be extraordinarily busy, and the view of making Christmas presents for everyone you know in these few months - yes, OK, almost everything that is currently on my needles is intended for myself. Shut up. I'm not very logical in my casting-on choices. Anyway, it seemed like high time for some instant gratification:

I made some jewelry! Talk about instant gratification, these guys only took me a few hours total, and most of that time was because I was really trying to cram things into places they were too small to go, or using the wrong tools. The shells I found in Costa Rica. These will all be various holiday presents, I'm not saying for who just in case they are reading this so there will be some modicum of surprise.

Then it was time for some semi-instant gratification:

I taught myself crochet! Well, Debbie Stoller and interweave crochet taught me. I had absolutely no interest in crossing over to the other side of fiber arts until I saw this. The Babette Blanket. And it was like the clouds had parted and angel voices were singing from the heavens. I had to have it. (If you're still not convinced, check out these bad boys.) I brazenly strode into my LYS and bought the spring 06 issue of Interweave Crochet and the called-for hook (when I got home, it turned out that the one crochet hook I own for weaving in ends was the same size too, now I own 2 size E hooks and nothing else. Oops.)

Incidentally, while I was there, I heard this other girl setting up a crochet lesson with the clerk. She was saying that she wanted to make the babette blanket but had only crocheted a few things before. I interrupted their conversation to inform them that I had never crocheted a thing in my life, but I was going to make babette too and I didn't need no stinkin lesson! I think I sounded a little crazy. (And I probably could have benefited from a lesson too, I had an hour or two of cursing and chaining things that looked like the cat spit them out before I finally got the hang of it.) Anyway it turned out the girl was Nicole whose blog I read occasionally, I saw her picture later on Ravelry and wrote her a sort of psycho-sounding message. It's a small knitty world!

Anyway, back to my babette. I was initially drawn to it because of its chaotic, colorful, haphazard kind of look. But it turns out it is all carefully planned and choreographed chaos. There are color codes, and charts, and more charts, all just to assign colors to their correct places. Phooey on that, I said. Also phooey on buying $300 worth of Koigu for a single project. So initially I thought it would be a good leftover yarn project. But there were still some decisions to be made. Should I use solely machine washable sock yarn leftovers? It seems like a good idea, but in practice I would have to wait eons before I accumulated enough. Ditto all fingering leftovers:

Kind of pitiful.

Should I use all my yarn leftovers, gauge be damned? It's a blanket, after all, that would be OK. Or, another thought, I could use all my non-machine washable sock yarn. I wasn't sure I wanted any more hand-wash only socks anyway.

These four are particularly nice together (I have a ton more of that peach stuff too).

A final option could be to put out a plea on knittyboard for everyone's sock yarn scraps. By the way, don't you wish that designers of colorwork patterns would tell you how much of each skein you really need? At least approximately? I think babette calls for 23 different colors of Koigu, most of those in single skein amounts. But say you wanted to make it in 10 colors, would you still need all 20-something skeins or what? Maybe I can ask someone with a finished babette to weigh theirs.

Mind you, I didn't start thinking about all this until after I had already made those first squares. So, I don't know. I'm starting to see how spending $300 on koigu could make the nicest, most color-coordinated blanket (imagine one that was all different shades of green and blue! ooooohh!). But that is not feasible right now (yarn diet, yarn diet, yarn diet!), and even if it were, come on. That's ridiculous. If I did happen to have that much koigu, I don't think I'd want to blow it all on one blanket. I'm thinking mine is going to end up being pretty haphazard, because I can't really see a good way to make a conscious decision about which yarns to use.

ETA: There is a little interview with Kathy Merrick, the designer of Babette, over here, where she admits she made up not only the color sequence as she went along, but the square/size sequence too. Aha! Hege, you were right. Well, I don't trust myself to make up the whole thing from scratch, I think I will still follow the recommended number of squares, but will just wing it with the colors.

Work in progress report

2007-07-21T17:34:00.000-07:00

I've been holding out on you guys. I have several projects on the needles that I haven't blogged about yet. Time for a little roundup.

Broadripple socks in Cascade Fixation:

I started these on the honeymoon and haven't really touched them since we got back. I like the way it's coming out but the knitting isn't so pleasant - I feel like knitting fixation on size 3s makes a pretty tight fabric and kind of gives me that finger crampy feeling when I'm knitting. Also, you know what? I hate 7" bamboo DPNs. They always bump into my hands in such an unpleasant way. Much bigger fan of 6" DPNs for sock knitting.

Hourglass sweater from LMKG in Noro Cash Iroha:

I think the cabled turtleneck is going to have some tough competition as the best sweater I've ever knitted. This one is looking pretty good. The yarn is very soft and silky, and such an awesome vibrant blue. I've tipped the edges with a few rows of this light blue wool-silk blend (lost the ball bands so I have no idea what the yarn is). Once the edges are sewn down the light blue edging will be much more subtle as most of what you see will be on the inside.

Some progress on the ribbed Mark and Kattens socks for my Dad:

Yes, my dad has huge feet, and don't worry, these socks are very stretchy so they're not really as skinny as they look. This yarn is also kind of killing my fingers. It's a wool-cotton-nylon blend and it's just ugh. Not fun to knit with. I'm really not crazy about the colors either. I've decided that life is too short to knit with yarns I don't love, even if it's for someone else. I'll finish these, but I've put almost all my cotton-containing yarn up for sale on the new Destash site. Check them out here if you're interested, there's some sock yarns, Tahki cotton classic (that top I was making with it was quickly frogged, what was I thinking?), some linen yarn, and some KP laceweight merino. I'll be flexible on the prices for my blog readers!

My tiredness and crankyness and general dissatisfaction with the Mark and Kattens socks led me to start these last night:

Embossed leaves socks from IK's Favorite socks in KP Gloss. Aaaaah. My fingers are so much happier. I've had a few different things of gloss in the stash for a while but this is the first time I've had it on the needles. It feels so nice. I've been thinking of ordering enough Gloss to make Thermal but wanted to make something smaller with it first to see how it holds up. I've heard bad things about stretching and felting, but we'll see. So far I'm loving it.

Tired and cranky

2007-07-20T18:08:00.000-07:00

I'm tired and cranky. But I am also itching to blog about this stinkin cabled turtleneck sweater, since I finally got around to lengthening it (picking out the ribbing from the bottom and knitting down some more ribbing was less traumatic than I thought it would be). I will try to put mostly pictures and not too many words, so that my crankiness doesn't overshadow the post too much.

Finally done!

Specs:
Pattern: The imaginatively named "Cabled Turtleneck" from Vogue Knitting, Holiday 2006. Apparently the designer is "Lang designs". I wonder in what circumstances the actual human designer doesn't get to be named. Did it really take a whole team of designers to come up with this sweater? Is there a ghost designer?
Yarn: Cascade 220 heather, in Lichen. Just under 6 skeins.
Needles: Size 6 and 7 denises
Mods: Made it a crewneck instead of a turtleneck
Started Jan 2007, finished July 20 2007. Ouch. Moral of the story, maybe I should pick sweaters with less seaming in the future.

Some more pics

Ta-da!

Bad daughter?

2007-07-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

So, I was going to start some socks for my Dad with that Lorna's Laces he wanted, but then I wound the skein up:

Now I don't want to give this yarn away any more! Look how pretty! I want it all for me me me! This is the problem with trying to knit gifts out of your stash, it's mostly all yarn I've picked out because I wanted it for myself.

So I started these other socks for my Dad out of a Mark + Kattens cotton blend yarn instead:

I have all kinds of excuses for why I'm not making them out of the Lorna's Laces - these new ones will be sturdier, he probably won't even remember which yarn he picked out, he'll like this cool self-patterning stuff. But I feel a little guilty. Maybe I'll make him two pairs.

Monkeys v2.0

2007-07-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

Monkeys part 2 are done! They would have been done a lot sooner if it weren't for a certain devil cat:

Don't let that cute face fool you. An evil heart lurks beneath that fuzzy exterior! While we were in Seattle for the long weekend, she somehow got the second sock in progress down from the top of the bookshelf where I left it, and chewed up all the yarn. Grrrr. Originally I started frantically knotting all the bits of yarn together to finish the second sock, but even with all those knots it wasn't going to happen. So I had to frog a repeat back from the first sock and finish them both a little shorter. They're a little saggier than the longer version would have been - the cuff could stand to be a bit longer. But I'm quite sick of frogging and reknitting these, I think I'll just look for some elastic to run through the top.

Without further delay, voila!

Monkey socks by Cookie A., of course.
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM, 2 skeins (minus the chewed up bits, grr.)
Needles: 2.5mm for the foot, 2.75mm for the ankle, 3.0mm for the top of the leg.
Mods: knit toe-up, all purl stitches knit.
Started: end of May 2007
Finished: beginning of July 2007

These are my first Koigu socks, I LOVE this yarn. I want to trade all my other yarn for more and more Koigu!

On color and masculinity

2007-07-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

J. and I went up to Seattle for a long 4th of July weekend to see my parents. I heart Seattle.
Anyway, you may remember that I made my Dad some socks last Christmas. He wears them All The Time. I was so touched, especially because this was the first knitted gift I'd given him - he kept insisting that he wouldn't wear anything knitted and not to waste my time. Anyway, I thought I would make him another pair for next Christmas (as part of my whole having no salary for the next year, I think I'll be knitting a lot of presents). I showed him all my sock yarn pictures on Ravelry and these are the ones he picked out:

Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Mill Ends, leftover from my Clapotis

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Buck's Bar

I just thought it was interesting, especially in light of the fact that J. seems to think any color that is not drab green, brown, or gray has some magic powers to drain his heterosexuality away. I guess growing up with my Dad kind of blinded me to the fact that most men don't wear colorful things. My Dad had this neon pink baseball cap that he wore constantly when I was junior high-aged. He got it for free at a gas station. The most embarassing part, to young teenage me, was that he had a wide selection of colors and CHOSE the pink one. But grownup me is more than happy to knit him some colorful socks. I think most "masculine" colors are boring.

The summer of Rachel

2007-06-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

Remember that Seinfeld episode, with the summer of George?

I am officially unemployed. Wait, maybe I should frame that more positively. I am officially a doctor! And I'm also unemployed, as of about ten days ago. (To be clear, I have been in a PhD program for the last almost 5 years, and they paid me.) It's looking more and more like I'm going to be unemployed until September, when I'm heading down here. This is more due to laziness on my part than lack of hireability. I had something vaguely lined up and it fell through, and I haven't been inspired to apply for anything else. But I'm feeling really, really good about having this time off. It feels especially freeing to be out of school and unemployed in the summer months. I've had summer jobs (or real jobs, or school) since I was 16, so I'm kind of feeling like a kid again! J. and I just made s'mores over the burner.

What other cool summery things could I do? Besides knitting, obviously. I've been doing lots of baking. And some writing. And more knitting. Maybe when it gets hot enough again I'll run through a sprinkler.

I leave you with some hot girl on yarn action. I bought myself a little graduation prezzie:

I've been remiss in showing pictures of my yarn recently. Everyone needs to see a little yarn action now and then. This stuff is so amazing that I couldn't not show pictures of it. It's like the Elle Macpherson of yarns.

Yum.

When is an FO not an FO?

2007-06-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

When it's ajar! Ha ha! Wait, that makes no sense.

Anyway, remember this guy?

Of course you do, I've been taunting you with pictures of it for months. Well, it's seamed, blocked, and dry, but it's too damn short.

Let me tell you a little something I figured out about negative ease. This is probably incredibly obvious, although it didn't occur to me until after I had already made the mistake. This sweater measures 36" around and 22" long when it's on the ground. 22" long seems just fine, I have plenty of sweaters that length and they fit great. I have a 38" bust. I like the 2" of negative ease, I think a worsted weight cabled sweater should fit a little snug on someone with my body type, so I don't look like a giant wooly ball. But here's the kicker. That 2" stretch has to come from somewhere. Hence the sweater being too short once I put it on. Doh. So now I will be attempting to rip out the ribbing from the bottom and reknitting the ribbed part longer. Eek! Scary.

You know how with some projects, you're so excited about knitting it that mistakes come along and you just rip right back and keep on going? Because you chalk it all up to part of the general knitting process? And you know that no project will ever come out right the first time through? And knitting puts you in such a zen mindset that little errors just roll right off your back? Yeah, me neither. I always think that every project will be perfect the first time, and every mistake or setback just pisses me off and I have to hide the project in the closet for a while until I'm calmer. Hence the fact that this sweater has been hiding in my closet for a few weeks. I'm almost ready to take it back out and fix it.

Socks seem to be the exception to this rule. They don't piss me off nearly as much as bigger projects. I don't know why that is.

I finished the first Koigu Monkey sock (toe-up) all on size 2.5mm needles, and the leg was way too tight. Somehow the sock managed to charm its way out of being chucked in the closet and I just ripped the leg out, reknit the ankle on size 2.75mm, and the rest of the leg on 3.0mm. Perfect!

I am totally converted to this whole toe-up thing. The miser in me loves using up every last yard of yarn. Now if I can only make myself cast on for the second sock.

Finally dry!

2007-06-07T15:15:00.000-07:00

Take one monkey*

Turn it upside down

Add one pair of bare tootsies

(Excuse the bandaid, I ripped up my toe in yoga somehow. Sticky mats my bum, they should call them shreddy mats.)

What do you get?

One pair of toe-up monkey socks!

Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in Copperbeech, almost 1 skein
Needles: Knitpicks size 1 DPNs (2.5 mm)
I never have revealed the time it took me to finish a project, mainly because I usually find it embarassing how long it takes. But it occurs to me that it might be useful to keep track of this kind of thing, so I'll swallow my pride and start telling ya. But please keep in mind that I am very fickle and never work on one project exclusively.
Started: May 9, 2007
Finished: May 28, 2007 (I think?)
Pattern: Monkey socks from Knitty, of course!
Mods: Knit toe-up. They're upside down! I basically just took the toe-up pattern from the IK Summer 2007 issue and applied the Monkey chart to it.

Toes! Magic cast-on

Heels! Short row heel

I'm unsure of the short-row heel. These socks are kind of hard to get on over my foot, but once they're on they do feel like they're staying in place better than my other handknit socks.

Verdict: I love this pattern! I love these socks! With one giant, glaring exception. I hate this yarn. I was lured into buying it on impulse at my LYS because of all those pretty pretty colorways peering out at me. I didn't even realize the horrible yardage (less than 300 yds! For $21!) until I got home. But that's not the worst part. Here's the worst part.

Sock #1

Sock #2

Notice anything? Like how the colors on the leg of sock #2 are totally different? There was a knot about 3/4 of the way through the skein, and the colors were completely different on either side of the knot. For $21, such crappy yardage, and THE BASTARDS TIED TWO DIFFERENT COLOR LOTS TOGETHER. I'm not the only one this has happened to either. I've heard alot of stories about people getting skeins with tons of knots in them too. You better believe I will not be purchasing this yarn again. Y'all consider yourself forewarned. Needless to say, my messages to the US distributors have gone ignored. Luckily my LYS is awesome and the owner gave me the entire price of the skein back in store credit, without even asking for the defective skein back.

Anyway, pissiness about the yarn aside, I'm still pretty happy with these socks. Especially because I wear jeans almost every day, so the legs aren't even going to be visible.

Happy feets!

So happy that I started another pair immediately:

I'm being a copycat and am knitting all the stitches that are normally purled. I think it gives it a more subtle, smooth look, plus it's much faster. Yarn is Koigu KPPPM that I got with my aforementioned store credit from my awesome LYS.

*These monkeys are Capuchin monkeys we saw on a boat ride in Costa Rica. So cute! We got to feed them bananas. Probably breaking all kinds of eco-regulations about not feeding the wildlife, but so so cute! With their little human-like fingers! And their funny little faces!

I wish I lived in Arizona

2007-06-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

If I lived in Arizona, I would have had FOs to show you several days ago. As it is, I wet-blocked some things AT LEAST a week ago and they are still not dry. San Francisco is unbelievable. It's a constant losing battle trying to find somewhere or some way to hang your towel so that it will be dry by the next day. You don't even want to know about the crazy prolific molds and mildews. Maybe I should stick to lace until I move somewhere drier. Anyway here are some previews. I promise I'll show you the real things as soon as they are dry enough to model (any week now...)

So Close.

2007-05-29T13:34:00.000-07:00

The seaming is finally done. The collar is picked up and knitted. The sweater actually fits beautifully, it's not tight under the arms at all, I think the shoulders are just lower than I'm used to so I kept trying to hitch them all the way up. But if I just let them sit where they want to sit it feels great. Just one tiny problem:

Ick. See how floppy and sloppy that collar looks? Ick ick ick. I can't wait until I get to the point in my knitting skills where I can look at directions in a pattern and think jeez, that sounds like a horrible idea, instead of just blindly following them. The collar is K3, P3, except then the last round they have you K1, P1 all the way around.

Ick. I think this is mainly responsible for the sloppy looking edge, although I also somehow managed to bind off too loosely (which never happens to me). I'm picking that stupid K1P1 row out as we speak, then will try binding off a bit more tightly. Fingers crossed!

Oh and P.S., Costa Rica was beautiful.

Still no seaming

2007-05-09T11:39:00.000-07:00

I have got a major case of startitis recently.

Some monkey socks:

My first toe-ups! The yarn is Colinette Jitterbug in Copperbeach. I really wanted to do Monkeys out of this, but I was worried about running out of yarn since the skein is under 300 yards (why is that? It doesn't seem any thicker than normal sock yarn, yet claims to be 100g. I don't get it.) I was doing mental acrobatics trying to convert the chart in my head to flip it over, but then I realized the pattern would look just fine upside-down. Hooray!

Started working on the Wedgewood blouse:

And finally, swatched for yet another cute summery top:

The Josephine top from Summer 2007 IK. In my defense, this issue didn't show up until after I had already swatched for the Wedgewood top.
The yarn is the SWTC Bamboo from this place, in Cobalt. It was an amazing deal, 10 skeins for $42.50, given that it usually sells for $13/skein. I was really excited when the yarn showed up, it seemed so soft and silky in the skein and had such a neat texture. Now I'm less sure. It felt really scratchy as I was knitting up the swatch. I hand-washed it and it feels a little better now, not scratchy anymore, but definitely not soft either. I can't decide if it's worth the effort or not. SWTC has changed their formula for this yarn, even though you can still find the old stuff for $13/skein at many places, but the new stuff feels amazing. Sigh. Why couldn't I have some of that for $4.25/skein?

Anyway, all this startitis came about because we're going to Costa Rica for two weeks for our honeymoon! Leaving in a few days. And I wanted to make sure I had plenty of knitting projects for the trip. First I started the Wedgewood top, then I thought maybe it was too much bulky yarn to lug on a trip, so I started the Monkey socks, then I realized they were on metal DPNs so I needed something else for the plane anyway, so I started the bamboo thing, then I thought maybe I would work some more on the Wedgewood top after all. I think I might end up bringing all of them.

The cabled sweater?

Banished to a corner to think about how difficult it has been.

New stuff

2007-05-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

I'm actually procrastinating some real work now. Which means procrastinating with keyboards and internets, instead of sticks and thread. New look for the blog. What do we think?
The banner is some yellow Hill Country sock yarn I've had in the stash for ages. (Also the same stuff that went into J.'s temporary ring.)

A series of procrastinations

2007-05-03T12:44:00.000-07:00

Not even excitement about the VK cabled turtleneck potentially being far and away the best sweater I've ever made for myself can induce me to finish the seaming.

What is it with seaming? Why is it so horrible? And why did just half of it take me the better part of a Saturday to do?
The good news is that I got far enough to try it on and realize that all the pieces fit almost perfectly. The sleeves are a little tight at the top, but I think I can block some extra room in there. More importantly, nothing is too long or too short, which seems to be where I have gone wrong in the past.

The other good news is that procrastinating the seaming induced me to finish these:

Boring stockinette socks that I started in December. I got serious second sock syndrome (SSSS?) on these.

Ooh la la.

Top-down, K2P2 ribbed cuff, stockinette socks. Instructions from Ann Bud's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns.
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Forest, less than 2 skeins.
Needles: Size 1s.

Even though they turned out OK, I think I'm going to be knitting from alternating skeins for handpainted yarn from now on. The spiralling doesn't bother me too much, but I would have preferred an even more random patterning. And there is a bit of pooling at the top of the instep, where the sock was the widest before the gusset decreases. You can see it in the top picture. I think it's kind of cute though how there were pools of about the same size but different colors on each sock. But it would have been cuter if there was no pooling at all.

What else could I do to procrastinate seaming? How about swatching for my next project?

Norah Gaughan's Wedgewood blouse from Summer 2006 IK. Cute cute cute! However, the whole thing is reverse stockinette in the round. I think I better learn that reverse knitting technique so I don't have to drive myself crazy with purling. Yarn is Takhi Cotton Classic that I had in the stash (which I accidentally forgot to flash, oops).

Ickle Wickle

2007-04-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

I thought the ring pillow was the littlest finished object I would make. Well, here are some even littler ones:

Baby socks for a friend who just had an ickle wittle baby boy. (I hope they aren't too pinkish for a boy! I don't think they are, personally, but who knows what the parents will think.) Ann Budd's basic pattern, size 0 needles, Regia bamboo sock yarn (lovely stuff).

But wait! Things get even littler!

J. had to send his wedding ring back to be resized, so I made him this temporary one. I mentioned the idea as a joke but he really seemed keen on it. I didn't think he would actually wear it, but it took about ten minutes so I thought what the hey. But he actually wore it to work today. It's already looking quite a bit worse for the wear from going through a softball game. I guess there's a reason wedding rings aren't usually made out of yarn.

I got married!

2007-04-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

Thank god for web-savvy friends with digital cameras, that we can have pics 2 days later!

The littlest finished object

2007-04-10T17:36:00.000-07:00

I made a little ring pillow for our wedding last night:

Just made a stockinette rectangle using size 10 1/2s and some leftover Elann Peruvian Cuzco in vanilla cream, sewed it up and stuffed it with polyfill. Made some ties with a sportweight alpaca yarn. We're not having a ring bearer, but we're going to do a "ring warming" where we pass the rings around to everyone and ask for their good wishes/blessings/whatever. This was the solution to someone potentially dropping a ring or people deciding they want to try them on. Then we were joking after we have the ring warming and everyone has touched the rings we'll have to have some purell up there and do a ring disinfecting.

Flash yo' stash (beeyotch)

2007-04-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

Happy flash your stash day! I wish I had done this last year, it would have been interesting to see the changes. I'm hoping it will be smaller by next year.

Here are the storage units:

The yarn I have in sweater amounts:

Clockwise from bottom right: pine green Debbie Bliss cashmerino aran, some fingering/sportweight brandless peach wool blend, fingering brandless white linen, Dove Jo Sharp Silkroad aran tweed, cobalt blue SWTC bamboo, above it is indigo Noro Cash Iroha, orangey Rowanspun dk, 2 big cakes of white cashmere from ebay.

Now the sock yarns. I have divided them into 3 groups in my mind.

Knitpicks sock yarn:

Memories in fly fishing, Essential Tweed in plum, Dancing, Essential in various colors, Palette in various colors, and Gloss in dusk and burgandy.

Fancy sock yarns:

Lorna's laces in sand ridge, buck's bar, and happy stripe, Mountain colors bearfoot in Ruby River, Colinette jitterbug in I forget, Lisa Souza, Cherry tree hill millends, Knitting Notions, more CTH, STR, Koigu, Sereknity, Sugar Bunny Boulevard

The "workhorse" sock yarns. I'm not really sure why I've made this classification in my mind, I guess most of these are not handpainted and the above ones are.

Katia Mississipi, some weird cotton ones, Regia cotton, Sockotta, Cascade Fixation, Regia bamboo, Trekking XXL, Elann baby cashmere something, more Regia, Hill Country Yarns, Louet Gems Pearl, Some KP koolaid dyed by me in the upper right, and some Elann sock yarn.

The laceweights:

Misti alpaca, orange cashmere from Ebay, Alpaca fino with a twist, Malabrigo laceweight, 2 KP koolaid dyed skeins, Jaggerspun Zephyr, some KP one

Handspun alpaca from J's mom:

(That grey monstrosity is the one I spun!)

Everything else:

The green cake at the bottom right is wool that a friend brought me back from Chile, then there's some merino bulky from Handpaintedyarn, some random purple cotton from an exchange, a few skeins of sportweight alpaca, a bunch of black alpaca blends, a black/white cotton in the corner, 2 skeins of wool, Lamb's pride, some cashmere in the back from Colourmart on ebay, some superbulky white yarns I forget what brand, and some other random skeins.

Finally, a big ol' bag of leftovers, because I never throw anything out:

(Flickr is still being weird about some of my vertical pictures. I don't get it.)

While this was probably not the most productive use of my time, what with all that so-called wedding and thesis garbage I need to do, I'm glad I did it because now my yarn is much more organized. Specifically, all my sock yarn is in one place now so I don't have to go hunting through all my boxes every time I want to pet a specific skein.

The sweaters I don't wear (Or, what a knitter will produce in a vacuum)

2007-03-30T18:27:00.000-07:00

While I was working on my cabled pull-over (front and back now complete!):

I had a thought. Or a few thoughts. One, this will be the first sweater I've made for myself since I started blogging (although there was also the itchy Somewhat Cowl that I started for myself and finished for Sienna). And two, it may well be (knock on wood) the first sweater I've made for myself that I actually like. Then I thought, since I don't have a whole lot to blog about in terms of WIPs (sweater, see above, socks, boring stockinette), maybe I'll show you some of the sweaters I made before I started this blog.

Besides the four you're about to see, there are 2 others waiting in the frog pile - one horribly felted (OK, obviously this one isn't going to be frogged, but maybe cut up and sewn into something else), and the other one just horrible. And then there was a 7th, my first sweater, that I made in high school, that was a giant potato sack and I gave it to Goodwill and now really regret it. But I did not know the concept of frogging at that point.

And that brings me to my other thought, of how much I think I've learned in the time that I've been aware of all the knitting goodness out there on the internet. For which I have Marie to thank (but she has me to thank for badgering her into learning how to knit, so we're even). I learned how to knit when I was 14 from a friend, who showed me how to make a hat, and from there on out I just sort of winged it. Which, as it turned out, did not work so well. I did eventually find some patterns and tried to follow them, but I never looked at a knitting instruction book or website, and almost never asked anyone for help with parts of a pattern I didn't get, I just fudged them. I don't think this is really due to pride on my part, but rather ignorance of knitting resources and laziness in looking for them (that friend who taught me how to make a hat only knew how to make a hat, so there were about ten girls in my high school who had learned how to knit a hat from her, but I didn't know anyone else who knitted). Anyway, not to brag, but I think I've come about ten times further in the last year than I did in the 13 years before it. I also was a much more sporadic knitter until the last year or two. Now I constantly have something on the needles.

Oh, and I just realized that this is my 50th post, so maybe this little exercise on reflection is in order.

Anyway enough gabbing. Here are the sweaters I don't wear (in reverse chronological order).

I don't know why I'm sticking my stomach out in this picture. Not like it needs to be emphasized.

Some cowlneck pattern from vogue knitting, in some chenille yarn. This one I made in high school. It's very comfy, but if I wear it for more than a few hours it stretches out like crazy and then I have to throw it in the wash to shrink it up again. Plus it is riddled with errors, the seams look horrible.

This I made while I was living in Italy, in 2002. It's also some pattern from VK. (Can you tell that VK was the only pattern source I knew about? Imagine my delight when I found out about Knitty and interweave and the ilk.) I made it because I had left my winter jacket in the US and it turns out, Rome is really cold in the winter. This one I actually wore a lot that year, but I don't wear it anymore unless it's really cold in the house, and I never wear it out. It was knit on some ginormous size needles with 1 strand of a superbulky red wool and 1 strand of a tweedy orange wool held together and then it turned out as big as a fat man's bathrobe, so I felted it a little bit. It miraculously came out to be just the right size, which made me cocky about felting as a means to get something to fit you, which resulted in the aforementioned felted sweater that is now sitting in the to-be-cut-up pile. I've learned my lesson.

This one is also from VK. I hope it's not bothering anyone that I'm not looking up which issues, but I'm lazy. And I don't think any of these are really examples anyone will want to duplicate. I started it in college and finished it in grad school, so it sort of pre-dates the red jacket. This one I actually think is the most aesthetically pleasing (love that keyhole) but I've never worn it. For one, I don't know that I will ever wear a knitted tank top. For two, there's a lot of side-boob action when I move, and I can't wear a bra under it. For three, it's a little short. (And for four, shhh, it's made of an acrylic yarn I got at a thrift store. But that actually doesn't bother me so much.)

(Jeez, there goes my stomach again. Apparently I really need to work on my posture.)

And this one I made just a few months before starting this blog. It's the Hot Lava Cardigan, in Knitpicks Sierra in Tide. So you can see at this point I had sort of discovered some internet knitting resources, but hadn't yet discovered that there were so many knitting blogs out there or Knitty or Magknits etc. This one I do wear sometimes. It's comfy. But the sleeves are awfully long. And it has some icky gaping ladders in the armpits.

Whew! That was a long post.

Ahhhh....

2007-03-25T09:22:00.000-07:00

That's better.

I added 3 more repeats, bringing it to a grand total of 14. I think it's just right now. I blocked it this time with the blocking wires, I bought some U-shaped pins so that the wires couldn't just pop over the pins. I think the blocking looks a lot better, although the edges still aren't 100% straight - there are all these loops where the wires went through. How do people get such perfectly straight edges when blocking lace, especially with pins? I don't get it.

Anyway, onwards and upwards to something else. I'm sick of working on this stole.

River of Malabrigo

2007-03-13T16:54:00.000-07:00

Mmmm, I'd like to go swimming please:

Pattern - My So-called Scarf
Yarn - 2 skeins Malabrigo worsted, I forget what the colorway is called.
Needles - 11s? I think? I just cast off the other day but damned if I can remember.
Changes - cast on 36 stitches instead of 30.

I just kept knitting until all the yarn was gone, it's definitely a double wrapper. Of course now it's in the 70s here. Oh well.

Conveniently hides the zits on my chin (all from my thesis talk, baby):

Flickr is doing this annoying thing all of a sudden where it is turning the small sizes of some of my pictures sideways, and I can't figure out how to make it stop. I usually don't like posting the medium size ones because they seem huge, but I guess it's better than sideways.

This is how much yarn there was leftover:

I don't think of myself as a very anal person, but I love when a project uses the amount of yarn I have exactly. Because anything more than like 10 yds I can't bring myself to throw out. Maybe it's my pack rat nature more than an anal nature.

Suddenly plagued with doubts

2007-03-11T17:56:00.000-07:00

Is the stole too short? IS IT???? I think it might be.

Look, it hardly goes past my arms! Also, I think the edges look really horrible! HELP!!!

I have NEVER spent so much preparation ahead of time for my appearance for one day, and I'm starting to have the sneaking suspicion that I'm not really going to look that different from how I normally look, except that I don't normally wear a dress, or white things.

Fret fret fret.

Less blob, more stole

2007-03-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

Someone wants to meet you.

Come out, little stole!

It's shy.

There we go.

I was feeling the model vibe, here are some more shots:

Hee hee, my feet look funny in that one.

Specarinos:
Pattern - Baltic Sea Stole
Yarn - Jaggerspun Zephyr Wool-Silk blend in Sage, approx. 900-1000 yards
Needles - Addi turbos size 5 (started on size 4s and couldn't see what the hell I was doing, going up a size made a huge difference).
Changes - In laceweight instead of sportweight, so I added a few pattern repeats and used smaller needles.
Reason for being - to wear in my wedding! Finished a whole 5 weeks ahead of time even!

Between the waiting for blocking wires to show up and a surprise trip to Vegas from little sis, there was a long time between knitting the last stitch and getting to take these pictures today. As it turns out, blocking wires suck. They make it sound like, or I thought that, it would be so much faster than pinning, but it's not. For one thing the ends of the wires are flat, not tapered, how retarded is that? It seemed to take just as long if not longer to thread the wires through the edge stitches as it would have to just pin every edge stitch. It was much more awkward than pinning, and I had to lift parts of the stole up while it was still wet which seemed like a bad idea. And then once I got the damn things threaded through, I couldn't figure out how to actually stretch it out, the instructions say to put a few pins to hold the wires in place, but the wires kept popping right over the pins as soon as I stretched it even a little. So I ended up just yanking them out and pinning the thing instead. It took me so long that the stole was dry before I'd even gotten most of the pins in so I spritzed it before continuing. I don't know if that was necessary or not.

I realized once I was close to the end of this that it was my first real lace project - I've made lacey patterned things before, like Ella and Branching Out, but this was my first with real laceweight yarn, and where every row had funky stuff to do on it instead of getting a purl row for resting. I think it's good I didn't realize that earlier, I might have chickened out and picked an easier pattern. But this one wasn't too difficult at all and I'm glad I picked it. I think it turned out quite well, if I do say so myself. The only part that bugs me is the edges, they aren't very even and I'm not sure if this is because I was too fed up to do a good job pinning or if I stretched it too hard. I definitely had a much harder time getting straight edges while pinning this than with other things I've blocked in the past. I don't know why that is exactly.

Now it is wrapped in tissue and sitting in my closet where it will stay until the wedding. I will not take it out to wear before then as much as I am tempted to, knowing me I would spill ketchup on it.

Oooo.... sparkly

2007-03-01T18:30:00.000-08:00

Picked up my wedding ring today.
Here it is with my engagement ring:

Holy crap, I'm getting married in 6 weeks!!!

Baltic Sea Blob

2007-02-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

Done done done!

Blocking wires, hurry up and get here! Added to my impatience is the fact that the blocking wires are bringing along with them this, this, and this - those last 2 are KP palette, for doing some colorwork with the green palette I already have. Endpaper mitts, perhaps?

11th verse, same as the first

2007-02-26T14:36:00.000-08:00

Hello little blog! Long time no see.
I have not felt very bloggy this month. Partly because I've just been manically plugging away at the wedding stole, and kind of in a not so fun, hurry up and finish sort of way. Partly because I've been manically plugging away at my thesis and thesis talk, most definitely in a not at all fun kind of way. But the good news there is that the stole is almost done (just a 9 row seed stitch border to go! yay!). I have ordered some blocking wires so it won't be presentable for a while, until those show up and I block it. I'm excited to not have to deal with putting in ten thousand different pins. I've ended up doing 11 repeats on the stole, which kind of bugs me. As I was going I thought it would be either 10 or 12 repeats, now I'm at 11 and it seems like the right length but 11 seems like such an unsatisfying number.

I also feel like so many bloggers seem to write entertaining and informative posts about the process of working on whatever project they have on the needles, but I can't find that much to say about the stole. It's on the needles, I'm pretty much following the pattern as written, I already showed you the first few repeats, I really don't feel like I have anything unique to contribute about it.

I thought to keep you entertained in the meanwhile (I haven't been around for weeks, surely I owe you some entertainment!) I would show you a non-knitted crafty thing I made a while ago. My wedding invitations that I did on my brand spankin new Gocco:

And reply card:

For some reason these are photographing as the same color, which is accurate for the reply card, but the invitation is actually sage green.
The Gocco has neat results I think, but is kind of a pain in the ass to use, and once you get started (if you are taking over the whole living room as I did, and don't have some kind of separate craft studio room) you pretty much have to keep going until it's all done and cleaned up, or else your cats will walk all over the wet prints while you are not looking, and I hate any kind of project where you can't put off the clean up stage. I'm not sure that I'll really be using it again - maybe it will show up on Ebay.

In other news, I keep craving small, quick projects (like Calorimetry (and I feel kind of pathetic that that little headwrap is my only finished object for 2007 so far)) that I can churn out mindlessly. I have started (and almost finished) a My So-Called Scarf in Malabrigo:

This is my first Malabrigo - yum.
Fuzzy squishies:

I want a whole blanket/pillow set made out of this stuff, then I would never get out of bed.

Like California, hell must have recently frozen over

2007-01-29T11:53:00.000-08:00

Because get this - not only did I use the specified yarn for a pattern, I even used the specified color. I think this might be the only time I have EVER used the called for yarn, which could explain why I run into gauge problems so frequently. Although maybe using KP shine sport for Picovoli counts, since that was one of the suggested subs.
Of course, this using of the specified yarn was a total coincidence. I had 2 skeins of Filatura di Crosa 127 Print sitting around for a year, and then the Winter Knitty came out with the Calorimetry pattern in it in the same color as I had bought. I don't think I would have looked twice at that pattern otherwise, but when I saw it I thought, hey, I have that yarn! Here it is:

This pattern is really cute and creative, but as many people in the blogworld have noted, the instructions as written will make a really gigantic headwrap. I'm so glad I have the internet community to do my work for me! I used size 7 needles instead of the called-for size 8, cast on 90 stitches instead of 120, and knit 24 rows instead of 40. I think it could stand to be even a little smaller, but it's not too big as is either. I only used 2/3 of 1 skein and I have another skein, so I can make a few more until it's just right!

Verdict - cute, comfy, and fast (took me a few hours, I'm sure actual fast knitters could churn it out in much less).

A day late and a dollar short

2007-01-25T11:27:00.000-08:00

Ashley informed us that the 23rd was National Pie Day. January strikes me as an odd time to have National Pie Day - I always think of pies as a summer thing, when all the fruit is around. I guess apples are still sort of in season, but apples are always available. Anyway I wanted to make some pies too! But I didn't get around to it until last night.

This one is half margherita, half tomato-sauce-olive-spinach-mozz.

I don't think this is exactly the kind of pie The American Pie Council had in mind. In fact, I'd be willing to bet there is a separate American Pizza Pie Council.

This one is potatoes, onions, and rosemary. I was trying to recreate one of my favorite snacks from when I lived in Rome - pizza rustica alle patate. Italian pizza is justifiably famous, and I'm sure most foodies even know the difference between typical Roman pizza (really thin, almost crackery crust) and Napoletan pizza (thicker and chewier). But there is another kind of traditional Roman pizza, pizza rustica or pizza a taglio, made in giant rectangular sheets and sold in little take away type shops in slices. You ask for it by weight, which I always thought was hilarious - "I'll have 150g of cheese pizza, please". My favorite was just a totally simple crust with delicious super thin slices of potatoes on it. But I think the traditional version must be made with buckets of olive oil - mine was good but nowhere near the potatoey ecstacy I remember.

Not much knitting has been happening around here. Yes, the thesis is partly to blame, but this new addition to our household has played no small part itself:

It's so little and cute! You could almost put it in your pocket!

Thesis shmesis

2007-01-16T16:20:00.000-08:00

Wedding shmedding.
It's cold outside (and inside) and I want to knit a sweater.

Hmm, maybe I will.

The upshot of my horrible week of last posting is that I get to start writing my thesis. This is a really good thing, because it means I'm almost done. (The bad part was the crap I had to take from my advisor to get him to agree to it.) But it also means I am to be trusted sitting at home in front of my laptop all day with buckets of yarn and projects sitting just feet away. Who are we kidding? If there was yarn in lab, I never would have got anything done.

Anyway once the temp dipped into the 30s here in San Francisco (gasp! shield your pets and children!) the lure of the unknitted sweaters was too hard to resist. I started this sweater from the 2006 Holiday VK a week ago and have already finished the back and a few rows of the front, which seems very fast for me. At this rate, I'll be done just in time to start panicking about how I have so little time left to finish my wedding stole. Or maybe I'll just start that panicking right now.

I'm doing it in Cascade 220 in Lichen, one of the heathered colors, so pretty. I originally bought this yarn for a simple cowl neck sweater but apparently that is not to be. Do other people ever really use yarn for projects it was originally bought for? I seem to change my mind pretty quickly after buying the actual yarn.

These cables are so solid and organic looking. I feel warmer already. (That pets and children comment wasn't actually a joke, well on my part it was, but the news around here has been ridiculous recently - one news show the other night said "Freeze warning is in effect for the Bay Area! Protect your pipes, pets, and children!" Come on. I may have become wimpified after living here for a few years, but I still remember what it's like in parts of the country where freezing is a normal winter event. Although I do feel sad about all the ruined citrus.)

What I did on my vacation, by Rachel

2007-01-06T13:21:00.000-08:00

I meant to post this stuff ages ago, I'm sure showing off my Christmas presents on Jan. 6 is way behind the times. But I was way too lazy at home over vacation to figure out how to blog from my parents' computers, and this week back has been craptacular in ways I can only begin to describe. I won't bore you with the details, nothing to do with knitting, just another chapter in the horrific adventure that is my PhD.
Anyway, show and tell time! Lookie what I got!

Knitting books! Victorian Lace Today and the Ann Budd from my folks, and the Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road from J.'s sis. How did they all know exactly what I wanted? Ah, the wonder of Amazon wishlists.

A big ol' mess o' Knitpicks sock yarn, from my dearest Sienna, who has clearly been paying attention to all my ranting about sock yarn adulation. There are 4 skeins each of KP Palette in green, which I'm thinking might be fun for some colorwork (one of my New Year's resolutions - learn Fair Isle) which obviously means I'll have to find another color to pair with it, and KP Gloss in Burgandy, mmmm. 3 skeins of KP Essential Tweed in plum, uber soft and lovely, and 2 skeins KP dancing (I'm not sure what this colorway is called) which has the neatest looking round ropey structure. The Essential Tweed feels so much softer than the plain old Essential I used for my Dad's socks, I don't know if it's just the tweediness somehow imparts softitude, or if they really have changed their formula somewhat.

More more more!

2 skeins of gorgeous alpaca-merino-silk blend, handspun and gifted by J.'s mom.
Look at the lovely subtle color variations:

I have several skeins of her handspun in various shades of cream and fawn sitting around the house, and I have been afraid to do anything with them because I want to think of something really special to use them for. But I think I have so many now (at least 5 or 6 big skeins) that I need to just dive in with something.

And finally, last but the bestest:

12 skeins of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed in Dove from J. Mmmmmmmm. I had been admiring Ashley's progress on her Demi in this yarn and really wanted to make one myself. Then I saw that the yarn was on sale somewhere and I really really really wanted it, and thought just maybe I would break my yarn diet to get it as a Christmas present to myself, but J. convinced me to stay strong, and then he went and bought it for me himself. He is the best one.

Mmmmmm tweedy. This colorway sort of reminds me of balled up wet newspaper. But in a good way.
And now, I really am really serious about only knitting out of my stash for the next thousand years, my stash boxes overfloweth.

Oh yeah, I also did some knitting on the vacay.

1 sock completed in Lorna's Laces shepherd sock in Forest. Boring stockinette with a ribbed cuff, but it fits so nicely.
I was so scared about pooling the whole way down, but seem to have gotten away with minimal damage. Now I can only hope the second skein will treat me so well.

Remember all that complaining I did about Christmas knitting, what with the deadlines and the stuff not being for me and all? Well, now I have jumped right into the wedding knitting:

I started the Baltic Sea Stole in Zephyr laceweight wool/silk in Sage. Of course, this project is for me (to wear at the wedding), but there's still the whole deadline issue. There are also 2 or 3 sweaters that I really wanted to make for myself this winter (and already have the yarn for), but I'm afraid to start them because of this other stupid deadline I've imposed on myself. Wah wah. Well, maybe I can make them in time for the foggy San Francisco summer.

But the good news is, here's what it will look like against a white dress (that's not my wedding dress, just a white comforter):

The pattern is not nearly so obvious, so I can make as many mistakes as I want. Which is good, because I've already made several.

Le contest

2007-01-01T18:20:00.000-08:00

Happy new year all!
The surprise Christmas presents were enjoyed by all, and seemed to be truly surprises (maybe my parents have forgotten about my blog). I have lots of things to show you but not the energy to go take pictures of them right now.
But it is time to pick a winner for my first blog contest! This fancy pants random number generator picked comment number 6, or Necia, as the winner. Congrats! I haven't quite decided what the prize should be, but maybe I'll find out from her what kind of things she likes.

Two down

2006-12-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

I have finished the second surprise Christmas project! More on that below.

Meanwhile, I have another finished object to show you - the hat from Rebecca 28, out of bulky merino from Handpaintedyarn.com on size 10 denises. I forgot how fast hats are - too bad I never wear them. Here it is blocking:

Here it is on me (it was not fully dry when I tried it on, let me tell you, there are not a whole lot of things less pleasant than putting a bulky soggy wool hat on your head).

I was trying to recapitulate the Rebecca model pose (although our house was lacking sprigs of wheat, so I had to sub a sprig of dried lavendar. Same diff.)
Did I succeed?

I hadn't appreciated how difficult it is to take a picture of the top of your head. This is the only one out of like 20 where I even got a good part of my head in the frame:

This yarn is so soft and squishy, and I love the subtle variations in color. Yay Uruguay! I didn't even use a full skein (I also forgot how little yarn hats take), I'm thinking of maybe a neat neck gaiter like this one with the rest.

Alright, now for the surprise Christmas present.
Here's what I did:

Socks! They're for my dad. This present I can actually model for you myself.

Specs -
pattern: Gentleman's sock with lozenge pattern, from Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush.
yarn: Knitpicks Essential in Pumpkin, just a titch over 2 skeins. I've heard that they changed the composition of this yarn somewhat so that it's softer - it did feel kind of tough and wirey while I was knitting with it, but once I blocked the socks they felt smooth and soft and lovely. And I love the color (orange is my dad's favorite color).
Needles: Knitpicks dpns US size 1 (which is really more like a size 1.5).
Verdict: yay socks! I hope he likes them.

My secret pal brings all the boys to the yard

2006-12-10T18:48:00.000-08:00

(And they're like, it's better than yours... now I've got that song in my head. Thanks a lot, me.)
Hooray for Christmas and secret pals! She sent me a Christmassy package:

It includes some gorgeous Lisa Souza sock yarn in Peacock, which I love, a cute little sock blocker keychain (hiding behind the sock yarn) with instructions to make the cutest little sock to go on it, some cheery red stitch markers, candy cane shaped bath confettis, Christmas cards and notepad, a candle, and much yummy Christmas candy (which is already gone - we got this package a few days ago). There was another kind of Hershey kiss that I had never heard of in there, the candy cane flavor, which were white chocolate with bits of candy cane in them. Yum. I am clearly very behind the times in hershey kiss advances.
Thank you secret pal!!! I've said it before, and I'll say it again, you rock.
Oh p.s., apparently that "Read more" thingy I put into my blog for the last post, in order to make a cut to conceal certain surprises, is now applied to every post I do. Bear with me while I try to figure out how to get rid of them, and don't hate me because you won't get any more blogginess from clicking those links.

One down (and a yarn contest)

2006-12-07T12:30:00.000-08:00

I finished one of my two mystery Christmas projects! Since the thought of all this work and no internet-bragging rights makes me sad, I'm going to tell you about it anyway, surprises be damned.

As a feeble attempt to keep it somewhat secret, I've made a cut thingymabob that you can click on below. I think of this as the virtual equivalent of putting Christmas presents under the bed. Everyone knows where it is, but they know they're not supposed to look so the onus is on them. (J., don't look under the bed!) So, anyone who thinks they might be getting a Christmas present from me, and to be broad let's say anyone I know in person, don't click on the link below. You know who you are. (If you're coming here from a direct link to this post, you won't see the cut dealy. But that's probably OK, I won't email the recipient the link or anything.)
*ETA - I've disabled the link since I couldn't figure out how to stop Blogger from putting one on every post.*

As for the afore-mentioned contest, I feel I've been the recipient of so much yarny love recently that I want to pay it forward, ala Aija. I'm going to make it simple, if you leave a comment in this post, I'll enter you into the contest. The winner will get some sock yarn from my stash (or, if you're not a sock knitter, something else). Let's say it's open until the end of 2006 (since I probably would not get around to mailing the thing before Christmas anyway).
Hooray! My first contest!

Just so there's something for everyone, here's a pic of a persimmon tart I made last weekend:

Notice the heart in the middle? That's for love.

Here's the big surprise!

It's a Picovoli! It's for my mother. Knowing her, she's probably clicked on this link anyway. Mom, if you're reading this, you have to put on your best pretend surprise face at Christmas.
Since my mother is much smaller than I am (she's 5'4" and 34" bust, I'm 5'8" and 38"), I didn't bother trying to model the Picovoli myself. (well, I did try it on, and it barely covers my navel. Not pretty.) Instead, I've enlisted the services of my favorite household model, Paddington:

As you can see, it covers his navel quite adequately.

Natasha wanted to know what was so interesting:

A close-up:

The specs:
Pattern - Picovoli, by Grumperina of course, from Magknits, size 32" bust.
Yarn - Knitpicks Shine Sport in Orchid, just under 5 skeins.
Needles - Ooh boy, that's a long story. I bought a Bryspun circular size 4 for this project, since I didn't have a shorter size 4 circ, and it broke at the join after a few rows. So I brought it back to the store and got another one, and it broke at the join after a few more rows. Grrrr. So at that point I just switched to the longer size 4 circ I had (I forget what brand, but it's metal) and stretched the bejeezus out of the stitches to make them fit on there. Probably not the smartest way to knit, but it worked out OK.

This is an awesome pattern! My one complaint is that the picot neckline is a bit floppy. This could be due to not blocking it aggressively enough, but it just seems so much heavier than the rest of the shirt that it can't help but fall over. Spray on starch, perhaps? Otherwise it's an adorable little top. I might need to make a longer (and less pink) one for myself.

I'm dreaming of a slightly chilly Christmas

2006-12-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

It's been cold in San Francisco this week. Probably not what people in the rest of the country would consider cold, but I stepped outside earlier this week, and I was like huh, what is this strange sensation in my fingers? Oh, my hands are cold! Maybe I should dig through my closet for some gloves.
Unfortunately, even though I don't think it's dropped below 45F outside, our apartment, in typical San Francisco style, has horrible heating. It has been nigh impossible to push the temp much above 60 inside this week unless we're cooking. So the extremities have been getting a bit chilly.
I've got several projects in my head lined up for after all the Christmas knitting, but this week I've been thinking a lot about making this hat (from Rebecca 28) in bulky merino from Handpaintedyarn.com (of Malabrigo fame) in Dusty Rose. Or Antique Rose. Something Rose:

This yarn was already in my stash, no cheating here.
I like that the hat has earflaps but no ties to hang around awkwardly or tie in a dorky bow under your chin. Maybe once I've made it I can find a sprig of wheat to chew on as happily as that model.

In other news, I won ANOTHER contest, this one over at yarnophiliac. She dyes her own yarn (etsy shop here, definitely go check it out) and sent me this gorgeous variegated green sock yarn and the cutest green and white stitch markers to match.

With all the awesome goodies I've been getting what with the contests and the secret pals, I've been thinking I will copy Aija and have my own pay-it-forward contest. So that's coming up, I haven't decided what the prize will be, but it will probably come out of my stash, because of the whole moratorium and stuff. Speaking of which, the shoes count is up to 3 pairs since the yarn diet started. But, in all fairness, one of them was a pair of hiking shoes to replace a worn out pair, and the other two only happened because I was looking for wedding shoes. Granted, neither of them are actually going to be worn to the wedding, but I HAD to go to these shoe stores and I am not to be held accountable for my behavior. Actual wedding shoes remain unfound.

I wish I hadn't knit this.

2006-11-27T18:14:00.000-08:00

I found out a few weeks ago that my cousin has breast cancer. She's 30. Needless to say, this totally sucks. It's scary, and sad, and scary some more. I don't know much about cancer or medicine, but it's stage III (which means it's not anywhere else in her body) and she's otherwise very healthy and she's started chemo and I've heard that there have been a lot of advances in breast cancer treatment recently. So that's good.
Anyway I made her a chemo cap, but I wish I didn't have an occasion to knit a chemo cap, hence the title of this post.
Here it is (modeled by my sis over Thanksgiving):

It's made out of 1 strand of Lang Cora (which is one of those super uber soft synthetic yarns that makes you marvel at how far the technology of softness has come along) and 1 strand Cascade Fixation for stretch, on size 10 dpns, a few inches ribbing at the bottom (not that you can tell) and then just stockinette for the rest. It is so soft and cosy, everyone in the family had to try it on. I'm thinking of getting some more of this yarn for bedtime socks.

I also made a pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving and forgot to take a picture until it was mostly gone, but I wanted to show you the neat swirlies (result of dividing the filling in 2 and only putting the pumpkin in half, then came the swirling):

Delish! I hope all of you had lovely Turkey days (or if you're not American, Thursdays) as well.

I heart my secret pal

2006-11-15T18:26:00.000-08:00

Seriously, she is the cat's pajamas. The bees knees. The shizknit. (Yes, I know I spelled that wrong. Didn't I make a cute pun there? I'm sure nobody else has ever thought of that.)
Anyway, she sent me another package! Can you even believe it? I am still longingly fondling the last stuff she sent me. When I said that I want to start knitting with some of my new sock yarns (but am holding myself back for fear of not finishing Christmas presents), it was that beautiful variegated brown stuff she sent me that I was really thinking of. Anyway, here's what she sent me:

I forgot to mention in the other post how nice the presentation of her packages is (probably because I was too eagerly ripping everything open). She picked out tissue paper to match the color theme of the package (plus, there's a color theme to the package! (it's blue)), and put little notecards on some of the things and cute gift bags/boxes. Anyway, on to the good stuff. In the position of honor in front is 2 skeins of KP gloss sock yarn in Dusk, exactly the color I was coveting. Yum. There are also: cute blue flowered gift tags, apple cinammon tea, 2 little teensy jars of jam, blue sock-shaped point protectors, knitting-themed notecards, and a size 1 KP circular needle. Awesome! How does she know exactly what I will like? I usually think of myself as a pretty picky person.

In other news, I got myself some Lorna's Laces shepherd sock yarn a while back. This place was having a great deal where you get 8 skeins for $46. Why am I unable to resist yarn sales? Oh, but the catch was the 8 skeins were a surprise, although it was guaranteed that there would be 4 sets of 2 so you could make socks out of all of them. Anyway, from left to right they are: Forest (I originally got Liberty, that red white and blue one, but that was before the most recent election and I was feeling most unpatriotic, so I swapped them on the Knittyboard for the Forest color, which I like much better anyway), Sand Ridge, Purple Club, and Happy Stripe. I was a bit unsure on the Happy Stripe when it showed up, but it's grown on me since. It is, as the name suggests, very happy looking!

Anyway, it was this purchase that forced me to admit to J. that maybe I had a little problem and maybe I needed some help. I'm really running out of storage spaces for my yarn stash, which is pretty ridiculous. Our apartment is not that small. Anyway he has taken his role as yarnoholic sponsor seriously and has stated that any yarn that shows up at our front door is to be immediately donated to Goodwill. I made him make an exception for Secret Pal yarn. So I'm once again on a yarn diet. But I have bought 2 pairs of shoes since the yarn moratorium started.

Not much knitting

2006-11-13T14:04:00.000-08:00

I have been knitting, but I've only been working on 2 surprise Christmas presents and I'm so paranoid about not finishing them in time that I haven't let myself start anything else, despite the fact that I would really really really like to start knitting some of the many new fancy sock yarns I've aquired. I think it's really nice to knit people gifts, I like giving people unique gifts and obviously something I've made myself is about as unique as it can get (since my attention span is too short to ever make the same thing twice). But at the same time I wish I was a faster knitter, since there are things I'd like to start for myself but feel like I can't until January. Boo.

Anyway, to keep you entertained in the mean time, I'll tell you about some non-knitting things. J. and I have been living the young single no kids high life the last few weekends, which for us means weekend trips.
Last weekend (the 4th) I surprised J. with a trip to the Russian River area (our favorite area for wine tasting, straight north of SF).
We stayed overnight in the beautiful Bodega Bay area:

And then we hit the wineries. This is California's version of fall foliage:

Look! A persimmon tree! I'd never seen one of those before. I thought they were oranges when we saw them from the car, but J. insisted they were persimmons and I thought he was crazy. But he was right.

Then, this most recent weekend since J. had Friday off we drove down to Santa Barbara to visit his sister. On the way we stopped in Monterey for a few hours and went to the aquarium, where we saw (among many other things) some hauntingly beautiful jellyfish.

Can you believe these things are real live animals and not just some crazy made up cartoon or something?

In Santa Barbara we went for a walk overlooking the ocean, where we saw some dolphins and many adorable sea birds, like pelicans and snowy plovers.

And we went to the Elwood Butterfly Preserve, where jillions of Monarch butterflies hang out in the winter. It was amazing. I have never seen so many butterflies in one place before, and it was really warm so they were all flying around like crazy. It turns out that flying butterflies are very hard to photograph. Here's one that kept still for a few seconds:

And I guess, since you've been so good and looked at all my vacation pictures, I'll show you a bit of my WIPs.
This one is an orange surprise:

And here's a pink surprise:

I hope the intended recipients like them!

Blogger sucks, my SP9 pal rocks!

2006-11-01T19:45:00.000-08:00

So, I meant to post this yesterday, but Blogger was driving me CRAZY! It still seems to be not uploading pics at all, but at least now I have been forced to open a Flickr account and learn how to get the pictures from there onto my blog. It's been a slow learning curve. Yesterday I learned how to get pictures onto Flickr. Today I learned how to get multiple pics onto my blog.

Anyway I got an AWESOME (please forgive the many instances of all caps writing, but I need to convey to you how cool my pal is) package from my SP9 secret pal. She (I'm assuming it's a she, please correct me if I'm wrong) is the best! Here's my loot:

Pear preserves made by the pal herself:

I have to tell you, this is great bcs J. is obsessed with jam/preserves/jelly and the like. When I moved in with him I was shocked to find that he thinks it's normal to keep like 4 or 5 different kinds of open jam jars in the fridge (and often several more in the pantry) just to have a wide variety of jams. It took me a while to accept this way of living, I was more of the philosophy that you buy one jar of jam, and then when it's gone, you buy another one. But I have come around to J.'s way of thinking, aided in no small part by his persistence in buying tons of jam. There was one time shortly after we'd moved in together that we had run out of jam (this was back when I was putting my foot down about buying all the jams) and he called and asked me to pick up some jam on my way home from work, so I did and I even bought 2 jars as a concession to him, only to get home and find that he had bought 3 different jars of his own, sneakily having figured out that this would be the only way to get several kinds into the house.

Anyway I digress. I also got some candy:

And a long size 1 circular Addi Turbo plus Magic Loop booklet (hooray):

And last, but by far my favorite, some gorgeous sock yarn made by a company called Sugar Bunny Boulevard, which I had never heard of, but I'm so glad I've found out about it now! It is so super soft and beautiful and I love the colors. I'm thinking it would make a lovely Child's First Sock in Shell Pattern from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks.

So thanks secret pal! I'm so thrilled with everything you gave me!

This wasn't in the SP9 package but it is a little bitty punkin that I carved for Halloween. The one from the last post was J.'s (that was before I figured out how to put multiple pictures from Flickr in one blog post).

Happy Halloween!

2006-10-31T18:50:00.000-08:00

I did some stuff (and took lots of pictures)

2006-10-22T16:12:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to report that the haunting spectre of the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky is almost gone from my life. I finally knit it up into some things that were not immediately frogged.
You may remember that I had 6 bedevilled skeins of it. About 3.5 became this scarf:
I had an idea that I was going to do a very thick scarf with all 6 skeins that would be full of many fancy cables. But then for some reason when I got out my Barbara Walker books to find some cable patterns, I found myself gravitating towards this simple yet pretty knit-purl stitch pattern called seaweed. Maybe because I'm lazy. But I think it turned out nicely.

The coolest part of it is, it looks different on both sides but in a good, either one could be presentable kind of way. Ignore the color in these pictures, the yarn is really much more of a nice olive green than the bird poo grey that my camera wants to show you.
Here's the "front":

And the "back":How do those knitted columns come out all wavey like that when there are no increases or decreases in the pattern? It's a mystery to me.
I haven't blocked it for fear of losing the cool waviness. I think it looks kind of nice in its bunchy way right now, I can't decide. I also can't decide if I am going to keep it or if it will end up as a Christmas present.

Then, with the leftovers I started these:
Comfy footy-type house socks that will be for my SP9 secret pal. She lives in Minnesota. I figure her feet must be freezing. I might be slightly more tempted to keep these for myself if it weren't currently 85 degrees here in San Francisco.
Unfortunately, at the end of all this industrious Superchunky knitting I'm still going to have about 1 skein left. And being a super-anal type I can't just get rid of it, so I guess their spectre will still sort of haunt me.

Also, I finished 1 Pomatomus! Hooray!

Here's the fly in my socky ointment however:
Why is the grafting sticking up like that? In my vast experience of having knitted 6 entire other socks besides this one, I haven't had that happen to me. It looks pretty funky. Did I pull the kitchener stitches too tight? Any advice?

But wait! I have more to show you!
Many, many more sock yarns have come into my life recently.
Brown Sheep Wildfoote sock yarn in Bark Cloth (what the heck is a bark cloth?):
This is for my secret pal, who professes to like autumnal colors best of all. This yarn is a little more orangey-rusty-red than is showing up here. I'm glad that this stuff gets to pass through my house on its way to her so I can feel it first.

I caved and bought some more Cherry Tree Hill Supersock mill ends from this ebay seller:
The auction ended at an incredibly low price though: $23 for 15 oz! Damn! I think some of this might find its way to my secret pal, and maybe the rest will become another Clapotis for my mother, although potentially not in time for Christmas, I have so many other things lined up ahead of it, and I'm a slow knitter.

I won a contest over at the Yarn Pirate's and she sent me some neat Opal yarn:
I'm excited to see what kind of stripey patterns will emerge as it is knitted.

And finally, I bought myself some Louet Gems Pearl sock yarn, just because I've been wanting to try it out:
Such pretty soft buttery yellow and white plied goodness. Reminds me of sweet corn.

Me me me!

2006-10-13T18:39:00.000-07:00

I'm getting sick of knitting things for other people. And I'm nowhere near close to done with my planned Christmas present knitting. I'm also getting really sick of knitting things in boy colors. The cheery respite of the baby booties has long faded away.
So I decided, screw everybody else, I'm making something for me! Me me me!
Voila un demi Pomatomus:
This is more of the Cherry Tree Hill mill end. I am knitting from both ends of the ball as I was getting some horrific green pooling (or flashing? what is the difference between pooling and flashing?) in icky spirals all around the leg of the sock. I think it's mostly better now. Although there are still more patches of green then I would like.

I am generally of the mind that variegated sock yarns are best suited to really plain patterns, as the changes in colors tend to obscure any cool stitch patterns, to my eye at least. But Pomatomus seems to be the sort of exception to this rule. I've seen some awesome Pomatomi in variegated yarn that still really highlight the neat stitch pattern (Cookie's original one from the pattern being the prime example, of course) but I've also seen some in variegated yarn that, in my humble opinion, are hard to identify as Pomatomus because of the colors. So I was a bit apprehensive about starting this project out. I don't think it's the best example of Pomatomus-colorway combination I've seen, but I think the stitch pattern is still noticeable enough.

Remember this?
It's my Clapotis, knit from what is purportedly the same mill end yarn. It came as several skeins of varying sizes that all looked like they were pretty much the same colorway, but I realized a few inches into the sock that the skein I'm using for it seems kind of different. It's all emerald green, magenta, and purple. Where are all the cool light blues and pretty rusty browns from my lovely Clapotis? Nowhere to be seen. It's not a big deal, the colors are still nice, but I'm kind of concerned that the other sock is going to end up looking really different, since the current skein is not big enough for 2 socks.
Twisted ribbing is neat.

Secret Pal 9 questionnaire

2006-10-07T10:52:00.000-07:00

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
I like almost all natural fibers. I've mostly knit with animal fibers in the past but am interested in trying some cotton or bamboo or others. I'm not crazy about mohair or alpaca if it's too fuzzy, those stray fuzzy guard hairs kind of drive my skin nuts. I'm also not a big fan of novelty yarns.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
I have a needle roll that used to belong to my grandmother, although I mostly use Denises and DPNs, so the Denises have their own case and the DPNs are currently just loose in a drawer.

3. How long have you been knitting & how did you learn? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?
I learned how to knit in high school but only did it very sporadically until just a few years ago. A friend in high school taught me how to knit. I would consider my level intermediate, I guess.

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
No.

5. What's your favorite scent? (for candles, bath products, etc.)
I like woodsy or green scents, or lavendar, or a lot of other florals.

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?
I do have a sweet tooth! I love most kinds of chocolate.

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?
I've done a little bit of yarn dyeing but it's not really something I want to get too into right now, living in a small apartment. I also like printmaking and sometimes sewing. I don't spin.

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD)
I like bluegrass, jazz, folk, rock, I think my computer can play MP3s.

9. What's your favorite color(s)? Any colors you just can't stand?
I like blues and greens. Not a huge fan of most pinks and neon colors.

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?
I live with my fiance and our 2 cats.

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?
I wear scarves occasionally, hats and gloves even more occasionally, and ponchos never. I live in San Francisco so it's doesn't often get cold enough to necessitate scarves/hats/gloves.

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?
I've just recently started knitting socks and I think those are fun! I also like knitting lacey scarves or other interesting stitch patterns.

13. What are you knitting right now?
2 pairs of socks and a sweater for my fiance. I'm about to start a Picovoli, one of these days.

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?
Yes!

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?
I mostly use Denises so circular, and I like metal DPNs for socks (I have a bunch of the Knitpicks DPNs). I've been meaning to try magic loop for socks but haven't gotten around to buying long circulars yet. Not so crazy about bamboo (it always seems to snag the yarn).

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?
Yes.

17. How old is your oldest UFO?
Hmm, I have a mohair sweater that I started in high school, so over 10 years ago, but it is never going to be finished as I realized that I hate mohair.

18. What is your favorite holiday?
Christmas! For the crafts and presents.

19. Is there anything that you collect?
Old postcards, and yarn, obviously.

20. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?
I have a subscription to Interweave, and to Vogue Knitting that is just ending. I'd love to try magic loop with long Addi turbos. I'm always coveting various sock yarns, like Socks that Rock, or Knitpicks Gloss, or Lorna's Laces. I'm currently looking for more solid color machine washable sock yarn. I would love to get a copy of a Gathering of Lace, or other good lace patterns (although I'm not so fond of triangular or circular shawls, I kind of feel like they belong on 90 yr old ladies). And I'd definitely love to get my hands on a copy of Jess Hutchisons's Unusual Toys for you to Knit and Enjoy, but that's probably wishful thinking.

21. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?
I'd like to try Magic Loop for socks, toe-up socks, more complicated cables (I've done some very simple cables).

22. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?
Yes I'm a sock knitter. I wear size 9.5. I think my foot is like 8" around? I'm not sure.

23. When is your birthday? (mm/dd)
May 13.

Arr, thar be some booty!

2006-09-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit late for Talk Like a Pirate day. But look, booties!
Some of J's friends had a baby girl a few weeks ago, and despite the fact that I really don't know them that well (although they are lovely people) I was so overcome with the urge to knit little cutesy girly baby things that I had to make little Annika some booties for her wittle tootsies! The impetus for this project also partly being that I have been slaving away on some very manly, and hence kind of boring, projects. One being J's sweater (which is about twice as far along as the last picture I posted of it, but what's the point of posting more, the front looks just like the back, boooooring), the other being a mystery Christmas project so even if I wasn't bored with it I still couldn't post any more pictures in the risk of revealing the secret. I was just looking through my closet the other day and thinking that all my clothes are brightly colored (mostly blues and greens) and I should really aquire some more neutral colored clothes, but now I'm thinking I'll have to buy them instead of knitting them, because apparently brown colored things don't hold my attention very well.

Anyway here's some info about yon baby booties.
Pattern was a freebie found here. I have to say this pattern kind of sucks, in that there is no gauge mentioned but it doesn't call for a specific kind of yarn, just DK cotton. But I guess you get what you pay for. It was partly for this reason and partly because I was being picky and indecisive that I ended up making 7 bottoms and almost 4 tops to wind up with 2 useable ones of each. The rosette pattern was another freebie, but a totally non-sucky one. Incredibly simple and took about 5 minutes to make each but I think they turned out really cute.
The yarn for these were from some totally random skeins that I think I got in a dollar bin at a yarn store in Seattle ages ago, actually I think it might have been a bin of bags of skeins for a dollar, so these skeins were probably like 20 cents each, go cheap knitting! The blue is a superwash wool and the pink is 50/50 wool/acrylic. I'm not sure how often baby booties need to be washed, probably depends on how much the baby in question likes to stick her be-bootied foot in her mouth, but I figured machine washable baby items were definitely the way to go.
The booty part was knitted on US size 5s and the rosettes on US size 3s.

Here's Paddington being a helpful model again:

Off the wagon

2006-09-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

Remember when I said someone should take my credit card away? I wasn't joking. Why do I feel compelled to purchase yarn at rates ten times faster than I can knit it up? But look how pretty!I went a little nuts when knithappens had a big sale at the end of August.

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Buck's Bar. I don't know what Buck's Bar means, but oh how I love it.
What is this strange hold that sock yarn has taken on me? Fleece Artist Merino in Parrot. Tropical bird colors for my feet!
A big ol' pile of Noro Cash Iroha for the Hourglass Sweater that I have been threatening to make for months. It's really much more of a violet-ish color in person. Unfortunately, I ordered ten skeins but the store only sent me 9, I hope this doesn't mean they are out. I was planning on making the size that calls for 9 skeins but it seems like everyone that makes this sweater is running really short on yarn, I was even nervous about getting through with 10.I was thinking of making the Hourglass with a contrast color trim, ala this one. I have this 2 skeins of this baby blue stuff, that I think is some kind of wool-silk blend. It was originally knitted into some ill-fated wrist warmers that are just too big and look silly. So I think it will be happier to take its place as part of a sweater. If I can get enough yarn, that is.

Clapotis

2006-09-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

Clapotis is done! This was such a quick, mindless knit, but so cool looking at the end! And of course dropping stitches on purpose is always fun. My denises came unjoined from the cord a few times during the knitting process and my scrambling to keep all those dropped stitches from unravelling seemed kind of funny, when I was purposefully dropping other ones.

I went a little nuts with the pictures since I actually made the effort and braved the passerbys' gawkings to go out to the front porch to get good light, so I have several non-fuzzy pictures instead of my usual 1 or 2 out of 30 or so.

Anyway here it is blocking (doubled up):

Pretty pretty colors (there are several knots in the finished product, one of which you can see here, which is entirely my fault, somehow I ended up making several huge snarls out of my center-pull ball and just broke the yarn instead of dealing with it):

Modeled by the porch railing:And the chair:

And by me!Specs:
yarn - Cherry Tree Hill Merino Supersock - a mill end, so I don't know what the name of the colorway is. I love the colors in this yarn - especially all the blues. And I think Clapotis is the perfect pattern for a variegated yarn, since any pooling is made much less obvious by the big stripes of dropped stitches. The yarn itself is very soft and smooth and lightweight, I think this is the lightest scarf I've made yet.
needles - Denise size 5s

I've started one of my Christmas projects already. Here's a glimpse that hopefully doesn't reveal what it's going to be, since the recepient may be lurking:
Mmm pumpkin. This is Knitpicks Essential in Pumpkin, the color really reminds me more of pumpkin pie filling. Mmmmm...

Prezzies!

2006-08-28T22:55:00.000-07:00

J's family was here this weekend. His mom has quickly figured out that the way to my heart is through lots of fiberous presents. She's a smart one! (Just in case she's reading this, I would like her even if she didn't give me stuff. But it sure doesn't hurt.)

Self-striping sock yarn (wool blend on the left, cotton on the right):
Despite all the sock yarn I have managed to quickly accumulate in the short time since I started knitting socks, I didn't yet have any self-patterning stuff. Goody!

These ones are alpaca-silk laceweight blends:
The blue stuff is Alpaca with a Twist Fino (and such a lovely rich bluey color) and the white is handspun by J's mum herself.

Now I need some good ideas for lacey projects.

My own mom was also here this weekend (although SHE didn't bring me any presents, harumph! Just kidding Mom. Thanks for the gift of life and all.). She suddenly decided she needed to start knitting something, even though she eschewed knitting decades ago, so I gave her a leftover skein of Knitpicks Sierra bulky blue yarn and some size 10 1/2s (that I think actually originally belonged to her mother, how quaint) and she was off and running. Apparently knitting is like riding a bike, I didn't need to remind her how to do anything. She was so cute!

(Update on the bridesmaids' dresses - several family members and a mild panic attack have combined to convince me that retail is my friend. You will hear no more from me of trying to create my entire wedding from scratch, promise. I'll leave that kind of thing to Martha Stewart and her thousands of employees.)

Dressing down

2006-08-24T22:59:00.000-07:00

After making that last dress, that was purportedly a mock-up for potential bridesmaid dresses, I decided that it wasn't at all the right kind of bridesmaid dress pattern. And then I saw this Vogue pattern, below, which reminded me of some cute dresses by J. Crew and Thread.

So I made another mock-up. Now, some of you might remember that part of the point of this whole thing was the saving money aspect of it, and now I've probably spent at least $60 on these two "mock-up" dresses, and am not any closer to having a single actual bridesmaid dress. Although I do own a cute duro-style dress of my own making now, at least. This second mock-up I made in Sienna's size (the fact that I made the first dress in my own size, despite the fact that none of the bridesmaids are the same size as me, ought to be a clue that I really had only selfish motivations behind that first creation), and again sacrificing work and sleep, managed to finish it in a few short days before flying out to Chicago to see Sienna over this last weekend. I am proud to relate that the dress looked awesome on her! Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture, and I think a good chunk of this awesomeness may be due to her ginormous ta-tas, as it doesn't look so good on me:

Bleh.

Up-close of the neato cotton fabric print of the mock-up:
Oh, and that pale green somewhat baggy somewhat cowl of the last post now has a new home with Sienna, and as predicted, it looked much better on her than on me. All of that under-arm bagginess was magically taken up by her, guess what, ample ta-tas.
I'm starting to get a little weirded out by the number of times I have talked about Sienna's bosom on this blog, which is supposedly about knitting, not about Sienna or her various body parts. Also, all evidence to the contrary, I swear that I'm straight. No more boob-talk, I promise! All posts from here on out will be strictly G-rated good ol' fashioned fiberous fun.

In case you thought I had forsaken knitting for bridesmaid dress mock-ups, here's evidence that Clapotis is Clapotising along.

And I also just broke my moratorium on no yarn buying in August by ordering a ton of Noro Cash Iroha, Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, and Fleece Artist Merino Sock. Well, it's almost September, right? Maybe if the yarn doesn't show up until September it doesn't count as buying it in August, yeah, that's it.

Somewhat undecided

2006-08-11T14:53:00.000-07:00

After months of complaining I have finished the Somewhat Cowl (pattern by Wendy over at Knit and Tonic). I think I realized after a few inches into it that it was going to come out too big on the top. I know she actually published a revised pattern since a lot of people were having this problem, but by that point it was already too big. And then I realized not too long after that, that I was having to put a blanket between the sweater and my legs while knitting it, since the alpaca yarn was itching me too much. So the chances of me wearing this sweater seemed slim from the get-go. Since I wasn't so crazy about the yarn, it seemed pointless to frog it and re-make it smaller. Great logic, right? It's so much better to have an itchy sweater that doesn't fit than an itchy sweater that does. So it languished on the shelf unfinished for a long time. Then I had the idea that maybe I could give it to someone who is a little bigger than me on the top, which is when I thought of the aforementioned large-knockered bridesmaids. So I picked it up again with the idea of giving it to Sienna, which gave me new motiviation to finish it, since I'm going to see her in Chicago next week.

But now that it's done, it doesn't seem quite so bad as I was expecting. I took several pictures of myself wearing it this morning to try to demonstrate the bagginess of the top part, and was having a hard time getting this bagginess to show up in a picture, which made me think, maybe it's really not so big after all, if it seems to look OK in the picture. So now I'm blocking it to see if I can make the itchiness go away too. Anyway here it is:

See, it doesn't look so bad there, does it? It does kind of make me look like I have no waist, which is unfortunate since I have giant hips and my waist is really much smaller than those hips, I swear, but this sweater kind of makes me look much more tree-trunk shaped.

I do actually have pictures that show the bagginess a little more than that one, but blogger is insisting on turning them all sideways when I try to upload them and I don't know how to fix it, so I just deleted them all. You'll have to take my word for it.

So I'm still undecided about this sweater - I think I'll end up giving it to Sienna since I said I would, and it would probably look cuter on her anyway, and then I'll have an excuse to make another one for myself that actually fits with Knitpicks Shine. I've seen a few versions in this yarn and I think it looks delicious.

cheating

2006-08-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

Do you ever feel like you are cheating on a work in progress if you start something else before finishing it? Something snazzier, more exciting, faster? Sure, it won't keep you warm and comfortable the way that long-sleeved stockinette pullover will, but look how many yarn-overs and twisted stitches! I felt like I was cheating on J's sweater when I made those turquoise socks, and the minute I finished those I felt remorse for ignoring the sweater, so I faithfully knit another inch or so of that mind-numbing K4 P2, until I was lured away by the call of the Clapotis. But the last few days I've been cheating on knitting altogether. The first episodes of Project Runway have convinced me that if all those contestents can sew a besequined outfit for an ice-skating poodle, or whatever they were doing, in just 24 hours, I can surely complete a simple dress with detailed instructions in the comfort of my own home. And I did! After putting the first few bits aside a few weeks ago when I got to the point where I would have to get the iron out to continue (yes, I am incredibly lazy), I picked it back up on Sunday, and with the minor sacrifices of sleep, work, and bathing, I have just completed it. Here it is, hot off the presses (I even figured out how to use the self-timer on my camera, so I don't have to subject you to the bathroom mirror pictures).

All the yarn

2006-07-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to dying the rest of my dye-your-own yarn I've had sitting around for months.
I used both Koolaid and Paas easter egg dyes this time. Those dyes were a blast from the past - I haven't dyed easter eggs in years.

3 skeins of sock-weight yarn - this one is Paas blues and greens:
Paas orange and yellow, with cherry koolaid for the red:
Koolaid grape, orange, cherry, and black cherry (in various mixtures). This one is my favorite, and is much darker and browner than I could get the camera to replicate.

Two laceweight skeins. Paas pale green:

Paas turquoise and grape koolaid:

The whole hand-dying thing was fun, but I think it was a one time deal for me. I feel like my results are pretty amateurish looking and it was very hard or impossible to get the colors to come out the way I was picturing them in my head. This problem probably could have been avoided by mixing up a lot of colors ahead of time and doing test bits of yarn and waiting for those to dry, but I'm not a patient person. Actually I did try doing that with the first dying attempt, and managed to create a fused melted plasticy mess of yarn and saran wrap in the microwave, which I guess taught me the lesson to include more water the next time, but didn't teach me much about coloring.

This hand-dying thing seems best left to the professionals:
Cherry tree hill supersock mill end from emtnestr. The colors are so beautiful - this yarn is clearly in an entirely different class than my pastely koolaid experiments. I've started this with it:That's right, I've jumped on the Clapotis bandwagon, about 2 years later than everyone else.

Finally, I heart Knit Picks:

They were luckily carrying the same dyelots for the green and brown merino style for J's sweater, that I stupidly did not order nearly enough of. On top of that, Shine Sport in Orchid that will hopefully become a Picovoli (I'm jumping on bandwagons left and right here), and some Essential sock yarn in Pumpkin, for some Christmas socks for some lucky gentleman.

les chausettes sont finies

2006-07-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

The second pair of socks is finished! I am offically converted to this sock knitting thing.
Here are the fronts:

The side:They can even stand on the floor:

And, at that point, I tried to get a working close-up shot but after a few blurry ones I had to give up and tear the socks off, it is so frigging hot here. OK, it's only in the 80s and I am officially a wimp, but yesterday broke the heat record for San Francisco by 6 degrees! Dang! I think it may be a while before I actually wear these socks for longer than 2 minutes.
Les chausettes:
Yarn - Hill country yarn instant gratification merino sock yarn in aqua.
Needles - US size 5, baby.
Pattern - Took the pattern from Nancy Bush's Heelless Sleeping Socks and applied it to a basic sock pattern.
Result - thick and warm! Too too warm!

Natasha begs to be included more in this blog. She has gone so far as to convince J to carry her around in his shirt, so as to look extra cute and force me to take her picture:

something old, something new, something borrowed, and a blue sock

2006-07-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

I had this horrible dream last night that I was suddenly getting married, like, right now (well, right then, in the dream) and had done almost no preparation. J and I are getting married next spring, which is the opposite of nightmareish, but in my dream it was like there was suddenly a time wrinkle between now and next spring that resulted in the actual wedding planning being skipped but all the guests and everyone showing up. Oddly enough, in my dream, my biggest worry seemed to be that my dress was wrinkled. Clearly I have my priorities straight.

Anyway, in other news, I've started knitting with that Hill Country Yarns instant gratification aqua merino sock yarn I mentioned a few posts ago. I realized on Saturday that I had not bought nearly enough yarn for J's sweater, and I got so depressed that I decided I needed to put that away and start some socks. Here it is in all its blueness, so far (also a gratuitous shot of my freshly pedicured toes, which is a rare state for them to be in):

The pattern is just a basic sock pattern, and I took the decorative pattern part (which is just a rotating P3 K1 which makes that swirlyness) from the Heelless Sleeping Socks from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks.

Here's a close-up that shows the cool striations of the yarn:

It is knitting up very quickly (size 5 needles!), and is very thick and squooshy in a comforting, wintery sock kind of way (unfortunately, it is actually real summery weather here in San Francisco, for once) .

stripey

2006-07-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

The back of J's sweater is almost done. For some reason, I always fool myself into thinking that the body of the sweater is like 90% of the whole thing and the sleeves will take but a few moments to finish. I keep trying to remind myself that I am NOT almost halfway done with this sweater, but less than a quarter done. Factor in the seaming, and I'm probably 10% done. Sigh.

I don't know why my camera makes this yarn look so orangey-red. It's really brown. The color is called cinnamon which I think is an accurate description.
While I'm knitting this sweater, I keep thinking of all the things I would like to make for myself out of this (Knitpicks Merino Style) yarn, in some more girly color. Like this, without the silly symbols on it; this sweater sort of reminds me of the hourglass sweater but with a less annoying neck. It's hard to remember that I have so many unfinished projects sitting around that I. MUST. NOT. BUY. ANY. MORE. YARN!!!
Since my last panicked post I have made myself sit down and write a list of what I am going to do with most of the yarns in my stash. Granted, I have just written "some kind of scarf" after most of the yarns, but I feel better now. And Marie has kindly lent me a very cool looking cabled sweater pattern (that I will probably do as a crewneck instead of turtleneck, ick) for my Rowanspun DK. Hooray!

Fickle

2006-07-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

That Cashmerino Chunky sweater turned out to be very short-lived. I got about 2 inches into it, realized that I had used up almost an entire skein, and then realized that the skeins are only 70 yds each instead of the 120 I somehow had in my head. So now I have no idea what I'm going to do with 420 yds of very chunky yarn. Grrr.

I have just recently realized that I have 3+ large boxes of stash accumulated and only one part of that (6 skeins of Cascade 220) is actually earmarked for a project. The rest of it just haunts me. And I'm really really trying to use it up, but it always goes like it did with the C. Chunky, where I'll look through every single pattern I own, then look through all my yarn, then try to pair one yarn with a pattern that it isn't really suited for but I convince myself I can make it work, then start swatching or knitting, and then a few hours later realize that I'm fooling myself and that particular yarn will never work for that pattern. Another problem is that I have such random amounts of most of my yarn. 420 yds. of cashmerino chunky??? What was I thinking!?

I think it's a hopeless cause, but I will turn to you, dear blogworld, for suggestions. In order to not overwhelm you I will just present the case of 3 of my yarns, that I may actually have enough of to do something larger with. Here they are:

The one on the left is good-ol Rowanspun DK. I have 10 skeins of it, so over 2000 yards. I might like to do some kind of cabled sweater with it but I seem to be having a hard time finding a cabled pattern for dk weight yarn.
The other 2 are some random yarns I picked up many years ago at this insanity. The middle one is 50% wool 50% acrylic and is fingering weight, I think, the label just says 2.5-3, next to some pictures of needles, which I think must be US sizes since it doesn't look thin enough for a 2.5-3 mm needles. Although I could be wrong. There's no telling how many yards of this there are. But I have 10 skeins, so again probably over 2000.
The last one is the most mysterious. It just says "lino" on the label, which means linen. No yardage, no weight, no gauge suggestion, no nuttin. But it looks very thin to me, I'm thinking fingering or less. I have 5 skeins of this one. But they're pretty hefty skeins.
I don't think I'll be too depressed if I can never figure out anything to do with these last 2, since I think they were probably like $5/bag or something like that.

Maybe I should just give up and give my stash to goodwill or something, and start over with the promise that I will not buy any yarn without a project in mind (or rather, with a project written down, since I did have a project in mind when I bought the Rowanspun but that idea is long forgotten).

Anyway in happier news, I started this sweater for J in Knitpicks merino style:

The main color is the brown and the stripes will be green. I have to say this yarn is amazing, especially given that it is only like $2.30 per skein. The resulting fabric is so soft and smooth and fuzz-less, it's like the anti-alpaca.
I understand the boyfriend sweater curse now, I think it could be due to the fact that the knitter will invariably want to show the boyfriend the progess of the sweater every ten minutes: look! it's half an inch longer now! hold it up against your stomach again so I can see how it looks. no, feel it! it's really soft! doesn't it looks nice?

aquisitions

2006-07-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

I've been on a bit of a buying spree recently. Even J, who is normally so accepting/oblivious, has noticed how many knitting-related packages have arrived at the door in the last few weeks and has wondered whether I might think of knitting some of this yarn I keep buying instead of just buying more. Silly boy.
I think this trend might have something to do with the fact that J and I opened a joint bank account a few months ago. Now, it's not so bad as you're thinking, it's not like I'm suddenly spending all of his money on yarn. We have each kept our own separate accounts and deposit half of our paychecks into the joint account and half into our private accounts, and then we pay for all the joint stuff like rent and utilities and food out of the joint account. The end result of this is that I've realized that that stuff is pretty much the majority of the money I spend, except for gas, and so now I've got all this discretionary money piling up (well, slowly trickling up) in the other account, and I'm like wheee! I can spend it on whatever I want!
Anyway in a good stash busting attempt I finally found and cast on for a pattern to use these 6 balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky that I've had sitting around for a very long time now. It's from some back issue of Vogue Knitting, I forget which one:

I think I'll probably make it 3/4 sleeved (or maybe even less, since I'm not sure how far 6 balls of this stuff is going to go) and add in some waist shaping. And I changed it to knit on circular needles. I feel like mods like this are things I probably wouldn't have attempted doing not so long ago, but now I feel a little more confident in my knitting abilities. Although the Stich and Bitch Nation book has some complicated formulas with Zs and Xs and Ys and gauge and waist and bust measurements for how to add in waist shaping to a sweater, and I'm like, eh, I'll just throw in some decreases and increases where I deem appropriate. So we'll see how that actually turns out.

Now on to the goodies. I ordered this combo pack of Hill Country sock yarn, which is normally $15-$20/skein (you only need 1 skein per pair of socks), pretty standard for hand-dyed sock yarn I think, BUT they have this combo pack of 3 assorted skeins for $25. What a deal! The drawback is they send you random colors. But I thought I would try my luck. And I absolutely love the colors they sent me, even better since I don't think I would have picked these out myself but now that they are in my grubby little hands I love them.

Aqua Instant Gratification merino sock yarn (knits up on size 5 or 6 needles so it will be a very fast pair of socks):

Yellow Sweet Feet merino sock yarn (standard size 2 needle sock yarn). I love solid color hand-dyed yarn because it has such subtle variations in the color. Both the yellow and aqua skeins have some very slight lighter and darker spots that I think look so pretty. It probably hasn't come out in these pictures.

And a mystery (no-tag) orangey-red and white striped yarn (it looks very similar to the yellow one so I think they're probably the same kind):I also ordered Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan and Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush from Knitpicks. Knitting Nature has some really kooky but really awesome looking patterns in it. Well, some are awesome, a few are incredibly weird looking.
Speaking of Knitpicks, I've been obsessively flipping through their catalog recently and eyeing different lovely colors of cheap yarn. Despite the fact that I'm really sick of the current Somewhat Cowl I'm making, and can't ever work on it for more than 30 minutes at a time, I still find myself thinking of the 2nd one I want to make in Knitpicks Shine yarn. I'm trying to convince myself that I'm sick of the current one because it's alpaca and the little fuzzies are driving me nuts. Maybe I should let J hold on to my debit card for a while...

Yo! Socks!

2006-06-29T17:27:00.000-07:00

I finished my first pair of socks! Go me.
First the sock and I watched some sweaty men chase a ball around a field.

Then, an entire pair of socks was born!

You might notice the little nubbin on the right one where there was a weird bumpy splice in the ball of yarn that I was too lazy to fix. I think it gives it that "homemade" charm. Also I read the directions wrong and so the toes are half the length they are supposed to be. But, they still fit.

Specs:
are in this post so I won't write them all again.

The dress is progressing slowly. I think I realize now why I haven't sewn anything since high school, it's because sewing is BORING. And I feel like a hunchback after a few hours of scrunching over the machine.

you sew crazy!

2006-06-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

I've been involved in a somewhat fruitless search for bridesmaid dresses recently. Not that picking out clothes for other people is ever easy, but this search is compounded by various factors, such as distance, budget, and big knockers (theirs, not mine - and therein lies the problem, since I seem to be unable to judge which dresses would suit someone who doesn't look exactly like me). Also every single dress in the world seems to cost $300. When did all the dressmakers get together and decide to make all their dresses $300? Of course I'm exaggerating. Some of them cost $3000.
Anyway last night I had the crazy idea that maybe I could make the bridesmaid dresses myself! Whoa! There are only 2 bridesmaids, plus maybe J's sister who will technically be a groomsmaid but will potentially be forced into matching the bridesmaids anyway by her evil future sister-in-law. So I went trolling on Craftster to look for dress ideas. And inspired by this and this, I went out today and bought this pattern:

Now, some of the dissenters among you (OK, that would be myself) might be thinking that I haven't sewn anything more complicated than a pants hem since high school, and that there is a layer of dust on my sewing machine so thick that little animals could shelter there. To you (me) dissenters I say, hey! Things get dusty really quickly when you live in a city! And I've got to be at least as smart as I was in high school!
I'm actually not even sure if that pattern would make a reasonable bridesmaid dress, or if it would be suitable for the large knockered among us, but I bought some cheap cotton prints to make a mock-up (that will conveniently serve as a summer dress for myself). Some of you skeptics out there (again, that's probably me) might be thinking that this whole thing is a giant ruse to make myself a cute dress. Well, you might not be wrong.
Anyhoo I bought these guys at Discount Fabrics:

The blue one is going to be the main color (I'm making the one pictured in the middle on the pattern, with the super short sleeves). I really liked that fan print but I'm a little worried that it's going to be too Asiany looking, given that the dress is sort of kimono-esque, for a non-Asiany person like myself. But I liked that fabric way better than any of the other ones. Then I bought 2 different ones for the contrast. I think I will end up using the yellow one on the left. But I was so drawn to those crazy giant flowers on the off-white one that I found myself bringing both up to the counter. Or I could even use both. Anyone have any opinions? Please save me from making my own decisions.

O Fraptious Week

2006-06-13T09:24:00.000-07:00

It is amazing what not working can do for your productivity. I went to Seattle to see my parents for about 10 days, and I got so much knitting done! It's shocking, since when I'm here and going to lab, I rarely get any science done. So now I kind of wonder what I actually do with all my time...
Anyway here's the finished Ella, looking, if I do say so myself, quite nice. And I think I can say that, since its fabulousness is entirely due to the pattern, and not my knitting skills. I loved this pattern, it is the perfect combination of easy and interesting. And you have to love any pattern that tells you upfront not to worry too much when you make mistakes. Usually I feel like the knitting gods are looking over my shoulder and frowning when I decide to just k2tog instead of going back to find where I made the extra stitch. But Wendy (the fabulous author of the fabulous pattern) clearly understands knitters like me.
This was knit with 4 skeins of Lorna's Laces Sport in Black Purl using size 8 needles.

This shawl is so darn wide it was hard to take a picture of the whole thing. I tried standing on my bed but even that didn't work. Here's most of it:

But wait! That's not all! I also finished (drumroll....) one sock!!! My very first sock! I know it's been said before, so I will just say that I now understand why everyone keeps blathering about being addicted to sock knitting. When I was still a sock virgin, this made no sense to me. I thought, why would you want to spend all that time and money knitting things that you can buy at Costco in a pack of 10 for $10, and that's going to get all stinky once it goes on your foot anyway? But now I see the light. For one, it was so much easier and faster than I thought it was going to be. This one took about 3 days. (We'll see how long the 2nd one takes, now that I'm back in SF not doing science.)
This pattern and the yarn were both christmas presents from my future mother-in-law, of alpaca sheari ng fame. The pattern is called YO cable socks (which my dad saw and said Yo! Cable socks!) by Knitting Kitten Patterns, the yarn is a lovely red sportweight alpaca by The Alpaca Yarn Company.
Here's the front:

And here's the side:

AND, when I got back from Seattle, I found this waiting for me:

A cheapo pack of Rowanspun DK in Punch that I ordered from Ebay. It's such a snazzy color. I was telling this to Marie, I know I had a project in mind when I ordered this yarn, but I cannot now for the life of me remember what it was. Marie suggested the hourglass sweater, which I think might be a good idea, but I know that wasn't what I was thinking of. This makes me think I should go through all my yarn now and label what projects I have in mind for all of it. Jeez. Maybe this absentmindedness explains why I don't get anything done most of the time.

koolaid and non-sequitors

2006-05-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to trying some hand-dying! I had so much fun - and it's nice that I can have a knitting-related finished product in only a few hours work, plus some drying time, as opposed to the weeks or months it takes me to actually knit something (that is, unless there is a looming deadline like Christmas). I limited myself to just doing 1 skein for the first try, since I was worried about totally screwing it up and ruining all my skeins. It was hard though, once I had started mixing up the kool-aid I was tempted to get all of it out and make every color possible. But I restrained myself. I used 1 skein of Knitpicks color your own merino wool in fingering weight. Here it is having a bubble bath:

I didn't take any pictures of the actual dying process, being worried about accidentally dying my camera. But here it is having a bath again, after the arduous painting:

And here's the finished product, rewound into a very messy skein (and probably missing about 20 yards or so, that just got too tangled up to deal with). This picture I think is a little lighter than the actual product. Those pieces that look white in this pic are really pale pinkish or peach. Although there were a few white bits that I had missed with the dye. I used 3 packets of koolaid, and I think that really wasn't enough for the whole 100 gm skein, even though I did a lot of pastel parts. The colors are various combinations and shades of grape, orange, and black cherry. I'm especially fond of the brownish color that is a result of a few sprinkles of grape into the orange mix.

I think it turned out OK, although it's a little pastelly for my taste. I'm thinking the next one will be darker red, orange, and brownish shades (will have to go back to Albertson's to stock up). I might send this one as the first one skein secret exchange. Is that rude, just because I'm not super crazy about it? Someone else might like it.

Here's the non sequitor part of this post:

It's the neighbor's baby bulldog sacked out on the back stairs. Awwwww

weekend report

2006-05-22T21:30:00.000-07:00

Back to the grindy daily grind after a nice weekend away, sigh...
I didn't get much knitting done, but I sure did taste a lot of yummy California wine!
I also didn't take a whole lot of pictures, being more interested in getting my mitts on the wineglass and drinking than recording what I was doing.
But here's the sky being pretty on the drive up:

Saturday morning J and I decided to go for a hike before hitting the wineries (best to do it in that order rather than try the other way around, we thought). We went up to Lake Sonoma where there were tons of beautiful wildflowers:

After about 20 minutes, however, J noticed the first tick on his pants. That's when we started getting a little nervous. A few minutes later, he found the second tick on his thigh. And then I found one on my pant leg. And then we noticed that there were ticks on EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF GRASS along the side of the trail. So that was the end of that hike, unfortunately we had a 30 minute uphill tick-ridden panic-striken trek back to the parking lot, which was luckily empty, because we sprinted to side of the car and immediately dropped our pants to check for ticks on our legs. I couldn't figure out how to work the self-timer on my camera, which is too bad, because that would have been a hilarious picture, but here's a G-rated version of J's reflection pulling his pants back up:

There are some things to be said for civilization.

bella

2006-05-18T23:38:00.000-07:00

Ella is starting to look like a shawl. Maybe I'll actually finish her one of these days.

Meanwhile, I think it looks quite fetching on Paddington. (I couldn't get either of the cats to sit still long enough to try it on them.)

J and I are going up to wine country tomorrow for a romantic weekend (my bday present!). Maybe between all the romance there will be time for some knitting. (I think there will.)

Grey skies are gonna clear up...

2006-05-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

Looks like San Francisco summer is starting to rear its ugly head. It's been alternatingly sunny and foggy, warm and bitingly chilly all week. After freezing my tootsies off the last few evenings, I'm finally giving up the idea of wearing sandals in May. There's usually a hill behind these houses that I can see from my window, but today it's totally shrouded in fog:

Luckily things are a little brighter inside the apartment:

I'm super excited to try some hand-dying finally! Now if only I could get this pesky work thing out of the way so I would have some time.

30 seconds after I had set up the orderly display of kool-aid and yarn above, this is what happened to it:

I swear that cat has some kind of 6th sense about unattended yarn. She can be napping on the other side of the apartment and if I leave a skein of yarn on the table, suddenly she appears in the doorway. I don't know how she does it. Maybe she can smell it.

Also, I just discovered and joined the ScienceKnits webring. I think it's cute how specialized these things get. Maybe I will start my own RedheadTwoCatsScientistsWhoKnitInColeValleySanFrancisco webring. Who's with me?

Nummers

2006-05-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday in several time zones! And I was in lab until 9:30 pm on a Friday. You can bet your ass I'm having a cocktail:

That pinky lovely is called the Martini Royale, and it contains vodka, creme de cassis, and champagne. Yum!
Behind it is my early bday present from J, delicious chocolates from a local purveryor. More yum!
Now if you will excuse me, I am going to make my cocktail a little more royale with some more champagne.

Alpacas!

2006-05-10T23:28:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some pictures of Alpaca Shearing Day! Some background first: 4 or 5 years ago, my fiancé's mother decided she was tired of her day job and wanted to start an alpaca farm. So she and her husband moved from Florida to central Illinois and bought a large property and some alpacas. Now she sells yarn and alpacas here (there are even some pictures of me in that site somewhere!). Anyway their kids live all over the country and Shearing Day has recently become another sort of holiday for their family, or at least an excuse for lots of people to show up at their house and help out and eat yummy baked goods. This was my and the fiancé's first time at shearing day. (Some friends from Chicago drove out with us and when we got there and my friend saw the ten or so people in overalls gathered around an alpaca on a tarp, he said, where is the beer tent and the oompah band? I guess I had been talking about Shearing Day with such excitement that I gave him the impression that it was like a big festival and the whole county would be there. Although he swears he had fun anyway.)

This may not be so exciting for some, but for me, a city girl, it was downright thrilling. So that's where all my yarn comes from!

Here are some of the sillies with all their fluff:
so cute, right?

the shearing:
and man, I never knew this, but alpaca spit STINKS. Apparently it is so bad that they have to leave their mouths open for a while after they spit, since even they can't stand the smell. Poor things. There was a very wide range of behavior among the animals. Some were totally calm and relaxed, and some were screaming and spitting and peeing all over the place. Yuck.

the shorn :
and look! I'm learning how to spin! man, is that some ugly yarn. (I insisted on taking it home with me though, I figured I can't just throw out the first yarn I ever made with my own hands.)

One skein secret pal

2006-05-10T20:02:00.000-07:00

Hooray I am so excited for the one-skein secret pal exchange! Being generally new to the internet knitting community this is my first of this sort of thing. I have bought some undyed merino wool from knitpicks and think I might subject my exchangee to my first experiments at hand-dying, bwa ha ha.
Anyway here are my answers to those secret pal questions.

1. Which yarn is most like your personality (you can be specific or general with your answer- brand, type, color, fiber, whatever)?
Hmmm, something soft and fuzzy and comforting and not too pretentious (I would like to think). Maybe Misti bulky baby alpaca? Love that stuff. I don't actually have any of it.

2. What is your favorite color yarn to knit/crochet with?

Everything I buy seems to somehow be blue or green. Sometimes that annoys me though. I need more other colors.

3. Have you ever used variegated, or magic, yarns?

I'm of two minds about variegated yarn. Some of it is beautiful, and some just looks kitchy to me. I think I like the rustic, handmade, handpainted looking types of variegated yarn better than the stripey stripey kinds.

4. Do you tend to favor certain fibers when choosing yarns?

Definitely go for the animal fibers almost all the time. Alpaca is nice, wools in general if not too scratchy, merino, cashmere (mmmmmmmmmmmm)

5. Do you prefer to work with center-pull or traditionally wound balls of yarn?

Either one

6. Have you ever worked with organic yarns or are you interested in trying them?

I'm not sure if I have - certainly not intentionally if so. But sounds intriguing.

7. How many and what projects have you made in the last year?

Only having started a blog recently, I don't have any way of keeping track of this. But I'm going to guess somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-10? Let's see, I can think of at least 6 scarfs, 3 sweaters (although 2 are unwearable so I don't know if that counts), and I guess that's all I can think of. So 8.

8. Will you be knitting any gifts this year?

Of course!

9. What is your favorite one skein project?

I would have to say, some kind of scarf with an interesting pattern.

10. How much yarn do you have in your stash and how do you store it?

About 4 largeish boxes. It's currently in 2 plastic tubs, 1 straw box, and one crumbly vintage hat box in my closet.

11. Do you have a yarn in your stash that you love so much you can never use it or part with it?

I do have several yarns purchased in quantities of 1-2 skeins that I bought "just because" and now have no idea what to do with them.

12. Do you knit less or differently in the summer?

I live in San Francisco, so not really. But there are definitely some hot days when I just don't feel like having a big pile of bulky wool on my lap.

13. Do you belong to any knitting groups (online or offline)?

Nope. Maybe I should remedy that.

what's on the needles

2006-05-04T10:26:00.000-07:00

My first post with pictures!
I thought I would put up some pics of things I'm currently working on. These are the three projects I can remember that I'm in the middle of, I've no doubt that there are another three or four half or quarter or 1/10 started projects wasting away on scrap yarn in a box somewhere. In fact I can think of one ill-advised mohair sweater that's been missing a neck and sleeves for years now... I don't think it will ever get them.

Anyway, this is the beginnings of Ella. I don't think I've ever worn a shawl in my life, but once I saw this one on knit and tonic, I had to have one of my own! I will become a shawl-wearer!

There she is in her so-far entirety. This is also my first foray into Lorna's Laces, and I love love LOVE this yarn. So pretty!!! I am newly inspired to try some hand-dying of my own. Here's a slightly out of focus close-up:

This upside-down badboy is the Somewhat Cowl, also by the lovely Knit and Tonic (can you tell I love that site?) in Elann's Peruvian Collection Quecha (what does that word mean?) in celery. It looks kind of pukey beige in this picture but it's really a nice calm pale green color. This yarn I'm so-so about. It's kind of splitty and very fuzzy. But hey, it's also cheap!

And this one, masquerading as a fried egg, is the long-ago started beginnings of the Silk Camisole from Joelle Hoverson's Last Minute Knitted Gifts, knit in some awesome brand-less cashmere from Ebay. Also so cheap! And so beautiful! (Did I mention that I am a somewhat-penniless grad student?) I haven't worked on this guy in quite a while. But it looks so pretty and sunny lying there, I think I might have to pick it up again soon. Mmmm cashmere...

here's another out of focus and sideways close-up of the cool lacey edge:
Next time - I promise I will learn how to turn pictures the right way up, and also learn how to use the supposedly automatic focus on my camera.
Also soon, pictures of alpaca Shearing Day!

another new knitting blog

2006-05-04T00:10:00.000-07:00

I've been knitting on and off since I was in high school, ever since a good friend of mine went away to some new agey farming community retreat and came back with a new knitting skill that she insisted on sharing with everyone. Really. It wasn't an option. We were told to go to a certain yarn store, buy a ball of yarn and some circular needles, and then report to her house where she taught us how to knit a hat. She was a little bossy, this friend. But I can't be annoyed, since that was the beginning of a lovely new habit!
Unfortunately it wasn't lovely for quite a while. Until reasonably recently, actually. This friend, being a novice knitter herself, taught us quite well how to knit a hat, and I made a lovely if plain blue stockinette ski hat kind of thing. But I never heard of the concept of gauge, or different needle sizes, or any of that stuff until years later. After making several different hats and giving them away to everyone I knew, I decided that it was time to make an entire sweater. So I bought a pretty simple looking pattern, and a ton of yarn, and some needles, I'm not sure if I even bought the correct size needles for the yarn or the pattern (I'm sure the yarn wasn't what the pattern specified, and I know I didn't knit a gauge swatch because I didn't know what that was) and set out to make a shapeless potato sack lump of a sweater.
Anyway cut forward 12 or so years and a few important lessons later, aided in no small part by the massive amount of knitting information and patterns that have cropped up on the internet recently, and I've gotten a little better. Once I figure all that stuff out I'll post a bunch of pictures chronicling (is that how you spell that?) the different objects I have managed to turn out over the years. Unfortunately I no longer have that first potato sack sweater, it was too shapeless to actually wear (and, stupid novice that I was, I didn't even know about the concept of frogging, not that it would have been that hard to think of on my own, but I think that sweater ended up in a Goodwill somewhere).
So, pictures soon!