Prezzies!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...