Yo! Socks!

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!

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

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 shearing 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

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

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

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...

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

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!

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

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.