ONWARD!

Peeps! I finished the obnoxious cabled sweater! It would be more exciting if I liked the finished product better. It fits and everything, it's just that the sleeves are less fitted than I like, and the neck is a little wider than I was hoping for. And I'm not ripping back. We are moving on from this sweater. Onward, to bigger and better things!

Well, other things, anyway. I've been pretty anxious to start new things, having forced myself to work tirelessly on that effing sweater for so long. I cast on 2 new projects last night, and I started spinning a new braid of fiber, since I haven't spun lately.

This hat is going to be lovely and colorwork-y. I seem to have mixed up the needles, somehow. But that's a relatively small problem, although it might be symptomatic of my lack of focus currently. Did I tell you that I ended up with different length sleeves on that sweater? It was only 2 rows and the mistake was pretty far back, so I just decided to deal with it. And one of the cables was REALLY off. But I couldn't figure out where that mistake was, so I just improvised. No one but me is going to see it, right? Everyone else will be impressed with my knitting prowess.

I also started a laceweight Sand Tracks Cardigan. I think it's going to be very pretty, but I'm also relatively certain it's going to take me FOREVER to finish. Because I'm just that smart. I'm thinking about starting another sweater out of bigger yarn, but I think we all know that's going to be counter-productive. So I'll hold off for now.

My calves hurt today, from the 2 oz of Frabjous Fibers BFL that I spun last night. The singles look lovely so far, though. So it's totally worth the soreness. I have another 2 oz to spin, but that's not gonna happen tonight. I have to go pick up a bridesmaid dress. It's probably not going to happen this weekend, actually, since it's Thanksgiving and I'll be doing family and drinking related things starting tomorrow night. I love Thanksgiving!






Finalmente, I finished cutting the fringe for Mariah's chuppah. I finally took Caitlin's advice and got a piece of cardboard long enough to wrap the right size pieces, so I didn't have to measure them all, or try to work out some other system. It went a lot faster after that. Now I just need to find some time to tie fringe. Again, won't happen this weekend, for the same reasons mentioned above. Freaking holidays. Messing with my crafting plans.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! Starting tomorrow, it doesn't count as "alcoholism" or "day drinking" if you constantly have a drink in your hand. It's just the holiday spirit!

And now we return to our regularly scheduled program

It's official. I'm done with the long paper for my European seminar. Thank goodness, it was really starting to get on my nerves. Long, boring, difficult to format because I added pictures to make it look longer. I'm sneaky that way. Whatever. It's done, and now I can go back to what I like doing.

Tres fortunate that Caitlin imparted her newly gleaned spinning knowledge to me, non? I've been making great use of it. Well, using it, anyway.

This is some mystery carded fiber that Caitlin had me bring to practice on. It's kind of a pale green. But not mint green. Just... subdued. I bought it a long time ago, and I'm not sure that I ever knew exactly what it was. All I know is that there was a great deal of it. I thought I'd never be finished spinning it. Not unlike my paper. But voila! It is done. Again, not unlike my paper.

I'm a little elated, can you tell?









This was some "sliver" that I purchased at last year's Wool Market. I don't know what was wrong with the camera when I took this picture, but the flash wouldn't go on. The colors are much brighter in person. I'm not wild about the finished product, but it was really fun, and super quick, to spin.





I would show you what I'm currently spinning, but I'm too lazy to go move things around so I can take an appropriate picture. It's some kind of merino roving, I'm pretty sure. I'm spinning it "from the fold," which is an exciting new technique for me, and is making quite a lovely single. I've got quite a bit of the fiber (apparently I have a hard time purchasing just a little bit of fiber), and the color is nice, so hopefully I'll think of something lovely to make with it. We shall see.

In terms of my knitting, not much has been going on. I've been so enthused by the new spinning techniques, or so absorbed in my paper that I haven't made much progress at all. I did, however, manage to finish a thrummed hat. Just in time for the warm weather!

In case you are curious about why I didn't model the hat for this picture, I will just say that the hat is ludicrously puffy, due to my misapprehension about thrums when I started the hat. The top has significantly less volume than the bottom. I'm hoping that it will deflate a bit over time. Next winter, since it's certainly too toasty to wear with the weather starting to turn warmer. Until then, it can reside with the pile of knitted items that are starting to be too warm to wear.

Finishing High

You know that feeling you get when you've finished a new project? The euphoria because it's so awesome that you're done and have a new object, and hey wouldn't it be great if you could finish some other stuff so that the feeling could continue?

Well, I have it. I've been doing kind of a purge on my WIPs. It's pretty cool. I finished my class knitting hat. That's my knitting during my academic classes, not a knitting class where the project is a hat.

Pretty, yes? It's the Pasha hat, in Honor. Absolutely gorgeous yarn, but I'm very partial to Lorna's Laces. And silk...

I also finished my novelty scarf. Just in time for Christmas! Which is lucky, because I need a present for a friend, like, right now. Two birds, one stone. Epic.

Admittedly, part of the purge has involved frogging. Those socks I was complaining about? I've consigned them to the frog pond because they have displeased me. Now I need to select a different stitch pattern and try again. You know, at some point in the future. Because I have many better things to knit! Including a thrummed hat and thrummed mittens. Which I may or may not have already cast on.

I'm so excited to be knocking down these WIPs! The melonstrosity finishing high should persist for a while longer, right? Cuz I can think of a bunch of things that I would like to work through...

Return of the knitting

Man, I am still exhausted from this weekend. So tired I nearly nodded off at work today. And I needed an energy drink to get through class, because I don't want to embarrass myself by snoring through someone's presentation. I'm not that rude.

I did, however, knit my way through class. I started a hat:

That's the first inch or so of Pasha, in Lorna's Laces Honor in color Poppy. I decided that I needed a new, excitingly colored hat. Which is totally not true, but it makes me happy to lie to myself. It'll be pretty, though, and extra warm because it's wool and silk. Which also means luscious. Yay!

The reason I cast on Pasha is because these are not going the way I want them to:

That's version 2 of those fingerless mitts I was trying to make. I've decided that the wrist is too short, and the thumb is too long, so I'm frogging them. Because they're clearly just not meant to be. I'll just let the yarn sit and stew on its fate for a while.

Also, the Rainbow mitts are not very portable, since they involve changing colors every 3 rows at this point, and they involve 8 colors. Not hard to knit, just hard to keep track of the colors and what is going in class at the same time. However, I did get a fair amount of cuff done last night:

Very exciting!

Want to know what came in the mail today? Of course you do. Who wouldn't? My mailbox is an exciting place

That's the Toboggan Hat and Mitten kit from Knitpicks. They had them last year, and I didn't order in time, so they were sold out by the time I was ready to order. Which made me le sad because I really wanted the blue kit, but they weren't getting any more in and you couldn't get the pattern by itself... anger. Anyway, they have them again this year. I went back and forth between the purple and the green kits, Caitlin told me to get both and make one up for her, but I decided to just go with purple, since I don't own a lot of green winter gear. We'll see how I like it. Now that I have the pattern, I could make all kinds of colors of these little buggers! Not that I need them (see the hat comment), but I could.

Anyway, it's all very exciting on the knitting front, and I'm going to have to exercise self-control (not a lot of that around here these days) in order to keep from being buried in a pile of WIPs. Or being committed to the sanatarium because my parents think I've finally lost it. Wish me luck!

Knittin' Weekend

I had a fairly successful weekend. I went to see the lovely Caitlin and do various things. On Saturday, we drove around a lot: two yarn stores, my brother's school to drop off a package, and the cake place that we ordered Shelby's cake from. Let me tell you, cake tastings are awesome. Who doesn't love free cake in lots of different, and delicious, flavors?

With all that driving around in my car, it is unsurprising that I didn't get much finished this weekend. However, I was able to finish Robert's hat.

Lovely, no? I think he'll like it. Although we didn't meet up with him to give him the hat. No worries, Caitlin has strict instructions to take a picture of him in it if she sees him before I do. The hat was pretty quick, considering that I didn't dedicate specific knitting time to it. I mostly just left it in my purse and worked on it when I had a spare minute. Obviously that's the way to be for a project like this, even if the two balls of yarn took up a lot of purse space. The hat is posing on the monster scarf that Caitlin made for him this weekend. It's a good thing those projects are so quick, she'd kind of forgotten that she promised him a scarf.

In addition to the hat, I worked on several other projects. The colorful Cherie Amour, which I kind of lost interest in last night. It's hard to knit lace on very large needles while drinking wine and watching children's movies. So I wound a great deal of yarn instead. I did a few rows on the Runcorn, but I'd forgotten to bring the back so I could match up the armholes and everything, due to a very crazy Friday which I prefer not to discuss. Anyway, not much progress on the Runcorn. I shall rectify that tonight. I also finished up the first of a pair of fingerless mitts, except for the thumb. I prefer to leave the thumbs for last. That way I don't get screwed if I run out of yarn. But none of these projects got much attention, as I was busy spinning.

This is Mary, Mary Quite Contrary on BFL for the Nursery Rhyme spin-a-long from the Storied Yarns shop. I was a little on the fence about the colorway, but this picture is obviously very attractive and may have changed my mind. We shall see what the finished yarn looks like. I'm working very hard on this spinning cuz the deadline for the SAL is the 15th. Here's to hoping I make it!