Saturday, March 31, 2007

I had thought of a witty header......

When I was driving around tonight I though of something that would be the perfect title for this post. However, sometime between then and now, it's escaped me. First things first. Someone was kind enough to gift this upon me.
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Notice the freakish, large saw. Why,in the name of all that is holy, would a gnome carry a large saw?? This to me is undeniable proof against the notion that all gnomes are friendly, forest dwelling protectors of nature. Nature isn't protected by giant saws. Here is another shot of him, the evil gnome-of-toe-chopping, as I expect to find him one night, slowly creeping through the darkness of my bedroom to de-toe me.
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The above photo is quite dark so depending on how your screen is, you may have to tilt your head or something to partake of the horror.
Okay, that being taken care of..........there's something I want you all to see! It's beautiful, and it made me truly feel like an addict when I opened it.
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Yes, my STR arrived. In fact, I already have one sock of it finished! On the left is heavy-weight Lucy and on the right is light-weight Cracked Canyon. They're both quite lovely.
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I love, love, love it! The heavy-weight is soooo dense. It as crazy to feel it against the lightweight. I can't wait until the medium weight comes back in stock...which should be next week. Excellent. Well, I guess that's all for now. I have a bunch more to show, but the batteries on my camera died and I haven't had a chance to photograph any of it yet. Now I think I'll go back to my CSI:Miami marathon. I had to momentarily leave the room to avoid seeing that cheese commercial where they butcher EMF's fun hit "Unbelievable" by their musical proclamation that their product is 'crumbelievable'. Perhaps it's just me, but that commercial truly drives me insane. Fun.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

If you don't have anything nice to say......

I've been feeling a little jaded for the past few days. As most of you know, this past year (or couple of years, but who's counting) has been filled with various unforeseen stresses and I, as would be expected, have been more stressed out than usual. I have big time wander lust and usually get the opportunity to travel at least 3 times a year. In October I was supposed to go to Atlanta and was sooooo looking forward to the trip. That got cancelled because my dad died maybe a week before we were supposed to go. Then I was supposed to go to Pittsburgh in January. Not a huge deal there, but Pittsburgh isn't here so it's good enough. Then I was supposed to go to Toronto maybe a week or two ago. That was another that had me excited. Toronto = hometown of various wrestlers, the Yarn Harlot, and Lettuce Knit, which conveniently carries STR. So I've been feeling stressed, stressed, stressed and claustrophobic about the DC/Baltimore area with no real option for escape.
This, being my Spring break, was supposed to be some sort of great, relaxing event for me. I like to believe in the "work hard, play hard" mentality....but have been finding that it's more "like work hard, then work hard some more.....and maybe sleep some" for me. My Spring Break, until today, consisted of working, cleaning, hiding from family, driving old people around, sitting in our lawyer's office for hours upon hours.....you get the point. Last night though, a plan was born. It had occurred to me while I was trying not to nod off at the lawyers that I should have just taken off for the yarn shops in Rockville. Since it was too late to do anything about it then, I decided to go today. Soon after that I recalled that a Dog the Bounty Hunter marathon plays on Tuesday nights, which I usually can't watch b/c of school. That made all the crappy Spring Break stuff fade into nothing. Anyhow.....onto to the yarn stuff. I guess it kind of makes up for the not going anywhere.
First, I went to Wool Winder's in Rockville. I had done some research on them last night and found that they had a great deal of yarn listed on their inventory and had their prices listed as well. I drove for quite some time to get there, and got lost only once. Keeping with the title of this post, I was very impressed with my parallel parking skills. I was not aware that my parking skills would be called upon like that, but I took on the challenge and was victorious. One may say that it was the trip highlight. Additionally, the owner of the shop was very nice to me. I came away with much less than I had anticipated, but one thing was way worth the trip.
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Silly me hadn't realized that this bad boy was out on the shelves yet. It's way cool......and I almost choked on my own tongue when I flipped it over and saw the price of it while I was pumping gas on the way out of the city. Yes, I like to stand there reading knitting books while I get gas. I also picked up these, which I have mixed feelings about.
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I have been regularly eyeing Koigu in the Patternworks catalogues. I had marked some colors that I wanted to order and was very excited that Wool Winder's carried it. To tell you the truth though, the colors weren't so hot in real life. Personally, I've never seen the stuff except for some super fug that was at the awesome shop in Texas. Even they said it was nasty and told me to chew out the company people for them at that years MS&W. Also, and I'll go ahead and say this because I talked about it with the staff there, they had maybe 7 colors. The reason for this is that they get in a huge, massively massive order once a year around November and it just trickles away from there. The company i not the best at sending out yarn, but at least they're very honest about it.
I was feeling a little let down about my day and I hadn't found some of the yarn that I was quested for, so I decided to go somewhere else......that I just won't name so I don't get any dirty looks. There, i picked up these.
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The greenish/yellowish stuff is this killer Trekking XXL that I've been hunting and hunting for. In the middle is some Claudia Handpaints fingering weight in Pink Cloud. I have better representations of the color below. On the right is some of Colinette's new sock yarn. I'm not secure with the yardage, but the colors are very interesting and rich. This particular one was just so wacky that I had to take it. It's way more circus-y than I would usually choose, but I like it. Here's a close up of the pink cloud.
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You know how much I paid for the Trekking, Colinette, and Claudia?? $20. Yep. Twenty smackeroos. You know how much I paid for at the first shop? Many, many, many. Granted, I got a book. Still.....many, many, many. Not so much what I was looking at price wise on the web.
Okay, so I obviously have quite a bit of sock knitting to do now for the rest of my break. I blame this whole shopping binge on the lovely ladies as Blue Moon Fiber Arts. Perhaps if my account information showed a sent icon instead of an order pending message, none of this would have happened. Hmmmrphhhh.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

The Dirtiest Player in the Game

I feel the need to give a quick shout out to the wrestlers of WWE who may be Googling their names today looking for themselves in print. I'd just like to say Randy, Adam, Shane and whomever else that I wish hadn't been mentioned.....Stay off the 'roids guys!!
Okay, now that that's out of the way....am I a great big,dirty ol' cheater? Perhaps.....
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It appears that there's a pair of socks on my feet. I use the word "appear" because these socks really don't match at all. I tried (no too successfully, but oh well) to capture their discrepancy in size here.
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I believe I mentioned somewhere in a previous post, pre-rampage over the STR on Skrilla's page, that I was put off by the first sock of this final pair and didn't really know what to do. Rather than take the one out and re-knit it, I just knit a second sock with like 10 more stitches cast on and maybe an addition inch of cuff/foot and called it a day. The fact that this may not actually be a fair pair out of my quota of 3 is negligible at this point.........besides, I ordered my STR as soon as that last heel was turned!!! Woooo! Yeah!! And who said I could only order one skein, huh? Those babies are packed up and shipping out! I'll wait until my package arrives to go into details, but it will be a grand day for me. Karma got me good though because if I hadn't been so freakishly gluttonous and impatient with my stalking I would have seen, pre-ordering, that the medium weight yarn that I wanted is anticipated to be restocked the first week of April. I'm not thrilled with the steeper price of the heavy weight and am not exactly secure with the yardage on the light. Hmmm. We soon shall see how they both fare. And I'd be willing to bet that come the first week of April, we'll see how the medium weight works out for my gigantic feet as well.
And I haven't just been busy with the socks!
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Okay, so one of these is another pair of socks and I actually plan on casting on for another pair tonight. What can I say? I have a f*cking ton of sock yarn that I have to work thru. That green sock is going to be half a pair of Tweeds from Magknits. I believe I mentioned that endeavor a post or two ago. The scarf is knit in Inca from......someone, and is just a 3x1 rib. It's been quite the popular pattern at the shop. Also, speaking of popular patterns, that purple thing is my short row hat from Interweave. Perhaps that should become the store's project mascot because I know that at least 3 of the 5 of are currently or have recently made one. Mine is special because it's evil. This photo is of the second or third incarnation of it because the bottom line is that the pattern just doesn't fit my wide head. If the circumference is working out, I'd have to be a cone head to accommodate the height. Currently I've sized my needles down to a size 6 and my measurements are still showing too large a gauge. I say screw it all. I'm finishing the damn thing and will shove my head into it regardless of how small/large/misshapen it turns out.
Alright, I've been distracted by the sounds of CSI: Miami floating down from my office. That means I must go, immediately.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

GrrrraarrrRRRRGGHHHHH!!!!!!! Noooooooooooo.......

Okay........I so totally just had a mini mental breakdown and literaly almost threw up a little in my mouth from the deadly combo of sheer excitement of looking at yarn that I want and the rage/jealousy of seeing someone else who has it all. I had to check just one more blog before I went to do my work........just. one. more. And what did she have?? Skein after skein of STR, in the SAME colorways I want, that she picked up at Stitches West. I am very upset right now.........I am quite inclined to go to bluemoon fibers and orer every single damn thing that I want and sit here until it shows up on my door. I want my yarn. I want to be in the f*cking sock club. I want to have not set this retarded goal of actually finoshed three friggin' pairs of socks before I order my yarn. I am not a person of restraint. It's ridiculous for me to set rules like that for myself. Yet I did, and I will stick to it. If I break down now I'll lose all faith on myself. It'll be like a heroin addict fresh from rehab taking a hit ( I watched Intervention a lot last night). Hrrrumphhhh. I think I might feel better if I actually threw a temper tantrum, complete with kicking and pounding on the floor. Yes....that would good, and it would be yet another thing I can do to keep myself from writing my paper.

Two and then some down

I finally was able to finish my orange socks. Here they are, being modeled by Dylan.
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He woke up a mere moment after I threw the socks on him and I could tell by the look on hos face that he sometimes has serious doubts about the intelligence of humankind......or at least me.
The completion of these socks brings me to 2 out of 3 needed to purchase my STR. I have one sock completed of that last pair but I have mixed emotions about it. The bottom line is that it's too small. It was suggested to me that I just finish the second one and give he pair to my niece. This, of course, is utterly ridiculous considering the fact that the reason I bought the yarn in the first place is because I like it for me. The fools......
To keep myself from thinking too heavily on the matter, I started a pair of Tweeds from Magknits. On par with most other things in my life, they aren't coming out exactly as planned. Perhaps this is because I'm doing something completely different than the pattern says. It calls for using two colors of yarn and doing one row stripes. I figured that I could achieve the same effect by using a self striping yarn that has short repeats. This is not working put so well. The sock itself looks fine, but it doesn't really look like the sock in the picture or that much different really from a basic 2x2 rib. Oh well. It gives me something to do. Speaking of which, I have to go finish writing a long, long, long paper : ( I'd soooo much rather play with my yarn instead.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Copy Cat

I took the liberty of totally ripping off a certain someones project and made a Calorimetry for myself....using the same yarn. At least I chose a different colorway.
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It's SWS by Patons in the Natural Earth colorway. I cast on maybe 10 fewer stitches than called for and only worked about 2/3 of the short rows. I don't know that it's quite as wide as the pattern calls for but it's just fine for my weird shaped head. I like the way the colors are depicted in this shot. I'm not so hot on the way my cheek and neck chub are prominently displayed. Oh well. Let me tell you this....I am sooooo proud of myself for my yarn buying restraint. I went a few places looking for this yarn and didn't buy anything else I saw. The fact that I ended up buying multiple balls of it, and then even more when I had to go searching for a button.....well, we just won't count that.
Here is my el-cheapo, yet pretty button which was found in a gigantic bowl of cheapo buttons I bought at Michaels.
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This is the first time I've ever sewed a button onto anything in my life. I found that it wasn't too bad.
Oh! And you know what sucks?? I think that knitting socks is hurting my hands! I'm slowing down a little bit and taking time to do things on larger needles so I can see if that helps any. I'm sure it will. At least it better!
Okay....off to do all my super fun school business.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Grace Elizabeth

My nephews girlfriend had her baby on.....some night this week. I'll say Wednesday. That sounds accurate enough. Luckily, I had finished the baby blanket. I didn't exactly wash it or do any pf the nice wrapping bits that I had thought I might do, but hey, the thing gor finished. For me that's pretty good. I still was able to box it up in tissue paper with a book and letter congratulating the girlfriend on surviving such a horrifying event. As I was leaving for the post office, three things occured to me.

1) My box wasn't securely closed.
2) I had forgotten to photograph the blanket.
3) I did not have their address.

Oops.

After some time of making calls, finding and looking through books, unpacking and repacking,an impromptu photo session and a short trip to my grandpa's house the box was ready to go.
Here it is, in fairly bad positioning on my grandpa's office chair.

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Here is my crappy attempt to show the colors. It's not too bad of a representation, but it could be better.
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In the letter I descibed it as an "all purpose blanket that can be stretched out to fit over big things or balled up to throw into something small, like a car seat." That's a loose cover up of my previous thoughts of " Ooops! This blanket has some super funky measurements now that I have it off the needles! What do I do??"
Anyhow, it's done and shipped. Yay for baby Grace being born safe and healthy. In a related story, I was emailed pictues of the baby yesterday. I literally recoiled when I saw them and it took me a moment to realize,"Oh. It's just a human baby." God bless all those who can look at babies all crusty faced and peely skinned and be proud. I think I'd have to give it a week or two before touching.