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.....

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Here is my crappy attempt to show the colors. It's not too bad of a representation, but it could be better.

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.

The new cursed yarn

As some of you may recall, I had some yarn a few years back that I decided was just cursed. The first incident involved me, as I was being loaded into an ambulance wearing an immobilizer, screaming "Get my yarn! Get my yarn!! There are 8 of them!" as I saw my new white chunky wool rolling all over the wet and blackened highway. My last run in with this yarn was when I was trying to pull a half knit sweater out of my dogs playful mouth. He was very upset because apparently he had been playing with it for quite some time.
My new cursed yarn is very pretty green OnLine sock yarn that I purchased a while back. I should have known something was amiss after all the other yarn that came in with the order had to sent back because of issues with the evil yarn company. My first personal complication was my yarn breaking in the middle of row. No huge deal. 2nd issue was the dog grabbing the yarn from a chair in the kitchen and wrapping it ALL around the room. The yarn broke again while I was trying to piece the ball back together. About two weeks ago I started knitting the socks again when I decided on my "Knit 3 pairs then buy some STR" rule. The night after I started knitting them, I came home an found the ball in the middle of my foyer. The sock was still up in my office....but I was easily able to locate it by following the long, long train of yarn that had been draped around my home...on multiple stories. I realized shortly after that evening that the sock I was knitting was approximately half the width of all my other socks. My plan to knot them on size 1's to make them extra strong seemed to have backfired. So I frogged them. Maybe a week ago I started knitting them again. I chose to knit them in garter rib, which naturally doesn't show AT ALL on the yarn. That's fine though because it's less work than pretty much any other pattern besides stockinette. I decided to take the socks with me on the road to be my knitting-here-and-there project. This brings me up to today, when I returned from my trip inside Safeway to find my ball of yarn laying in a filthy puddle in the middle of the parking lot. I guess it got caught in my purse strap or something. All I can say is that this yarn isn't going to get out of being knitted! I'm getting my damn STR!
I have to go do my hair now for this evenings events. I have to go to a dinner and lecture my school is hosting. Fun.

New Yarn, New (ish) FO's, and oral surgery

I was informed last night at about 11pm that my mother had rescheduled some dental work that was to be done this coming Thursday and needed me to take her in to the dentist this morning. I ended up having to miss all my classes, which may be good because I have a rather large exam tomorrow that I really need to prepare for. Now though, considering that no one will shut up for long enough for me to read more than 10 words in a row, I decided to take a breather and update.
I've started ordering a lot of yarn from Knitpicks. This ordering yarn over the internet thing may prove very troublesome for my ban account. I don't have photo evidence of my first order but I got this stiff in yesterday or the day before

This is Palette yarn that I had planned to make Endpaper Mitts out of. My plan was to get two balls each of mint (the light green depicted) and two of bark. When I got my package it contained the mint and 2 balls of wood. I apparently filled in the little quantity box above the color I wanted instead of underneath it. In order to remedy the situation I immediately ordered 2 balls of the proper dark brown and 2 balls of a pretty blue to go with the wood in some future, undetermined fair-isle project.

In order to prove that I do more than just buy more and more and more yarn, here are two FO's from January that haven't been shared yet.

This is a hat from Stitch n'Bitch Nation for which I can't presently recall the proper name. The yarn is Noro Kureyon....the exact color I'm not really sure of.

This is me at a very strange angle wearing my rainbow scarf, knit up of 4 balls in various colorways of Kureyon. Why are we sitting around the house wearing various knit objects?? It's cold as a witches "tata" in my house for some reason and these were some quick fixes. It's still mega-cold today but I have yet to resort to wrapping my face up like a little Russian woman. However, the day is still young......

FO and knitting I just don't feel like doing

I finally finished up my grandpa's birthday socks this past weekend and delivered them to him only two days late. That has to be some sort of record for me. In the past, it's sometimes been literally years before I get my gift projects all finished up. At least for grown-ups. Anyhow, here they are.

No matter how I took the picture, it kept coming out looking more or the black and white side than in color. I'm curious to see how the colors appear online. Here's my attempt at getting a close up of the pattern...although clearly my attempt was not that great.

These socks took me a surprisingly long time to knit up. I used a thick alpaca blend (Chunky Al by Elsebeth Lavold) and size 5 needles doing a twin rib pattern. I used to be able to knit a big sock like this up in a day. I'd like to think that these took longer because I was knitting them for a big man's foot, but in reality I think I'm just getting slower. Oh well. They came out well and I think he was quite impressed with them. I rate the project as highly successful.

Now that the socks are done with, I have bigger fish to fry.....or knit. One of my nephews girlfriends is due to give birth in early March. Way, way early March, like the 1st or 2nd. When they were down for my dad's funeral I found out all the details as far as baby sex (that sounds really dirty when I think that sentence in my head, even though it's obvious what I'm referring to) and room colors. I ran right out to get yarn and a new pattern, excitedly digging in once I got back home. I knit away at that thing for quite some time, then left it because, Hey!, I had plenty of time. This was in November. I think once between then and now I've actually picked the thing up, maybe knitting a total of 3 rows on it. Now not only is the pressure on, but I'm finding all the little errors I've made. Not so much errors in knitting, per say, bit errors in knitting judgement. For instance, I decided to cast on for the larger or the given blanket sizes even though I'm using 2 strands of worsted weight held together on 13's rather than a dk or something on a size 8. It's now more that apparent that I could have gotten away with a much, much smaller size. Also, I'm getting peeved at the thought of how long I'm going to have to make this sucker. I think this was one of the main factors in my putting it down to begin with. I kept thinking I had made huge progress but then I'd spread it out and see the true width of it and that made any length gain seem negligible. Not too much I can do about it now. I've knit way too far into it to fuss with ripping anything out. I'll take a picture of it when I get a chance.

In closing, here are the dogs celebrating the fact that it snowed. They were very pleased that I got to stay home and watch them frolic. They also found it really amusing to stand at my porch door and watch me screaming obscenities and throwing things like snow shovels and empty containers of ice melt for hours on end while I slaved to try and get my f*cker car shoveled out of the road. After 3 days of working now, it's still stuck on an ice shelf at the bottom of my driveway and I don't foresee it going anywhere soon.

Beaulina

My pretty kitty passed away this weekend. I'm very, very sad about that. She was about 17 years old and lived a good life. It seems that old age just got the best of her because she wasn't sick or anything. She just got run down and kind of passed in her sleep at home.

Sorry I've been behind on any knitting content. I have finished some stuff up and I'll share all that later.

Quasi-FO

Well, now that school had started back up I'm afraid that I won't be able to knit as much. In order to try and counter this and other things, I've devised a plan. Each day I'm going to make a little goal chart that will include a goal, even if it's really tiny, in each category of home, personal, and knitting. Today my goals are to remove my laundry from my bathroom floor (home), look presentable at school (personal), and try my damnedest to finish one of my grandpa's socks. Other than that, I present you with one of my latest endeavors, a Noni bag.

This fits in with my earlier goal of stash busting. I even was able to incorporate some ultra crappy Fun Fur. I still need to trim down this big flower a bit.

I noticed that I didn't put anything on the bag for scale post-felting, so having the phone there pre-felting really serves no purpose. Oh well. Here she is about a day out of the wash.

I really like it. A lot of the times when I've made felted bags in the past, they haven't come out exactly as I'd pictired or they turn out to be something I really don't think I'll use. I think this bag is very chic. At least for a felted bag. I'm already making another smaller version with the very first Cascade 220 I ever bought. Oh, btw... all the yarn in this bag/flower is 220. I don't know the particular colorways. Sorry.

Now all I have to do is pick out handles, pick out/purchase fabric, learn how to sew in a lining and do so.

The stash groweth

Last night I was knitting my grandpa's birthday socks and realized that I was going to run out of yarn....again. Normally this would not be such a big issue. A normal person would just walk into the yarn shop, pick up an extra ball of whatever and buy it. I see it all the time. I work in a yarn shop. This is not the case with me. The first time I ran out of yarn I went in and picked up another ball of my Chunky Al. It's right there next to the door at Fiberworks. However, I then walked right past the checkout and headed straight for the Noro. I ended the day with this, minus 4 more balls of Kureyon that are already scarfified.

The green/gray stuff is Noro Transitions and the other is Kureyon in some un-remembered colorway. I got the wool to remake the Hurry Up Spring wristwarmers in Stitch n' Bitch Nation, but now I'm questioning that. I have no immediate plans for the other.
Today I went for JUST the Chunky Al. Same routine. Walked in, turned right there next to the door and picked up my yarn, then walked past the checkout towards the Noro in the back. This time I stopped midway and picked up some Elsabeth Lavold Hempathy, too.

In all fairness to myself, this trip was less selfish in nature and therefore doesn't count......much. Oh, I also picked up the Manos throw book I've been questing for. It turns out that it's very old, which is opposite of the new books I've been going through looking for it. The Hemp yarn is for the washcolths that I've decided to go ahead and make for my sister. The really wonderful, pretty, pretty stuff is Noro Silver Thaw in purple (obviously). Here is a closeup.

If this were a man, I'd marry it. Except then I would be the least attractive in the relationship and that may upset my preferred power balance.
I need help. I should never be allowed into a yarn shop unsupervised, or with anyone who may encourage buying. All this is excluding the Noro I bought on my initial trip to buy sock yarn. I will save that yarn porn for another day.

It's snowing!!

And that really sucked earlier while I was trying to drive from Ellicott City back down to Silver Spring. I won't go into it much, other than to say that at one point my car skid about 200 ft travelling perpendicular to the road, then spun around headed the wrong direction before finally spinning around again and letting me go on my merry way. My car and inclement weather....not such good friends. On the happy side, I had both gloves and a snow scraper inside my vehicle so I was much more prepared than usual. This would be perfect weather to wear my lovely double knit mittens that I've been planning/working on for a time period too long to reasonably fathom. However, they are not yet done. More on that later.
One thing that IS finished, since it's like the last thing anyone would ever need to defend themselves against cold and ice is this:

I picked up the new book Knitting Pretty, or whatever it's called by one of the women from Stitch N' Bitch Nation. At first glance I thought it was really good. Now that I've actually looked at it I don't know how many patterns I would actually take the time to do. Nice stuff, just not necessarily for me. One thing that did kind of strike my fancy was the idea of gifting people with hand knit washcloths and designer soap. One of my sisters is getting ready to move and I thought that may make a nice little housewarming gift. To test the practicality of the idea, I first made a washcloth for myself, only I used cotton instead of the hemp called for in the pattern. It started out as a way to knit thru some of my stash, but then I ended up frogging the stash cotton and buying this stuff at Walmart. The colors match nothing, but they made me feel a little brighter. It's Peaches and Cream cotton on the lemon-lime colorway. It actually isn't as low grade as I had pictured in my head, but my hands wanted me to just go kill myself after knitting just a few rows. Cotton just isn't my thing.
To end, here is a gratuitous photo of the boys. I'm sure that they were fighting each other or double teaming something else momentarily after the picture was taken.

Other than that, have fun in the snow and be safe on the roads!

Photo testing

Okay, here it goes. If this works, you all will witness not one, but two great feats. 1) I will have actually published a photo in a manner that suits the ideals I have in my head and 2) You will see that my disgustingly large stash is no longer splattered around my house.

As you can see (hopefully), I have not only managed to shove a lot of yarn in plastic drawers, but I have also taken steps towards organizing my books and patterns. This is mainly just books. The crates underneath are far less impressive, as they are currently crammed haphazardly with loose papers of various origins/topics.

This is another shot that shows the depth of my yarn containment unit. Quite impressive, no? Also impressive is the ginormous pile of rubble that still remains at the foot of my glorious construction. As you may notice, my genious design also includes both knitting and knitted bags hanging on hooks that were stratigically placed for me about 30 years ago when my house was built. Needle holders (please note my fabulous Lantern Moon needle case that was picked out at the TNNA convention and later purchased at work) fit nicely in the previously uncomely space between towers.
Okay, so I've got a slightly better hand on the picture thing now. I still have to fgure out some sizing and placement issues, but I'm pleased with myself none-the -less.
In non-knitting news, I just saw on my scrolling news that they're getting ready to release a Steve Irwin doll. I find this disturbing for some reason. Still, I will have to devise a plan to keep myself from purchasing one.

Thus far, I am unimpressed

I was a little excited when I saw that they had switched up some stuff on Blogger. As I previously said, I have been attempting to update things around here and was hoping to get away from some of the issues I had initially. The first thing that hapoened when I eagerly signed up for this revamped bit was that I downloaded a virus that has been wreaking havoc on my system ever since. The fact that I go back to school ina week and still do not have a working home computer makes my irritation over this matter at least double in intensity. Then yesterday, after running various scans and downloading a bunch of virus killers that seem to have had little effect, I was able to download numerous pictures from my fabulous new digital camera, which I love and desperately want to use. That went as planned, so I signed onto Blogger to do a little update. Seems something is mega-f*ed with it now because I keep getting some lengthy error message saying there's something wrong with my account and gives me all these codes to give to the support guys. Personally I'm not all that vested in it and really don't feel like going thru all the hassle. It shouldn't be this hard to keeo a friggin' knitting blog. It also makes me feel a bit more "special" than usual because no one else seems to have these problems but me. I think I'm going to have to attack a friend or two after I get all this virus hooey out of the way and have them show me a thing or two. I also am quite peeved that after all I've tried to do, I just cannot get a picture onto this thing the way that I want it. Grrrrrrr. I'm still making the effort to update though. That's a step in the right direction. Also, I've been knitting up storm so I'll have plenty to show once I figure some of this damn technology out.

Baby Steps

Okay, here's the deal......in a very compact form.
I am not dead. Due to various computer glitches and circumstance it seems that I have not gotten around to updating my blog in about half a year. Such is life, and I am trying to rectify the non-blogging situation now. I received a new digital camera for Christmas and was eagerly looking forward to snapping some new pics of my knitting. However, I have run into even more technocal difficulties with Blogger. The very first thing that happened, which I guess doesn't really have anything to do with Blogger itself, was that I lost my home internet connection. That was a blower, but I was doing okay with the laptop. I never downloaded any kind of publishing program on it though. Maybe a day after the camera made its way to me, I got all set up to redo the blog and make it oh-so-much-more-fabulous than before. No go. I evidently downloaded a virus when I was updating my bogger account and photobucket apparently does not believe in publishing complete photographs of mine, only thin slivers.
So that's that. I have delved into bits of computer repair and downloaded some kind of program from Norton that kills my particular virus. This is the first time I've been able to stay on Blogger for more than the time it take to type a word, so that's a good sign. I will soon attempt to republish my photos and all that good stuff, and hopefully all will go well.

Totally Busted

I was just so busted by my nephew and I knew the only place I could get any understanding was from fellow knitters. At Christmas two years ago, I had started knitting him a scarf. It turned out looking half-assed so I bought him a gift instead. My mother, being wonderful, told him that I was making him the scarf and showed it to him. I didn't rip it out and restart it for almost another year. This past year as Chirstmas was approaching, I bumped his gift up to a scarf, hat, and fingerless glove set. I knew I woudn't actually be seeing him at Christmas, so his gift got bumped in priority of finishing. I DID finish all the knitting, just not the weaving in of ends. He came over in January and I showed him the set, which he was impressed with, and told him that I would have it finished very soon. About a month and half later, I ran into him at Walmart and asked about it. I told him that needed to know if he wanted scarf fringe or not........It's now the very end of July. He came over for a surprise visit tonigth and saw his *still* unfinished gifts laying on my chair. I am a TOTAL LOSER, people. This time I said that since it had gotten so hot, I knew he wasn't going to be needing it so I just left it alone....and that I needed someone to show me how to sew over the holes in the thumb attachment. I have serious, SERIOUS issues with finishing projects.

While it's true that I'm sometimes an unfaithful knitter....

Okay, I'm totally feed up with my publishing equipment. The program I have apparently doesn't work AT ALL. The pictures won't go where I want them to go, I can't add captions....I'm thru. I am adding finding a new alternative to my schedule this week. As much as it pains me to do so (because God forbid I should want to add a photo or two to my blog) I present to you one completed jaywalker, as shown above. It's in Opal sockyarn, but I must admit that I have yet to figure out the German mumbo-jumbo on the label to identify any sort of specific yarn name. I know from reading that they do HAVE actual names, but it's just beyond me at this moment.
And as proof that I didn't fib about starting the second sock immediately upon finishing the first, my black sheep tape agreed to pose with the cuff of the second.

I did mention the other day that I'm a terrible, unfaithful knitter and started my RPM's. I had a system worked which involved planting the RPM's at my kitchen table and leaving the jaywalkers in my office. That way, if I was upstairs, I was forced to work on the jaywalkers exclusively. In fact, I even finished the 2nd sock! Amazing. The sock has yet to make it's photo debut, but it soon will along with the baby bits of my 1st RPM.

Lucky day for knitting

Today was a pretty good day, knit wise. However I sense that I am waaayyyy on the verge of cheating on my second jaywalker and dive into those RPM's. Hey, I found the yarn for it after all! I see that as a sign that the socks must be made post haste. Or I'm just good at justifying my totally irresponsible knitting decisions. But.....I also found some size 2 needles hiding under the seat in my car, which I need for the RPM's. My size 2's are currently occupied with another pair of socks I started a good while ago but had a terrible accident involving a 24 row lace pattern and no clue where I was in the chart. Ughh. I also bougth some Feza Cotton Candy today at work. I'm planning on making a bolero/shrug/shoulder warmer thing akin to a One Skein wonder but a little different in the arms. Hooray knitting!
I'm very sad that I didn't get to go to the Columbia Sit n'Knit tonight, but I was busy saving the battered women of the county. I really wanted to go.

P.S. I'm leaving all photos out of this post because I actually made an effort to learn how to correctly utilize my publishing stuff and they are experiencing difficulties. That made me angry so I just left it all alone.

Looky what I found!

I must be losing it

I'm having some serious sock yarn issues. Now, I realize that I have what may be considered an obscene amount of yarn. Even though I'm far (FAR) from being the most organized person in the world, I have my own odd little system which allows me to process all the disaster and know what I have and roughly where I can locate things. Here's the thing. I know that a few months back we got in a huge shipment of sock yarn from the new Skacel collection. We got their new 100g balls of the stuff with the little metallic strand in it, Trekking, and that Step stuff that has the aloe in it. I clearly remember this because it happened while I was in New York and I nearly passed out when I walked back into the shop and saw it all in its gorgeous sock-yarn glory. I also recall this situation clearly because right before my trip, I happened across some Trekking at a shop which shall not be mentioned and decided to treat myself to some. I had never seen it before, thought it was awesome, and was hella pissed when I saw the saem friggin' yarn at my shop where I have a lovely little thing called an employee discount. I scooped up a ton of it. I bought three balls the first day and at least one more at a later time. Those first three though....they've got me stumped. My little detective story goes like this:
1. Look at new sock patterns on Knitty.
2. Decide that I wish to make RPM but can't think of which yarn I'd like to use.
3. While in a state of confusion, my brain switches back to pomatomus and I decide that the pink sparkly stuff I got way back when is a super option.
4. In thinking about that yarn, I try to recall the other yarn I bought then.
5. Dead air.....lots of dead air.
6. I remember that when I hd that bag of sock yarn laying here in its bag, I decided to go out and buy a new trunk to stash yarn in and placed the sock yarn in it.
7. Go thru trunk. Find 2 of the 3 balls of yarn.

I am now going nuts. Both of the ones I found are the sparkly stuff. I have a very strong feeling that I bought some more of the Trekking in a more neutral colorway. Where the hell is it thought?? I KNOW I bought that third ball of yarn. Why would I have put it in some random place while I put all the rest in a special home?? These answers I do not know. What I do know is that I want my yarn. Even if it isn't the suspected Trekking. I want it now.
Speaking of socks...amd speaking of things which won't make me crazy, I finished one of my new Opal Jaywalkers. I'm not doing flips over the colorway, but everyone else seems to like it a lot. I don't think I've ever gotten so many compliments over any other sock yarn. It's not that I don't like it, it's just not super cool in my eyes. This sock didn't tke me nearly as long as the lone Jaywalker I made of the magic stripes. And contrary to my usual one-sock-and-I'm-done routine, I have alreasy cast on and knitted a fair deal on the leg of a second. Hooray for me. I will get pics up as soon as the camers returns from its trip to Ohio. I must say though, working this much on such tiny needles is taking a toll on my hands. I'm quite achey.
As to not continue on and on with no pictures to entertain, I'm going to call it a night. Happy knitting.

Yarn, yarn, yarn

As much as I enjoy yarn there are several problems with it.
1) It's addicitive to buy

2) It costs money, and sometimes a lot

3) It requires minor home renovation when you accumulate enough of it. I don't even know how many times I've rearranged my closet and had to run out to Target to buy more shelving units.

and 4) ......dammit, it all crumples up into unmanagable knots and tangles all over the floor and everywhere else it twists and lands and you end up with an office floor that looks like it's covered with one gigantic, colorful, terribly intricate cobweb that refuses to succumb to your hours and HOURS of painstaking picking apart work!!

I swear, I'm so close to just trashing the whole glob of it that's laying there. I think I've separated out most of the "important" stuff, but I'd still be tossing at least $150 of fiber. I just can't take it anymore. I have to get this place looking like a grown human rather than a messy chimp lives here and the yarn is just out of control. I'm thinking that if it's gone this long without me touching it that it clearly is not high on my Things to Knit list. However, I'm kind of a pack rat and there WAS a reason that I bought all of it. I just don't know what to do with it.
Okay, I'm done venting and am going to go back to it. It feels a little better each time I get at least one piece out. Seriously though, I think I'm about to just take the loss and grab some scissors and a trashbag.

Contrary to Popular Belief.....

No, I'm not dead. I haven't been abducted by aliens, or even been away on some fabulous world vacation. It was brought to my attention that I need to be a much more responsible with my timely blogging duties, so here it it.
Big thing number 1 is that I went to the TNNA convention in Indianapolis....back near the beginning of June. Since it wasn't a cash and carry event (thank God because I'm broke), I have little to show for it but we will soon has much wonderfullness filling the shop. The main things I scored were some needle cases and I picked out some yarn to try out on Forcast (from Knitty/ Stephanie Japel).
Big thing number 2, and the main reason why I have virtually nothing to show for summer knitting/ seem to everyone to be in hiding or something is that I am doing two bits of research over the summer. Since I wasn't talking any summer classes, I decided to fill up my schedule with pretty much everything else under the sun. I'm a busy, busy girl these days and essentially have an average of zero days off a week. Yay!!
Well, that's that. I'm scheduled at the Howard County Domestic Violence Center on Thursday nights, so I will only be able to attend my knitting group in spirit for a good while. My morning meeting pretty much preclude my being able or wiling to do much at night anyways. That kind of sucks, but at least I feel like I'm doing something for the greater good and all that jazz.
I think I have food burning in the oven now so I guess I'd better run. I don't really have anything else intetresting at the moment, so cya later.

The Hidden Evil of "Simple" Projects

I went to my knitting group tonight and had a pretty excellent time. It was so hot and terrible at work that we closed early so I actually got to the meet up early instead of my usual rushing in at the end bit. I worked on my Mega Boot sock, which may have been a mistake because I was investing much more of my attention in talking rather than counting rows. I didn't bring my other sock with me either so I had nothing to compair it to. With the dark yarn, it was too difficult to accurately cont my stitches, so I just guesstimated and did my heel turn when it looked right. I ended up having to rush out on the group, whoch I regret now. I have issues driving on wet roads and my mom gets stressed when the power goes out unless it's pure daylight outside. Also, I wanted to be home when my sister came home so could witness any "stuff" that may hit the fan. Hehehe.....I'm a little troublesome. Traffick was so bad coming home though and before I even got to the turn for 29, the rin was pouring down in a way that I've never, ever driven through before. I couldn't see a damn thing. It let up after about 5 or 6 minutes though, but that proved to be quite a freaky experience. It turned out that it didn't even rain in my neigborhood and my nasty sister still hasn't shown back up.
In working on my sock, I've found that I really, REALLY need to pay more attention to the things I'm doing, especially when I find what I'm doing to be easy. I've made so many socks that I don't even think about it. usually it works out fine. These socks may or may not be. Here are all the boring details: With each sock, I cast on 52 stitches. For the heel turn, what I do when I'm not using a pattern is use the formula where you divide the number of heel stitches in half, then subtract 3 to get the number you need to knit across before your first decrease. Since I had an even number, I increased a stitch to make 27. For some reason, the heel turn on the first sock would NOT work out. I don't know what was going on with that. I even ripped it out and did it over a few times. I keot ending woth way more stitches on my purl side than the knit side doing the short rows. At the end, I just messed with it and "finished" the turn with some unknown number of stitches. Then when I went to pick up the gusset stitches, I know that I picked up some really high number, but what that number actually is, I have no clue. Now that I'm doing the second sock, this lack of information is proving troublesome. Stupid sock......and maybe stupid me, too, considering that I seem incapable of writing anything useful down.
On a happy note, I was gifted two fabulous hand made stitch markers tonight. One made by Jody and one by Margaret. That comes in quite handy since I currently need exactly that number of stitch markers for my socks. Lucky me.
OH yeah.....and huess you got straight A's this semester?? That would be ME. I suspected I may have but officially found out tonight after I got home. Very cool, indeed.

Heat Sickness! Tendonitis! Oh My!

So today basically was horrible. For starters, I woke up to a blinking alarm clock again this morning so had to rush around in the heat to find out if I was way late for work or not. I wasn't. In fact, I ended up being up waaayyyy earlier than I had wanted to be. It was SO HOT. To motivate myself to move from under the fan and get ready, I envisioned being at work with the chilly AC blowing my hair back away from my face as I charmed customers with a big smile on my face. Plus, I have AC in the car. Turns out the AC at work is busted, too. Again. SO HOT. I couldn't even go into the main room because of the stagnant heat. I got chewed out by a customer because of the heat also, which was really fun. I definitely had one of those 'True Lies' moments where I imagined doing.saying totally different things to her than I actually did. Anyhow, I did make some progress on my Green Gable but I decided to leave it at work since I'll be there tomorrow. Pretty much as soon as I started adjusting to the heat a small shipment of yarn came in. I made the mistake of believing my arms were healed enough to lift the little box and carry it into the back room. Then my stupidity continues as I unpacked the yarn and tried to put it out on the shelves. Those two little actions pretty much started me on a downward spiral of arm horror.
Once I got home I was faced with surprising (NOT) info that my wonderful sister had refused to help my mother prepare for her big recital tonight. I won't go into details, but let me just say that before my butt even hit a chair, I had vacummed two rooms and rearranged the furniture in my living room. All with one arm. I'm sure I looked very cute doing it. I got everything done though and my mother is completely ticked off with my sister, which is always fun for me.
During the recital I fell asleep. This is where things went very, very worng. My house was so hot and horrible. As I was laying there, I started hearing strange things. This should have warned me to perhaps not continue to lay in the heat. I woke up a few hours later when my mom called to tell me the recital was over. I was just pure nastiness. I was covered with sweat, my skin was all hot, I had a killer headache and was sick to my stomach. To make things even better, my tendonitis had flared up in a major way and I could not use either of my arms. I went downstairs and tried to shake the heat-grossness off, but I just kept getting sicker and sicker. Within about 20 minutes from waking, I felt like I was going to pass out and had to prop myself up on a chair outside. This made me feel slightly better because it wasn't as warm, but I was still in terribel shape. Finally, my mom had to pack me up and take me down to my grandpas so I could lay down in his cool air while all the pain meds for my arms kicked in.
I feel a good bit better now, but I'm back at home and already the heat is making me feel like my skin is burning. I should have just spent the night and my grandpa's. Too late now.
That's about it for today. Tomorrow night is my knitting group so that should be a good time. Hopefully I'll be done with this second Mega Boot sock soon so I'll have yet another goody to show.

I may have hit the point of no return

First off, I have to say that I don't know what the crap is up with the positions of these pictures. There's something wonky going on with the system. Needless to say, I've been busy with the needles since the semester ended. Ocer to the side there is something I'm quite proud of. My very first crocheted item!! Granted, I don't know who exactly is going to be making use of dishcloth around here, but it's done and relatively mistake free.

In actuality, I finished that thing a long time ago and just found it while I was cleaning under the cushions of my overstuffed chair. I still had to tie off the end and weave in the ends, so technically it's stll a new FO.

Next to my wonder of a dishcloth and below are two possible causes of the terrible pain that kept me up all last night. I finished my hourglass sweater last week so started Green Gable with some gorgeous Berroco Cotton Twist I got at the shop. I've been a little hestitant with the use of cotton, but I love the color so much and the patterns cute so I went for it. The pattern is fine, but I ran into a good bit of trouble with the needles. I started using Denise Interchangables size 6 with a 20 inch cord. At first, there were so few stitches that even the 20 in was a bit long, Quickly though, I began running out of space. I had to mess with and regroup the stiches so much that it was taking forever to finish a row and putting a ton of stress on my hands and wrists. Not fun. I went to switch to a 32in addi turbo, but the size 6 addi and 6 Denise are totally different! It's like a whole size different. I fretted with the 20in's for a while longer then gave up and went with the larger ,longer pair. It's coming out better that way texture-wise and since it's a top down raglan, the gauge isn't of as much importance.

This guy here is one of my fabulous Mega Boot Stretch socks. I tried and tried to get a picture of the finished one alongside the one far along in progress, but the flash on my camera was making them look all gross.

So on the topic of my horrid night.....perhaps it was due to obsessive knitting or maybe it was just from cleaning. Whatever the cause, I had a terribloe, terrible run in with my old pal tendonitis and was up all night unable to move without sending shooting pains through my arms. It was awful. I finally got up around 8 and began searching for medication. I finally decided on some painkillers I have leftover from something or another. We had not a bit of anti-inflammatory in the house. Luckily, someone was kind enough to go fetch me some since I could not move either of my arms of my fingers by about 9am. That was a really big blower.

On the bright side of the day, I met with a man about the AC and he fixed it, but needs to come back and do about $800 worth of work practically rebuilding the thing. Bad news is that by about 7, anything resembling chilled air stopped moving through the vents. I HATE my furnace. At least having that short time with cool air gave me one less thing to be miserable about while I sat in the kitchen all day not being able to knit or manipulate anything on the computer. I did get to read a good chunk of The DaVinci Code though. I already know the story so it's not quite as intriguing as it could have been if I read it sometime before everyone else on the planet.

So now my pain has subsided (I'm hoping it's for real and not just because I have like 30 doses of pain meds/ Motrin in me) and I'm exhausted. Tomorrow is going to be a long day so I'm going to bed. Whenever I get the AC fixed for good I'll take a picture of it. I don't even want to touch it's wooly goodness in this mess. Maybe I can cause mysle fot have have a dream about being somewhere cool and wonderful where Ican frolick in my Manos : )

I'm so ashamed

I had my last final of the semester scheduled at 8 am yesterday. I woke up at apporximately 8:06 and still had a 45 minute drive to campus. I think a fuse must have gone or something while I was sleeping and someone fixed it. That's all I can figure. All I know is that my alarm was set for 5:30. I woke up to hit the bathroom and noticed that it was light outside and that the numbers on my alarm clock were blinking. I can't think of a momnet were I've felt closer to death. Luckily, my teacher in that class is really nice and he let me make it up later in the day.
I have knitting shame, too. I finished knitting my hourglass sweater. I began to slave away at the neckline seaming. I got about a quarter of the way through and realized that I messed the whole thing up. I read and reread the seaming instructions over and over again and didn't see where I was going wrong. I don't know what's wrong with my brain. Anyhow, I finally realized my error in comprehesion and now have to rip out all that I've done. I don't think I'll do it tonight because it may drive me crazy.
In order to ease the suffering I figured that I'd be inflicting on myself tonight, I bought some Opal sock yarn in a pretty brown/pastels colorway and some orangey-peach Cotton Twist for a Green Gable top.
That's all for now. Maybe I'll go ahead and start this ripping. It's best to just get it over with, regardless of my possible loss of sanity.

Mentally Defective

I've been a busy, busy girl lately. Between finals, papers, and all the other random craziness that comes along with being me, I've surprisngly done a lot on the knitting front. The majority of this knit-"doing" falls into the shopping category. I'm attributing it to a mixture of angst from missing MDS&W this year and massive stress spending. I was telling one of the customers at the shop today that I can think of few days within the past week or so that I haven't made a detour to at least a craft store on my way home from school. Some of the stuff I didn't bother to photograph. Needles and whatnot aren't a ton of fun to look at. My first bit of goodness is this here skein of Mountaincolors sock yarn. I got it with plans to make pomatomus from knitty, but the yarn is way too thick. I'll tell ya, I love that girls sock patterns but the gauges are always T.I.N.Y. I have little to no desire to buy or knot with yarn that is so small.
Items #2, 3, and 4 are these little beauties. On the left is something that I don't recall, but it's pretty nifty and I can see it morphing into a loosely knit scarf so I can show off its bumpy goodness. The red furry stuff is something I got on massive sale at JoAnns. I think it is destined to become either a warm scarf or possible some sort of shrug. On the top right is some Mega Boot Stretch sock yarn from Lana Grossa ( I think). It porduces some pretty awesome footwear.
These here are some balls of a blue and brown yarn I spied quite some time ago and keot lusting after. I finally went back and got 5 or 6 balls of it to make a sweater. Probably a cowl neck one. Yes, it is of the super crappy fiber content variety but the colors rock.
And, because I couldn't exactly justify all the yarn purchases without actually turnong something out......Here is Kate (a la Winter '05 Knitty) lounging in my living room. Her one arm is a little wonky and the stitches are perhaps a little loose for all the polyfiber I stuffed into her, but I think she's cute anyways. You can also tell from her mouth that I'm not exactly a pro at embroidery. Oh well.
I additionally am almost done with my Hourglass sweater. This picture doesn't really do it much justice, but it does display the "almost done" element of it. At this point, that's probably the most important thing to it.
Here's a closeup of one of the raglan decreases. It's mainly just to see the colors better. I like it.
And finally, on par with my usual stress sock knitting, I present my Spring '06 Finals week sock crafter from Lorna's Laces Sheperd Sock in the Black Pearl colorway. The pattern is one of the simple lace ones from Sensational Knitted Socks. I don't recall which pattern it was offhand.
To be honest, the colors didn't come out quite as gorgeously as I had thought they would when I bought it. The yarn is SO SOFT though. I love it to death. I've heard it doesn't wear particularly well, but we'll see. I probably won't be wearing them all that much.
I've actually started working on another pair of socks out of a darker shade of the Mega Boot....yoy can see a little of it poking out in the right hand corner of the photo above. This yarn is so cool. The effect of the colors blending is really unique. I followed a link on the Yarn Harlot's blog and fell in love with the yarn. I'm loving it even more now that I was able to score some of it. I'll have photos of that one soon.
That's about it for the moment. I think I'm going to try and manipulate a new camera put of my mom in reward for my excellent grades. I guess I'm a little old for things like that, but hey. If you've got it, use it.
Sixteen Candles is on now so I must run. Hopefully now that my semester is almost over I'll be better with the updates and such.

Clearly, I suck

I'm the type fo person who gets irritated rather easily. One thing that gets me is when the people who's blogs I read go for long periods of time without a new post. I vowed not to do this when I started here. However, life happens and the next thing you know it's been an eon since the last time you've posted.
I have no photos to show. I have no FO's. I an a loser.
My semester ends in two more weeks (I think, hope) and then I plan on knitting as much as possible. I also plan on purchasing a digital camera and an iPod. The camera will help with be able to take and post pictures. The iPod will just serve to make me happy, and if I'm happy I reason that I'll be more likely to do productive things like knit and follow thru with the posts.
Here is a little breakdown of what I've been doing, knitwise.

1) Almost done with my hourglass sweater. Really, really almost done. I was set to purchase my last ball of yarn for it today but someone beat me to it.

2) I have an awesome felted bag that is all knit, but I have to figure out how to line it, buy fabric, and get the handles on there.

3) As a quick pick-me-up, I knit Kate from the winter 2005 knitty. She's cute. However, she currently has no eyes. I plan on hitting JoAnns tomorrow after I deposit my paycheck. That way, if any yarn or something should fall into my basket, I'll be able to pay for it.

4) I've picked back up a pair of socks that I had set down some time ago. I'm a fan of the socks. I may have mentioned them in a previous post, but I can't remember so I'll talk about them again. They're in a stone-ish colorway of the Skacel Fortissima with the little glittery bit in them. I don't recal the name of the stitch, either, but when combined with the color it reminds me of pretty marble slabs.

I think that's it. I'll spare you from my ranting on and on with nothing to show from myself. As soon as Kate has vision, I'll borrow a camera and post a pic.

Happy Happy, Joy, Joy!!

I got my lovely Regatta Blue Magic Stripes!! I didn't even know it had come. I just went downstairs yesterday and there was my little box sitting on the kitchen table. Now I'll have something that's not all hot and woolen to knit in Texas. I'll bring my hourglass sweater, too, if I can come up with the moolah to purchase the rest of my yarn. I had three balls of it at home for which I couldn't find a worthy project. I saw on someones blog an hourglass sweater made in a similar color, and I had to do it. I had been thining about the hourlass sweater for a good while but hadn't really set my mind to it. When we got in the new Manos shipment at the shop, I stashed about 5 skeins. According to the yarn requirements, I'd still be a skein short. I've been hearing reports that many people have gone over on yardage, so I'm figuring I'm probably going to have to buy 2 more skeins somehwere else. I thought I had finished knitting the body last night, having used about 4 skeins. I then cast on for my first arm. However, this morning when I examined the body, it looks way short even though I went a alittle over the given length. I added a good bit to that, eating up the rest of ny yarn. I have a little left over in the ball I'm using on the arm, but when that's done (in not too many more rows), I'm fresh outta Manos. Hopefully tomorrow I can buy atleast two more of the stashed skeins. That'll get me through finishing the body for good and both arms. I probably wouldn't get much farther than that on my trip anyhow. Especially if I have my jaywalker to do. I'm also considering taking some of that disco yarn I got awhile back to work on some other sock pattern. I'm dying to go thru that Sensational Socks book.
In other news, I really need a pedicure and hope to take care of that tonight before I go to bed. Additionally, This morning when I got up for work, I threw on my robe and felt somethign wet slap up against my calf. I looked and founf that someone, more than likely Riley, had taken the liberty of barfing all over my robe during the night. I'll have to remember to wash that.....

Bad to the Bone

I'm a bad, bad, bad blogger. I don't even want to look at the date of my last entry because it will cause me such horrid shame. I've been busy with school and all that good stuff, so blogging (and sadly, even knitting) has been on the backburner. I haven't finished a project in Lord only knows how long. I did manage to pop out an ultra cool cable accented hat (Coronet from Knitty, to be specific) in some brown Teseo. I'll have to get some pictures together tp update right. Hmmm, what else? I finished knitting a realy noce scarf out of some green Cyprus Mohair and Kid Mohair, both by Feza. Again, I'm lacking any photographic proof. In my defense, I'm also really bad at paying my phone bill and seeing as how I've been using my phone to snap pictures, I've been camaeraless for a good while. Also, I've just been lazy about it. Let's see....I've been knitting away on an Hourglass sweater out of Last Minute Little Gifts. I love it and can't wait until it's both completed and not Spring/Summer so I can actually wear it. I don't quite know what it is with me and my knitting of wool sweaters in the warm months. Last year it was the Pastaza fair isle started sometime in July, I beleive. I'm going to Texas next week and would like to have something non-wool to knit. I did get notification today that my Magic Stripes backprder is FINALLY going being shipped. Maybe I can do my second jaywalker. This will show you how my brain has been functioning for the past few days, but I've been seriousl considering whether or not I want to knoit my next pair of socks together or one by one. Doing the two at a time is best in the loing run, but I'm finding that my 'second sock syndrome' easliy morphs into a 'lose interest while I've got half of two socks done' problem. At least when I have one sock done I can put it on my foot and look at it. I thik that's about it for now. I'll have to make a note to take some pictures tomorrow so I can add some eye candy on here. Words can be so dull.

What's the opposite of progress?

I've gotten pretty much no knitting done over the past few days. I was really busy over the weekend, but I did manage to get the heel flaps and turns done on my baby cable socks. I have no photo evidence of this. Mondsay I went back to school, which was exhausting. I packed my socks up in the morning, along with my laptop, planning to knit and play internet games in the time between my first and second class. I ended up waking up really late and not getting my goods together, so I found I had to return home after class #1. That killed my three hour kntting/playing break. Today I was thinking that perhaps I could knit between class and work, but then I fell asleep in the parking lot for an hour and a half. The first day of school was alright. This being day two, my body realized that Monday had not been some sort of foul trick I was playing on it. I just couldn't take it today. First of all, my teacher wouldn't allow us to eat or drink in class. That meant no coffee. I just had to leave it sitting there on my desk, staring at me and emitting taunting fumes. Once I drove to work, I just set my phone alarm, threw a sweatshirt and coat over my head to block the sun and slept. I didn't get any knitting done at work, either. I did a few rows, but nothing that really counts. It was slow, but I had a lot of organizational bits to do. Considering my lack of knittong time, my mind naturally jumped to future projects. First, I decided on the yarn to make my flowerbasket shawl for the spring. I'm going to order a slightly varigated purple shade of Bamboo from SWTC. Second, I finally dug out the issue of Interweave with the bag I've been waiting and wanting to make. Turns out that I have the totally wrong yarn for it. For some reason, I thought it was felted bag and got a bunch of bulky wool for it. Upon looking at the pattern again, I came to find that it's acctually made of linen and silk yarn held together at a smaller gauge and not felted at all. I love the yarn I got for it though and I really don't feel like having some weird yarn imported from Japan so I can make the bag as per its specs. That would also turn into a huge expense and how can that be justifies when I have so many other yarns I wish to own? I guess I'll just have to modify the pattern a bit. Oh well. A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do. I need to head of to the shower now. I have to do as much as possible at night so I stand a fighting chance of getting out the door in the morning.
Cya

Oh, what FUN!!!

As usual, my pictures got all messed up during the publishing process. I don't know what's up with this thing, but it's really starting to grate on me. So, if you'll excuse the total disarray of things, I'll get on with the post. So I finished my jaywalkers sock, which is being modeled in the photo containing a whole sock. To the left of that photo is a progress shot of my baby cable socks.
I'm very happy with them. Making cables without actually having to use a cable needle often makes me happy. Below that pic is a closeup of the cable pattern. I think they'll be extra cool when I'm done with them. I'm going to do the heel flaps and possibly the turn tonight. The foot may take a bit because I have to reorganize all the stitches and knit both together. I'm using a size 2 needle, though, so even being worked together, they're not seeming to take as much time as the jaywalkers on size 1's.

This random picture of wooden reindeer is the main purpose of the post. When I got home from work today my mother informed me that she's decided to leave these Christmas reindeer out all year and she thinks it would be really cute if I knit them all little outfits for the various seasons/holidays. FUN. FUN, FUN!!!!! That'll be a hoot and half. She's already done some wardrobe planning. I'm going to tell her she has to pay me in booze so I can try and get through the whole ordeal. I think it's only reasonable that one drink in excess while creating handknit clothing for a family of wooden reindeer. It would just be weird without at least a few good beers.
On a totally off topic, I'm watching 'Monk' right now and it's just creepy to see the Captain. I just see Buffalo Bill dancing around in his woman-skin suit doing the "pull-thru" for the video camera. Sexy.
~*~ Please disregard all references to phote placement. Once I saw the published form of the post, I saw that the format totally had changed and nothing I said makes sense. I'm sure everyone's smart enough to figure out what photos I'm refering to in the writing. Sorry~*~

Pictures soon to follow

Well, turns out my fear that I was not going to have enough "Ithaca" yarn to finish my jaywalkers was spot on. I drove all over the place trying to find more or it with no luck. I did find the yarn in a different color, but I think that frustrated me more. I dislike that so-close-yet-so-far feeling. I had to break down and do the sensible thing in this situation, which was order it online. Anyhow, I did finish my first sock and took pictures. I just didn't get around to loading them on the computer. To pass the time while waiting for my yarn to arrive, I started some socks with a brown and white Opal yarn. I'm using a Fiber Trends pattern called Angel's Peak. What I'm turning out doesn't really resemble the pattern photo at all, but is an obvious pattern none the less. Interesting. Due to the very, very itchy nature of that yarn, I'm afraid I've already sort of postponed my work on it after only about two inches. To ease my pain, I purchased a crapload of sock yarn and a new sock book from the shop. I worked in a baby cable pattern into socks that I laready had on the needles and I'm loving it bigtime. This also fits in nicely with my plan of new project/ old project rotation. Those socks are coming along quite well. I only have about another inch to go before I do the hell so they won't take too much loinger. I'm doing both at one time, so it'll take a little longer. Well, that's all for now. I need to get some sleep so I'll be bright eyed and bushy tailed for work tomorrow. I'll post the pictures tomorrow.

The never ending "quicky" project

I've decided that my jaywalker socks are never going to be completed. Not that I don't want them to be, or that I won't keep knitting away at them. I've been going and going. Each small section that I completed pleased me greatly. I did then leg. I did the heel flap, that turn, I slowly but surely finished the foot decreases. Now, row after row, I'm trying to tackle the foot. It just never seems to end. Not only that, it doesn't seem to grow! I didn't photograph it because it doesn't really look any different than last time, regardless of the days and work in between. At this point, I'm not even sure that I'm going to have enough yarn lef to do the second one. In a way, that gives me hope because I won't have to start on the second one immediately. That will give me some recoup time. Anyhow, that's about all that's been going on knit-wise.
In other news, I went to the Washington Gift Show today. It was out in Chantilly, VA. Due to lack of intelligent planning on my part, I agreed to meet Carole and the others out in Ellicott City at the shop. It occured to us there that since I live so much closer to VA, it would have been smarter for me to have just met them there. I ended up driving out there with Amy in my car, so I could just go straight home afterwards and Amy could be taken back to the shop by Carole. I walked around so much that I swear I thought my feet were going to be bloddy when I got my boots off. Leave it to me to wear big heels for a day of walking. I should also mention that I was absolutely broke. I didn't get a chance to hit the bank yesterday. I wasn't expecting to have to put gas in my car, so all my cash was eaten up. As I was trying to navigate my way home, my low fuel light came on, even though I had just gotten a little bit of gas before we headed out. It was one of my worst drives home in a long, long time, I was so afraid of running out of gas, I didn't really know where I was going, and I was totally exhausted. I got home okay, and immediately fell asleep, staying in bed until after 9pm. I was zonked out. Now I'll probably be up all night and I have to be up early to help with a meeting in the morning. At least it'll give me an opportunity to work on my socks.
That's it for now. Hopefully I'll have something to show next time.

I love them, but COME ON!!

I'm making progress on my jaywalker socks. I finished the leg, heel flap and heel turn last night. I wish they were a little taller, but let's just say that perhaps my legs are a bit too "athletic" for knee socks. "Athletic" is code for too tubby. My legs may not be my best asset, but they are very strong and muscular. I like to keep that muscle safe by coating it in a layer of chub. I swear though, after knitting all those socks for the holidays using size 7 and 9 needles, I'm feeling the pain of using size 1's/ I knit and knit and knit tonight and only did about 1.5 or 2 inches. I'm not even done with the foot decreases yet. While I was at the supermarket, I picked up the new Knit It magazine. It has some cute stuff in it and I like that it's made ut of cheap yarn. The only problem is that of the two patterns that I
really like, one is for small children and the other is made out of a designer yarn that the store doesn't carry. I've heard of it though, so it shouldn't be too hard to track down.
In unrelated project news, I found my lamb's pride fair isle cardigan hiding behind my big chair in the office, I took it to work and made some progress on it. The fair isle part on the bottom is a little tight, but I think that after I block the hell out of it and it's stretched across my body, it'll look okay. I didn't take any pictures of it because it's balled up in my knitting bag. I like it, and I really love the colors, but I'm a bit concerned now about the shape of the thing. I made another sweater from the same book out of some pastaza at the beginning of the summer, which I really like, but the arm hold construction is a little wonky. I'm sure there's a technical name for the shaping that I can't think of at the moment, but it's one of those where you knit the whole thing from the bottom up and connect the arms at the underarm and knit the yolk in one big piece. The shoulders just kind of droop down. I wasn't considering this shaping bit when I knit the first sweater and I oversized it a little. I still really like it though. I'm just being a little over cautios with this cardigan, and that's taking some of the fun away from it.
I'm so tired now and my hands ache from the tiny needles. I need to go to bed. Tomorrow I'd like to get a good deal done on the foot. Who knows, If I get a little over zealous, I may even finish the sock tomorrow. I think that's a long shot, but hey, they're for me so what's the rush?

A lot going on

So much for me doing a ton of knitting for myself over my break! Oh well, stuff happenes I guess. Before the holidays, I was super busy knitting for my family. I followed New Years with getting massively sick. I was totally out of it for over a week, which is far sicker than I've been for a number of years. I really didn't do too much knitting then, mainly because I couln't really breathe and that put a major damper on things. I had to go to Ithaca for a few days right after I started feeling better, and that probably put me straight back to the sickhouse. It was SO COLD. Plus, the city more or less sucked big ones, making the possability of becomming sick again very not worth it. I did manage to knit some on the trip though, and now have a spiffy new pair of arm warmers. I did actually weave in the ends because I needed to wear them. That isn't captured in the photo. I bought some new sock yarn while I was up there. It's really neat looking color and I'm very curious to see what the color pattern looks like when they're knit up. It doesn't show well in the photo, but the yarn is a light blue/white/tan/ lime green mix. Very unusual combination. I'm thinking about doing the jaywalker socks from Magknits. Hmmmm...yes, I think tht's what I'll do.
Before my trip I had to organize my office a little bit, and I had a ton of yarn to deal with. I have yarn EVERYWHERE. I really need to do something about it. Im so disorganized, too. When I was trying to pack knitting for my trip, I couldn't come up with a total package of anything. I'd either be missing needles, a pattern, yarn....just no good at all. Before I go back to school I have to get it all in gear.
Here is an example of my lack of organization. I have several other shots of yarn here and there around the house, but for some reason I can't get them to load correctly. My new goal is to knit one old thing for every new thing I purchase. The arm warmrs cancelled out the sock yarn. I have to finish an old pair of socks though before I can knit the new ones. Speaking of which, I'm going to go back to my little socks now.

I'm so lazy!

I haven't made an entry for almost a month! I have nothing to show, knit wise, life wise, and have been doing nothing but being a big lazy butt. I have no excuse. Well, I sort of do. I've been nasty sick, which while it may not have caused my spree of laziness has most definitly contributited to it's further existance and depth. I lost my voice a week ago and today is the first day I've had it back. I'm feeling a lot better, but I'm still a bit nasty. To the outside observer, I would still be classified as someone one would dread being sat next to on a flight. Due to this illness, I've missed a whole week of work, so now I'm poor as all get out. On the bright side of everything, I'm going to Ithaca on Thursday morning. I was thinking that would be all good, but now my mom is coming down with the same symptoms that I had last Tuesday. Hooray! There's nothing quite like being stuck in a car for hours with a sick person, especially if you're just getting over something yourself. Well, I gotta run now. I'm trying to straighten up my office so my father can actually move around enough to feed the pigs while I'm gone. As I'm going through my stash, which makes up the majority of mess in here, I'm finding so many terrible things I've knit and so, so, SO mush yarn. I'm going to have to find a wasy to work through this stuff!
Happy New Year Everyone: )