Goes From Virgin to Yarn Whore in 60 Seconds

I've come to a realization about myself. I need to anticipation of packages arriving in the mail to get through the average day. I knew bad things would happen when I started shopping online. I knew it! Oh well. I guess having yarn issues,while still a legitimate worry, is much less severe than many problems one might develop. That being said, here is what arrived for me this week.

I hate to say it but I'm less impressed with this shipment than i was with the previous one. I think it's practically because the colors are a wee bit different than they appeared on the screen (whereas the others were spot on) and that the first order I placed was ones that I really, really wanted while this one was more in the category of "Hmmmm...do I want this one?.....or do I want that one?" which basically culminated in my just kind of randomly deciding on two of the multitude that I desire. I still like them though. And maybe when they're knit up I'll be doing imaginary back flips over them like I did with the first order. And yes, sat here for a good 10 minutes with at least one hank of the yarn pressed up to my face while I semi-psychotically inhaled it's fabulousness. The one on the left is STR Henpecked and the other is Little Bunny Foo Foo, both in medium weight. LBFF is essentially Lucy but with pink instead if the blue. In my head I think of it as being grey, but it is in fact a beige-ish color.

On to the next subject.....oddly still related to my new found obsession with STR.

Guess what I have???

Why yes, that's a photo of me relaxing in my super-terrific Monkey socks!

I enjoy standing in them, too.

Here's a closeup of the pattern.

As previously stated, this is the Monkey pattern from Knitty. I used STR lightweight in the Cracked Canyon colorway and size 2 needles to accommodate my humongous feet. I love them.

Now I get to break into the new stuff: )-

One down

I'm loving my Monkeys. I'm also loving my STR. Big time. The sheer awesomeness of my socks is so great, in fact, at it may case somewhat of a family rift. My mom, who doesn't even wear socks, picked up my completed Monkey and put it on her dirty foot. She then asked me which color I was going to make her a pair in. My first reaction was to go to BMFA's and show her the colors. The underlying plan being, of course, to throw a hank or two into the order for myself. But then.....then......ughhh. I don't even want to say it. She wants my new Lorna's Laces. My new, pretty, pink Lorna's Laces for which I had already printed out a little pattern which was carefully placed in a it's own special plastic sleeve just waiting for my Monkeys to be finished. After I picked up the crumbles of my heart, I quickly formulated a new plan. I would order more or the Tickled Pink and get a few hanks of the Vera colorway, too. Then I thought better. It's very rare that I can knit with the same yarn multiple times. I get bored and part of the whole sock yarn draw is the novelty of color. I decided to just not be selfish and make her the freakin' socks.......except then I had a big realization while I was freakishly sitting up in my office staring across the room at the yarn I had spread out over the adjacent chair. The Tickled Pink has a great big glob of purple in it! So does the Rhodonite colorway from BMFA that I've been stalking. The new and improved (and tentatively final) plan is this. Purchase the Rhodonite and knit both it and the Lorna's Laces. Then I can fully consider the extra yarn purchase as being part of a highly involved experiment. Excellent!

So I was going to Chick-Fil-A for dinner.......

Oops. I forgot that the JoAnns with the big yarn section lives right across the street from the Chick-Fil-A in Columbia. So, while I intended to run out and come home with some chicken nuggets, I came home with this instead.

The guy who checked me out asked me if I was a new knitter. I felt a little bad about being asked this because I still carry a bit of buying-shitty-yarn shame. I said that no, in fact I was NOT a novice and explained my predicament about being in town to buy some chicken, but being so close to yarn of virtually any sort makes me go a little nutty sometimes. He then asked me if I liked the color green. Hmmmmm. The darker colored ones are Patons (not too shitty) wool and the other ones that have more convoluted coloration are something so cheapo and terrible that I won't even mention the name. Come to think of it, I don't even know off hand what the name is. Anyhow, it' absolute crap but I like the colors they come out with.

Maybe the next day or the day after that, I stopped by FiberWorks while waiting for a prescription of my mom's to be filled.......two towns or so away.

The maroon yarn is something from Universal. We just started carrying the company at the shop, but we didn't get in any of this stuff. The other yarn is some new stuff from Online, producer of the yarn in my fabulous orange socks. In all honesty I probably wouldn't have actually bought the stuff if Rene hadn't been so kind as to go out of her way to show me where it as on the shelves and show me a poster of it. Its interesting and stripes in a very oddball sort of way, bu I'm just not really feeling the jacquard (or however one spells it) yarn at the moment. And the needles....ahhhhh, the needles. Pretty, pretty, cheap, plastic needles. I love them so. I had to run out to Micheal's to pick up something random and naturally couldn't go without getting myself a prize, too. I've been wanting these needles for a fair amount of time because I like the colors and truth be told, I really don't care too much about using plastic needles for things that aren't teeny tiny.

A few days later I had to go back to Michael's in search of paper Easter grass for a basket I was assembling for my grandpa.

This yarn is extremely pretty, and feels a bit like an old brillo pad. Oh well. I'll suffer through. It's really not that bad and I figure when I combine it with the boucle, it'll be better.....slightly. I really like it though and think it'll make a nice scarf. I like he way the pink and brown goes together.

Speaking of pink, look what just came in the mail!

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Tickled Pink and Flame. Yay! Clearly, my mental status is flailing. I think that maybe subconsciously I'm getting nervous about the prospect of being dirt poor while I'm in grad school. By buying a non-sensical amount of yarn now, maybe I'm just trying to set myself up with a little something nice for later.

Oh, and just to feel just a weeeeeee bit better about the yarn purchases. here is a little baby WIP shot.

In case you can't tell, it's part of a Monkey. That seems to be the definitive thing to do nowadays. This is the Cracked Canyon colorway from BMFA in lightweight. I LOVE it. In fact, I love it so much that no sock pattern was deemed worthy for it. I had some massive trouble at first since I seemed to hate everything that would perhaps detract from the yarn. The pattern may be a bit busy for the yarn, but I'm fine with it and I think that's about as close to being very happy with a pattern as I'm going to get. BTW, a new color palette is being being released this coming week I believe. I'm a tad panic stricken that they'll remove some of the colorways that I'm still stalking. I hope not.

Sad day

My guinea pig Angel passed away at about 3:15 this morning. I'm very, very sad about this. He was seven, maybe even eight years old. That's quite a run for a guinea pig. He was one of my most favorite guinea pigs of all time.

That's him on the lower right. The cowlicky one with the white nose. It's sad to even look at the picture because everyone in it is dead now. Angel used to like to chase Beau around and bite her tail. Sad, sad, sad......

The worst part is that I knew he was dying for a few days. He got super sick yesterday morning and I kept checking on him all day. Finally, at about 7, I thought he was dead and I went and made him a little coffin and dug a little grave. When I went to get him though it turned out that he was till alive, and we just had to wait until early morning. That was horrible beyond belief. At least now he's not suffering or anything. I HATE burying animals though. I can think of few things worse than having to deal with all that. I'm just not cut out emotionally for such things.

Alright, not much else to report. I haven't been knitting too much.....or at least have nothing to show for what efforts I've made. In fact,I pretty much am moving backwards knit-wise because I decided last night that I need to frog my Caruso socks due to sizing issues. Once I get that sucker on my leg I'm fine, but I just can't deal with the fight of pulling it over my heel. I keep feeling like I'm going to snap all the slipped stitches in half. No good. Hopefully the rest of the week will be more cheery and I'll get more fun stuff done.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.