Uhhhhhh...good thing I'm "organized", huh?

Ok, no photos or anything of interest. Just a small plea for help. Does anyone have any idea what the hell I bought 15 skeins of Noro Silk Garden No. 211 for??? I know it was a garment, and I know I was super excited about it. I also put a lot of thought into the color choice. I had come across the yarn while I was picking up for my trip and all memory of it's purpose was sucked straight from my brain. I've looked through my Ravelry queue to no avail, then checked my stash to see if I had earmarked the yarn for anything. Typically, since it's knowledge that I actually need, I didn't even enter the yarn into my stash. I then perused the blogs I frequent to because I felt I had probably seen the project there. No....but that *is* where I finally decided on my colorway. I have since scoured all my Noro books and the projects on Ravelry and still have nothing. Nothing even strikes recognition in my head. I fear this is going to drive me insane.

And She's Back!

WARNING: POST CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!

I got home from Italy about a week ago. The trip was fabulous, as always, and I'm already looking forward to going back. I'll be uploading the relatively few pictures I took as soon as I feel non-lazy enough to do so.

On to the important stuff. So how much of my knitting list do you think I got through?? Ummm...how bout NONE. Seriously, how pathetic is that? Lack of progress was due to an assortment of things, namely hurting my finger the second day I got there and then just not particularly feeling like it. I swear, it as so. friggin'. HOT there. Truly, the few times I did attempt to knit my yarn would become so water logged that it seemed to be felting in my sweaty little hands. I've made a little progress since I've been back, but none to speak of. I'll stick up some WIP pics later.

And now, on to the VERY important stuff. One of the benefits of going away when I did was that I hardly had to wait at all for the July installment of RSC. Awesome. And we got not one, but two patterns this time around! Exciting!

The kit (minus the Sweetarts that I already ate)

The yarn: STR lightweight in Goody Goody

Pattern #1: Gumdrop Socks by JC Briar

Pattern #2 Sweet Tart Anklets by Marilyn Kaleikilo

Sorry about the semi craptacular lighting. The sun long gone but I want to cast on so I had to make due with what I had. I'm trying to decide what size/needle combo I want to use. The sizes are a little small for my gigantor feet but I can easily remedy that by going up a needle size like I usually do. If I choose the largest size and knit with the called for needles, there's no way in hell I'd have enough yarn. I think I'm going to try out the medium size on a 2. The fit should be fine, but I always risk getting some kind of super fug pooling when I fiddle with stuff like that.

Speaking of fug......I was on the Lion Brand website today as I've been looking to try out their newish sock yarn. While there, I browsed the patterns and picked up a few for afghans and a bag that I've been eying. Some of the other ones.....Ughhhhh. Had to have been some of the most hellashiously shiteous things I've seen. You should go take a look if you're into the horror genre.

Off to play with my yarn!

Bon Voyage!!

I suppose that's not something one really says to themself....or regarding themself, but oh well. I never was very good at going with the pack. I'll be leaving here in just a few hours. I have to somehow run a few errands in the early morning before I fly out, so that'll be interesting. I have no Xanax for my many, many hour flight so I'm hoping I can catch the doc super early and get a quick prescription written out. Then I have to go find some brown pants and make a deposit at the bank.
On the knitting front, I have these projects lined up for my travels-
1) Finish my Spring Forward socks that I'm making with STR Lunasea
2) Finish my "Gaywalkers" in STR Pride
3) RPM's in a semi vile color of Noro Kureyon sock. I'm excited about these.
4) Marble Arches in STR Calico
and 5) Finish last years Italian knitting, my Embossed Leaves in STR Lemongrass.

We'll what kind of dent I make in that list. Last year I knit 2 socks. Well, almost 3 b/c I had my Alina Monkeys just cast on when I left. Anywho....I'm bringing my computer with me so perhaps I'll be able to update while on vaca. I'm off to make a last ditch effort to minimize the pores on my nose so as not to scare off any hot Italian suitors. Because my puffy, no-sleep-induced-black-circle eyes will make no difference at all.
Till next time, Ciao!

Finally!! FO's

I FINALLY got the baby blanket not only finished, but photographed and sent too! And the baby's only 4 weeks old. Amazing! The blanket I knit for his 4 or 5 year old sister is still folded up in my bedroom. I possibly should have sent that along, too, but I've not exactly sure how late in childhood a blanket is an appropriate gift. Anyhow, on to the good stuff.



And a really blurry shot that sucks, but at least it shows the blanket in its entirety.



Frankly I'm too lazy to type out all the yarn information, and actually I don't even know the colors offhand. The ball bands are long gone. If you're really curious you can check it out on my Ravelry project page. Here are just the basics-

Yarn: Dark Horse Fantasy in various shades of blue with a bit of black and tan
Needles: Size 7 circ's
Pattern: baby size Modern Log Cabin Blanket from Mason Dixon Knitting
Mods: Instead of using the 4 colors the pattern called for, I used something like 8 and just put them in where I saw fit.

I can't tell you how thankful I am to finally have that monkey off my back! It shipped out today and should arrive on Friday morning.

Next order of business: Zombie Socks!



It was really hard to even *try* to get the pattern details or an accurate color, but here's my attempt.



Pattern: Zombie Socks by Emm1e on Ravelry
Yarn: BMFA STR lightweight in Rook-y from the Raven series
Needles: Size 2 circ, worked Magic Loop
Mods: I did 5 pattern repeats on the leg instead of 3 and had to add a few repeats onto the heel.

These socks are also my first pair for the 52 Pair Plunge....which I joined with some crack-pipe aspirations in my head. I am SO far behind, but I'm not too pressed about it. I'd rather enjoy what I'm knitting than feel like I'm knitting with a gun pressed to my temple. Tonight I plan on finishing the first of my second pair, the Spring Forward socks from the summer Knitty. Pictures of that to follow.

In non-knitting news, guess what I'm doing right now?!?! Oh yeah....I'm just sitting here watching DOG THE BOUNTY HUNTER!!!!!!! Evidently A&E has decided that while Dog may be a bit of a "character" he may not be so much of a racist and have put his show back on the air. You know what this means!! My obsession can continue! I knew the new season was starting in July, but you can imagine my surprise when I heard that familiar riff and the voice of Ozzy as the show came on tonight. I totally spazzed out. Big time.

Alright, off to work on my sock!

Because Everyone Else is Doing it.....

This has been going around the blogs so I figured I'd have a go at it. It was very interesting to see what turned up in my photo searches.
It goes a little something like this:
Search flickr for these things-
1) your name
2) favorite food
3) High school you attended
4) favorite color
5) Celebrity crush
6) favorite drink
7) dream vacation
8) favorite dessert
9) what you want to be when you grow up
10) what you love the most
11) single word to describe yourself
12) your flickr name

Cut and paste the URLs to fd's mosaic maker and voila!

Mwahahahaha....I WIN!!

My few year long obsession with STR has paid off!! For those of you not in the sock club this year, Tina just had a contest in which we had to guess the two colorways that made up a pair of socks she got for her birthday. I got it on the first guess. Woot! The winners were announced today and as a prize I get some Rare Gems. Gotta love the Rare Gems.

I've been doing a good deal of knitting lately but haven't had a chance to take pictures with the off and on weather. I'll try to do that tomorrow.

Overwhelmed

The remainder of my time before leaving on my trip is going to be spent truly cleaning my living areas. None of this shifty around of items to make one room look better while another room suffers. I mean down to the knitty-gritty, multiple cleaning supply using, probably changing the colors of the walls and floors from them not having been really, really scrubbed down in ages type of cleaning. Objective/necessity numero uno is getting the rouge yarn under control. I contemplated taking a picture of the anarchy that's ensued in my office but I think it would probably give me a panic attack. I should probably take a picture and just not look at it, then post some before and after pictures later....if I make it. It's just SO. BAD. I don't know what to do. I sit there and try to untangle, think I'm making some minor progress and then pull a strand that leads me to another clot of yarn-hell across the room. And it's not even shitty yarn that I'd be willing to sacrifice to the scissors and trashcan. It's Jojoland Melody, hard to come by Regia, assorted Berroco.....ughhh. And the main cause? The boys. I love them to death but it's driving me crazy. Riley especially. He likes to take his toys, climb into my yarn and burrow. Dylan's tactic of choice is to grab things out of the trash can and bury it in my yarn. It just gets worse and worse and worse. The thing that really gets my goat is that just days ago I saw my one ball of Jojoland had fallen out of it's bin and thought, " I need to get that.", but I didn't. So now I have like 300 yards of giant tangle to deal with.
That's all for now. I need to do some more of this while I'm feeling motivated. I foresee the rest of the night going something like this: Untangle about 3 yrds of various yarn, panic attack, untangle 3 more yards, panic attack....etc.

May Rockin' Sock Club!

**********SPOILER***********

I got my package pretty late so it's unlikely that this would actually spoil anything anyway. Better safe than sorry, though. I love it!

The colorway is called The Incredible Shrinking Violet. I didn't take a pic of the pattern because they never come out good but it's designed by Yarnissima and called Cleopatra's Stockings. Very chic. There's been a lot of grumbling about how so far we've gotten all semi-monochromatic colors this year in sock club. Personally I don't mind at all. Tina wrote in the dyer's notes that this will probably be the last of her color study so the rest of the shipments should be more multi colored. Still, even though all the colorways thus far have been shades of the same color (reds, greens, and now purples) I don't consider them shaded solids at all. March's "Lucky" was the closest, I'd say, but there was still a huge difference in the colors.

In other knitting news, I'm almost done with the baby blanket. I have about 20-some rows left of the blanket body and then the border, which I'm going to have to go pick up more yarn for. Then I have the fun task of weaving in all he ends. Ick. A new motivating factor arrived today by way of a box from Webs. That Kureyon I ordered to make my Curilque Coverlet came in and I must say, if you all don't already have No. 196 in your stash, go get some NOW. Even if you don't love knitting with Kureyon, this one is a must.

Didn't beat the timer

Blasts! The baby came out! Audra had a the baby sometime this evening. It weighed over nine lbs, so I'm glad this blanket is going to be on the large side.

I yanked this pic from Audra's Myspace.

Yarny Weekend

I had to deliver my mother to UM today so she could judge the MSMTA Solo Festival competition. Since I was (relatively) in the neighborhood, I decided to stop by A Tangled Skein to pick up some Conjoined Creations Flat Feet. I had seen it before but had become entranced by the sheets/units/whatever the proper term is for them that have popped up on Ravelry. I also scored some great pattern booklets from Sublime Yarn. Uh, and some Opal Rainforest collection and some Stitch Diva patterns I've been wanting. Also, I found the Oat Couture pattern for the Curlique Coverlet that I've been hunting for. That may win as the Item of the Day because I've been all over the place trying to find it. After some deliberation, I ordered some Kureyon from Webs with which to make it. I'll post some pictures of my haul once I figure out why Flickr has decided that my photos should be posted sideways, regardless of what editing tactics I employ.

This weekend should be pretty low key. I've been working in my office, sporadically at least, over the past few days and I've hatched a plan to assist with yarn/book storage. Now I just have to get off my bum and build the shelving units I picked up. My plan is to put one of those Target 4x2 units sideways under the long stretch of my desk and a little 2 story table unit under the shorter leg. Hopefully the printer to my laptop will fit there because it's been a real pain in the ass to have to run all over the place just to get a sock pattern....or whatever else I want a hardcopy of. But yeah, it's mainly just sock patterns. It may have been useful for me to have measured or something before I went out and bought the furniture, but if it doesn't fit where I want it I'll just find a place where it will.

I don't know if I mentioned it or not but I joined this years round of the 52 Pair Plunge. I don't know that either my willpower or my wrists will hold up to knitting a pair of socks each week, but I think it'll definitely help me downgrade the tremendous sock stash. I have a feeling that Fiesta Boomerang will be one of my best friends since it's so thick and sproingy. I haven't actually tested this, but I bet i can whip a pair out in a very timely manner with it. That starts June 1st, so if I appear to have vanished it'll be a safe bet that I'm just holed up obsessively knitting footwear.

Now I'm off to build!

ETA: The shelving unit TOTALLY doesn't fit! Dammit all!

Clapotis the Fourth

Alright.The sun came out and I happened to not be out running my ass off. I've been working on this semi-obsessively and not doing any of the other projects I'm "supposed" to be doing, but I'm really liking it.

And a little close up of the dropped stitch part.

And my awesome stitch markers! I got these and some pistols from an Etsy shop.

I wish I could remember the name of the store. If I recall it, I'll let you know. She had quite a lot of interesting stitch markers and I'd like to go back for more. Knowing where I was going would help.

I'm about halfway thru my second ball of yarn now and it's become clear that I'm going to need a little more. Luckily, I know Lindsay at Storm Moon Knits and was able to put in a word for some. It may be a little while, but that may give me a chance to subside my clap obsession and work on the baby blanket.

You know you need another cup of coffee when....

I'm currently knitting yet another clapotis. I'm completely infatuated with this one, as it kicks major ass. I'm using Storm Moon Knits worsted yarn in The Time I Was RadioActive. I promise I'll post pictures as soon as one of these random sunny days corresponds to my free time. I don't want to do it the injustice of photographing it in the dark cave-ishness of my house.

So these past few days I've been running around more than usual on less than usual sleep. This was evidenced tonight as I sat here working on my clap and proclaimed, "Oh shit! I dropped a stitch!".

In other knitting news, I'm still going at it with the baby blanket. I'm not sufficiently at the point of time crunch madness that'll push me into crazy knitting on it. That day is on the horizon, however, so I can expect that it will soon become my current *must do* WIP.

More Monkeys!!

IMG_2249
Originally uploaded by knitglit

I joined a KAL on Ravelry and actually did the knitting!! I think I was just really excited to use this yarn, and who can turn down a Monkey sock? I have the first one completed....obviously, I guess, and am about to do the heel flap on the second. The colorway is KawKaw and was the sock camp colorway at this years Camp Crow's Feet. I wasn't able to go, but Cindy was kind enough to nab a skein for me. If anyone's interested in the colorway, Tina just put it up on the BMFA website today.

Leafling

I believe I mentioned that I had finished my Leafling socks the other day. Voila!

In trying to take a picture of these, I had the realization that I am apparently rather retarded in the area of putting on socks straight. Oh well. We can't all be good at everything. I also found that it's very difficult to get a decent photo of your own feet/lower legs while trying to simultaneously bend over, keep you long pant legs from dropping down, elude shadows, and keep a balanced hand. Here are some of the pics from the first finished sock, but we'll just pretend that I planned to use them here as detail shots rather than their real intent/origin, which was just me being hyperactively excited about having a single sock and thus taking approximately 1000 photos of my single foot. Yeah...."detail shots"....that's it.

I hope this is a better shot of the design.

Semi decent shot of the heel detail.

These socks were a pretty fun knit. They used a heel from Cat Bordhi's new(ish) book New Pathway's for Sock Knitters: Book One. Instead of doing a heel flap, stitches were added along the sides of the pattern panel so by the time the heel turn was worked, half the foot was already knit. Pretty sweet. The ribbing on the heel continues down to about mid sole, too, which is a new one to me. I think it looks pretty snazzy.

On to the specs!

Origin: RSC March '08

Pattern: Leafling by JC Briar

Yarn: STR Mediumweight, Lucky colorway

Needles: size 2 circular

Mods: none

I guess I should also add that this is the first pair of socks I've completed using the magic loop method. I began using the one needle out of necessity and just stuck with it. I found it to be pretty intuitive in practice so I didn't check to see if I was doing anything "right". It all worked out though, so yay! Considering that I often lose needles if they're not practically sewn onto my hand, magic loop is my friend.

Hope everyone is having a fun day, and for those not in my immediate area I hope you're having better weather. It sucks here and has for a number of days. However, the rain and general grossness outside makes for good cozy knitting inside.

Freak of Nature!!!

The baby shower at which my blanket is supposed to make it's debut is next Saturday. How did I miss this?? I'll refrain from posting a new picture because it would be depressing. If you're really interested in the progress, scroll down a few entries and look at the last picture of it. The only difference between then and now is that the blanket is currently balled up in an ice bucket that it was thrown in as we were bringing things in from the van. Shit. I'm off to knit.

Woot!

I got in my shipment from BMFA a few days ago. Rarely have I ever gotten such a thrill from a yarn shipment. Almost everything I took out of the box became my new favorite thing. And the Single Silk?? O.M.G! It is sooooooo nice. I don't have the patience to post a picture of each of the items received, but more detailed info can be found either on my Ravelry account, or on Flickr. In fact, I think that the individual photos should be rotating thru that little Flickr badge off to the left right about now.
In knitting news, I FINALLY finished my Leafling socks from the March RSC. More details on that to follow.....once this shitty weather goes away and I can take decent pictures. Today I think I'm going to cast on for a pair of Crosswalker socks with one of my new yarns. I love them all so much that it's going to be hard for me to decide which. No new progress on the baby blanket, because I suck and am very, very selfish.

The Power of Sunshine

I took advantage of the nice weather the other day and photographed a good deal of my newer stash (i.e, sock yarn).

I plan on doing some more of this advantage taking today. Not so much with the photographs, but with the leisurely outdoor knitting. I FINALLY finished a sock from the RSC last night and I'm eager to get into the 2nd as I'm semi afraid I'm going to run out of yarn. Size 11's and sock yarn yardage don't always get along so well. Especially when you're a super-tardo like me and decide to knit an 8 inch cuff while all the while sitting there thinking, "hmmm, I hope I have enough yarn!". Oh well. We soon shall see.

Also (keeping fingers crossed here) I might be getting in a mega packed order from BMFA today. They put up the new/returning colorways awhile ago but I was trying to hold out for the the Inside Out sock pattern to be posted before I ordered. Tina had told me that it would be up a few weekends ago, but no such luck. I decided to just go ahead and order. I'm VERY eager to do the Inside Out socks though, and now that I'll have the yarn it's going to eat away at my poor brain. I'll get it eventually though. Not like I don't already have enough to keep my hands busy.

Off to lounge in the sun!

Je pense que je suis "jinxed"

Last week at Stitch n' Bitch I was asked if my Log Cabin baby blanket wasn't terribly boring to work on considering that it's all garter stitch. I said no, and at the time that was the truth. Since that night, however, progress seems to have come to a screeching halt. Up to that point I had been completing about a section a night. Currently I'm about half a section away from where I was a week ago. This is not 100% due to it being a boring project. I really don't even find it boring at all since I usually work on it while I'm catching up on my days DVR recordings. Something happened though......that's for sure. Here's where I'm at now.

You may notice that there's VERY little difference between this picture and those of my previous entry. Really though, it'll be done after not too long. After this top section that I'm working on now there are only 2 more to go. They involve a little intarsia action so the monotony of working on the really big sections will be broken up. I'm thinking it's not going to be quite as big as I had thought.

And here's one of those random FO's I promised.

Pattern: Noro Hat by Saartji de Bruijn

Yarn: Noro Kureyon No. 185

Needles: US 8 circ's

I don't think I modified this hat in any way. I started and finished it back in January so my memory on it's production is a bit questionable though. I do recall that I thought it was coming out HUGE but in the end it all worked out. Oh, and something is fishy with my camera so please excuse the amount of fierce blur in some of these pictures.

In non-knitting news, I signed up for an Italian class through the Italian Cultural Society of Washington. The Monday night class I wanted to be in got cancelled because of lack of space so I had to take Wednesday nights. That means no more Stitch n' Bitch for me for the next 10 weeks. My class started tonight, but after driving around for 2 HOURS I still couldn't find the building so I ended up coming home and missing it. WTF???

Oh! I also went to see the Yarn Harlot on Monday night. Typically, I left my camera at home. It was much fun, though. I started a new project while I was waiting there.....because we all know that's exactly what I need to be doing. I'll have more info on that later on.

I'm Baaaack

Yes, yes. I know it's been forever and a day since I last posted. Sorry. All I can say is that I'm one of those people for whom the more time there is to do stuff, the less stuff gets done. Conversely, if I'm super crazy busy, I go into frantic mode and manage to get absolutely everything I need done and then some. I'm still adjusting to not having such huge deadlines always looming over me and when given the spare time, I just kind of flit around trying to decide what it is that I'm really supposed to be doing. Anyhow, that kind of explains it.

Sooooooo.....I have lots and lots to share. My game plan to get myself back into the swing of blog maintenance is to post a little spread over a few days. Seeing as how I'm so all over the place, some of the stuff may be (severely) out of chronological order, but oh well. To start, I'll begin with the present.

Most of my sock club subscriptions have expired, which is a little sad. I had some massive issues with Paypal that kept me from being able to renew anything. Maybe that's for the best seeing as how my sock yarn stash has grown to legendary proportions. I think we all know where my heart really lies, and *that* sock club is still in full swing. Yes, I am referring to the 2008 Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin' Sock club. I don't really remember if I ever even posted my first shipment....I'll have to investigate that....but here's the second.

and a semi fugly close up of the yarn

The colors really don't show well at ALL in these pictures. My house s so dark and with the schedule I was keeping, sunlight and I were distant strangers. I really like the color, and am liking the pattern too. I wasn't sure about it when I first looked at it, but once I really saw the details of it I'm digging it a lot more. I'd really like to say that these socks were completed, but a little touch of masochism got in the way. It looks a little like this.....

It's a Modern Log Cabin Blanket! Excitement.

I recalled that my impregnator nephew and his fiancees baby is due quite soon. So, in my brilliance, I decided to make a large, multi-colored, smaller gauged blanket for them. Smart! It's actually coming along quite nicely......attractive, more complex looking than it really is, and yet still on the easy knit/semi-speedy side. The only issue I'm really having with it is that some of the joints are a little......icky.

I'm hoping that when I wash it and all that good finishing stuff, I can kind of conceal some of the messiness. If not, eh, it's really not all that noticeable unless you're really looking at it.

Well, that's about it for now. I have my camera charged and ready to go so hopefully I'll be spitting out some FO shots soon. Not that I'll actually be spitting out FO's. That's one of the joys of not blogging for a long time. I have a lot done already:)

Happy Valentines Day

Considering that I haven't updated in God knows how long and have completely fallen short of my New Year's goals of keeping better records of my projects........I decided today would be a good day to do ne of my standard "Hi, I'm here and not dead" photoless posts. I HAVE been knitting and even crocheting a bit. I have NOT managed to tae any pictures......because I suck at such things. This past month hasbeen filled with familial sickness, having to go out of town to help a friend, and just more chaos than my life normally is immersed in. Hopefully things are slowing down, though I'll be going ou of town again this upcomming week for a few days. Anyhow, I'll break out the camera soon and give a real update.