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17 Months

Berry Nice Socks

After a healthy 17 months on the needles, I finally finished ye olde Berry Nice Socks.

I used Knitpicks Felici in the Mixed Berries colorway on size US 1 DPNs. For my sizing, it was 80 stitches on US 1 needles with a 3×1 rib over the whole thing. Easy peasy but I guess I was bored by them. At any rate, they are finally done!

I like the yarn a lot, so the fact that these took so long is stupid.

Speaking of Felici, I cranked out a quickie stockinette scarf on the knitting machine on Friday.

Felici Scarf

It’s also out of Felici, and knit at a loose gauge. It’s an experiment that worked out all right, though I’m not in lurve with it or anything. I will have to tighten up the gauge a bit for future experiments.

But all things considered, I made a six foot scarf in a half hour, so whatever.  I blocked a little bit and it curls less.  I’ll probably block it a bit more another time to see if I can kill the curl some more.  Hopefully that will work. I just pinned it this time; I didn’t use the blocking wires.

It’s a good way to use up that self-striping yarn, because despite its flaws, it turned out fine, so more will probably be on the way.

I also finished a scarf I knit the summer of 2004 while I was staying in Leon Springs, TX – house-sitting in BFE, basically.  I’ll post pictures of that another time. I found the scarf when I moved again in January, and I finally wove in the ends and blocked it this weekend, so technically speaking it is a 2009 FO. Heh.

Right now I’m working on some socks and also thinking about a sweater with all this dark grey Wool-Ease I got on sale awhile ago. We’ll see.  I’d knit the front and then machine knit the rest because I am super lazy and product oriented when it comes to sweaters.

I also got a bee in my bonnet about hats, so next time: a finished Norah Gaughan hat from the latest Vogue Knitting, and maybe, if I crack the whip, a Koolhaas, which is a hat I’ve wanted to make since its debut in the 2007 Interweave Knits holiday issue, and finally found the perfect yarn for it – the blue lagoon Dream in Color Classy I got for my birthday.  The Norah hat is also knit with Classy, in Spring Tickle. It’s been a busy week, and I haven’t really been home when there’s been good light, so no pics just yet.

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Ishbel the Second

I made something this week.

Ishbel

Another Ishbel, from the lovely Ysolda Teague pattern.  I knit an orange one in June, and this is its royal purple counterpart.  I used some of the Miss Babs sock yarn I purchased at Stitches this year, and it was wonderful to work with.  This is the colorway Clematis, which is a bit more purple than appears here, though still in the blue-purple category of which I am so fond. The yarn itself was springy with a nice feel, and it blocked out very nicely.

Here you can see the size difference between the two different Ishbels I’ve made:

Ishbel

The orange one is the small version as written in the pattern – small stockinette section, small lace pattern. The purple one is the large stockinette version with the small lace pattern. I’d seen this version on Ravelry quite a bit, and it used up the yarn nicely; there is only a little bit left of the 400 yd skein. Eventually I would like to make a large version as written in the pattern, but that will be later. Another small awaits me in the near future.

This pattern pretty much knits itself, and everyone should download a copy. I must confess I watched the dollar and nabbed the pattern for fairly cheap. So if you care about that sort of thing, buy it when the dollar is up and the pound is down. What, I am a capitalist, watching my bucks.

Speaking of bucks, I am fully committed to not spending money right now, so hopefully I will have saved some up by the end of the year. I don’t have too much going on the rest of the year, save a trip down to LA to visit Sarah.

I am also going to get back on the Wii Fit. There, I said it. Now I have to DO IT.

Ishbel

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Recent (Birthday) Yarn Acquisitions

As I mentioned previously, my birthday was a week ago.  I turned 29 (for the first time). So this is my last year in my twenties! Between that and the high school reunion a couple weeks ago, I am feeling, well, adult. I didn’t do anything for my birthday except force the family to take me to Country Waffles for breakfast. I generally don’t do much for my birthday because my friends aren’t in town, though next year I might have a party or something since my birthday still falls on a three day weekend (if you’re lucky – when the 4th of July falls on the weekend, you either get the friday or monday off, and since my birthday is the 5th, I often get a holiday weekend out of it).

But anyway so all I did for my birthday was go out ot breakfast, get presents from my parents, sister and granddad, and then went out and spent birthday money at the Yarn Boutique in Lafayette.

My mom had fun ordering my birthday present from Knitpicks.  Sometimes they just give money but this year I said that I wanted “stuff.” Sometimes it’s just fun to open presents.

So my mom got me some blocking blocks and wires, and some delightful yarn:

Birthday Yarn

That’s Knitpicks Essential in dark green, african violet, and tuscany, and some Knitpicks Gloss in mermaid. I can tell you right now that the gloss is destined to be a shawl of some sort, possibly Laminaria. And I’ve always liked the purple; I made some socks for Sarah out of that, that I always kind of regretted giving away because they were just that nice. 😛 Knitpicks Essential is a great yarn, very soft and seems to hold up well.  I’ve used it a few times for gift socks but I’ve never used it for myself.

Anyway, so after I collected presents from the familia (Abby also updated my Netflix account for another six months – yay!) I stopped at Jason’s where I picked up some cold hard cash. I would have stayed to chat but he shooed me out.  He had tripped on his oxygen cord a few days earlier and fallen on his face and frankly looked like he had lost a prize fight, so he probably didn’t want to be bothered by yappy grandchildren.

Thanking him profusely for the Benjamin now in my hot little hands I headed over to the Yarn Boutique to spend it. (What, wait for my Las Vegas trip? Oh, how you jest! Unlike my father, who has saved birthday and Christmas money for years in anticipation of a flat screen TV, my birthday/Christmas money is normally spent within if not hours, at least days of acquisition.)

I got a copy of Evelyn Clark’s Knitting Lace Triangles and some awesome yarn:

Birthday Yarn

Jason has great taste. 😉

Dream in Color Classy in Blue Lagoon and Dream in Color Baby in Happy Forest. The Baby is destined to be a shawl too.

THEN I got an email from the Loopy Ewe with one of their sneak-ups and bought myself a birthday present with my own money.

Birthday Yarn

They got a big order of Fleece Artist Merino 2/6 sock which is one of my absolute favorite sock yarns – I knit the Kai Mei socks out of it and was really impressed. I ordered two skeins of Smoke (yes, another destiny as a shawl), one of Moss and another of Pumpkin.

I have to stop buying orange now because I apparently like exactly the same shade of orange. I have similar colors now in the above Fleece Artist, Miss Babs and Sanguine Gryphon Eidos (not to mention the Terracotta Malabrigo sock I made the Ishbel out of). Oops.

And now I promise I will be good and stop buying yarn for awhile.

Like… October? Can I last that long? Could I even last until… Stitches West in February 2010? A lofty if not unattainable goal (though kind of unrealistic, let’s face it).

Let’s start with October. I think that’s doable. Also there is the sheep and wool festival thing I’m going to in Dixon on the 3rd.

And, I am going to Vegas, and the King Tut Exhibit ($32.50/person!!!1) and Disneyland again probably in September or October, so I really need to behave myself money wise anyway.

At least this time I can justify it as being a birthday present. 😉