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Lately I’ve Been

On Tuesday I went up to Sebastopol with my mother to the thrift store The Legacy. This is a wonderfully unique thrift store where they only sell craft items, and it benefits the local senior center. My mom was after some sewing machines parts and I was after nothing in particular but wound up getting loads of knitting pattern pamphlets for under $10.

Two blocks away from The Legacy on the same street is a yarn store called Balls & Skeins. My mom dropped me off over there so I could spend some of my birthday money. Balls & Skeins is a nice little store, though there isn’t a huge selection, or rather there isn’t a huge variety of different brands – or specifically different to me brands. They did, however, have the new larger 400-yd skeins of Jitterbug, so I snapped up one of those and another skein of turquoise Cascade 220, which shall join the pile o’worsted for the upcoming hatapalooza.

I do seem to enjoy knitting hats in the hottest months of the year; go figure.

The yarn is on top of my pile of stuff from The Legacy, and the top pattern is a vintage(ish?) child’s pullover, very adorable. The yarn is my sole birthday yarn this year. A friend sent me a gift certificate to the Loopy Ewe, and I selected a skein of Skinny Bugga in the Goldenrod Crab Spider colorway, which is an awesomely weird yellow green mustard color; absolutely what I envisioned and have been wanting. I’d like to make a shawlette with it to wear with my gray jacket.

In the middle is the Jitterbug. I don’t know what I’ll make with that yet. The colorway is (I think) Ischia (?) and reminds me of chocolate mint. Last is the Cascade 220 in the extremely well named colorway 9455.

I’ve sort of got project ADD at the moment; I don’t have something I’m completely married to and have been jumping back and forth between projects, even picking up an old one from last year:

These are fingerless mitts I’m calling “King George Mitts” based on the name of the lace pattern (which I confess may actually be called “King Charles Brocade” and in one of my pattern books is simply titled “Lacy Diamonds”. However, King George has stuck).

This morning (Saturday) I went to Felicia’s local wedding shower and gave her my gift. I like attending wedding showers for the sole reason that I don’t have to tote a gift to the wedding. In fact, the last several weddings I’ve attended I went to the shower for this purpose and I have to recommend it! For Felicia I got her a 12-count muffin/cupcake tin, a cake decorating set and a set of scissors. She seemed pleased with it, and to my amusement when she unwrapped the scissors, the whole room full of ladies went “Oooooh!” so, see, I was right about everybody needing scissors! I personally probably have about ten pairs floating around the house and it’s simply… not… enough. 😉

Next week I don’t have much to do except continue to look for work and I may have lunch with Felicia and Jennifer, who was also at the shower. Hopefully I will also have a chance to meet up with Malvina to help her with a hair dyeing situation. I also need to work on Sarah’s birthday present, like, a lot. Sarah is coming up for the wedding and Malvina and I plan to take her out to lunch for her birthday which is actually next week.

Oh, incidentally, I am Felicia’s wedding dress storage facility! Thanks to the fact that I have an animal-free homestead, there is a big lacy dress hanging in a storage bag in my living room, and it actually kind of startles me every time I walk past because from the corner of my eye it’s like a person standing there. Heh.

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Adventures in Slackitude

I have always maintained that if there is a chore that I have been putting off because it’s A) time consuming or B) boring or C) gross or D) expensive, then somehow, if I wait long enough, the universe will take care of it for me.

This has happened on numerous occasions, like, I needed to vacuum Jason’s house while I was still living there and then suddenly I come home from work and my aunt is randomly there, vacuuming. Or, I need to seriously wipe the stove down, but then my mom comes to stay and randomly cleans it up.

This time, I have been wondering about my central air conditioning unit. I am the only person in my family who has one, so nobody knows anything about it. It works fine but I just don’t know what to do about it: do I get it serviced every year? Should I call PG&E and have them come out to check it? I haven’t a clue.

Anyway, so my community is actually having PG&E come out and look at them and service them for free. My appointment is on Monday.

And once again, procrastination wins.

(I am seriously like the worst role model.)

***

I went through my yarn cubbies and pulled out all the random skeins of worsted weight yarn like so:

There is lots of fun yarn in that pile, including Malabrigo, Dream in Color Classy, Cascade 220 and even some Araucania. There is also some Berroco Vintage in dark purple and bright blue; the blue is leftover from my Vaila sweater.

I’m about to embark on some serious hat pattern making. I feel the need to knit some hats and knit them like the wind. I have a bunch of different ideas and since I have that patterning software I am going to write up some patterns. Should be fun (and eventually, profitable! :P).

First I plan on reknitting my alpaca rib hat (rav link). I’ve knit it twice and it’s easy but that was like 8 months ago and I don’t totally recall actual numbers involved. This pattern would be free because it is so, so easy. I also have an idea for another hat that I want to make in both worsted and fingering weight yarn that is more a beret style. That one will involve maths and a pattern growing out of the ribbing, so I’m still mulling it over.

I also need to start thinking about Sam’s yearly birthday hat. Man hats are so boring and Sam refuses earflaps (I KNOW, RIGHT??) so I really have to think about what I make. I think I have a pretty good idea but like the above hat, I have to mull it over.

Anyway, I also made some random crochet hexagons.

They aren’t for anything, though, just practice.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch

So anyway, the week before my life completely fell apart through no fault of my own, in a fit of fiscal irresponsibility (which always precedes terrible things in my life, so maybe THAT is a sign, :P) I ordered a bunch of the new Knitpicks Stroll Tonal sock yarn skeins. Like, a bunch. They have great colors in this new line, and they’re so cheap! *is weak*

Here’s what I got:

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The colors are actually pretty accurate, considering I took these pictures on a cloudy day at 6 pm with flash. And I like most of them… but not the purple one. It’s too gray for me. I’m debating if I want to return it and get the darker purple. The yellow is a great butter yellow and I got that one for my mom, who was super stoked to receive it. (“That’s the last time this is going to happen for awhile, huh?” she joked, referencing the Jobpocalypse. :P)

The brown actually perfectly matches a skein of Dream in Color Classy I have to make a hat with. I was hoping that would be the case. The green is more green than pictured here, and the red has more variation. Red is a tough color for my camera unless it’s got strong natural light and no flash. But for the most part I’m pretty pleased with these yarns and look forward to using them. The yardage is generous as well at 464 yards; that’s more than enough for a nicely sized shawlette.

When I last talked about my current projects I mentioned that I was working on a couple socks and since then the sock WIPs have exploded. I even finished a sock:

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This is the Papaver sock from Knitspot. It’s one of those great patterns that basically knits itself. It’s a sixteen row repeat, which has four rows of plain, four rows of pattern, four rows of plain, four rows of pattern. So just when you are getting bored with one thing, a new thing starts. Very cool! This pattern would look fabulous with all sorts of colors, and I wouldn’t be averse to knitting it again. I’m currently knitting it in Rio De La Plata merino sock in the “raspberry” colorway, and it’s great yarn to knit with. I don’t know that this company still makes yarn. I looked at Ravelry to see, and it looks like maybe this is still available but their other lines are not. I got this at my LYS two years ago for my birthday, so this is “birthday yarn”, heh. It’s now past the heel and over a couple of repeats till the toe.

The next project is one that I have meant to make for a long time. It’s the bluebell rib pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks in (I think) Dye Dreams sock in the “Peeps” colorway. I looked a long time for the perfect yellow and finally found it sometime last year (I think at the Loopy Ewe).

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I have nothing in particular to report about this yarn. I like it. But then, I like most yarns.

My work BFF Amy stopped by yesterday to pick up some earrings I made for her to wear when she elopes this weekend and I don’t think she’d been at the house since I painted and put the Expedit full of yarn up. And she said, “Holy shit! You could knit a whole wardrobe!”

And I said, “Yep,” rather smugly.