In which I learn some things

Lessons from knitting:
1. Negative ease can be my friend. Being 5'3" means even size small sweaters sometimes swamp me. (Alliteration is, apparently, also my friend.)
2. Short-row bust shaping is also my friend, even if it means putting a mauve stripe where I would just as soon not have a mauve stripe. (If I had to do it again, I'd start the short rows as soon as I took off the stitches for the sleeves and use two balls of yarn to avoid the giant mauve stripe.)
Pattern: Wicked (although I misplaced the pattern halfway through, hence the not-quite-matching sleeve widths that I need to redo)
Yarn: Patons Soy Wool Stripes in Natural Earth - about 770 yards (!)
Needles: US 7
3. Entrelac is a little bit like magic, especially with striping yarn.
Pattern: Quant
Yarn: a partial ball of Noro Silk Garden, color 226 (I think) that I got in a guild swap
Needles: US 5, because this pattern makes a pretty big headband

4. Yarn makes a great Christmas present; so do gift cards to purchase yarn.
From the top: 5 skeins of Malabrigo worsted in black, 5 skeins of Malabrigo worsted in apple green (thank you, Uncle D and Aunt S for the gift card!), 2 skeins of Plymouth Happy Feet in a red/brown multi that will be great for non-stockinette socks, 1 (of 2) skeins of Plymouth Happy Feet in a blue/green/red multi that is more muted than the colors suggest (thank you, Grandmother!)

5. If you give your sister a coupon for hand-knit socks for Christmas, she will pick out a) your favorite yarn from your stash, b) the lightest-weight (and therefore longest-to-knit) sock yarn, and c) a pattern prone to dropping stitches and yarn that, when dropped, will run approximately 1 inch per second. Oh well. It'll be an adventure. Fearless Knitting, right?
Yarn: Actual Size Creations in Rorschach
Pattern: Conwy, from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road (at least I've made these before, so it's going pretty quickly)

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Let's get the ugly out of the way.
This is my shirt after wearing my Ophelia vest, which I knitted from Hobby Lobby's new cotton yarn. "I Love This Cotton" knits up very nicely and is wonderfully soft, but...yeah. This is what it leaves in its wake.

Now, some good. First of all, my first felting project:
I crocheted a circle from the leftover wool from my Cable-Down Raglan (and my cabled headband). A little vigorous swooshing in hot soapy water, and here's what came out.I made this little circle-type object to put my teapot on when I take it up to my room.

And new yarn always counts as a good thing, right?

This is some Louet Gems Fingering that I got through a Ravelry destashing. It's a soft yellow - bright, but not fluorescent.
This is from the same destashing - Actual Size Creations hand-dyed sock yarn. The colorway is named Rorschach (as in Rorschach blot, I guess), but to me, it's fall leaves.
And here's some Ultra Alpaca Light, 433 yards of fingering-weight wool/alpaca/nylon. The color is so much richer in real life - dark, vivid blues and greens. Lace shawl, anyone?
And last (and least!), the bad.

This may not look terribly bad. Sure, it's pooling like crazy, but it's a sock, right?See the problem yet? Into the frog pond it goes.

New yarn and furry friends

One of the benefits of Ravelry is that you can trade out yarn that you're tired of looking at. I had some Schaeffer Anne in a bright yellow-green and Schaeffer Miss Priss in a variegated yellow, blue, and green - both lovely yarns, but my inspiration was waning with both. So I swapped them for some lovely Malabrigo. I received two skeins of Oceanos and one of Peach Tree. Oceanos is a variegated blue, from darkest navy to palest sky, and Peach Tree is a mix of warm peach with olive green.








Yesterday, we had a family reunion for my maternal grandfather's side. (And before you ask, no, these are not my family members!) Family reunions are usually almost as exciting as renewing your driver's license, but one of my cousins-several-times-removed) had a spectacular idea. She brought gumdrops and spaghetti, and the kids could build towers. So of course, "the cousins" (me, my brother, my two cousins, and one cousin's boyfriend) had to get in on the fun! (And for the record, my 19-year-old brother was the youngest of the bunch.) One of my cousins is an engineer, so her tower made it to almost four feet tall. My other cousin and brother made a fortress-thing, complete with gumdrop people furnished by yours truly. My cousin's boyfriend's tower wound up looking an awful lot like Barad Dur from Lord of the Rings. I think this may become a family tradition!

After the reunion, we went back to my grandmother's house. She has a small farm, complete with Eight-Ball the Llama, Magnum and Elvira the miniature donkeys, chickens, and peacocks. Eight-Ball looks a bit intimidating, but he's such a marshmallow. He loves to lie out in the sun on his back on hot days. The first time my granddad saw him out there with his legs sticking straight up and his neck turned back, he was sure he had a dead llama. Llamas can be such drama queens.

Magnum and Elvira are my buddies. They're getting up there - I think Elvira is at least 23 years old! - but they're so sweet. The old proverb about donkeys being stubborn is mostly true. There are only two things these two will move for - sweet feed and petting. Give them a few scratches behind the ears, and they'll follow you anywhere. Magnum especially loves hugs.



As I was cleaning my closet (yikes!) the other day, I found a partial ball of wool left over from my Tangled Yoke Cardigan. So I made a little headband from it. It's very easy.

CO 3 sts on a circular or double-pointed needle. Work in I-cord for about 6-7 inches. (You want it to be long enough to tie behind your head.)
Start working in garter stitch; k1, kf&b, k to end; repeat until you have 12 stitches.
Start cable pattern:
Row 1: k2, p1, k6, p1, k2.
Row 2: k3, p6, k3.
Repeat rows 1 & 2 twice more.
Row 7: k2, p1, c3b, p1, k2
Row 8: k3, p6, k3
Repeat until cable section reaches across your head from ear to ear. (Cable pattern is VERY stretchy.)
Start garter stitch end: k1, ssk, k to end; repeat until you have 3 stitches.
Work 3-stitch I-cord to the same length as the first I-cord. Bind off and weave in ends.

How to keep an eleven-year-old occupied

The little girl my sister tutors was at our house on Saturday with not much to do. The solution? Give her some recycled cream-colored wool, Kool-Aid, and egg dye.

This is the colorway that Bianka picked out. It's purple egg dye, pink egg dye, and cherry Koolaid-knockoff. The purple separated a bit, but the pink and red turned out well.

So now I have a big ball of girly-colored wool. I'll be making hats or scarves for Bianka and her sister.

This is the colorway I picked out. It's supposed to be dark blues and greens. I mixed blue and green Wilton's food color paste with Wilton's black color paste...and discovered that either the black was just ultra-concentrated red, or vinegar changed the color.

It took soooo long to get all the wool dyed on this one. I had it packed in too tightly, and when I poured on the dye, it stuck to the closest wool and wouldn't budge. Every time I thought it was done, I'd pull a bit out and find huge white blobs. I had high hopes for this colorway ("Mess"), but you can't even see any blue on it!

The internet has returned!

I has teh interwebz!!!1!

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas! I spent Christmas south of Tulsa, as usual, with my mom's side of the family. We ate (too much!), drank (lots of tea, especially Pomegranate Oolong), and were very merry. I learned a new game (Fluxx), opened lots of great presents (including a lovely sampler embroidered by my grandmother), and ate way too much homemade eggnog candy - did I mention that?

I also knitted a sock...well, actually, the second of the Embossed Leaf Socks for my mom's birthday...

...and worked on my Tangled Yoke Cardigan. These are the sleeves so far; they're both on one size 3 40" Addi Turbo. That was a challenge to get going! I wish the circular needle was just a few inches longer so it would be easier to handle.

And look at the yarny goodness that Santa (aka Grandmother and Dear Aunt & Uncle) left me under the Christmas tree!

Plymouth Sockotta - I think this colorway would be perfect for Pomotamus, don't you?

And this lovely skein is Tempted, a sock yarn from a shop in Tulsa. Here's an up-close look at the lovely colors in the Fiesta colorway.

Speaking of the shop in Tulsa, they were having a big sale on the 26th. So I dragged my patient and obliging Mom (there's a reason she's getting knitted socks for her birthday next month!) down to the store. Here's what I got:












That's right. Nothing. Although I can say that I have seen the new Noro sock yarn. I wasn't impressed with it, to be honest. It feels like baling twine. I can't imagine having it on my feet. I was looking for something that I couldn't get in OKC, but I really didn't see anything that I wanted. GYC has much better prices, even counting the Tulsa shop's 25% off.

Still not done with the CDR.

But I'm making progress! I only have a little over one diamond repeat left on the right sleeve. One thing I've figured out, though - next time I do a top-down sweater, I'll do the sleeves before the body. These sleeves are taking so long!

I've got two Mmmmmalabrigo projects on the needles at the moment - a Mistake Rib scarf in worsted Azul Bolito...













...and a Swallowtail Shawl - my first "real" lace project! - in laceweight Tuareg.









Oh, and I got an email from WEBS about my (first!) order. They ran out of the chocolate brown Silky Wool, so I got some Araucania Nature Wool in a buttery yellow instead. I've been craving a soft yellow sweater.

I used my last two Amazon.com gift cards to get two books I've been eying - Victorian Lace Today and Fitted Knits. They should be arriving next week! So should my other major book purchase...*gulp* Not sure what I was thinking when I signed up for this class.

Harry Potter and the Hagrid-Sized Knitting Bag

At 5:45 PM on Friday, I had this:


At 1:00 AM on Saturday, I had this!


I finished Deathly Hallows in 4 hours. I need to re-read it to let it sink in more. The reason I plowed through it so fast is that I just wanted to read it before I got spoiled, like I did on almost all the other books. Some parts were great, some parts weren't, some parts I totally saw coming, and some parts I totally didn't. I won't say much more so as not to spoil anything, but if you're considering reading Harry Potter to your young 'uns, stick with the first three books. Deathly Hallows is most certainly not a children's book. It's got a terribly high body count.

After I finished Deathly Hallows, I went to SWAK in Guthrie, where they were having their store-wide 25% off sale. I picked up 9 skeins of Silky Wool in a really pretty dark cobalt blue for $4.81 a skein! This is such lovely soft yarn. The color is blue without being the denim-y blue that I'm so sick of. I can't decide what it wants to be, though. It would look great in cables.


Last Christmas, my grandmother ordered me a knitting bag from Land's End. She didn't give it to me at Christmas because she thought it was too big. But it works great for toting around the knitting guild library!(I wear a size 8 shoe, by the way, and yes, it does come up to my knee.)


I finished the bottom of the CDR! And wonder of wonders, IT FITS! And there was much rejoicing. Go gauge swatches! (The stuff hanging out of my armpit is waste yarn, by the way. Seriously.) I've knitting about three inches on one sleeve.

CDR progress and YARN SWAP GOODIES!

I've started the waist cables on the CDR. It certainly is coming along quickly! So far, I've used two of five balls of Patons Classic Wool. This stuff is pretty nice, but in the second ball, I came across several knots in one of the three plies.

And here's what a lovely swap partner sent me!
That's a hank of Cherry Tree Hill in Turquoise, a hank of Schaefer Anne in Minty, and a skein of Opal Silk Wool in a yellow, brown, purple, pink, and light blue. So far, I'm thinking Bayerische for the CTH, Monkey or Pomatomus for the Schaefer Anne, and Jaywalker for the Opal. I've also got that Nancy Bush book, as well as Sensational Knitted Socks...I'm overwhelming myself. Must stop now.

Clapotis pics

I'm plugging away at Clapotis. Here's what I've got so far:

It's about...one pillow-width long so far. I'm a little nervous about not having enough yarn to make it a decent length, so I only did 5 repeats of the increase row instead of 7. It's still a good width, though. I think I've used up about 1/3 of that ball of yarn, which was one sleeve's worth. If I get a 6-foot long wrap, I'll be happy. If I get more than that, I'll be happier, but beggars can't be choosers.
I've just dropped the first stitch. Boy, that was exciting...sort of. It only went down a few rows.

This yarn is a little "clingy," since it's recycled from a sweater. It will definitely need a bath in conditioner and a stout blocking. This is one sweater that lived up to the stereotypical itchiness of wool. Right now, the dropped stitches are kind of sticking out. I hope it sorts itself out once more stitches are dropped.

And here's a gratuitous picture of the Easter Egg dyed yarn all worked up.
I still am amazed by how well this turned out. It goes from a bright leaf green to mint to sky blue to deep robin's-egg.





And here's what was waiting for me on Monday when I got home from work:

This was what I got on Amazon.com with my gift certificate! I have so many things I want to work on from these books. This way, I won't have to worry about library late fees. I'm planning an Hourglass Sweater from the blue Fleur de Lis.


Here's the yarn that samm sent me:

That's the sock yarn - I've been wanting some solid-ish sock yarn for some patterned socks - and the variegated heavier-weight yarn, which reminds me of the autumn leaves in Arkansas when I was at college. (I have never seen such beautiful trees as the October that I went on a weekend retreat to Fayetteville, Arkansas. The colors were glowing.)


I really need to find a place to photograph my stuff besides my bed...now the whole world will know how often I change my sheets.

Well, it's 11:00 PM, so in the words (?) of a 2nd grader that I tried to teach a bit of German tonight, "Auf Wiedreshqpritiethdqetrjeqwkansen!"

I found the cable!

I have pictures to post again! This is a finished Conwy sock. I think I set a record with this one - I casted on at the March Knit-In and had it done in about a week. Amazing the amount of knitting you can do when you're sick.

Also included for your viewing enjoyment are the Log Cabin Blanket (4 balls of Plymouth Encore on size 8 needles and about 2 months!), an Anthropologie-Inspired Capelet from Patons SWS, Easter-egg-dyed recycled wool in blue and green, blue variegated Malabrigo Laceweight, and a baby hat that only took about 2 hours to knit.

Oh, and there are also some (quite a few, actually) gratuitous flower pics. I love living in Oklahoma...