Yay socks!

My Jaywalkers are done. I'm not in love with the pattern and probably won't knit it again but i loved the yarn and the colorway.

Visual Aids

I come bearing visual aids! Hehe, I received my camera on Friday and I'm still playing around with the different settings so these aren't going to be very consistent pictures but its technicolor nonetheless. First up, a picture of my stash (well, most of it anyway):


Can you see why i need to join the 100 skeins challenge. hehehe.

Next up are my Jaywalkers knitted up in Blue Moon Fiber Arts Silkie Socks that Rock in Mochaberry:

As you can see, i'm at the home stretch now and since i'm 2 at a time, when i'm done - I'm completely done! WOOT! I love this yarn and the colorway but i have to admit, i'm not in love with the pattern, i know its a popular one but it just isnt' for me.

Next is my Alpaca Clapotis...sorry about the not so great picture, i'll try again later:

That's all i've got for now. More pics later...

Froggage required

I knit a few more rows on the Jaywalkers last night at the SnB and realized that the ankle really is too tight. i'll frog back to to the heel part and redo it with 2.5mm needles. I learned about another SnB in the area from one of the new knitters who came yesterday. This SnB meets on Monday nights - i see some knitter stalking in the near future. LOL.

i've also started bagging up my sock yarns into paper bags for the personal sock club. i'm still not sure how i am going to coordinate this with the BMFA and the Sunshine Yarns sock clubs but i want the personal one to take priority. Maybe i can do the non-personal sock clubs after i finish the personal one or skip the personal one on months when i get the other sock clubs. hmmm...

as for the Sunshine Yarns sock yarn...so far i've only tried the Soft and the Twist yarn bases and i have to admit i'm not impressed with either. Maybe the Classic yarn base will be better - though i'm not sure how the sock club works in regards to which yarn base is used. The colorways are gorgeous including the first club yarn i received in October but i hope that a different yarn base is used for the next club yarn. That said, Dani has some GORGEOUS superwash merino rovings and is willing to do a special order for me for a sold out color. WOOT!

Lack of photos and a random generator

Have you noticed a sudden lack of photos on my blog? And if you are on Ravelry, i'm sure you've noticed the same on there too. the reason is that my mom has the one good camera and the other camera i have is just...CRAP. no worries though, i'm getting an early Christmas present in the form of an awesome camera - even better than the one my mom has "spirited" away. it should be here by the end of the week so expect an explosion of photography on this here blogging space. i am especially looking forward piling up all my yarns and rovings on the bed to take a pic for the Stash Knit Down 100 skeins challenge. I fully intend to jump on them and roll around after the photo op. LOL.

I have 4 really pretty drawstring WIP bags at home that i purchased from various sellers on Etsy and they are seriously awesome in keeping my organized as well as helping me avoid unnecessary puncture wounds from scattered needles. i like using them so much that i've decided that i'm going to use these bags to help me control the number of WIPs i have. I have 4 drawstring bags so i am limited to 4 projects (large projects like blankets and sweaters are obviously an exception). I currently have more than 4 WIPs so those don't count until they get transferred to a drawstring bag. All this may seem odd but it works for me - it is like a pnemonic for controlling number of WIPs instead of for memory...if that analogy makes sense.

I'm bringing this up because i'm pretty far along on my jaywalker socks; i've discovered the secret to finishing projects quickly - TOTAL FIXATION! LOL. The socks are absolutely all i've been knitting for the past few days and i'm done with the foot and the heel and am at the leg part now. the let part is going to go up until i've run out of yarn. I forgot to change to larger needles when i got to the heel part as Sherri had suggested and now that i've gotten about 1/2 inch into the foot - i can feel how tight the sock is. I may just rip back to the top of the heel (because the sock felt pretty comfortable when i tried them on after i finished the heel) do the leg again in larger needles. another thing i could do is what Karen does - make the leg part larger than the foot part so i could go up to 76 stitches for the leg part. i think i'll knit about 1 more inch on the leg before i decide.

wait that was another tangent. The reason i brought up the drawstring bags controlling the WIPs was to actually talk about what happens when i finish a project (such as the jaywalkers that i'm FIXATED on). I checked the number of items i have in my queue (171!), went to some online random integer generator and generated an number between 1 and 171 - as soon as i landed on a number/project that i have the yarn for, i moved it up to the top of my queue and as soon as i have an empty WIP bag, that is getting cast on next. In this case, it is a pretty crochetted lace shawl pattern that came up. Now i have to decide what to do with my WIPs that aren't already in the bags - do i finish them first?

FO Rage!

Okay, i was planning on try to punch out a pair of socks over the holiday weekend but i was looking at the number of UFOs i have and i've decided to instead finish as many of them as possible. FO Rage commences now!

Finally!

Socks are done!

100 Skeins Challenge

One of the suggested challenges on the Stash Knitdown 2009 group was to knit 100 skeins in 2009. It doesn't matter what weight or yardage of the skeins, just do 100 in the year. Of course, this means you have to average 1 ball of yarn per 3.5 days! A daunting task indeed! I'm cheating and starting early - the diamond lace sock yarn skeins take the first 2 spots in this countdown of mine. WOOT!

Most of my sock yarn is in 1 skein so i'll get at least 12 skeins done from socks alone. I'm double knitting that DK weight alpaca for the hat, scarf and gloves so that will also expedite my coundown. I'm also counting spinning a roving into yarn as 1 skein used. Then when the handspun yarn is used, that counts as another skein (or 2 if i made 2 skeins but my skeins will be of reasonable size).

Socks from HELL!

These freakin' diamond lace socks are the socks from hell! i've been working on these since August and by now i even hate the colorway of the yarn (which i was totally in love with when i first started these socks). They will never end!!! I've been staying up late every night this week knitting on these stupid things. FINALLY, i'm at the top ribbing part. God i hope i get these done in the next day or so. I'm going C-R-A-Z-Y! How the crap am i going to be knitting 1 sock a month if just the leg part takes over a month! GUH!

First Fleece

EEEEEEEE!!!!!

Pretty, pretty Cormo!!!

Stash Knit Down

I just found a really cool group on Ravelry called "Stash Knit Down 2009". The group is centered around the idea of using up as much of your stash as possible in 2009. One fabulous idea is to create a personal sock club where you bag up your sock yarns along with patterns and treats (just like a real sock club) and pick a bag up every...whatever frequency you want.

After reading this great idea, i decided to organize my stash by weight of yarn to figure out how much of everything i had. As i went through my bags and boxes and baskets and watched (aghast) the pile of sock yarn rise higher ...and higher...and higher and then i thought about the yarn i have ordered with Karen that hasn't even arrived yet...well, "i'm freaking out" does even begin to describe my feelings. Clearly the personal sock club is the thing for me. I promised myself the Rockin' Sock Club membership a while ago so i am still definitely getting this whenever it opens up but i'm thinking that in addition to this club membership (and the Sunshine yarns Harry Potter club that i already have) i'll do the personal sock club.

When i went to the NYC knitting group, i met a girl who punches out 1 pair of socks a week. A WEEK! this is my goal! well...first baby step is 1 pair a month. I'm trying very hard to finish those Diamond Lace socks and i'm almost done. I'm a few inches into the leg (finally!) so when the balls of yarn are just a little bit smaller (i'm thinking just a couple more repeats of the diamond pattern) i'll start the ribbing and finally be done with them. After that, i'm not going to start a pair of socks until December and my goal will be to finish the next pair of socks (which will probably be the Baudelaire socks from Cookie A) in December. This is also a chart sock pattern so i'm not sure if i'll be carrying these around.

So, goal for 2009: Finish 1 pair of socks per month.

Overdue Update

I am so used to just updating Ravelry that i forget to add updates here.

I finished my Cable sweater which came out really nice but is a little...form-fitting. :) I guess its just incentive to keep losing weight (am doing really well with that, btw). Here is a of the cable sweater:


Next i started on a sweater from Knitscene Fall 2008 - also a hoodie sweater but i think i'm going to modify the hood into a long hanging collar. I started working on this and knit up 4 balls of yarn when i realized that the sweater was 4 inchs too wide! I was devastated but i had to pull all that knitting out. The one good thing is now i get to modify the hem a little so it doesn't curl up anymore like it was before. Here is a pic of it after about 2 balls of knitting - you can see the curling is pretty bad:


So i recast on and did a couple of rows but i put it down again. I was a little frustrated with it. I haven't touched it for a couple of weeks now. But i've had something else occupying my mind - RHINEBECK!!!

Last weekend was the NY Sheep and Wool festival at Rhinebeck, NY. It was full of yarn, fiber, yarn, sheep, llamas, yarn, food and YARN! I spent so much money (though when i counted later on, i realized that i didn't end up spending much more than my birthday money. I bought many many yarns and also lots of spinning fiber. That's right, I've got a new fiber addiction - spinning. I had tried to learn spinning a few months ago with that crappy, cheap spindle that was a complete deterrent to my learning process so i did some research on it and found out that spinning really should be learned on a good, well-balanced spindle. I invested in 2 Golding Spindles at Rhinebeck:


I started spinning with these and absolutely loved it! It was so much easier spinning with these - i didn't feel like i was in a battle with the fiber! LOL. I even made a baby skein of yarn which I still have to take pictures of and will post soon.

As i said, i bought lots of yarn and fiber at the festival. All of it is posted on Ravelry so i wont' repost here but some of my more "exotic" purchases included cashmere and llama yarns. I've already started knitting the Abby cowl from knitty.com with the cashmere. I haven't decided yet what i'm going to do with the llama.

Lastly, here are a few pics from Rhinebeck:

First Sweater

This is my first sweater. The pattern came from the Fall 2008 Vogue Knitting.

Spinning Yarn

Okay, so I ordered a roving from Etsy and its just been sitting there. I think after I finish my first sweater I'll once again try my hand at spinning. This roving is so beautiful, I'm afraid to touch it. I just want to order more and more practice roving before I get anywhere near this thing with my spindle.

Hedera Socks

I finished my Hedera Socks.

OTN Update

I haven't had any FOs recently except for the Absorba Bathmat from Mason-Dixon Knitting but it didn't come out to great. I think putting the mat away half done for a few weeks was a bad idea because my tension was completely different when I picked it up again so it looks discombobulated.

I'm working on the Hedera socks from Knitty which are knitting up very fast. I'm using 1 size larger needles and its only 60 stitches so it is going much faster than the Siren socks. I've already turned the heel and picked up the gusset.


The Simply Gorgeous Pi Shawl is also coming along though looks like a crumpled mess at the moment. I'm still on the first ball of yarn but i think i've used up about two-thirds. I'm thinking i might use one of Meg Swanson's lace edgings to finish this shawl so that will probably be about a half of the second ball of yarn.


I also started two new projects - a scarf for charity and the shawl i'd been planning for my mom. I was going to use the Feather and Fan pattern for the shawl but i found that the yarn didn't really show the pattern too well and looks just as beautiful with simple garter stitch. So I decided to use the Feather and Fan pattern for the charity scarf instead. The charity this scarf is for is OFA Red Scarf Project.



Lastly, i've decided to learn how to spin yarn. I keep seeing these gorgeous rovings and i just couldn't resist. I ordered a starter kit that has a drop spindle and some practice roving. I over-twisted the first piece i tried but i'm working on it.

First Socks!!

My first pair of socks are done! I am so happy with them. If anyone questions the reasons for knitting a pair of socks, let me just tell you - listen to the knitting gurus because they are right! Once you've donned a pair of hand knit socks, you will never want store bought socks again!

The heels and everything came out perfect. I make the leg part a little short because I always scrunch my socks down to the ankles anyway. So I have more scrap yarn left over than anticipated. Also, since I hadn't bothered to practice Kitchener's stitch on a swatch, I did create a couple of holes but those were easy enough to fix. I was planning on knitting the next pair of socks for my dad and the pair after for my mom...but they are probably going to end up being for me. LOL. I do love the fabric from size 0 needles and don't mind spending the extra amount of time on the small needles for myself but maybe if I decide to knit for others, I'll do it on size 2 because they are faster to knit.

Trip to Montreal and Projects update

My trip to Montreal was absolutely wonderful! The Jazz festival was on when I went so I had a great time there. We also visited Old Montreal which was gorgeous and the street performances were hysterical and impressive. I even had a caricature made. We also went to the church of Notre Dame, the BioDome and the Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately it was too hot and we were too tired to truly enjoy the Botanical Gardens but the rest of the trip was great. Since I still don't have a decent camera, we hardly took any pictures at all.

I ended up going to one yarn store while I was up there and got some beautiful hand painted baby alpaca lace yarn. It is so lovely. I am making a simple knit pi shawl with it:



As you can see, the yarn is so lovely that it doesn't need a pattern at all.

Speaking of shawls, I frogged my Mystery Shawl...I just picked the wrong charts from the clues from what kind of shawl I had in my mind. I looked at some of the other knitters' shawls and saw what I wanted my shawl to be and am going to change the charts around. I may actually wait to finish my Siren socks first before starting the shawl again. I have to check the measurements of my Siren socks today because though I cast on the correct number of stitches from my gauge, it seems the actual sock is much bigger with the scallop pattern. I'm going to have to confirm. Sherry from my knitting group suggested that I put a K3, P1 ribbing in the areas where it is just plain stockinette which I may end up doing after all.

I also have some really good news: I finished my Merletto Mitts!



They are full of mistakes and I absolutely love them! I used the wrong side leaning increases on the thumb of the second one - I got confused as to which increase leaned which way and then i just sorta continued with it. LOL. And the other fantastic thing about this project was it produced by my first ball of scrap sock yarn!



Look at the cute little ball of yarn! I have no idea why but I'm so proud of this ball of scrap yarn. I feel like I've accomplished something now that I have scrap yarn rather than just new, mostly unused balls of yarn.

I'm looking forward to having many, many more balls of scrap yarn to adorn my stash with.

A Very Long Post

So I’ve made my first genuine learning mistake – no forgotten stitch or missed yarn over, but a real mistake I made because I had no idea what to do but I figured it out when I looked at my work. The whole thing happened in the Merletto fingerless gloves I’m making:

I made the mistake in the thumb gusset. The pattern talked about how to make increases and about left and right leaning increases. I wasn’t sure which increase to use for which mitt so I thought to myself, well let me try doing the right leaning increases on the right mitt and here is the result

Okay, I’m probably in need of a better camera so you may not be able to see that I did right leaning increases on both sides of the thumb gusset. A few rows of this and I had a light bulb moment – duh! Right leaning increases on the right side of the gusset and left leaning increases on the left. I was so happy when I figured it out! I’m so proud of myself for figuring it out on my own that I’m not going to rip back to the lifeline (which I placed just before starting the gusset). I’m keeping the mistake – partially also so I can refer to it when I do the second mitt. I have to admit this project really is knitting up very quickly. And I love this color!

Speaking of lifelines, the first lifeline I put in was in the mystery shawl I’m working on.

I know the lifeline is in the middle of chart 2-A but who cares. The line was actually a row lower but I unwittingly put it through all my section markers and realized what I’d done the next row up. So the line had to be moved. I think for section 3, I’m going to do chart C – it looks the least complicated. LOL. One last thing, someone mentioned that there are no beads on this "Beaded" shawl - well, I'm not sure if I'm going to be adding beads. If I do, it won't be until section 3 or 4 or even just 5 (edging). We'll see.

Yet another tangent – I was about to order A Gathering of Lace on Amazon for the Feather and Fan Shawl pattern but it is a good thing I didn’t – I went to my local Barnes and Noble instead to look at the book and well…I’m working my way up to being that advanced. The book is on my list to get – just not yet.

Tangent (squared) – Since I broke the plastic ball winder from KnitPicks (which they are graciously returning on their tab), I ordered the Heavy Duty Ball Winder by Nancy’s Knit Knacks from www.yarnmarket.com – I figured that I’ve been so good this month with the spending that I’m going to treat myself to a $200 yarn notion! WOOHOO! And well…I just couldn’t help it – I ordered $100 worth of sock yarn on top of it. And wouldn’t you know it – the very next day KnitPicks announces new handpainted sock yarns in their own line! I really must finish one pair of socks before I order any more sock yarn! The only sock yarn I can justify ordering is the 12 skeins I’m going to order to make a sweater from Knit so Fine.

Speaking of socks, I’m still working on my dad’s socks from Father’s day.

They are my travel project – always in my purse for whenever I have a few minutes. This means they will be slow going which is fine since the pattern is so boring but easy for when you have just a few minutes. I am thinking of making the Hedera socks with the red Berroco Comfort Sock yarn I have.

Lastly, the Siren socks I just haven’t started yet. I have to look at the pattern and make sure that I know how to make all the different stitches before I start. I was thinking of doing these socks with the Trekking XXL yarn that I have but I may change my mind when I see the yarns from Yarn Market which should be arriving tonight.

One final thought, the Leaf Afghan. To be honest, its been hibernating because I’m just not sure I’ll be able to actually do the narrow stripes. I can’t figure out the pattern which I was told I would be able to do when I did the wider stripes. I suppose I can email Ann who wrote the pattern to see if she will send me instructions on it. I guess I’ll stop here with that thought.

Leaf Afghan started

I started the leaf afghan. The pattern calls for 5 wide stripes so I got a long circular and am knitting all 5 at once. Surprisingly, it is still knitting up very fast which is such a nice break from lace and fingering yarn. The only problem with this method is I've got 5 balls of yarn connected to my needles and creating quite a tangle.

The other thing to keep in mind is all the stripes look the same so how am I going to determine which is the left and right needle if I put the work down. Well, this requires some deligence - see the Red and yeLlow booties I've got attached to the needles - that is for Right and Left.

I was looking at some of the other patterns by Ann and noticed a really beautiful blanket called The Boys Afghan which is just gorgeous. That may be the next long project I do...although the Moderne Log Cabin blanket from Mason-Dixon Knitting calls out to me as well.

Goddess Mystery Shawl Knit Along

Talk about firsts! This is my first lace, shawl, bead project and knit along. I'm very excited as the group seems great. I've created the test swatch which was relatively simple and I love the yarn I'm using - Baby Alpaca Lace by Plymouth Yarn.




As you can see, I'm playing around with the beads in the pattern. I don't like the two beads in the pattern at the bottom two motifs but I really like the 3 beads in the top two motifs. The picture does not do justice to the colors of the beads or even the yarn. The yarn is a very soft pastel pink and the beads are purple (left) and pink (right). The pink is very close to the color of the yarn itself. I'm still deciding which color to use. Perhaps I will use both colors and alternate between motifs but that will depend on what the final pattern looks like.

For now, I'm just twiddling my fingers until June 14th when the first clue is published.

Leaf Afghan

Need size 7 needles
Worsted Weight Yarn
Gauge: stockinette - 4 sts and 7 rows = 1"

Generous yarn reqs:
Dark Color (narrow stripes): 4 skeins, 8oz each or 1040 yds
Light Color (wide stripes): 8 skeins, 8oz each or 2080 yds


http://www.gallentine.org/Knitting/leafafghan.html