Thursday, November 27, 2008
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!
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
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).
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!
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, October 24, 2008
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:
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:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
