Stuff I did this weekend...

I've finally ordered the yarn for both my Dad's golf club covers, and my little cousin's sweater. All from Knitpicks- 14 balls of yarn, one book*, and another size 3 fixed circular needle- and I only spent like $50. I also ordered some gahhhhhgeous yarn from a small cooperative out of Nepal, made from banana plants. I plan to use most of it in the various yarn-swaps I've joined in the past couple months, one of which is mentioned below. I really hope this yarn lives up to my (high) expectations.

As I wait for my yarn to arrive, I still need something to work on. I had to work at my night job on Fri, Sun, and Mon nights, and not having any knitting to distract me would make me go batty. So Friday I whipped out my "One Skein Wonder" book, and started a coffee cup coozy, to keep my hands from freezing when I get my caramel iced coffees. Work was busy Friday, so I didn't get much done. On Saturday, Jeff and I took the ferry out to Block Island, and I finished a good chunk of it on the way out there:

And then finished the rest at work on Sunday. I also forgot to bring any of my needles besides the set I was using for that project, so I spent the rest of my Sunday night shift reading Danielle Steele. *shudder*

Here's the finished product, doing it's intended job, and doing it well, I might add:

By the way- in case you were wondering what Knitting Knerds and their boyfriends look like when they aren't Knitting:

We are the Knerd Poster Children.

That's the two of us on a rented moped on Block Island. Fun! We look like we can't wait for the short bus to come and pick us up.

So tonight at work I needed to start another project while I continue to wait on my yarn shipment. Again, I reached for One Skein Wonders, and settled on the small felted bag. I have some Lion Landscapes yarn, that I had picked up at Job Lot for supercheap, and I wanted to see if it truly "FELTS BEAUTIFULLY!!!" as the label proclaimed. Landscapes is only 50% wool, and 50% acrylic, but from the description on the Joanns website, the 1/2 wool is all that is needed for the felting, and the 1/2 acrylic will make what are referred to as "color blips" across the fabric.

The project knit up ridiculously fast, and work was crazy slow, so I finished it by the end of my shift. Here's the pre-felted bag:

I really like this yarn, pre-felting, alot. It knits up real purty.
Came home from work, tossed the bag in the washer once- no dice. Twice- uh uh. Three times through the long cycle and a trip through the dryer? Yeesh, finally. Sadly, I don't love the yarn post-felting as much as I did pre-felting:

Maybe I'll like it better in the daylight. I do like the pattern though, and it was so quick! I plan to dig through my 100% wools tomorrow and see what else I have that would sub well in that pattern.

***Update: I don't like it better in daylight, but my roomie loves it, so I think I'll pass it along to her, once lined.

I can't wait to start a decent project. Let's hope Knitpicks comes through for me soon...

*A note to my crochetey friends- the book is "The Happy Hooker" which claims it can teach anyone to crochet, even a knitter. We'll see. It was on clearance.

A Lack of Inspiration+Yarn Porn

I am uninspired. I'm not working on anything great right now. I have a pattern picked out to start working on some golf club covers for Father's Day, but I haven't found the right yarn for those yet.
I decided yesterday that I should go through my yarn supplies, and see what I had, maybe divide them up by fiber, and create a "yarn-ventory". I had hoped that would provide inspiration, but sadly, not so much. I thought it was pretty funny how much I had once it was all laid out, so I took a pic:


When it's all re-organized, it looks like this:

Please note my modern and artfully displayed collection of VHS tapes as well.

Much nicer. Since I'm being gratuitous, heres a pic of my needle storage as well:


Those big crazy vampire-killing red spikes are the Speed Stix, size 50's, as previously mentioned. Downright silly, those are. I also have a myriad of circulars, Knitpicks and Addis in sizes 1,2,3 and a Boye set of interchangeable circulars while I save for the Knitpicks set of interchangeabes. Those just aren't as pretty to display, hehe.


On to fun! Two weeks ago I attended the NH Sheep and Wool Festival, in Hopkinton, NH. It was faaaaabulous. So much gorgeous yarn, so many cute Alpacas (my all time fav. animal, even before I started knitting) and so much to see! I was totally overwhelmed with yarn colors, feelings, and fibers. I did cave and buy a hank of the most beeeeeeeautiful Alpaca- its three different colors plied together -but it's 100% natural, no dyes. The pic won't do it justice, but here it is:

It's much richer in person. It's also ridiculously soft- now I just need to figure out what this yarn wants to be- I'm thinking soft and snuggly bear.


During the fest, I took my very first spinning class! It was so so fun, and I've already called my parents and told them the make and model of the wheel I want for Xmas! I can't afford a wheel on a lowly social-worker salary, they start at $300 and increase exponentially from there.

I have to admit, my first attempt at spinning was less than perfect. It's actually pretty scary- what do you think?

The saddest ball of yarn in NH.

It's way overspun in most places, and way underspun in others, in a desperate attempt to compensate for each other. What you can't see is the part that's rolled up into the center, where I almost had tension figured out. In the end, I purchased a cute little drop spindle (pictured in the basket along w/my favorite yarns, above) and I had received a bag full of different rovings as part of the cost of the class, so I'm going to try hand spinning with those until the wheel can be a reality. Stay tuned for the excitement!

And finally, since I mentioned soft and cuddly bears, above, here's a pic of my very first knit stuffed toy. I had paid no attention to the finished dimensions of the bear in the pattern, and I was kinda bummed it was so small. I also think that black was a poor choice of yarn (though it hid all my boo boos so well!) since it limited my eye choices, and left me with scary white button eyes. I do however, love the duplicate stitch heart on his chest:

He's almost cute, if it wasn't for creepy zombie eyes. Ha!

Mother's Day Present? Check!

So I had totally wanted to make socks for my Mom for Mother's Day, but I just couldn't find the motivation. Once I had cast on the stitches, I decided that I hated the pattern, and then set out to find a better one... etc etc, until it was about 5 days before Mother's Day. And I work 3 jobs- so it was pretty unlikely that I was going to finish BOTH socks in time.

So I set off in search of a pattern that could be completely quickly and easily, and would be useful to my madre, in May (ie, no hats, scarfs, shawls, sweaters, etc). I decided on an afghan, since the 'rents have a place up North, and it gets very chilly there at night, and my mom usually snuggles on the couch with a book at night. I also happen to know that there is only one throw blanket in the living room, and it's fleece and doesn't match the decor at all.

Luckily, Lion had a free pattern (I know I seem like a HUGE Lion fan lately, but honestly, I don't think I've used any of their patterns before, I just have been stumbling across them alot lately.) for a six hour afghan. "6 hours? But that's impossible!" you say. Ahh, but Lion makes these goofy "speed stix"- size 50 needles. That's right, size 50. They were hard to work with, very awkward, and according to various observers- ie, my boyfriend, texas shawn, and Kat-I looked comical, like I should be in a Mario Bros video game or cartoon, while using them. They did, however, allow me to knit a lovely afghan, in under 6 hours. I'd say I might have hit the 6 hour mark somewhere around the time I was making dvd-box fringe. (The pattern called for using 20 inch fringe, 4 strands of each color, 35x on each side. I didn't feel like measuring that much yarn, so I measured each side of a dvd box, and I think it was like 17 1/2 inches or something-close enough! Wrap wrap snip!) (I'm using a lot of parenthesis in this post.) (It's getting old quickly, like finger quotes.)

I had meant to take a pic of the lovely 'ghan, before boxing it up and handing it to Mom (who cried, btw), but I forgot. Cuz I suck. So here is a pic from the Lion website- and I assure you, my 'ghan looked EXACTLY like the pic. Except my fringe was approx 1.5" shorter on each side, which is soooo noticeable.


When I was buying the yarn for this, I thought the pink-ish color would look totally goofy with the other colors they recommended. All the way through the store I was looking in my cart and thinking the whack-jobs that designed that bitchin' lamp shade cover were probably the same craft-impaired people who had chosen the colors, and that the picture on the website was probably waaaay off. It actually took me until I was about 3 rows in before I decided that the pink-which was actually fuschia, says the label-blended really nicely, and added a pretty jewel-tone to the entire 'ghan.

I'll see if I can get a pic from Mom this week of the actual 'ghan, but no promises, Mom has a hard time with the digicam.

My next proj. is a sweater sampler, from the book The Sweater Workshop. I hope to have this done @work tonight, so we'll see what happens!

WTF?

In the category of wtf (or whiskey tango foxtrot, as Texas Shawn says) today is a Lion Brand Pattern that came up when I was searching for "golf club covers" to start a project for Father's Day.

Here it is:



Seriously? Wtf? It's a lamp shade cover. It looks like someone starting knitting... I don't even know- a shawl? An ugly sweater? And then they were like "umm, bored of this project... guess I'll tie it around my lampshade." It's not even fastened together neatly. I don't get it. Way to hock your crappy patterns, Lion.

And to give credit where credit is due, if you just luuurve this cover, here is the pattern.

Red Sweaters

So I have a page-a-day calendar about knitting. What? Why are you looking at me like that? This is the Knitting Knerdspace you know, where I get to express all my Knitting Knerdiness. And that includes my page-a-day knitting calendar.

I look forward to coming to work every day, to pull off yesterday's page, and to see what new yarn, pattern, website, or idea comes floating my way. I even have a folder where I save the pages of patterns or yarns that I think are useful. I know, ultimate Knerd-dom.

So today I pull off the page, and there's a website listed called Red Sweaters.
I put the link into my browser (because I love having every opportunity to NOT do work when I'm sitting at my desk) and I learn that the Red Sweaters project is an installation project conceived of by San Franciscan Nina Rosenberg and informed in part by the wartime initiatives of old. Her project aims to promote public awareness of the Iraq war-and it's casualties-by suspending hand-knit mini sweaters from a tree. Each 3.5" mini sweater represents a soldier lost in the war.

Right now she has 2,442 sweaters hanging from the tree, and she still needs 939. Very powerful. And that number is just going to increase every day until we get the hell out of there.


Please check out the link above, to Red Sweaters. I'm going to be casting on for my mini sweaters tonight. Hopefully you will as well.

While I'm at it- Check out United for Peace and Justice
Jeff and I attended their March on the Pentagon on March 17- Demanding the US get out of Iraq now, and to fund people's needs, not the war machine. UFPJ has great links to letters you can write to your State Rep's, to newspapers, and links and info about local demonstrations and local action you can take. Speak Up!!!

Attack of the WIPs

I hate this baby blanket. Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate it. It is taking FOREVER to finish. Done on size 8's with fingering weight baby yarn, entirely in garter stitch. UGH! What was I thinking? Obviously I wasn't. At least it's not bad looking, I've actually gotten a bunch of compliments on it at my night job, so hopefully Clay and Kristin love it as much as everyone else does, ha! I hope to have it done by Friday, so I can send to Kristin in time for Mother's Day.


It isn't blocked yet, so it's hard to see the edging/border that is created with the YO in the pattern stitch. The blanket was done by casting on only 4 stitches, and then increasing one with a YO every row, until there were 200 stitches on the needle. Then, start decreasing one with a K2Tog and YO combo on the edges. I hate it, but it looks nice. Will be much nicer once blocked.



Posting these because my friend April mentioned Moda Dea yarn in her comment the other day, and just last weekend Jeff and I were down in RI, at the Job Lot, and they had a shit-ton of Moda Dea Cache and Lion Brand Boucle on sale- for $1 a ball! My roommate was less than happy to see me coming home with two more shopping bags full of yarn, hehehe.

I made the hat with about 1 1/2 balls of the Moda Dea, on size 10.5 circs. I cannot use DPNs to save my life, so I used my newly learned sock technique- 2 circs!- to do the teeny rounds at the end. I really like how it came out, and quick! I did the entire thing while Jeff took a nap and a shower- maybe 2 hrs total? Next time I would use a smaller needle on the hat, for a tighter stitch. Maybe 8s.



Sock! Not quite done, because I'm not totally in love with the ribbing at the top, and I wanted to start another pair for my Mom for mother's day. This is my very very first attempt at sock making, and I'm very very proud of it. I turned a heel, picked up a gusset, now all I have to do is graft a toe!

This is a detail of the heel, I think it's cool how the self-patterning yarn made a perfect pink triangle when I turned it. The yarn is Plymouth Sockotta. Pretty fun to work with, because it's neat to see how it knits up!

Baby Stuffs and Food Poisonings

Ugh. Today was just about the worst day ever. 81 degrees, sunny, clear, and I was home from work. Did I get to go outside and enjoy the sunshine? Anope. I got poisoned by the deli next door to work yesterday- egg salad was a bad, bad choice. It's been just about 24 hrs, and I'm actually starting to be able to move again. Hooray for plain toast and tea.

OK! On to a much lighter and happier topic. For Clay and Kristin's baby shower, I had knit the TBA baby a couple of hats, some booties, and a soaker. These were all constructed pre-needles, on Knitting Looms. They ARE pretty cute though! I got to spend the weekend with the happy new parents and little Zoe, who is just over a month old.


Strawberry hat. Zoe is a good model.
This was the very first pom-pom I ever made. I love this hat, and I wish I could remember what yarn I used.
Blue wool soaker. My friends here use cloth diapers, and a soaker is intended to cover the cloth diaper, and keep the baby clean and dry. Unfortunately, I had no concept of baby sizes when I made this, so it's much too big to be just a diaper cover. Luckily, Zoe loves these as wooly shorts! They keep her toasty up there in the North.

My apologies for the crazy font colors and bad formatting. I'm just starting to learn all this blogger stuff.