This one is “Traveling Woman” designed by Liz Abinante of Feministy.com.

It is knitting up either really quickly or I am just obsessed and working on it way too much. I cast it on over the weekend with some frogged Dream in Color “Smooshy”. But I used the end of the yarn that was freshly frogged and it was still really crinkly which gave the finished knitting a weird look. I figured it would all come out with blocking so I continued on. But about half way through the stockinette part I realized I’d missed a few edge increases somewhere along the way and decided to frog it and start over. I also dampened it and rewound it to take out the kinks and started from the other end of the yarn. I’m much happier with the result now and think in the long run it will look more even after blocking.

I didn’t really like this yarn for socks. I cast on and knit almost one entire sock out of it TWICE! But frogged both attempts because I just wasn’t happy with them. The first attempt was one from Cat Bordhi’s book in the Riverbed architecture. I don’t remember exactly what my problem with it was but I think I just kept messing up the pattern and gave up. The second attempt I don’t even know what pattern it was which was the main reason I frogged it. I couldn’t knit the second sock if I didn’t know what pattern I used now could I? Plus it was too tight and it felt stiff and scratchy. This yarn is perfect for this project though. The looser gauge gives it room to breath and it is much softer and drapier than I ever imagined it would be after my earlier unsuccessful sock attempts with it.

I’ve also added two repeats of the main lace pattern and still have a good amount of yarn left over so I’m hoping I’ll end up just right. Leave it to me to just wing in and hope for the best instead of putting in a life-line after one of the repeats in case I run out and have to rip back. I like living on the edge!

I’m also not sure if this is a keeper for me or if it will end up being a gift. Mother’s Day and Mom’s birthday are coming up in May. Shhhhh, don’t tell her! Maybe she won’t read this post and it will be a surprise. I think this color will be really pretty on her and I haven’t knit her anything in a while.

This is probably going to be my next project. Made out of this yarn. Just some Knit Picks Shadows lace I picked up on sale last fall. At this rate my stash should be shrinking pretty fast and my stock of finished projects just keeps growing.

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AND THE WINNER IS!

I almost forgot to post the winner of the T-shirt give away. It was Emily!!! Quite fitting since she inspired the entire thing anyway. Emily I will send you an email to let you know you won and find out which style and size you’d like. (I can bring it to you tomorrow at knitting!)

I’ve been doing the knitting thing again lately. Must be these long winter days of sub-freeezing temps.
This weeks finished object is this little shawl made with Socks that Rock mediumweight sock yarn in the Monsoon colorway.

I got this yarn in a barter deal with my friend Blogless Carla a few years ago. I did some sewing for her and she paid me in yarn. Since then I’ve tried to turn this yarn into something a few times. One of those attempts almost cost me this finished object, but more on that in a minute.

Just over a week ago I was going through my stash doing some “shopping” so I could cast something on without spending any money. I found a basket of all my pretty handpainted sock yarns. I really don’t have much desire to knit socks anymore and some of my favorites are just too pretty for my feet so they’ve just sat awaiting a nice small project to become. I brought my selections down stairs to my computer and after a quick Ravelry search I found a few possible one-skein projects. I had also just supported the Wool & Co. drive to raise money for Doctors without Borders so I had access to the free patterns they offered as a thank you gift. One of them was a pair of cute fingerless mitts. I decided to cast on for the mitts. I got the first one to the thumb gusset and just wasn’t happy. They needed to be just a tad bit looser and I didn’t have the next size up in double points or a long circular needle and didn’t want to spend money so I frogged them. Then I found the Multnomah pattern on Ravelry. Gotta love free patterns!

Disaster struck after I was through the third lace repeat when I ran out of yarn. I had seen many completed projects in the same yarn and yardage I was using so I was confused. I know my gauge was right on but there was no denying that I was out of yarn and no where near complete. Then I remembered a scarf I had knit with another STR yarn from Carla that I never liked and thought maybe it would look okay with this and I could combine the two. I dug it out of its hiding place in the front closet and started frogging.

Then a miracle happened. I had made this ugly scarf out of both STR colorways, alternating them similarly to the Chevron Scarf but in a drop stitch pattern a la the Clapotis. I never liked it because it rolled and the colors just weren’t my colors.

Once it was frogged I had enough yarn to complete the Multnomah.

I love the colors of this yarn. I’ve been wearing a lot more green lately and just bought some new grey slacks so I think I have a new outfit. I like small shawls like this because I wear them around my neck rather than over my shoulders like a traditional shawl. They fill in the space in my open necklines and don’t hang down like a scarf and don’t get in my way.

Now I’m being a Patriot and knitting a helmet liner for our troops. After that I think I have a few projects planned for some other reclaimed frogged yarn from unfinished projects that just weren’t destined to become FOs.

What are you working on? How long do you let an unfinished project sit before saying forget it and frogging it so it can become something else? Or do you let UFOs marinate for a while and then eventually get around to finishing them? What is the longest a project sat unfinished before you finished it or frogged it?

This is a really addicting project. For the record, crocheting is really easy and fast just like I was told. But the most addicting part is watching and waiting for the colors to transition from one to the other. Sometimes the affect is really beautiful and other times it is a little unfortunate.

I doubt I will become a hardcore hooker now but it is nice to have another trick in my bag. I still want to make one of those big multi-colored granny square blankets like Roseanne had on the back of her couch out of all my miscellaneous bits of left over yarn. Or a Molly Weasley Sweater (Ravelry link)!

She went from being a beginner knitter to spinning her own yarn in record time. She is pretty much self-taught in all her various craft forms. You should see her mad crochet skills! Recently she decided that she wanted to advance her spinning skills and applied for a scholarship to attend SOAR this fall in Oregon. She needed reference letters and I was more than happy to lend a good word or twenty to help her achieve this goal. I was not surprised in the least when she won one of the coveted spots. The thing is is that she lives in Arizona. As I mentioned, SOAR takes place in Oregon. Not exactly right next door.

You see Erin works really hard waiting tables to help support her family. She doesn’t make a lot of money so buying a round trip plane ticket is a real luxury. But in usual Erin style she looked at the problem and set a goal to solve it. She scored a load of decorator samples at a local thrift shop and set to designing an awesome needle holder for interchangeable needle sets. She has been working her fingers and sewing machine to the bone making these and listing them on her etsy shop. All proceeds from the sales will go toward purchasing her plane ticket.

I’m thinking I may just need to invest in a set of Addi Clicks just to have an excuse to buy one of these for myself. Looking at them I think they’d also work great for all those miscellaneous double point sets I have rolling around in the bottom of my knitting bag too. If you have a need for a small, compact, CUTE! needle case this would be the perfect solution. Go now. Buy one, or five!

What is it you ask? It is Cascade Venezia in Salmon. This is one of the yarns I won when I was crowned the Skip, Skip, Knit Obstacle Course Champion of 2007.

I loved the look and feel of this yarn but the color kept putting me off. Being as it is Merino/Silk blend I was hesitant to attempt over-dyeing, knowing that the plant based and animal/protein fibers would take the dye very differently, if at all, depending on what kind of dye I used. So I just stashed the yarn and returned to it on occasion to fondle and pet it and try to make it feel welcome in my home.

Then last week I was looking for something else and balling some sock yarn in my studio (get your minds out of the gutter!) and I stumbled upon my little pink bag of salmon-y goodness. I figured, what the hell, I’ll ball a skein of it too (again with the impure yarn porn thoughts! Shame.) and do some swatches and maybe find a project for this yarn after all. After knitting a plain stockinette stitch swatch I was smitten. So I started perusing my infinite number of pattern books and magazines in search of the perfect project for this squooshy yumminess.

Can you tell what that is?
It is of course the Origami Cardigan by Nora Gaughan from the Summer IK 2007. These pictures are from Tuesday morning, before I got sick. Last night I cast off the back and started on one of the front rectangles. Which reminds me, I need to go update my Ravelry notebook…see ya there.

I bought the New Pathways in Sock Knitting book last week at Friday Knitting with Company. I stand by my conviction that Cat Bordhi’s brain just doesn’t work the same way the rest of ours does. As mentioned during Friday Knitting, we’d love to see a brain scan of her’s while she is knitting and devising new ways to construct common knitted objects.

As I’m sure countless knitters around the world have done since this book came out, I devoured it. After a couple perusings, I grabbed a set of dpns and some scrap yarn and feverishly knit up the sample sock patterns. The above “booties” are the result of my practice runs.

The purchase of this book also required that I purchase new sock yarn:

The top one is Colinette Jitterbug and the bottom one is obviously Dream in Color “Smooshy”.
I cast on the DIC for a Spiraling Coriolis last night while watching Forrest Gump with the family. (My favorite movie of all time I think)

I chose to knit the little sample socks because I have a Great niece/nephew due in January and I figured a few pair of baby socks could be put to good use. As luck would have it, I received an invitation to the baby shower for my niece today so I just need to take the remaining Socks That Rock and knit up a matching hat or maybe even a Baby Surprise Jacket. The nice thing about the two colorways that I had to work with is that one is quite feminine and the other quite masculine. So I can give Mylene both and no matter the gender of the baby, she’ll be good to go. Her best friend is also pregnant right now so she can always pass on the other pair if her friend has the opposite gender. Or if she gets like many of us harried mothers, she’ll just throw on whatever is clean and handy regardless of the gender stereotype.

Other things on the needles:
I’m on the third generation of Little E’s socks. This time I think I will outwit her ever growing feet and have a pair she can actually wear. I’m only about a half inch from the heel but the Cat Bordhi socks have sucked up my sock knitting time.

I did complete the little Patons Classic Wool shrug for Little E. It looked really small while I was knitting on it, but the finished object fits perfectly. It got really hot and humid the day I finished it and so I haven’t managed to get it modeled and photographed.

The circular shawl I started out of the Briar Rose Angel Face is coming along slowly. I fucked it up a bit by forgetting the difference between knitting a lace chart flat vs. knitting it in the round. It isn’t bad enough to frog and go back (maybe if I had put in a lifeline but alas, I did not). I’m just not feeling this knit. It will probably be gorgeous when I do finish and block it, but right now the nondescript lace knitting is sucking the life out of me. Honestly, I wish I had knit this using a doubled strand of the yarn. God knows I have enough. Maybe if it sits idle long enough and I don’t have more frogs and reknits on simpler projects, I may decide to be a perfectionist and frog and restart this one AGAIN.

I can’t explain it, but I’ve been way more perfectionistic than normal lately. I knit, ripped and reknit E’s sock three times, ripped and restarted the Invisibility Cloak twice and restarted the Coriolis socks once last night because I didn’t like the toe. I’ve even been knitting gauge swatches for heaven’s sake! Oh! and I cast on, knit, ripped and reknit (and have to frog and restart still) an Origami Cardigan out of the Cascade Venezia I won this summer at the Knit Out. What the hell has gotten into me?

The next morning while Mini-Me was sleeping and reading, Little E and I popped disc one of the audiobook in the car stereo and headed to Crystal Lake. The day was beautiful and the festival was lovely. I was on a pretty tight budget but did manage to sneak in a few purchases. I couldn’t resist this lovely laceweight from Briar Rose Fibers. I’m not sure what it’s ultimate destiny will be but I couldn’t pass it up. The colors make me think it will make a lovely Invisibility Cloak.

The wooden bowl was also purchased at the fair. I’ve misplaced the business card from its maker so I can’t share that information. But each bowl is hand-carved and sanded and uniquely one of a kind. I just couldn’t resist the tactile beauty of them and spent quite a bit of time deciding which one I preferred.

I also picked up a small learn to drop spindle kit but haven’t had time to try it out yet. After eying all the gorgeous batts of fiber at the festival, the idea of getting into spinning is daunting and makes my budget ache. E was quite the enabler that day. Just by expressing a shared interest in learning to spin and innocently asking if I would knit her a pair of socks she drove me to buy the spinning kit and some sock yarn.

We also enjoyed and nice lunch with our friends BloglessCarla, YogaNan and her daughter Meija (I’m sure I spelled that wrong), Emily and Mary.

My friend, CrazySockLadyCarla (or BloglessCarla, depending on whos blog you are reading) is one of those lucky bitches that got into the cool kids club and is a member of the Socks That Rock 2007 sockyarn club. But she didn’t particularly like these three colorways and offered them to me. Doesn’t that qualify her for sainthood or something? (Regardless of that non-catholic/not particularly religious thing.) I still haven’t ‘paid’ her for these beauties but we’re going to work out some kind of deal. (I don’t really need two kidneys right?)

More Socky Goodness

This is my finished Diagonal Cross-Rib Sock from Favorite Socks in Sophie’s Toes ‘Jean Jacket’. It fits perfectly and I love it. No fear of SSS with this one because I want them done so I can wear them.

Unfortunately the new kitten is also a big fan of Sophie’s Toes. She found the second ball I had wound and had her kittenish way with it yesterday. I just now got it rewound back into a nice neat little cake (that’s it with the finished sock.)

This means of course that I will now have to add sock yarn to the list of things to keep hidden away from the animals, along side the hemp twine and yarn.

The gals at Friday Knitting have heard the Hemp Dog story but I don’t think I’ve shared it here.

Two years ago about this time you would’ve found me sitting at home waiting for the vet to call me to tell me that Heid’s teeth cleaining was finished and she was out of sedation etc. Instead the phone rings and my vet (Dr. Sarah) is on the other end with a sound of shock and awe in her voice that I’ve never heard from a medical professional before or since. She proceeds to inform me that she will need to do major abdominal surgery on Heidi because she discovered a string wrapped around one of Heidi’s molars that went down her throat and upon x-rays, ended in a large “mass” in her stomach. The string had luckily gotten caught around her tooth which prevented it from moving any further along her digestive track and had also absorbed a lot of fluid and expanded to the size of a professional janitorial mophead. All the time this was inside her she had proceeded to eat and behave normally.

What it turned out to be was a ball of hemp macrame twine the Mess Girls had been using to make Friendship Bracelet out of over spring break. We figured the hemp smell gave Heidi the munchies and she couldn’t resist. When I purchased my Hempathy for my lace tank I vowed to keep it far away from the Bernese Mt. Goat.

Heidi also received some notoriety for this culinary feat from our vet. Some months later Dr. Sarah related to me that she had gone to a reunion with her Vet School friends and they had sat around one evening sharing stories about their practices and especially the stories that begin, “You won’t believe this one case I had….” Well Heidi the Hemp Eating Berner bested them all.

I had a 9am appointment to have my hair cut and get a mani/pedi in preparation for my partay tomorrow night. It was pouring rain at 6am but bright and beautiful by 8:30. By the time I was out of the salon, it was a downright bee-you-tee-ful day.

I actually went shopping. FOR CLOTHES! Holy Crap, star must be aligned and spring has sprung. Three pair of jeans/khaki and a sweater at Coldwater Creek. Plus a pair of cute shoes! Gotta have the cute shoes. (Sorry Carla, these have no arch either, they are heels!LOL) But they are comforable heels (Aerosoles) and they look fabu with my new pedicure.

I also had lunch at TacoHell (no one else in the family likes TacoHell and it is my guilty pleasure.) and a mini-spree at Barnes & Noble. An armful of Scotland travel guides/magazines, 5 chapter books for Little E, a Harry Potter related book for MiniMe and a Time mag for Mr. Mess. PLUS a knitting book, Favorite Socks from Interweave Knits.

See:
That gorgeous sock yarn is from Emily Parson’s etsy site I linked on Monday. I ordered it Tuesday morning and it was in my mailbox Wednesday afternoon. I swear for a second that Emily herself had driven the USPS box over here and delivered it personally. But nope, regular mail. Plus she included a little handwritten note wishing me a happy birthday. I think I may just have to become her personal stalker.

More pron shots of Emily’s gorgeous colors:

I realized after taking the above pictures today that I never showed y’all (the two of you that didn’t help me pick it out in the first place!) the woolly goodness I bought last Friday at W&C for a new felted wool bag I’m designing. So here you go. The piece of fabric they are resting on is a sample my friend Jayne gave me from her sister’s interior design business. It is a discontinued fabric and Jayne loved the colors and design and wants me to make her a bag out of it. I haven’t decided exactly what I’m going to do but I’m fermenting some ideas.

Thank you to Carla, Jodee, Leslie, Jen, and everyone else that put their 2 cents in to help me make my final decision on coordinating yarns.

Finally finished the Monkey socks this morning.
Details:
Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug Castegna
Needles: Addi Turbo 40″ size1 (Magic Loop)
Modifications: none
Notes: I LOVE this yarn. I will definitely be picking up more of this in the future for more socks and maybe even a small shawl or something. If I could change anything it would be for the pattern to be toe-up. I just prefer toe-up and I came this >< close to running out of yarn before getting the kitchenering done. Thankfully I remembered that I had a small bit I had swatched with hiding by my monitor in the office. Otherwise, this yarn combined with this pattern will easily make a pair with one skein.