Sockapalooza4 Yarn

After this weekend's trip to the yarn store I also picked up the yarn for my pal. It's the Fleece Artist Sea Wool in the colour Seastorm. Since starting on my Hedera socks I've fall in love with this yarn and I can't see how my pal wouldn't either. And some experimenting in colours you wouldn't normally see chez Jenna so it will be a great adventure. Now if I could only settle on a pattern for the yarn...

It'll just take some more searching. But the yarn is very lovely and there has to be the perfect pattern out there somewhere!

More yarn

More yarn for me! It's my birthday this Thursday so I've been treating myself to some yarn. Well, lots of yarn actually, but let's not try to argue semantics here :) On Saturday I took a trip over to Ram Wools and got mostly yarn essentials and a treat.

The treat for me was 1260yds of "Fiddlesticks Knitting" lace weight yarn (50% Merino wool, 50% tussah silk) in the colour indigo. I've been wanting to make myself a shawl for forever and I figure birthday yarn is a good excuse. I settled on making the Snowdrop Shawl by the Yarn Harlot. I think that it's definitely manageable for a first lace attempt and it's easy to memorize. I'm making good use of lifelines in the pattern and taking a good lesson on the fiddliness of lace. It's crap to unknit :) But I'm a trooper. Here's my progress so far:

I keep reminding myself that lace is meant to be blocked and then I'm happy with it. Though I must say that I'm rather alarmed at the number of people who are seeing it and asking if I'm making underwear :S

As mentioned before, my cousin is having a baby this summer and I'm in mid baby blanket (it looks the same, only longer, so no picture this time). Now about a month ago I bought a Debbie Bliss Baby book and fell in love with all the adorable patterns. As she still doesn't know the baby's sex, I can't make any clothes for them. But, I couldn't resist. So I made some baby socks for my research supervisor's daughter. But I apparently have no concept of baby sizes and blindly follow book guidelines so they might be too small. But he has hopes they might just fit for a bit (here's to hoping). I stupidly forgot to take a picture this morning so there's no picture of them. But I assure you that I'll knit more because they're too cute. And my first time using more than one colour. So I was very proud of them.

But my weekend wasn't all fun and knitting games. I nearly threw a tantrum at my yarn. The lace weight yarn, very near the start of the ball had a HUGE honking matt/tangle. I spent 2 hours trying to salvage it but it wasn't working. The yarn was literally like fused together and had I eventually seperated it, the yarn would have been so frayed that it would have become unuseable. Here's one knot that I couldn't get out:Remember, this is lace weight yarn (you can see how thin the one strangling piece is) so that should tell you just how badly it's knotted in the middle there.

Then, comes my Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino for the socks. All I had to two was 4 rounds of 32 stitches on the cuff in one colour and then I got to change. Practically an inch from where I had to switch colours (and all would have been fine):

They kindly decided to tie on a new piece of yarn right there. So there goes the first few yards of the ball, all for not. I understand that this happens, but right at the start of the ball making it totally unuseable?!?! These were both expensive yarns so I would expect better, but I digress...

For non-Sockapaloozers on here, you might be quite impressed to know that our group, with 1000 sock makers "broke blogger" . There were so many sock knitters on the blog that it couldn't handle it so they've had to move the message board on to a program called Digg. It is really cool. It basically involves people posting stories from different blogs instead of it all being on one blog. Any one can go read look at all the cool sock posts here. So that means seperate posts on my blog for sock stuff.
(More on the other yarn I've acquired when it arrives sometime this week

I will never get the post office

First off, I'd like to begin tonight's blog entry off by giving a huge hello to my ISE4 scarfee Sharon *waves*. By miracle upon miracle, the post office managed to get my parcel not only to Australia but to her house in only 6 business days. Considering it's taken them over two weeks to send a letter express post two provinces over, I take this be nothing short of a miracle! I'm so glad that she loves the scarf and that her daughters are excited for the treats I left them in the parcel. It's always scary making something for someone else when they have no clue what it is. I think colour is an extremely personal choice and luckily I was able to pick something she loves. Which is exactly what she deserves as she's not only my scarfee but happens to be the very capable organizer of the whole exchange which is no small task!

And in some crazy cosmic timing, on the exact day that my ISE4 pal gets her scarf, I received the info for my Sockapaloooza4 pal. Reading their profile, this will be really different for me. Their colour choices and design likes are so far from mine, it will be very un-Jenna like knitting. A good challenge for me, but even harder to make sure it's something they like. I'll have to do some serious blog reading to get ideas!

Today I went to my friend Joanne's house for some extra fun knitting and chatter. Plus some quality time with her many pets whom I adore. While there I finished sock #1 from my Fleece Artist Sea Wool in the Hedera pattern from Knitty. I am quite in love with them. And the pattern is very easy to remember in a 4 row repeat so it's good travel knitting or when you can't give %100 concentration. Here's what sock #1 looks like:

I find these pictures are pretty true to colour, but they are in fact a bit darker and shinier in real life. Not entirely unrelated, and maybe it's just me, but does anyone else find looking into the "gut" of a sock to be a bit obscene?

I always feel like I should be averting my eyes or something *shrugs*.

And, just to prove that I'm equal opportunity with using my kitties to hold my papers, here's Misty from the other day:

They're very insistent on where they want to sleep. And if it happens to be in the middle of my papers, that's fine as long as they don't mind "joining the pile" which they clearly don't :)

Tomorrow I start my summer research job at the university. Think good thoughts for me!

Twinkletoes

This past weekend I decided that I needed a bit of a break from the baby blanket. It was starting to get to me (which is probably a bad sign seeing as how it's only 1/5 of the way done) so I figured a quick knit pick-me-up project was what the doctor ordered (I really never learned the whole delaying gratification lesson I'm afraid). A while back I bought the yarn to make Twinkletoes from Winter 2006 Knitty so no time like the present right? I am very happy with how they turned out. Rowan Calmer is not only soft to work with but I can't even begin to describe how soft it is against your skin. If there was ever a yarn made for slippers, this was it. Here's how it turned out:

My favourite part by far is the ballerina ties on them. Were I to make them again (and I most definitely will) I would add 2-4 more rows of stockinette. It stretches well but I still find it a bit of a reach to keep the heel in place. And I would also add length to the ties. They look much longer in the pictures on Knitty than my turned out. My mother really wants a pair for her birthday and I think that I'll be making these as Christmas gifts this year.

Now, I know that I promised my Queen of Cups socks once they fit on my feet, but the pictures didn't turn out very well, you can't quite discern the pattern and they aren't very flattering to my ankles so instead I'll distract you with a picture of Mittens sleeping in my knitting.

If you look you should see: the baby blanket, twinkletoes in progress, Queen of Cups in progress, finished Monkey socks and a finished scarf (oh! And the lid to Cookie Dough ice cream). And yes, I shamelessly use my sleeping kitties as pattern holders. They like it, I swear!

Done!

I am done, done, done, done, done classes and exams. Hooray! And at the same time I have also managed to finish up my ISE4 scarf and the package. Here is the artsy picture of the scarf (my first attempt at artsy knitting shots, so please be kind):

I am very happy with how this scarf turned out and it is soooo soft from the Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino. I totally love it. I really hope that my recepient will love it too. It is currently in the mail and off to Australia. I think the post office was trying to be amusing. They gave me an "option" of surface or air mail. Surface was half the price but could take up to 3 months to get there while air mail took 1.5-3 weeks. Needless to say I got the air mail.

Things got a little bit interesting with the blocking of the scarf though which I hate to think about reliving this experience in the future:

Notice what it's being blocked on? Astroturf. *sigh* That was murder trying to get the pins to stay in. My scarfee is allergic to pet hair so the only way to avoid cats walking all over it was to block in out on the balcony. My poor little Mittens sounding like she was dying with all her meowing when my dad went outside after supper and she wasn't allowed out.

I also have another FO under my belt. About two weeks ago my friend Justyna mentioned that she was having a get together for her birthday last weekend and was hinting that she liked my fingerless mitts. So I nod and smile and continue on with my day. It wasn't until the next night when I was sitting at home when I realized that, "Crap! She invited me to her birthday. That means she's having a birthday and needs a present!" With only a week and a half and three exams in the mean time I had to settle for what I had in the house. I had bought the yarn to make Fetching from Knitty not that long ago so I tearfully gave it up and made her mitts out of my precious Rowan Cashsoft Aran (but don't be too sad for me, I went back to the LYS after the exams and bought myself another skein). It was a madhouse trying to make them while studying. And as fate would have it, her party got pushed back a week and is tomorrow. So I could've had lots of time. Just my luck. But here they are, I hope she likes them:

In the mean time I've also gotten more done on the baby blanket and my Queen of Cups socks which I'll show once they're at the point that I can get them on my feet (which shouldn't be long!). Happy weekend!

Back to your regularly scheduled knitting

Well, the worst of my exams are over. I just have one more next week and then I'm free of school work for about 4.5 months. And do you know what that means? Knitting time! Actually, since Friday night I've gotten quite a bit of knitting done and watched an obscene amount of 7th Heaven at the exact same time (I bought the first couple of seasons as a reward for all the extra hours I've been working).

Firstly, while I was whispering about starting another sock last time, it seems that I've somehow managed to have another sock jump on the needles. But I swear that the Queen of Cups is for at home knitting while the other sock has a simple enough pattern that Ican use it as a travelling sock. Without further ado, my super cute new sock made from the coveted Fleece Artist Sea Wool:

Yes, it's a bit dark. I'm still crossing my fingers for a new camera for my birthday next month :)

My Queen of Cups socks are starting to come along, but they've been mostly cast aside for my two big projects (after they felt so special that I was cheating on the Monkey socks for them, I suddenly cast them aside for something new too, classic). I'm still loving the bamboo needles and still totally paranoid over breaking them. I don't know how I could ever think of travelling with them...

And your final picture for today is the baby blanket after almost 1.5 repeats of the pattern. I am absolutely loving how it's turning out and I think the colours are absolutely adorable. I can't wait for when my cousin sees this when it's done. I can't think of anything that gets more love than a baby blanket.

My ISE 4 scarf continues. I figure that I'll get more done before another picture. I finished the first half last night and then had to pickup the stitches from the provisional caston to start the second half. That was murder. It was so slow going picking out the crochet. And I fear that I used too small of waste yarn because I could barely get the stitches on the needle they were so tight. I got to try my hand at the picot bind off as well which turned out better than I was hoping so that's excellent.

Now, if I could only supress my urge to start knitting miters after reading all these fabulous blogs with people making mitered squares...

Still living

Yes, I am still living. How well and how much is debatable but the point is I'm breathing and not entirely comatose so all is as well as can be expected durring exam time.

There hasn't been incredible amounts of progress over on my end in the knitting department as I went about a week straight with no knitting due to the huge volumes of work keeping me up until 3am every night (I know, I'm just as horrified at that thought as you are!). But here is what's been going on:

This is my ISE4 scarf after the 4th repeat of the pattern. It looks rather dense because it really does need to be blocked when finished (it doesn't look anywhere near this flat when not stretched out). The cashmerino is soft on the hands! Knitting it up is just heaven. I'm just hoping that I'll have enough yarn because I'm using a slightly heavier weight yarn than in the pattern. We'll see how that turns out.

In the world of Monkey socks, the second one is nearly done (yes, they are taking forever!). Here I am modeling them today whilst on the toe shaping:

I do believe that I'll try my hardest to finish them tonight because I really want to wear them now after all of this waiting. And once they're done, I may or may not have another pair of socks on the needles...

Shhh!