Sometime over the Christmas holidays, I completely lost my knitting mojo. It might have been burnout from all the present knitting, or the endless sweater class cardigan being knit in hard-to-see navy blue (which I'm in the middle of seaming, I swear), but knitting just wasn't fun anymore. The wisdom teeth saga might have had something to do with it too (did I tell you that one of the wounds got infected after I returned to Boston? And that I had to have it drained? Fun times). Anyway, Adrienne = not a happy knitter. So to counter the knitting blues, of course I went shopping (before I made the resolutions, I promise!): 
Yummy Handmaiden Cashmere from Colorsong Yarn. A Devin's Toque kit in the Mineral colourway so I could knit a hat for Jason, because he is utterly lacking in winter accessories. If that's not a knitter's siren song, I don't know what is. And plus, cashmere! So, a few days of knitting later: 
A delectably pettable hat. At first I was having serious pooling issues, but then I think my tension changed somewhat and I ended up with this fun swirly pattern. The yarn is super-soft and slippery, and breaks really really easily. I had to be pretty careful with the knitting, even on bamboo needles. But I think it turned out pretty well, it keeps the head warm and wards off wind-induced headaches, so mission accomplished. And we are knitting again, I'll have to list all the UFOs that I'm working on sometime. =)
I'm not normally a very resolution-y sort of person, but this year, I'm turning over a new knitterly leaf. Whereas last year seemed to be all about being a Bad-Ass Knitter, about buying whatever yarn whenever I wanted and not feeling guilty about it, so there (although to be perfectly honest, I still felt guilty), this year is going to be a little different. For one thing, I've catalogued the stash and there's too much of it, I've got yarn exploding everywhere. For another thing, I've started thinking somewhat about the Future, about maybe someday moving beyond this poor-yet-single-and-fancy-free-living-in-the-present existence, and part of moving forward will probably involve not spending money like a drunken sailor (not that I do technically, I never spend more than I have, but let's just say that I could spend less, shall we?). So, here is my current list of Knitty Resolutions for 2006: 1) The stash is not to grow beyond 100 balls of yarn. It is currently at a little over 100 balls, but I am setting that as its maintenance level. 2) To help maintain the stash at a reasonable level, we will start actually knitting from stash instead of finding new and novel things to buy because we are bored with everything we already have. 3) We will stop inventing imaginary projects in order to justify purchasing yarn which is either on sale or newly discontinued. 4) We will try our very hardest to not use shopping for yarn as retail therapy. We will try to find comfort and satisfaction in buying inexpensive or practical things, like, say, scotch tape and tampons. I think that's all for now, it's been 13 days in January (Happy Friday the 13th!) and I haven't bought any yarn yet. Perhaps there is hope after all. =) ETA: I just realized that all those resolutions basically amount to one thing: No more haphazard yarn accumulation. =P
So, I managed to finish these armwarmers for Miranda. They're the 'Hurry Up Spring' ones from Stich 'n Bitch Nation. It's a pretty fun pattern and actually knits up pretty quickly when you put your mind to it. I was a little annoyed with the fact that it took just over one skein of Noro Kureyon to finish it. I was too lazy to pick the right part in the yarn to get the identical striping pattern, but now that I look at them side by side it's a little unfortunate that I didn't. Oh well. I guess that's why they tell you to get two skeins.
This shot is supposed to be a close-up of the leaf and branch pattern on them. I don't know if I made mistakes reading the chart or not, but there were definitely places in it that didn't seem to work out properly. And they really should have explained the whole reversing of the pattern part for the left-hand armwarmer way better than they did. They just said to read the chart from the left to right instead of right to left, and it's NOT THAT SIMPLE!! They don't explain that you have to reverse the entire pattern, and that caused me a little confusion.
All in all, this was a fun knit, though I wish there weren't so many mistakes in the pattern. You can't just mindlessly follow it, otherwise you'll run into trouble. The part where they tell you to make the thumb gusset it totally messed up if you don't start your 2x2 ribbing with p1 k2, instead of the k2 that most people would do, right from the start. And they don't tell you that little detail either. So, I just ignored what they said and just made the thumb gusset following the rib pattern and it turned out fine.
Now to put these in the mail, and hopefully they'll get to her some time before winter in Tokyo ends! HA HA!!!!
This is bad...I have found SO many projects that I want to do, instead of finding projects to use up my stash with. I really, really want to make the Peacock Feathers Shawl from Fiddlesticks Knitting. I just called up Lettuce Knit and they have the pattern...so I asked them to hold it for me. Isn't that awful? I think I have enough yarn to make it, but the question is if I want to use it for that. It's not really the nicest stuff and I have no idea how it'll drape. God...now I feel like a yarn snob. But can I just say that I love knitting lace stuff? I want to knit myself Cozy from Knitty as well....
Plus I have so many unfinished projects going right now. I still have to felt and sew up another cat toy that I made, finish that baby sweater from the class (I didn't make it to the second class, but more about that another time), then there's the wristwarmers from Stich 'n Bitch Nation, and the ever present Clapotis that is taking me FOREVER AND A DAY to knit...oh, and as always there is Kyoto still hanging around waiting for me to finish. *sigh* I suck...I need more of that 'must complete everything I start' energy....though I think the fact that I absolutely hate finishing kinda puts a damper on things.
I know it seems like it's been a long time since I was doing any knitting. I mean, I've admited already that I'm not knitting anything for Christmas presents this year, and my last post was in October! But I finally have photos to show! Hooray! Bear with me...this is going to be a bit of a long post. Maybe I should split it up and write it over several days so it looks like I've been doing lots. HA HA!!
Let's back up a little bit...so I signed up for that baby sweater knitting course and needed to pick up my materials for it. So, Elaine and I headed to Lettuce Knit. In addition to the stuff I needed for the course (which I'll show a little later), we found these bags of merino ends or rovings, or whatever they call them. They were packaged by weight. And of course we couldn't resist getting some. The whole bag was only $40. It's a sport weight (I think...I'm so bad with the weights), and Elaine and I swapped some our colours. So, here's what I got in the bag.
Now to come up with a project for it....any ideas?
So, the baby sweater class started this week. It's only a 2 week class because the sweater is pretty tiny. I actually finished my homework the day after the class since I was practically done after the 2 hours in the store. So, here's a picture of the pattern.
(Sorry...too lazy to rotate the pic)
It's knit pretty much in one piece in the round starting from the neck down. It's got raglan sleeves too, which I happen to like. The idea that I don't have to seam anything is SOOOO appealing.
So, that's what I've got so far and you can see what other colours I picked. I wanted to do a stripped sweater. The part that I've stopped at is where we split things to make the sleeves. I think I'm going to want to switch colors here otherwise it'll be a pain to keep track of how many rows of blue I need on each sleeve. And I actually didn't know that it was going to be knit neck down when I chose the colour. Not that blue is so bad, but I originally wanted to put it on the bottom. In retrospect, I probably should have chosen a variagated yarn instead of trying stripes because there's so much blue now that the next stripe will probably take up, like, the rest of the sweater if I want to keep the stripe the same width. Or maybe I'll frog some of what I've done and re-do it in another colour...I dunno. Maybe I'll go back to the store for some advice, but I don't know if I'll be able to before the next class on Thursday.
Lastly (yup...told you this was a long post), I finished my first felted project! I made a toy mouse with the pattern and yarn that Carolyn and Elaine gave me. Felting is really fun! I was kinda scared at first, and got even more worried when nothing seemed to be happening. But the results were pretty good.
The funny thing about the 'face' is that you have to sew the eyes on before you felt, so after I felted it, the shape of the eye changed shape. So, I stuffed it with some scrap yarn and a little catnip and let the cats have it.
I think the toys are going to go over pretty well...or maybe it's the catnip!
So, I went to my knitting class the other day (more on that in another post) and was lamenting the fact that I was really going to miss the Mission Falls stuff now that it's been discontinued and found out from the person in the store that it's actually going to be coming back! Someone bought the company from the lady who used to own/run it. I don't know if this means that the product will be a little different, or what, but I was very excited at the news.
In other news, I finally got to touch some Malabrigo. They have it at Lettuce Knit now, the cotton stuff too. It's SOOOO soft. I kinda wanted to get some just to have it. But I resisted the urge.
Well, Jamie and I are off to buy him a laptop. When I come back, I'll put up some pictures of some of the stuff that I've been working on.
