Just hours before the end of 2008, I wanted to make one last post for the heck of it. First off, here's a little something I made for my mom for Christmas that I forgot to post about.
A pair of Fetching wrist warmers made of the same Berroco Alpaca that I made mine out of. I modified the pattern to make mine extra long, but I didn't do the same for my mom's. When I gave them to her, she was a bit puzzled as to what to use them for, but hopefully she'll find them as useful as I find mine.
As some of you might already know, the hubby and I are now house-hunting. We're packing up our condo in preparation for putting it up on the market, so that means a HUGE de-clutter, and sending a ton of things into storage. And so, my knitting corner had to disappear from the premises (ack!). I've had to select a few key skeins to tide me over, but the rest had to be packed away. So here it is. My entire stash.
Yes Adrienne, that includes all that Silk Garden you were so kind to bring me. I seriously thought I had more yarn than that. Maybe I can treat myself to some more yarn when we've got ourselves a house :)
Have a safe and happy New Year's celebration, everyone! See you all in 2009!!
Did you all get the email about the Webs Silk Garden closeout sale a couple of weeks ago? Did anyone else buy any yarn? Because we (Karen and I) sure did. We didn't go entirely crazy like I'm sure some folks did (did you see how fast it disappeared?), but when I put in the order for 28 skeins I admit to feeling a teensy bit faint despite the fact that the yarn wasn't ALL for me (hey, I'm on a postdoc salary and can't afford to buy too much yarn at once, ok? =P).
I thought maybe the box would be enormous. Turns out, yarn is squishy. Here's the box with an 8-pound cat sitting on top:
The box of yarn balanced on my head:
And the spoils. I won't say who bought which yarn, but that's 3 colourways of Silk Garden, #47, #226, and #247.
The yarn is even prettier in person (top to bottom, #47, #226, #247). I love love LOVE this yarn. If I were stuck on a desert island with only one kind of yarn to knit with, this just might be it.
Today, I fell off the wagon and bought myself some yarn.
It's some more Dream in Colour Classy, and I've got it pegged for Talia, from the Spring issue of Knitty.
It's been a trying few days with the cats, so I felt like I needed a pick-me-up. One of them peed on our entranceway rug, and they've just been a pain, which is a bit out of character for them. Then one day I came home to this.
And two very not hungry cats. Grrrr....
So I've REALLY fallen off the wagon this week. Since the yarn splurge last weekend, I've done a bit more shopping. I went back to the store that was having the moving sale (twice even, but once was purely just to keep someone company) and bought a bit more Noro and some Elizabeth Zimmerman books (gotta see what all the fuss is about, after all). The Yarn and Fiber Company was having a 15% off sale and I picked up some Kureyon colourways I had my eye on. I went to another yarn store to pick up a pattern. I saw some very very discontinued Silk Garden on eBay, made a modest bid, and won (to my utter surprise, I was completely expecting to be outbid).
Normally I might be feeling terribly guilty about all this, as though I were spending away my future or being totally reckless, when I had specifically told myself I wouldn't buy any more yarn until Easter. But really, it wasn't that much additional money, I am far from dipping into savings/credit to finance it, and all the yarn/books were on sale (well, the pattern wasn't). All the yarn is also earmarked for specific projects that I had in mind beforehand, not projects that I made up on the spot in the store.
I think I've gotten a lot better at not buying yarn on impulse, at not saying "oooh, here's some pretty yarn....quick, what could I make with this?", or justifying a yarn purchase by saying "I guess I could always just make a scarf out of this". I have a lot of "this is for a random scarf" yarn in my stash, and I'm tired of it (I love all the yarn of course, it's just that I and my family have a lot of scarves now). The Silk Garden is for a large-ish project-in-progress (I'll blog about it soon, I swear, but there's been a lot of other bloggable knitting these days), and the Kureyon is for a smaller version of a log cabin-y blanket that I saw on Ravelry (damn you, Ravelry!).
Anyway, I'm sick of looking at yarn now. Unless one or two very very specific opportunities come up, I'm more than done for now. =)
In other news, I've finished the front of my Nothing' But A T Shirt (I have no idea why the picture looks so weird and swirly, click to see the actual photo on Flickr).
Immediately after casting off the front, I threw both body pieces into a Eucalan bath and pinned them out. They are drying on the blocking board now, and once they're dry I'll sort of pin them together and see how they look on me. I pinned them out to the correct dimensions, but I'm terrified that the yarn will snap back and create a lot of body-hugging negative ease. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I'm no longer the underweight-to-the-point-where-people-were-telling-me-to-please-put-on-some-pounds girl that I was 6 months ago, and I'm not sure how flattering it would be. =)
I did the shaping for the neck using short rows, instead of doing the step-wise bindoffs (like I did for the back), and you can kind of see where the stitches look a bit wonky as a result. I hope that will disappear once I pick up the stitches for the neckband (I was kind of hoping they would even out with blocking, but it appears you can still tell).
And on a completely unrelated note, I love that Daylight Savings Time is so much earlier this year. More light, hooray! I have a feeling that it will be hard to wake up tomorrow morning, though. =)
I had a little falling down today. You see, several yarn stores were having sales. You'd think that, being on a yarn fast, I'd know better than to even contemplate setting foot in a yarn store, but what can I say, I'm lacking in willpower these days (although I've managed to avoid buying yarn online, even though I nearly succumbed to the virtual sale bin at Purl).
The first store was having a massive moving sale. Everything at least 30% off. I bought an armful of Silk Garden (colourways 245, 247, and 255), a skein of Kureyon (colourway 95), and a skein of Colinette Zanziba (to be knit into a scarf together with any Zanziba leftovers from my mom's Ab Fab throw). The Colinette was 75% off, the Noro 40% off. How could I not?
Aside from the Kureyon and Silk Garden, they also had Blossom and Cash Iroha and Iro and Silver Thaw, it was really really hard not to sweep entire shelves of Noro into my shopping bag (I won't even get into the Rowan and Manos and everything else). I may have to go back there.
Then at knitting group afterwards, we discussed the fact that another yarn store nearby was having a sale, so we packed all our stuff up and took a little walk. This store was selling Tulip Sweater kits, using some of the new Dream in Color colourways.
I know I haven't even started my first Tulip yet, but I figured that this would be the most economical way for me to try out several Dream in Color colourways at once. These colours are mostly different from the ones in the kit I bought from Lettuce Knit.
So, so much for Lent! Ravelry will really be the death of me, that's how I found out about both of these sales. It's an entire community of enablers. =)
So, Lettuce Knit is re-doing their floors this coming week, so this weekend they decided to have a store-wide sale in order to minimize the amount of yarn they'd have to move in and out of the store. Of course I had to take advantage of this. Here's the list:
1 Tulip kit
4 skeins Malabrigo worsted (for another Clapotis)
2 skeins of home-made cotton tape (for a lace wrap skirt)
5 skeins each of two different colorways of Silk Garden (for an Entrelac shawl)
1 skein of Dream in Colour Smooshy (for toe-up toe socks)
2 balls of dishcloth cotton (for dishcloths)
1 skein of Ultra Alpaca (for wrist warmers)
Yup. It was a very productive shopping trip. Photos of pretty much everything are on my Ravelry account in the stash section. Photos of everything would seriously have made this post really picture heavy.
I also finished off my Koolhaas hat today.
The suggestion from the lovely Adrienne to try cable needle-less cables was a life-saver. I still had to use the cable needle for some of them because the physics of doing cables that are both knit and purl don't really work with that technique (and I could be completely wrong about this, but when I tried it a few different ways, I got weird stitch wrapping action happening). I had a little bit of trouble with the decreases owing to the fact that I read the pattern incorrectly. Thankfully, I put in a lifeline after I finished all the lattice repeats, so after 2 rounds of decreasing when I realized my problem, I didn't have much to rip back in order to get where I needed to be. In the end, I only needed 3 lattice repeats using the Malabrigo in order to get the hat to fit my head.
I absolutely love how warm and squishy this hat is. I haven't blocked it or anything, and I have a feeling that I probably won't bother. It looks fine as is, and I just want to wear it already!
I have quite a bit of yarn left over too, and I think I could probably even get another one of these hats out of it. I might leave it for now, and then make another one when I feel the need for some more or less instant knitting gratification.
I guess it's my turn to show off my purchases, huh? Unlike Karen, I was not nearly so generous with my shopping. Everything I bought was for ME. Me me me. =)
Socks That Rock Lightweight in Count Cluckula:
Dream in Color Tulip Cardigan Kit. I love this thing. I didn't buy it with a particular baby in mind, and I will probably never ever give this away. I will knit it up and it will sit in storage forever, and I will look at it and admire it and pet it periodically. Unless for some reason I end up with a baby girl, then she will be dressed up in it and photographed extensively.
C'est tout. I was pretty restrained and only bought what I was initially planning to. Progress!
And Karen totally fails at stash busting.
Today, the fabulous Adrienne and I met up at Lettuce Knit and had a fabulous time playing with all sorts of beautiful, beautiful yarn. Have I ever mentioned how much I love that store?
Here's what I came home with in terms of yarn:
Believe it or not, I've got projects pegged for all of that. Two of them will be gifts, and two of them will be for me. The green Dream in Colour (Spring Tickle) is slated to become socks for my brother. The dark brown is going to be yet another Baby Bobbi Bear. The blue Malbrigo is going to become a Koolhaus hat (bought the Holiday Knits issue with that pattern too), and the Socks That Rock (in Jasper) is probably going to be a Swallowtail shawl.
Once home, I tried to split the green into two even balls so I could do that 'knit two socks at the same time' trick again. And I fail.
Oh well. I'm sure I'll be able to fix it when I get closer to finishing the socks.
I was lucky enough to leave work early today, and since I had some time to kill before my dance class, I head to Lettuce Knit, just for fun.
And wouldn't you know, they had 2 Lady B's in stock for me to look at! While it's absolutely adorable on the outside, looking at the inside confirmed my hunch that it's just one huge bucket with a lot of side pockets - not quite what I was looking for. It also gave me a nice idea of what sorts of dimensions I'd like. The Jordana Paige bag is just as deep as the Lady B (6", I believe), and I know that there are days when I need more than that. This is just making the Namaste bag all the more attractive since it's expandable to 8.5". I'll have to call around to see if any stores around Toronto have a sample somewhere.
And since I was there, I couldn't pass up the chance to buy some fun yarn. Since there are more babies on the way, and I'm getting tired of knitting sweaters, I thought I'd change gears a little. I bought the pattern for the Baby Bobbi Bear, along with some light brown Blue Sky cotton. Then there were these kits for an adorable crochet baby blanket out of Debbie Bliss Cashmerio. I touched that stuff and fell in love. The kit had 7 balls of it with a pattern, and it was going for $60. I thought that was great considering each ball used to go for something like $10 or $12. So, I bought it and figured that even if I didn't want to crochet the blanket, I could knit a similar one. The crochet pattern doesn't look too bad though; I think I'll give it a shot.
Photos of my swag to come. I'm just lazy with the camera today.
All knitters know that one of the Very Important things to consider when contemplating moving to a new area is the number and proximity of yarn stores. So when I was in Montana recently, I made a bit of time to drop by a LYS before flying back to Boston. I visited Joseph's Coat, a cute little yarn store in downtown Missoula. They are a small shop, but they have a good selection of yarns as well as rovings and some handpainted yarn. I needed some "souvenir yarn", so I bought 4 ounces of handpainted mohair:
And some Mountain Colors yarn. That's a skein of Bearfoot in the colour "Teal", and some pretty mill ends, I can't even remember what the yarn is, wool of some kind at least. Mountain Colors is based in Corvallis, which is literally 10 minutes away from Hamilton (where I was visiting), but sadly I didn't have enough time to visit their dye workshop:
I made a little muppet-like scarf with the mohair boucle. Held together with some Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride worsted, in the colour periwinkle. The scarf is actually not really my style, but it was a nice mindless knit, which is precisely what I was looking for. =)
Okay....so, as much as I wanted to stash bust, I couldn't resist the lure of more yarn. I think of it as retail therapy. Jamie's been away for a week, and I've been feeling sick and lonely. So, what better way to cure that than with some shopping, right? I actually did my shopping over the internet though. I was only planning to buy a couple skeins to make a small project for a friend of mine, as well as some baby things for other people from Knit Picks. But in the end, I wound up buying more than just that. I got a whole ton of other yarn for two sweaters that I'd like to make, plus something a little luxurious for a scarf. I guess the only saving grace is that I actually have projects pegged for all of the yarn. I'll be sure to update with all my new goodies when they arrive!
