Ramblings of a Knitting Obsessive

Yeah, I didn’t get to finish the Mitts, since I’ve been so busy the past couple days. I got pretty close, though. Just have to finish the top of the hand (I placed the thumb opening last night) and pick up the thumb stitches. I’ll probably post pictures when I get back from Yearly Meeting. Oh, and speaking of that, please wish me luck in my officering position (Recording Clerk…I take minutes [detailed notes] at our business meetings and then at the end they’re bound together with all of the other minutes from the adult business meetings in a big book for quaker posterity to look at. It may sound boring, but it’s actually pretty fun!) this week. I’m really excited and scared at the same time!

As if I need another project to have going on my needles…

Um…yeah. After I wound up the first ball of recycled yarn, I decided that I would just test it on something. So, I look through my copy of the Spring Interweave, and I find that the pattern for the pretty little Clementine Shawlette calls for yarn that measures up at 13 wraps per inch. Guess what? My yarn just happens to be that too, so I cast on for the little tail thing that is supposedly the tie, and fall in love with the pattern. The yarn is so soft and and the angora makes the fabric have a nice little halo, and I really like the lace pattern that makes up the shawl. Sadly, I’ve got a lot of other things to finish up right now, so this and the Razor Lace socks won’t really get a lot of play for a few weeks. In a burst of un-procrastination yesterday, I got through the second cable round of the second Mitt, which needs to be finished pretty soon, so I want to get them all done and blocked before Saturday (Northwest Youth Yearly Meeting time!! I am SO psyched) so that I’ll have them to present to Austin on his birthday. I also have a peek at La Chandail de Mystere (’the sweater of mystery’ in French) for you!

The picture kind of screwed up the color, but it’s really a pretty deep purple, less pinkish than in the photo. All I’ll say for now is that I’m using Cascade 220 in the color 8885 (which I might name something like ‘Eggplant’) and I’m pretty happy with how my design is turning out so far.
I’ve also started listening to the podcast ‘Lime & Violet’ and am thoroughly addicted to knit-casts now! I love their podcast and that got me listening to ‘Cast On’ and other assorted podcasts. I really like just listening to random knitting talk while I do crafty stuff, not really sure why, but it works.
Assuming I’ll have an FO to post (the Mitts, hopefully) in the next couple of days, I’ll be writing again, but if not, I’ll be gone next week at Yearly Meeting!

Yes, that’s right, I’m back from my two-week-long family trip to California! I had fun in Chico and Lake Almanor, but there’s nothing better than sleeping in your own bed after couches and one rapidly deflating air mattress. However, even with the long lull blog access and multi-hour periods of driving, I do not have much knitting to show. Apparently, my feet are too big for standard Jaywalkers in this particular yarn and needles, which I found out after trying to force the first one onto my foot on completion of the heel. So, those have been sent to the frog pond (for you non-knitters, ‘frogging’ is the act of unraveling an [unsatisfactory at best] knitted object, although I’m not sure what the origins of the term are). Oh wow look at me, showing my addiction to parentheses once again, using a pair of them inside another. ANYWAY, back to the main topic! (yes, this is why I call my writing ‘ramblings’…you probably have noticed by now how many tangents I go on) After rescuing the offending sock yarn, I proceeded provisional-cast on the toe for some toe-up razor shell lace socks, which are turning out to be almost Jaywalker-esque, but stretchier and a little bit less slanty.

Hopefully they will have a better fate, putting aside the fact that I haven’t picked them up in the last week. The Mitts are still on hiatus, although they can’t be for much longer because I need to finish them in time for their recipient’s birthday.
I also have been dabbling in the design for a top secret sweater, which I am going to be careful about posting pictures of until I can submit the pattern to a certain online knitting magazine. You might get a teeny peek once it’s progressed more, but right now it’s not really worth the disk space, which I am incidentally running low on.
In non-knitting affairs, I read through my aunt’s copy of The Devil Wears Prada, and my parents took all of the cousins and my sister and I to see the very first showing of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” in the adjacent rural town of Susanville, where there is not much else to do than go to Wal-Mart (my severe dislike of that particular corporation I will not go into) or the movie theater. As for the book I read, I liked the movie better, and as for the movie I saw, I liked the book better. “That’s all”…
I also am working through recycling the yarn from a 70/30 wool and angora sweater that I bought at New to You (a nice consignment shop in a close by town) that contains thousands of yards of yarn for around $15, a huge bargain considering that if you bought something similar to that (such as Classic Elite Lush) in that quantity, the cost would be more than I would ever be able to fathom with my teenager’s allowance money.

This is only the yarn unraveled from part of one sleeve, so there will be much, much more to do in the coming days, and I’ll need to take the kinks out somehow. I’m not sure how much I like the icy blue color (which is sort of the color I imagine our carpets looked when this house was first built…now they’re sort of grayish and stained). What I do know is that whatever I do with it, it’ll have nice stitch definition, because the original sweater has a big, nice looking aran pattern on the front.