happy holiday!

Hi everyone! Sorry this is a photo-free post, as I have no access to my normal computer with iPhoto and ability to hook my camera up to upload photos.
Anyway, I just thought I’d check in.
My knitting is going good, although I’ll have to wait until another post to show you what I’ve been working on.

I had an idea a few days ago of thinking back through the months of this past year and trying to sum up each with a song that stands out that I may have listened to more than others. It was surprising, too, doing that, because some of them actually represented somewhat accurately what how I was feeling at that particular time. Others, though, were just caused by the buying a new album or receiving a mix from a friend (like the awesome one Liv gave me for my birthday) and listening a lot to get familiar with the songs.
For November and December, the songs I’ve been listening to most are fresher in my mind than, say, February, so I had trouble picking just one.

My Soundtrack to 2007:
January…A Lack of Color (Death Cab for Cutie)
February…No Hay Problema (Pink Martini)
March…Yankee Bayonet (The Decemberists)
April…Brand New Colony (The Postal Service)
May…Song for You (Alexi Murdoch)
June…Annie Waits (Ben Folds)
July…Bubble Toes (Jack Johnson)
August…The Engine Driver (The Decemberists)
September…Blackbird (The Beatles)
October…Gone (Ben Folds)
November…Trapeze Swinger (Iron & Wine) / The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us (Sufjan Stevens)
December…Casimir Pulaski Day (Sufjan Stevens) / Baby We’ll Be Fine (The National)

I hope you all are having a good Christmastime/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/whatever holiday you celebrate!

 

yarn shopping!

My grandma and I went on a sort of yarn shopping spree yesterday (a.k.a. stash enrichment expedition), going to Northwest Wools, Knit/Purl, Yarn Garden, and Mill End. I just thought I should show you guys what I got.

7 skeins of Malabrigo Worsted Merino in Lettuce. I’m loving this stuff! So yummy and soft. I’m thinking either a Tilted Duster or Clapotis for this.

Enough Rowan Felted Tweed to make a Tangled Yoke Cardigan (also 7 balls) in Melody. I swatched this last night to see if I got the right gauge, and the fabric this stuff makes is so cool! I can’t wait to start on my cardigan. For some reason, the naming of this color makes me think of Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens (a beautiful song that I’ve had stuck in my head for the last few days) when I look at it.

Guess what: more Malabrigo! This time, it’s 3 skeins in the colorway Rich Chocolate, which makes me almost want to eat it. I’m not really sure what I’ll do with this, but it was so luscious looking I couldn’t pass it by. Maybe a vest? Or another Briar Rose? Maybe in time I’ll know what it wants to be.
I just now realized that both of the colors of this that I bought are named after food. Coincidence? I think not…

Last but not least, a sampler 3 pack of Soak wool wash and a Knitter’s Handy Guide to Yarn Requirements booklet. I haven’t gotten to use the Soak yet, but I smelled each of them and I think the ‘aquae’ scent is already my favorite. I love that it’s biodegradeable, too, and that you don’t have to rinse it out.

I hope you all have had a good weekend!
Please wish me luck in finals this week!

ps. I decided what I want to do with the fingering weight alpaca (at least most of it) that I mentioned before: Anemoi Mittens. I plan to dye one of the hanks with Black Cherry Kool-Aid (making it a sort of dark red color) and leave the other undyed. I’m still not sure what I’ll do with the third one, though.

 

progressing s.l.o.w.l.y…

This is taking me WAY too long.

Yes, the color really is that bright.
If you’re wondering, this is the back of the Dollar & a Half Cardigan (renamed $1.50 for short from now on) that is going slower than I thought humanly possible. I cast on for it last Monday, and look where I am now. Not even to the armholes! I took this picture a couple of days ago so there’s maybe an inch and a half at most more than that, but still. This is supposed to be done (and I’d like to have it blocked so it looks nice and not all puffy like right now) by next Friday, the 21st as my 3rd self-directed project for CPF class, and I’m starting to have doubts about whether I’ll make that deadline. I’m on the tech crew for the Winter Play at school (’Arsenic & Old Lace’…it looks like it’ll be a good one. There are two casts; Liv is playing Dr. Einstein in one and Austin plays Officer O’Hara in the other and both casts are doing really well) and have been staying after until 5:30 every day working on set building, so I haven’t gotten hardly any time to knit the past few days. I missed the window for weekend knitting on that because I was working on a different knitting project, Ruthie’s birthday present, which will come later after I give it to her on Friday. So, I guess I’ll just have to keep going and see where I get, if all else fails I can finish it during Christmas break and get partial credit for turning it in on the first day back.
Now that I’m on the subject of this sweater I might as well say why I’m doing this instead of a Tangled Yoke Cardigan, which is what I’ve been hoping to do for this the whole time since school started. When I went to buy yarn for the sweater I thought I would be making, it ended up being at a shop that I thought carried Rowan Felted Tweed. However, when I got there, the only person working in the shop was on her very first day there, did not know the stock and layout of the store, and could not find any. She looked it up in the inventory and found that the shop did indeed carry it, but after another search nothing was turned up. So, being pressed for time, I had to figure out some kind of alternative, and ended up choosing Debbie Bliss Rialto, which though not tweedy, was still soft, and merino is always a good choice. Now, in that moment I seriously underestimated the yardage in one ball of Felted Tweed and thought, “Oh, okay, the pattern I want to make calls for 7 balls of yarn that have about 150 yards in them. Look! This yarn has 115! So I’ll get 9 balls to cover for the difference.”
Not so. When I came home, I found out much to my dismay that Rowan Felted Tweed actually has 191 yards in it, making me over 300 yards short for my desired sweater.
So I went looking for another pattern that calls for less than what I have. The yardage thing on Ravelry’s pattern pages is really a good tool. I found that the smallest size of the $1.50 Cardigan calls for 11 94-yard balls of Reynolds Soft Linen, which is about the same weight as Debbie Bliss Rialto, making it 1034 yards total. I have 1035. I know that the 32-inch circumference may be stretching it a bit, seeing as you’re supposed to wear a cardigan over things, but I guess a little negative ease wouldn’t hurt on this sweater.
The only problem, though, is that I’m almost to the armholes on the back, and am into the 3rd ball. It seems that if only the back takes up 3 balls, there won’t possibly be enough by the time I get to the sleeves and picked-up button bands! Can anyone help me with this? Am I overestimating how much yarn this will take? I know that the back is the biggest piece, but I really do not want to run out of yarn, because that means, aside from the time issue, that I won’t finish the sweater at all, let alone late.
Please wish me luck as I truck along on my Personal-Fashion-Creating!

 

published!

If you haven’t seen it yet, go check out Winter Knitty, especially my pattern, Dahlia.

First of all, thank you so much to all of you who left me comments! I’ve been really excited for this to go live ever since I heard back from Amy, and now the time is finally here!
I also want to send a huge THANK YOU to Sara, to whom I am extremely grateful for modeling the sweater for me and putting up with my perfectionism.
This issue looks to be a great one! I’m thinking of making an Ice Queen cowl with that extra ball of Kidsilk Haze I have from the Wisp.
Anyway, have fun looking around!

 

oh hello there

has it really been almost a month?
sorry guys. You must have gotten pretty tired of seeing that dress.
The worst part of it is, I don’t really have much reason for not posting. I finished a few things. I just didn’t really feel like trying to take photos and post about them.
Maybe I should try and do my own NoSoNaBloPoMo (Not So National Blog Post Month - November was NaBloPoMo and I missed it). Even if I couldn’t do it every day, I still want to set a personal all-around standard of at least once a week, though I’d like to do more than that.
Now, however, I have a good reason to end my silence.
I present to you Miss Briar Rose:

I had originally planned to make this in Malabrigo since I’ve heard so many good things about it, but I never got around to getting up to the shops in Portland that carry it, seeing as it’s one of the few things that Boersma’s doesn’t have. Oh well, I can always use it for a future project. I ended up settling for 5 skeins of Cascade Pastaza (I had JUST enough…only a few yards left over) in a pretty mauve-y color, which was originally yummier feeling but is now slightly itchy and sheds all over everything. I do like how it turned out, though. The first time I wore it I kept tugging the fronts together, so I decided to add a button in the middle. I also did eyelet-mock-cable ribbing around the outer edge instead of the lace or baby cable rib, and that turned out pretty nice. The sleeves turned out more just plain baggy and huge rather than puffy, but that’s alright.

I made an iPod cozy with some of the leftover The Knittery Cashmere Merino Sock from my beret, but it refused to be accurately photographed, so maybe I’ll show it to you sometime else.

I also finished my second project for CPF class (Creating Personal Fashions, = sewing, etc.), which was an awesome, gargantuan bag:

You can’t really see in the picture, but the corduroy outside fabric is ever so slightly variegated (and also extremely soft), and the lining is complementary but not too matchy - an allover teeny pink-and-purple flower print. It’s topped off with a big plastic button that almost perfectly matches the lining. I’ve had a lot of fun carrying it around school the past few days, and it fits a ton of stuff. I might have to start calling it my Mary Poppins bag, since you’d be surprised at the amount of things that would fall out if you emptied it. Anyway, I’m really happy with the result, and I think I did better on this than my first project.

The weather around here lately has been typical Oregon winter - we only just emerged today from 3 or 4 days straight of torrential downpour and high winds (there was even flooding in some places, and I got completely soaked walking home yesterday) I suppose it’ll keep raining, but hopefully not in such extreme quantities.

I’ve started on a Dollar-and-a-Half cardigan as my last project for CPF class, but that’ll have to wait for a later post seeing as a) all it consists of at the moment is approximately 1 1/2 inches of ribbing on the back, and b) there’s a semi-long story that accompanies why I am making this instead of a Tangled Yoke cardigan, which is what I had originally planned on.

I also have a surprise to share with you all, but that also has to wait, as I’m not at liberty to reveal it to you just yet.

 

an FO of a different sort

Remember when I mentioned the gingham jumper dress I was making in sewing class before?
Well, after much work and even more wasted thread from repeatedly ripping out seams, I can now proudly present to you my very first machine-sewn garment!

I love it.
When I first put it on I knew it was truly a jumper because it was so fun that it made me want to JUMP!
The ribbon and the fabric were a completely perfect match, and the pattern was simple and nice to make. For you overly curious people, I used McCall’s pattern M5313 in view ‘A’.
The only thing that didn’t go very smoothly was that the sizing on the pattern was a little messed up. Before I chose a size, I measured and checked and then remeasured and rechecked, just to be sure. Then, a few days ago when it was almost finished, I tried it on and it was WAY too big, even for being worn over a short- or long-sleeved shirt. So, I had to take off about 1 1/4 inches on each side, and now it fits a lot better. I learned a little about alterations from that, though! I also learned how to gather, sew in a zipper, do darts, and all kinds of things! This really seemed to be a perfect pick for my first serious project.
Now I’m can go on to a big, pretty hobo bag in some even prettier brown variegated corduroy (which I didn’t even know existed until I went to Fabric Depot and discovered it).

 

happy (late) halloween!

I carved a pumpkin on Monday.
Here’s what it looks like in the daytime:

And here’s what it looks like in the dark.

The little holes on the side were an attempt at spelling my name out with a tiny hole-punching tool, but it didn’t work out too well. Other than that, I (sadly) didn’t do much for Halloween. My friend Eva had a party last Saturday, where I made up a secret agent costume out of what I could find in the clothes I have (including the then just-finished Purl Beret). I didn’t look very much like a secret agent next to Austin, though, who came in a tuxedo and sunglasses. I didn’t really do anything on the actual day of Halloween, though, except hand out candy to the TWO trick-or-treaters we got. Two. Why is it that even though there are so many kids in our neighborhood, they never come around to the nearby houses? The upside of that is that we got to keep all the extra candy for us.
My week has been pretty slow, and I stayed home sick from school the past couple of days, mostly sleeping. I’ve been feeling a lot better most of today, though, and felt like baking something, so I made some banana bread.

The recipe I used was from the Extending the Table cookbook, which has recipes from around the world. This particular one is from Jamaica, and it has raisins and walnuts in it.
I’ve also been knitting sporadically on the Cloud Bolero. I bound of the sleeves yesterday and I think somehow I ended up with the wrong number of stitches because I’ve frogged the same row about three times now, so I’ll have to do some counting.

Somewhat to my surprise, I actually kind of like doing lace patterns in chunky yarn. I still think I prefer working with lighter-weight yarns and smaller needles, but for now it’s alright. The Cascade Ecological Wool is also nice to work with, and it’s doubled in this pattern to get gauge, which makes for a nice, squishy fabric. Now I just have to find either some ribbon to tie the top or a nice button.

 

purl beret

Leave it to me to use up stash yarn as soon as I have acquired it, leaving me with practically no stash to speak of whatsoever.

This is what I did with about half of the ball of (absolutely gorgeous) The Knittery Cashmere Merino that Elin sent me. Inspired by the one she made a little while back, I used the Purl Beret pattern from the Purl Bee, and it is now my new favorite hat.
I really love the way the colors made sort of spirally stripes up the body of the hat - not too obvious (I really don’t like when variegated yarns pool) but still there.
Here it is on:

I never thought that anything other than a really basic head-hugging hat wouldn’t look goofy on me, but this evidently proves my theory wrong. The ribbing at the bottom was a little loose when I first finished it, so I ended up putting some elastic thread around the inside just before the stockinette portion starts, and now it stays on a lot better. Another benefit is that it goes perfectly with my new sophisticated wooly black coat, which I already love to pieces. It’s knee-length with a double button placket and belted waist, and I’ve really been enjoying wearing it around in the ever-increasing fall chill. Now just to make some warm winter mittens, and I’ll be set.
Remember the gargantuan hank of sock-weight alpaca I posted about before? Well, I’ve reskeined it as I plan to try my hand at dyeing (probably with Kool-Aid since it seems to be the best beginner medium, plus it’s not toxic like some other dyes).

When I wound it before, I managed to get it into three pretty much equal-size yarn balls, so I thought it would be perfect to get into dyeing hanks. The picture only shows a fraction of them — they turned out really long (probably almost 3 feet) but that’s good since I’ll have more room to put color and the dye can saturate the yarn better since there aren’t as many strands.
I’ve also started on a Cloud Bolero with some Cascade Eco-Wool (also new) in a pretty heathered off-white, and made some green and pink beaded stitch markers to use for it, but seeing as my progress is really not blog-worthy (I’ve only got about six rows done) that’ll have to wait for my next post.
Now just to figure out what I, the non-sock knitter, will ever do with 660 yards of lusciously soft fingering weight yarn. Any suggestions?

 

glimpses of my week

For starters, let me just say that I absolutely LOVE getting things in the mail. Maybe that has to do with the fact that nothing much comes for me very often, so when I know that I’m waiting for something to arrive, it’s really fun.
A little while ago, Elin ran a contest on her blog to generously give away some extra yarn from her stash, and my name was randomly drawn out of a hat, so I won. Her package finished its journey across the Pacific Ocean and to my door today:

Yarn (The Knittery Cashmere Merino Sock in Dark Reds, SO pretty. I’m so psyched to work with it since I’ve never knit with cashmere, so even the hint that’s in this is really enticing) and chocolate (Green and Black’s Organic, a bar of Maya Gold, which is super-dark with orange and spices, and a bar of ultra creamy Milk chocolate. I pretty much like all kinds of chocolate, but I think that dark is by far my favorite. Let me tell you, it was hard to wait long enough to take a picture of this stuff before I tried it, and it was delish)! I also love the tissue paper that everything was wrapped in, by the way. Thanks, Elin, for the great package! My rainy Friday was made much happier when I got home and saw it waiting for me.
On Saturday, I decided to rearrange my room after straightening it up, and it now feels at the same time bigger and more cozy.
Here’s what you see when you walk in the door:

This is the other corner, where my dresser and assorted other things are:

All the collages and stuff on the walls are made by me except for the one immediately to the right of the mirror, which Ruthie made for me a couple of years ago. The thing above my bed that’s not really readable in the first picture is the lyrics of “Song for You” by Alexi Murdoch, done as a calligraphy project in one of my classes last year. I used this really cool brown ink that’s made of crushed walnut shells, and the script that I know is called Carolingian.
The bulletin board in the second picture is just an old corkboard that I put some quilt batting and fabric on, and then some crisscrossed ribbons to hold things. It holds little random things that make me happy, such as the awesome flower drawing that Liv didn’t want and I was happy to take.
Under it is my knitting needle caddy, (an old oatmeal can that I collaged with scraps of newspaper), the picnic basket that contains my (comparatively meager) yarn stash, which is made up for the most part by small leftovers from past projects, with a few exceptions, my school bag, and a pretty paper parasol the Liv brought back for me when she went to Japan last year.
There’s also a big bookshelf (that incidentally doesn’t contain that many books) over to the left of the room, but I couldn’t get a good enough picture of it, so you’ll just have to imagine.
I really like the way it looks now, especially with all the floorspace. The way it was before had the bed in the middle and it completely dominated the room, but now it feels so much better.

On the knitting front:
The first Jaywalker sock is nearly done, I’ve decided that I’m going to take my time since they’re going slowly.
Other than that, I made a little beaded clutch bag/wristlet to complement my homecoming dress (for tomorrow night! Huzzah!):

I used some of the Sauder Village Handspun that I mentioned awhile ago, and it was my first time knitting with beads. It was so fun! I can’t wait to use it tomorrow. The pattern was pretty much improvised, though it was originally inspired by the one from Sn’B Nation.

Hope you’re all doing well!

 

I’ve been ultra busy these past couple of weeks (mostly homework, including one huge chunk of text translated from Ancient Greek in which Socrates and Meno argue for 27 whole pages about the definition and nature of virtue and other adjoining themes, with small interludes in which Anytus and a slave of Meno join the conversation. Yeah..It sucked at first because I didn’t understand any of it, but then
Liv helped me and it was more fun). I’m sorry I’ve neglected you poor readers for so long.
There has been knitting, however.
I finished the Wisp last Wednesday (I know, bad blogger no cookie) and have yet to find good buttons for it, so for now it is worn solely as a lusciously soft scarf.

I love the delicateness of the lace, and it’s surprisingly warm for how many holes it has. I also found that the pink is almost a perfect match to the pinstripes on my dress for the homecoming dance, thus making it a possible shoulder wrap for that fast-approaching night (next Saturday! I’m so psyched).
I’ve also got some socks going:

They’re Jaywalkers on size 1s, knit from the toe up using the middle-eastern cast on and I’m planning to do the toe-up heel flap technique from the Widdershins pattern. They’re very slow-going at the moment, but still nice. I’m liking the wintry colors in the yarn, but not the pooling so much.
I also made this little cutie as a distraction from the above-mentioned socks:

It’s a kitty stuffie from Ysolda’s pattern, and it worked up really quick. I still need a name for it, so suggestions are welcome.
Well, I guess that’s all for now. I hope you’re all having a good weekend!