Where have I been?

The holidays were quite busy for me. Consequently, this will be a rather long post.

I haven't finished the Reflection Aran Pullover for my brother quite yet. Here's where I am on it:


Like I posted before, I've only got about five skeins left, and I'm thinking I'm more than likely going to run out. I have, however, decided that I don't care if the front doesn't match. I'm just going to knit until I can't really knit anymore. I just want to be done with the damn sweater. The back is done, and I'm about three quarters done with the second sleeve:



Here we have the detail of the sleeve. It's coming along quite nicely, but I have made a couple of screwups. There's a few S cables instead of the plain right and left twisting cables. Right there, you see a couple of really awesome stitch markers. They were a gift from my friend Beth. She made six of them and gave them to me in a nifty box. It was like receiving ME in a box really. Each one is just a bit of me. Besides the camera (I really love photography), and the ball of yarn with needles, she also made one with a book and two beads that say DK (DK is the company I work for), one with an achor (yay RI!), one with an Arc de Triomphe (my favorite Parisian landmark!), and another one with a microphone (I used to be a part of WRIU, the college radio station at the University of Rhode Island).

What I did do for my brother, however, was knit him a tiny sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts:


Yup, that's a pipe cleaner made into a hanger. When he opened it, he looked at it and asked if it was a penis warmer (no joke here...he really did think that was its purpose). I had to tell him that no, in fact, it was an ornament, and besides, it'd probably be too itchy for such a place.

While I was in Rhode Island, I got my mom started on her first sweater ever. She's been knitting dishcloths for quite some time now. But, to be honest, I can really only deal with so many dishcloths, so it was time to teach her something new. We headed out into the wild streets of Rhode Island to try to find a decent yarn store to get her some yarn. I wanted to use the trip as an excuse to explore some yarn stores I wouldn't get to explore ordinarily. We went looking for Knitting Traditions...and More! which is theoretically located in Middletown. Well...there's a fishing shop there, a hairdressers and a hardware store. The guys at the fish store told my mom that the yarn store moved down the street. So we went looking for it. We got to the end of the street and still didn't find it, so we took a left towards a group of shops. Randomly, there actually was a (completely unrelated to the yarn store we were looking for) yarn store called Knitting Corner. This is by far my favorite yarn store in Rhode Island. We got her some Cotton Fleece to Make the Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

She actually called the store a couple days ago and asked for them to set aside a skein of yarn for her. Then she called my dad and asked him to pick it up. When he got to the yarn, he said to the woman "you can make a whole sweater out of this?!" I love my dad.

I also got a bunch of yarn, but I think I'll squeeze that in as a seperate update.