Where Have I Been? What Have I Done?

Oh where to start? November first Ruth and I went to Anthropologie (yes, that Anthropologie) to meet Wenlan Chia, author of Twinkle's Big City Knits. I went partially for the free yarn (Anthropologie had it set up as a workshop where participants would make either a scarf of an ornament according to skill level), but mostly to meet Wenlan (I seem to be good at meeting knitting book authors!) and to ask her what the hell was going on with her sizing.

I thought I wrote some sort of review about the book, but I can't seem to find it in my archives. I thought it was rather scathing towards the inhuman sizes she has. I was confused. She came over to Ruth and I (who were obviously the most advanced knitters in the workshop) and we asked her" dude, WTF?! (but nicer obviously) She replied that because her garments are knitted on huge needles and the yarn is like roving, her garments stretch like mad and also, that they're built with quite a bit of negative ease to be form fitting.

So, I bought her book that night, along with enough yarn for the Skating Sweater from it. Anthropologie was selling Twinkle for $10 a skein! and 15% off of that because we were there for the workshop, so I'm sure you understand that I just had to! Curiosity got the better of me, and I started knitting it the next day once I found size 19 24" circiulars (Thanks Purl Soho!). After just a week, I was here:



Since then, it's been completed. I actually wore it Thanksgiving Day. The sleeve seams are a bit bulky, but nothing I can't get used to. And it fits pretty well. I'm not really sure if it looks alright, since I didn't get a chance to get a photo of me in it. I kinda wish it were a repeat or two longer and of the 6 or so skeins i bought, I have three left over.

I seem to be on a big needle spree what with the Berkshire Pullover and now this. I knit a hat out of one of the skeins, but I don't like it, it's too short (probably that I can just never get her row gauge). But I've also been working on a set of four placemats for friends who got married last May (hey1 I've got a year after the wedding!). I've finished all of them, I just have to weave in the ends and slap some made by tags on em.

I was sick last week, and cuing projects to Ravelry like mad. I bought the new Rowan book (there's LOTS of great stuff in there!) and kinda can't wait to finish up the projects i'm currently working on in favor of some new ones. Next up on the docket is going to be the Tangled Yoke Cardigan from the Fall IK. I started swatching, but I haven't measured yet at all.

I'll probably bring the placemats to SNB tomorrow so I can weave in the ends. And I've made quite a bit of progress on my monkey socks as well. I'm knitting it in Great Adirondack's Silky Sock in the Antique colorway. It's really great yarn to work with. Up there on my top five sock yarns I'd say.

So, I upgraded to Leopard, but the problem I'm having is that only photoshop's CS3 program works, which means my Photoshop 6.0 or 7.0 or whatever was obsolete. Also, I can't seem to get iPhoto to work either (probably because it's not part of iLife 08). So i found CS3, but I need a good Leopard hack for CS3 to get it to work, so if anyone's got that, drop me an email or something. My friend had one, but it doesn't work for Leopard I guess. We did try that screen sharing thing through ichat and it was pretty nifty. Thing is, I don't really want to put up any photos I haven't changed the contrast/ color on. I think mostly because my camera sucks and I always end up with photos that look like crap if they haven't been balanced.

Anyway, I'm still getting over this cold, so I really need to get to bed. Sorry for the virtually pictureless post.