Post X-mas haze

Yup. Haze. I have NO WIPs.

Read that again, just to make sure. No WIPs.

I finished Christmas knitting - in time for Christmas even! Check out these awesome mittens I made for my roommate


She had the scarf. The project was to match the mittens to the scarf. I think I did a pretty good job. The mittens are a little brighter than the scarf, but I think that normal wear and tear in the city will dull the colors so that they're both the same dirty color. So I finished those while I was in Rhode Island for Christmas.

I also finished the monkey socks...sorta


My monkies were the last FO of 2007. Which is actually pretty hot. I think i botched the kitchenering on the toe of one of them though, so I have to go over that with some extra yarn and close up the hole. I really LOVED this yarn, the Great Adirondack's Silky Sock.

I'm currently seaming together a ginormous afghan for a friend. Her friend had crocheted her this blanket years ago but it's coming apart at the seams. I told her that for Christmas I'd seam it together for her. It's proving to be a rather large task.

But I should still have a pair of socks in the works right? Well, I thought I'd pick up the Over the Knee Stockings from 2006. I untangled the yarn and looked at them. Sternly. I will not be beaten by a mere pair of socks, no matter how tall they may be. After looking at them sternly, I realized that I need to add about three more repeats to the length of the stocking to get roughly the same ratio of over the knee ness. This means that I suddenly might not have enough yarn. While I like the yarn I chose for these, there's no way in hell they'd stay up. I'm thinking of changing to a koigu, Louet Gems or something different. So I think I'm heading up to Annie's on Saturday afternoon...just so you know. Come hang, give some moral support, and knit with me.

Feels good to kick those damn things out of the zzzz pile.

Also, I found this hot site on the web that's trying to be a Suicide Girls for knitters. Cool thing is that they've got some tat shots up there, and my tattoo is the icon for the links to knitting tattoos!! :D After looking at the site a bit, it really makes me want to be a Knit Girl! Go check it out: http://www.badknitgirls.com.

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2007 in Stitches

Here's what I managed to complete in 2007!

• A Stripey Mohair Scarf knit out of Bee Sweet


• Mountain colors Jaywalkers


• Reflection Aran Pullover for my brother


• Uptown Boot Socks thanks to Jury duty


• Wedgewood Blouse too bad it didn't fit


• Rhode Island Red Socks STR yarn from Some Bunny's Love


• Coachella


• Clapotis next time I want to do this, remind me not to


• Icarus


• Jack Sparrow's Favorite Socks


• Berkshire Pullover from Weekend Knits


• Twinkle's Skating Sweater


• 4 Basketweave Plaemats for Bess and Jeff


• Sparkle Hat 2.0


• Ann's Midnight Dot Mittens


• Colorful Monkey Socks

Not to shabby. 17 projects overall. I think that's more than last year! It was a good yarn year.

Yay!

Phew! Well, I finally got CS3! THANKS RAVI!!! I'd link to your blog but it hasn't been updated since like March.

So now I actually have photos of what I've been doing! Unfortunately, no sooner did I get CS3 (THANK YOU RAVI!!), did I find this wicked awesome site called Picnik. You can do all sorts of stuff to your photos there. Crop them, adjust them, etc. It integrates into Flickr too, which is HOT. And you can save photos straight to Flickr using that. Which is also hot. So go check it out.

Anyway. So I completed some projects. I still haven't managed to find time to get a photo of the skating sweater on me. And currently it's drying from being blocked. I got a lot of comments on it when I wore it a couple weeks ago. Someone at work, before I could even say I knit it, commented that she really liked it. It's really my first successful sweater.

I also completed one of my Monkey Socks. But I don't have a photo of that. And I just took a photo of it! I knit it out of Great Adirondak's Silky Sock in the Antique color way. I love how the yarn isn't really pooling at all. Check it out:


Surprisingly, I was patient with this sock, so it actually fits. I usually get so excited to kitchener stitch that a lot of times I knit my socks too short. This one I didn't. I just have to make sure I don't knit the second one short either and I"ll be good to go. I've started on the second sock, but I'm kinda putting it on hold until I finish Ann's Midnight Dot Mittens.

I've started these mittens three times. It's kinda gotten to the point where if this next shot doesn't work, I kinda want to give up and hire someone to knit them for me.

Look what else I finished:


Bess and Jeff's place mats!!! I haven't had a chance to pass them on to the recipients, but I did have a chance to take some glamor shots as you can see. There's more on Ravelry and Flickr.

Additionally, I knit a hat. You see, my old Sparkle hat from SNB was the first hat I really knit for myself. So it has some sort of sentimental value. This was before I realized the wonder of pattern erratas. I used the wrong size needles for the top of the hat (even though they were the needles used according to the pattern), and so the hat didn't really fit right. It's been a long time. That hat has started to look kinda shoddy. Looking felted even. So last year I bought some paiettes (don't even ask where, I've no idea, somewhere on 6th ave in the upper 30s) with the notion of knitting a new Sparkle hat. I had to dig for them, but I finally found them, punched holes in them, and the next night set to knitting the hat. It took me one night to do (I finished it shortly after Bleach ended on Adult Swim on a Wednesday night). And so I present to you, Sparkle Hat 2.0:


Nope, a photo can't get more myspace than that! I've gotten several comments about it. The manager at the Point laughed at me. But the best was some guy on the subway platform at Pacific Street. He came up to me and said "I noticed your hat from several pillars away. I just wanted to say that I like it and it's very festive." I smiled at him and thanked him. And then he disappeared.

This is important. I didn't say "oh thank you I knit it myself in a night" like I usually do. I just thanked him. It was significantly easier than telling someone, "no really, it's easy." or "yeah, I probably could sell them, but I don't feel like it." Why is it that people want me to be a sweatshop? Really?!

On a completely separate note, I thought I'd share some resources I've recently stumbled upon outside of Ravelry.

Knit Map is awesome. You plug in your zip code and they find knitting stores around you. I'm still not sure it's really complete. I did a search for Staten Island and it said that there weren't any there. I'm sure there has to be at least one knitting store on SI.
knitblog.com has a whole index of where to find pattern errata for several different books.

There was another cool thing, but I've completely forgotten it. Anyway...isn't that enough!?

Thursday's itinerary and finally some WIP news!!

So I figured out how I'm planning out my Thursday around the Yarn Harlot's Cast Off Book event. I'm taking Thursday off of work. Looking at the weather for Thursday onward, I realized that Saturday is supposed to be not so nice, and that I'd much rather fill in some voids of YarnHarlotness on Thursday than actually do a whole day of Yarnness (well, that and I told Claudine that we'd have special James Bond/Daniel Craig day on Saturday). Here's my plan:

6:00 am - meet at Rockefeller for the Today Show (organized by It's a Purl, Man invite is here.

~10am - head to School Products (mostly because they open before noon!) for a bit of yarn porn.

Noon - magically appear at Strawberry Fields for the infamous Sock Photo.

Whenever the sock photo gets over - head to Knitty City on 79th between Broadway and Amsterdam (west side)
Maybe the The Yarn Company after that - Disclaimer: I've never been here, but I want to see if the people are really as evil as everyone claims, and it's sorta in the neighborhood.

~ 5ish - I'm thinking it'll be about time to grab something to eat somewhere and wait in line to get into the event itself on 27th and 7th ave at FIT's Haft Auditorium.

So how does that sound?

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I've been quite busy knitting though, even if I haven't been busy with blogging about knitting. I'm sure the first thing on everyone's mind is "how's the sweater coming?"
The sweater is coming:


I've got about 18" for the front, and I need to reach 23.5" before I can start in on the neck. It is looking quite lovely though.



Mentally, I'm totally done with this sweater. Physically, obviously I have quite a bit to go even after I finish the front. My brother asked if he could have it for Easter. We'll see, but probably not. I'm working on it as much as I can without vomiting over the color (sure, it's pretty, but after seeing it sooooo much, it's really driving me close to vomiting).

Onto the next item...the Icarus Shawl. This one has been slow for me. It's my first real attempt at lace. I just started the third chart though.



Since I didn't have a sock to work on for my trip to Denver and back, I brought along my Icarus shawl. I got quite a few rows done. I think it's gotten quite a bit bigger since you've seen it last:


I caved and bought one of those Know Knits pouches to put my yarn in. It looked like the small size was perfect for socks or my Icarus. I can fit the photocopied chart, a ball of yarn and the whole shawl into that bag. It's really handy to carry around. I'm not even worried about spilling anything on my knitting while it's in my bag anymore! I'm really liking the pattern and liking the yarn Misti Alpaca lace weight even more. It's so soft and luxurious!

I guess that's all for now, I should stop doing these marathon posts! Hope to see you at the book launch day long party!!