I am...

...a bad knitblogger.

The socks I'm knitting for Sockapal000za are the Retro Rib Socks from the Winter 04 issue of Interweave Knits, which I think I mentioned last week. I'm knitting them in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn in the Buck's Bar colorway (I'd link to a picture of the yarn, but I think the colors are misrepresented by the three different pictures I've looked at. It's actually a lot prettier in person than online - really Spring-y).

I haven't yet finished the second Jaywalker sock. I don't remember how far along I am. I think that I've turned the heel, but I'm not sure. It's just sitting looking sad on top of the filing cabinet. Poor sock.

After I finish that I'm seriously considering starting on the Torino sweater. Or not. I have to frog and reknit the mostly completed silk sweater I started for my mom ages ago. It's made of silk and when I swatched it I got the right gauge, which is good, but it was before I knew that silk grows after washing/blocking. Oops. Fortunately it's mostly stockingette stitch, so it'll go quickly. Plus, I won't mind redoing the knot motif thing, because I've gotten better with cabling since I knit it. I don't have the enormous ladders between the purls and the cabled knit stitches like I used to. (They're still there... just much smaller. Which is ok. It doesn't have to be perfect. Really.) So after that, then, I'll cast on for the Torino sweater. I'm not thrilled about knitting with wool in the summer, but I'm hoping that if I work on it here and there and don't give up on it, I should have it done by the end of the year, i.e. winter. Which would be awesome. Because seriously, if it doesn't come out looking like soft boiled ass (which hopefully, it won't. I've done the two handed stranding colorwork knitting thing before and was fairly proficient at it) I am planning on wearing the hell out of that sweater. That's why I got the dark blue men's colorway as opposed to the white women's colorway. If I'm going to put that much money/time/effort into something, I'm getting my money/time/effort's worth... dammit.

So yeah. That's what's going on.

schecki♥

Sock One, sock one.

Sock one is very nearly completed. I've just got to kitchener the toe closed, which I should have done immediately upon finishing the knitting. Because the only time I've had to knit since finishing it on Sunday night is:

• standing on a crowded train
• sitting on a bus with a full cuppa hot tea
• loud, crowded Dollar Burger/NTN trivia night

And it's not like I need complete silence or to lock myself in a room anymore, but I do need 2 free hands and to be sitting down. I'm going to sew that bad boy up tonight though, and get cast onned... casted on? ... I shall sew that bad boy up and cast on for sock two. Grammar, yay!

Not knitting anything else currently... which isn't to say there aren't approximately fifty WIPs sitting there taunting me, but I'm restricting myself to these socks, and these socks only until they're finished. It's kind of motivation in a way. Not that I need loads of motivation to finish them, because the thought of a few hundred pairs of socks flying around via the post cracks me up and is awesome and that's why I got involved in the first place. I just get a kick out of it. The fact that I'll be receiving a pair of socks is icing on the cake.

Anyway, back to work.

schecki♥

Update, yay!

So.

I haven't posted here much because I haven't been knitting much. Once Dames rehearsals started I pretty much stopped knitting.

But I'm back and with a vengeance because I've got to get those Sockapal000za socks all knitted up. I had bought yarn and started knitting with it, but discovered that instead of being fingering weight it was sport weight and I just could NOT get behind it. It wasn't knitting up in a way I liked at all. So I frogged that and finally bought new yarn a week ago and I've just turned the heel of sock one. I'm about three quarters of the way through the instep/gusset decreases. I picked the Retro Rib pattern out of an old Interweave Knits. I think Winter '04. It's a fairly simple pattern; just eight stitches and four rounds per pattern reapeat. What's nice about it is that it's easy to memorize the pattern and it's just challenging enough to keep me from getting bored (though "challenging" is probably not the right word), but remaining simple enough that I can while on the bus/watching tv/half asleep/mildy inebriated without screwing it up. So yay. I'll probably have it finished by the end of tomorrow, or Monday night at the latest, so that's good. I'd really planned on having the socks finished by now, but oh well. So long as they get done by May 2. That's the important thing.

Anyway, it's dinner time and there's a serious rumbly in my tumbly. I'll check in later. Bye!

Shh

So just between you and me? I may have bitten off more than I can chew with the Torino sweater.

steeking scares me

In other news, I finished Jaywalker sock #1. Ends woven in and everything. It's because Monday Night is a Television Night. I rather like the pattern. It goes quickly, because it's based on stockinette stich, but avoids becoming mindnumbingly boring by virtue of the double decreases. Plus it just looks frickin' cool.

Is my full memory card excuse getting old yet? No? Didn't think so. Would have done that last night only Scruffy was on the computer and I had to shower. Maybe tonight.

It Came! It Came!

It came it came it came it came!!!!!!

IT CAME!!!

Jaywalking

I'm chugging along on Jaywalker sock number one. I turned the heel and I'm about halfway to the toe, if not further. I didn't read the pattern directions very carefully and discovered that I hadn't been slipping a stitch to keep the patterning going during the decreasing near the instep, but I don't care. I knit the instep for a inch, and then saw I had a big fat hole where I'd picked up stitches, so had to frog and then re-pick up the stitches on the one side, including an extra one in the gusset to close up the hole, which I think occurred due to the kfb increase. I'm not sure though. So then, I got an inch and a half in, and wanted to check to see how many stitches I had to decrease the foot to, because of different gauges between sock parts, and realized I had not been doing the aforementioned slipping of a stitch. So I figured I could frog, again, and do it correctly or do what I did end up doing which was to say, "F*ck it. No one will be looking at my feet that closely."

I swear I'll get around to posting pictures, soon.

In other news, I bought the yarn for SockapalOOOza, but I have no idea what pattern to do.

Cobwebs, yay!

So. I'm back. I had a brief forray into LiveJournal territory, but I'm back.

Currently on the needles: A pair of the Jaywalker socks everyone and their sister is making. In Lorna's Laces' Black Purl colorway. The memory card for my camera is full, so once I dump it to a CD, I'll post "in progress" pictures.

I finished the sock of the month socks on Sunday and same deal. When I can take a picture, I will.

I also finished the sweater from the cover of Simply Knitting (UK), but have discovered it's been so long since I knit a sweater that I kind of forgot how to seam up set in sleeves. And I can't find my Vogue Knitting book.

That's about it for now.

peace out.

Son of a Monkey

I swear I just posted yesterday!! The weeks are really flying by lately. Scruffy and I have been married for almost six months. Six months! It feels like we just had the wedding.

I haven't done much fiberwise lately. I took my wheel to Stitch'n'Bitch last week, and people thought it was cool, and one of the women has a bunch of fiber at home that she doesn't really feel like spinning and wants to contract me to do. Which is awesome. Also, I'm a Knitter For Hire™. I'm doing a sweater coat from Vogue Knitting International (the 2003 Holiday issue) for a fellow S'n'Bers boss.

I went to Michael's and picked up some gigantic chenille yarn to make the two tasselled cable hat in the Hip to Knit book, and I got all the way home before I realised that I'd bought some big fat wool to make the very same hat. Oops. Also, I got some Wool Ease worsted to make Ann Budd's cabled leggings pattern that I found in the Subscribers only section of Interweave Knits's website. I'm making them in the Fisherman colorway, I figured that since they look like an Aran, might as well make them so. The pattern has them in this gold buttery color, and though it's pretty it would match approximately zero percent of my wardrobe. I hadn't intended on making legwarmers at all; I found the pattern for Rachael, because she was just talking about wanting to make legwarmers, in practically the same pattern. Last week though, I was here at my office, wearing a skirt and freezing my knees off. So legwarmers there I went. I spent most of my freetime this weekend working on them, and I've finished one, and I tried three times on the train to cast on and work at least one row of the second this morning, but it just wasn't meant to be.

Oops, got ahead of myself a bit. Rachael and I went to Arcadia on Thursday night, and I was magically restrained. I bought a set of double points so that I can get on towards finishing my Lopi sweater, and by luck they had the very issue of Vogue KNitting I was looking for, and I splurged on a Knit One, Crochet Too scarf kit. It's a little skinny fringey scarf, in black and silver. I thought it would look really cute with my jean jacket, so... I got it. Scruffy couldn't believe how little I'd brought home. Usually I come home with a giant bag o' stuff. Anyway...

This weekend we went down to visit Scruffy's parents and go to the Apple'n'Pork festival in Clinton, IL. It was so much fun!

That's about it for now, I think.

Later!

Spin Span Spun

Hellooooo!

I'm so bad about updating. I'm pretty busy at work; we've just moved offices, and we're putting on a conference in Missouri that starts this weekend, so I've been pretty swamped. But I've got a couple of minutes, so here goes nuttin'. :)

This past weekend, as I mentioned before, a couple of Stitch'n'Bitch friends went to the Wisconsin Sheep and Fiber Festival and Wisconsin Spin In. I spent half the week preparing, that is when I wasn't either in the emergency room for my eye, or at the doctor's office, again for my eye. I got a spiffy new back pack, and some camp dishes and a waterjug, but best of all was the camping friendly margarita glasses, which made awesome presents. I gathered all of my gear and things together on Thursday night and set out to packing. That was when I started to freak out a bit. Me? Going camping? Surely you jest. (And don't call me Shirley.) So I packed everything up and took a couple of deep breaths. I went to work on Friday, and left early. R picked me up from work, and we zoomed up towards my neighborhood where we did some serious grocery shopping. We hit three of the four grocery stores in my 'hood. It was intense. ;o)

We got the car loaded up, waited for J, and then once J got there, we were off! We got up to the campsite with little difficulty, and got some fire wood, then set up camp. It was great! We got the fire burning, and the camp chairs set up and just hung out around the fire for the rest of the evening. I can't convey how incredibly awesome it way. (In case I haven't mentioned, this was my first time camping, ever.)

Saturday morning, we got up, found the showers and got cleaned up, then headed over to the Jefferson County Fairgrounds for the Festival. Jefferson was really nice. It's the Gemütlichkeit City! So. We got to the fairgrounds and headed in. And naturally made a beeline for the "Country Store" vendor area. All three of us are rabid knitters, and J spins. We looked all through the first building, and drooled all over everything. There were such incredible fibers, handpainted roving, handpainted handspun yarn, alpaca, wool, llama, angora rabbits to take home, you name it, it was there. I really wanted to take a bun-bun home with me, but the cats would absolutely terrorize it.

Now, for the real reason I wanted to go to the Festival. I wanted to learn how to spin. And there was a particular wheel which, if I could manage spinning, that I wanted to buy. And by sheer luck, they were holding a free class at their booth/area in the Country Store. So, we found our way to Babe's Fiber Garden's booth, and I inquired about the two o'clock class. There was 1 opening left! It was like fate! R and J went off to shop and see the lambykins and things, and I learned how to spin!



The class lasted for about an hour, and it was one of the coolest things I've ever experienced. It's almost as if I already knew how to spin and someone had to remind me to remember how. It was so awesome! So I bought a wheel. (and I've been obsessively spinning since. Knitting? What's knitting?)

After we left the festival, with gobs of fiber and yarn and a wheel and a drop spindle for R, we stopped at a grocery store to get some more ice for our cooler and some soda and then J had the most brilliant idea of getting a fireplace starter log. Because she rules. We hadn't had trouble getting the fire started on Friday, mind, it just took a long time due to the lack of kindling. And this fire? This was a serious fire. We burned through 4 cords of wood over the course of the evening. The ashes in the morning were still warm.




While R and J sat around the fire knitting, I (you guessed it) set up my new wheel and spun for awhile.



After it got dark, we roasted hot dogs and sausages and then made smores! It was so much fun. Then we all sat around and shot the poo for awhile. J was tired, so she went to bed and R and I stayed up til some ungodly hour talking. It was great.

The next morning we hung around the campsite for awhile, then R and I checked out one of the trails. This park is ginormous! We headed back, and knit some and I spun some and R tried her drop spindle for awhile until she got frustrated with it. Then we broke camp and headed back into the city.

It was a really incredible weekend!