yarntherapy

random Friday

A few odds and ends......

I forgot to mention that my awesome Secret Santa at work (a non-knitter) gave me At Knit's End! What a great little book - I have it in my knitting bag and I just pull it out every once in a while to read random bits. Love it!

She was a great Secret Santa - other gifts included a bottle of Coppola Merlot and a big box of Lush goodies!

Currently on the needles - Tubey:

I'm about 5 inches from finishing the second sleeve. I like the Austermann Mayfair - knits up evenly and smoothly, with nice stretch. The only thing I've done differently so far is to knit an extra MC row after the stripes before doing the increase row - I didn't like how the M1s pulled the contrast yarn up so there were visible jags - you can still kind of see that above but it's not nearly as noticeable.

I did start the sleeves on DPNs and knew right away I'd go insane if I had to knit 41 inches that way. So I pulled out my Magic Loop booklet that Mindy so kindly sent me last year and I fiddled until I figured it out:

I'm still getting a slight ladder at the looping points but that may have more to do with the stretchiness of the yarn than with my technique. I'll have to try it out in a variety of yarns to see. At any rate, I much prefer it to using the DPNs of Satan, and it's also much easier to travel with knitting on a big circular rather than a bunch of little DPNs.

And now - hold on to your hats - I'll leave you with a little cuteness:

guess who's back?

Well, hello everybody!

Miss me?

This is why I've been away:

That's not what your desktop is supposed to look like.

So I waited for Mac Expo which did introduce Intel based Macs but unfortunately didn't help me much since the iBook line probably won't be updated until the spring. I've got blogging to do, I couldn't possibly wait that long!

So thanks to a $125 rebate from Amazon, I have  a sassy new G4 iBook with the Tiger OS - widgets are fun!

Most importantly, I can now show off all the work I've been doing!

Remember Backtack II? And all the cool stuff to spin that Jenne sent me?

First, the silk hankie I spun on Christmas Day - this:

Became this:

Which is now this:

A teeny little neck scarf (it's wrapped double in the photo) adapted from the Slanted Eyelet Scarf from the pattern-a-day calendar - January 4. So fun - I have four more hankies from Crown Mountain Farms (great service!) waiting to be spun. The Chasing Rainbows colorways are all incredible.

A little more spinning - this crazy fiber:

Is now this equally crazy yarn:

There isn't very much of it, I'm not sure what I'll use it for. Sure is purty, though!

Now, hold on to your hats - see if you can possibly handle the cuteness:

It's Blu! For little Gabriel, the newly adopted son of my friends Al and David. I'm so excited - Gabriel is visiting us at work today and I have been promised that he will be wearing them. Super fun pattern, really quick to knit (at least in the 3-6 month size!) I had just enough yarn to finish. Luckily I had the perfect colors of embroidery floss and wool felt on hand for the details.

The pockets aren't very symmetrical - I was in hurry to finish, I was afraid he'd grow out of them before I was done! I used the felt to make a faux button in front:

Can't wait to see them on a real live baby!

That's it for the moment. There is a ton more stuff to tell you about, including my potential entry in the Knitting Olympics, and (gasp!) a finished Audrey!

 

 

Happy New Year!

Well, the computer seems to be stable enough for a quick update today, but I'm not going to risk trying to put any pictures up. Suffice it to say that I am totally smitten with silk hankie spinning. Amy's Knitty article is terrific - very helpful and really lets you know how easy and fun it is.

I brought my finished yarn in to work and Gayle was immediately in love as well - we placed an order with Crown Mountain Farms for some more. They should arrive around the end of this week - they say 3-5 business days for just 5 bucks shipping. Nice deal!

I need to get or make a niddy-noddy, it's a real pain to try and measure yardage without one. I think I got between 80 and 90 yards from my hankie, and I'm making a scarf adapted from the January 4th pattern in the 2006 knitting calendar - the slanted eyelet scarf. I cast on 19 instead of 29 stitches and I'm only doing 2 repeats of the pattern. It looks good - I just hope it's long enough to be a functional scarf when it's done!

In other news, my holidays were very quiet. The transit strike and my nutty work schedule really took it out of me - the paychecks made it all worth it, though. I can afford the new computer (soon!) and, most awesomely, I'm going to take some classes at the 92nd Street Y! I'm doing a one day mixed media collage workshop, and at the end of January I'm starting a 14 week jewelry making class! I am SO excited about that one - I can't wait to go buy all my supplies and be a student again!

I hung out at home on New Year's Eve, but last night I had Carol and Ben over for a late Christmas dinner - she didn't want to clean and I didn't want to cook, so she brought over an awesome chicken curry and some homemade gingerbread, so all I had to do was rice and a salad. (Well, and clean my apartment. By tossing stuff into closets and under the bed. I think I am going to regret this.) It was nice, but I'm pretty glad these holidays are over. Not my favorite year, but I'm excited about what's to come!