yarn suprises are always nice!

even if the yarn you're suprised with is for somebody else. got this tastycake of a ball of yarn in the mail yesterday. it's rowan classic baby alpaca dk, i think it's in either the thistle or zinc colorway (i didn't check).... a really pretty greyish-blue. the yarn is going to get itself made into a pair of knucks for melissa. she ordered the yarn from jimmy bean's wool, which is a rad yarn company for a lot of reasons, the least of which that they send goodies with every package! this time i got two pineapple candies and two little buttons with fish blowing bubbles on them. melissa, you can have the candy, i am for sure keeping these buttons! but what to use them for? i'm sure i'll figure something out. i may just sew them onto something as a purely decorative touch, because they're f-ing adorable.

in other, sort-of knitty-related news, i think i've discovered my future husband. aside from being a total cutie, he knits and designed a rad baseball-style raglan shirt (which has an X purled into the sleeve, can he also possibly be straightedge?!!!?) for the new issue of knitty. apparently he lives in berlin :( so i guess i'll just have to wait. is that a tattoo i see peeking out from under the shirt? and plugs in his ears? uh, yes please.

knitty actually has a lot of awesome looking patterns in this season's issue. aside from wanting to make the above-mentioned shirt (i just need to find a nice boy to make it for!) i'm already considering frogging that alpaca shawl i'm working on and re-working the yarn as the muir wrap. ooh, and the roam hoodie looks delicious (even though the yarn for it is like thirty dollars a skein! jesus christ!) as does the foliage beanie (i already have the malabrigo it calls for! excellent!). it's going to be a busy fall.

i haven't even begun to think about christmas knitting yet.....

sweet book score (and a WIP)

i was killing time in baton rouge yesterday evening, waiting for a friend to get off work so we could get something to eat. i was perusing around barnes & noble and picked up these delightful tomes:

i'd just like to point out what you may/may not have missed:

nice! both of the nicky epstein books were half off. amazing! all i need now is knitting beyond the edge and i'll have all three of her finishings books. i haven't had a chance to look that closely at them but a cursory glance suggests lots of inspiring patterns and stitches. i picked up the knitters handbook for reference more than anything, it was only like six or seven dollars and i figured it would be nice to have a halfway-decent stitch guide around. all in all, i made out pretty well.

this is what i've been working on all weekend:

i frogged the original nautie that i was working on (switching yarns every other row was basically a huge pain in the ass) and started another one. this one is for my friend steve. i think it looks a lot better with just one color. this is pretty much a quick knit, as what you see in the picture was done in maybe three hours. em's working on one in a variegated yarn and i'm interested in how that's going to look. probably awesome. the only thing that i really don't like about this pattern is that it's stuffed as it's knit. that means stopping every four rows to add a little bit more fluff. hella annoying. overall, it's awesome and i plan on making myself a matching one when i'm done with this pattern. what more could you want than matching cephalopods! i have an overabundance of malabrigo yarn in this colorway (emerald blue), i might make the second one out of that and have a luxury sea snail, as the yarn is a buttery soft merino. i'm putting the cart just a little bit before the horse on that one though, so we'll see.

melissa is demanding a pair of knucks, she's ordered the yarn and is having it shipped to my house so i'll be starting on those soon. i don't know what kind of yarn she ordered, nor do i know the colorway, so that will be a fun suprise. photos of all that to come!

!!!FFO (First Finished Object)!!!

i can proudly say that i am posting my first FO on this blog. and i've had it for what, a year? i've finished other things since i started this little site up but nothing i've mentioned on here or that's worth mentioning in general. i completed this guy last week but this is the first chance i've had to put it up.

without further ado, the sock!

i have pretty gross feet/ankles but you get the general idea. the fabric created by this yarn is way thicker than what i generally like when i wear socks (which isn't often - i'm a barefoot kinda girl) and made my foot get kinda sweaty in the time it took for me to snap a few photos.

will you look at that delicious striping? i love it.! the grey/green parts almost look like faux intarsia. overall the yarn is heathery in nature which looks really nice close up.

now that i've completed this sock and feel confident enough in my sockmaking abilities i'm going to forego this guy's mate and get right to making the real pair of socks one of my friends requested. though he has a size 13 foot (mine are a 7.5 in guy's sizes) so i'm going to have to be creative in altering the pattern....

what i've been working on lately

...lots of things, actually. and i'm not finishing any of them. i guess i've been in a mood lately where i kind of just need to be working on something, it doesn't really matter if i finish what i'm working on or not. i guess in that sense i'm a process knitter... don't get me wrong, i like finishing projects just as much as the next yarn-obsessed person. i just sometimes get into a funk where i pretty much just need something to do with my hands. idle hands do the devil's work, or something.


and now some lovely pictures of some delightful WIPs:


aww.... its my first sock pattern! ann norling's play on ribs pattern. not the most attractive but i figure if i'm going to foray into the wide world of sock knitting i might as well try something easy to start. i guess it doesn't get much more easier than this... the majority of the sock is just a K3, P1 pattern which creates a pretty tight but still stretchy fabric. i was a bit intimidated about picking up stitches around the heel but i don't think i f'ed it up too badly. i have maybe another inch or two to do on the actual foot part of the sock and then i'll start on the toe decreases/kitchener stitch finishing. i will admit, i definitely understand the phenomenon found in sock knitting known as "Lone Sock Syndrome." i'm not even done with this first sock and already i don't want to make the second one. knitting this has made me question the evolutionary design of having two feet. it would be so much easier to just have one for the purposes of quick knitting. it would certainly result in less bitching on my part.

i'm using moda dea sassy stripes in the polo colorway. this is also the first project that i've ever used self-striping yarn for it's intended purpose and i must, it's so awesome! i'm using size 3 DPNs which is a size smaller than what the pattern called for but it seems to be working out well. the fabric is more dense and i like that.

i decided to undertake two rather frustrating projects in addition to the socks. the first is the candle flames shawl pattern from knitpicks. this is the biggest lace project i've ever worked on, as i am generally impatient and prefer the relative instant gratification i receive from smaller projects. i have all of this delicious alpaca yarn that i have nothing to do with, however, so i figured i might as well try my hand at a responsible, classy project.

let me tell you about this yarn. hoo boy. it's arucania yarn's atacama, colorway 502. an absolutely gorgeous, hand dyed, variegated alpaca in shades of blue ranging from pale, almost grey, sky blue to a deep turquoise. i love this yarn. it's probably one of my favorite yarns of all time. i really wish it wasn't DK weight because i hate knitting with thin yarns (takes too long, i'm always afraid i'm going to snap it from pulling it too tight) but i love it anyway. my one complaint is that since it's hand dyed, the color tends to bleed onto my fingers after i've been knitting for a while. i don't mind too much, though, since everything else about this yarn rules.

the picture above shows only about a third of the width of the whole thing. my circular needles are super curly so it's difficult to straighten them out long enough to show the project. the picture to the left is a detail of one of the lace repeats. i think i'm about twenty rows in, which is a bit more than halfway through the repeat. i'm not looking forward to the 15 or so repeats i think i'm going to need to do to make this a decent shawl. this one is probably going to be finished in a year at the rate i'm going.

another thing i'm not looking forward to is blocking this beast. which is something that i'm not gonna be able to get out of doing as it's lace and lace always needs blocking. i'm worried because i live in a studio apartment and i don't really have much room to block projects as big as this. i think i may just pin it to my bed before i leave for work one day and hope that it's set by the time i get home. that's kind of far ahead up the road so i'm not really going to worry about it for the time being.

last but not least is another tryout pattern. my friend steve is a big fan of cephalopods (and is also a knitter! how awesome is that!) and i am a big fan of steve (not in that way! minds out of the gutter!) so i' decided i wanted to make him one. knitty's nautie has provided me with the perfect pattern. the directions are relatively straightforward, however, i've never knit a stuffed animal that's required stuffing while being knit. there's no way of getting around this, either, as you're basically knitting a long cone that's wrapped around itself as it's knit. this is done by means of picking up an already-knit stitch from the body every four rows and knitting it with one of the new stitches. it's kind of hard to explain but actually pretty easy. i like the stripey effect of switching yarn every other row (i'm using hideous red heart yarn because it's good for stuffed animals and that's about it) but i also hate it. because i'm switching yarn every other row. add to that constant increases, stuffing, and coiling and it all results in kind of a headache. now that i have the hang of this pattern i'm considering frogging it and just making the real deal for steve. in one, solid color.

what a long post! congrats if you've made it this far! i think if i were to update this more often the posts would be shorter... i should probably get on that.