Retail therapy and a FO jumpstart

Today was a good day! I found a winning cocktail of FO's and shopping to help prop up my waning academic abilities. I went yarn shopping and thrifting with a couple of girls from my area who knit and wear old, smelly clothes (just like me!) today, which was a much-needed break. I hadn't realized how long it had been since I'd looked foward to some sort of social outing, which is kind of frightening. So, it got me out of the house, away from the books, and all pumped on retail adrenaline.
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I ended up buying more sock yarn, of course. I bought two skeins of Claudia's Handpainted in the passion fruit colorway (in the blue shoes), which is amazing. The big blue hanks are Mountain Colors Bearfoot in the purple mountain colorway (appropriately pictured in the purple heels). They're gigantic skeins, and one is easily enough for a standard pair of socks, but I got ambitious and I'm planning on making super-long kneesocks with them. I got the cute blue and purple shoes, along with some skirts and a sweater, and the thrift store. The damage? $75 at the yarn store, $20 at the thrift store. Good haul.


After getting home and seeing Mr. Man off (he's gone to Oberlin, our alma mater, for the weekend to be a better activist than I and see our friends who are still wee undergrads), I spent the night alternately working on various psychological measures and papers and his armwarmers. Now, I'm finished with the reading I had to do and the armwarmers. I feel productive.
Yarn - about a skein of Malabrigo (100% merino, 215 yards) in apple green
Needles - Clover bamboo size 9 dpn's.
Pattern - some weird love-child of Fetching and Glaistig. The structure and shaping of the armwarmers are based on the Fetching pattern, but done in the cable pattern of Glaistig. I ended up doing three cable repeats total with an extra ten rows of 1 x 1 ribbing for the fingers, with the thumb being placed on the row just after the 5th cable turn. The thumb was made with five rows of 1 x 1 ribbing.

Only one more present to go!