FO: Baudelaire socks and Saartje's booties

Whoa! Sorry about the absence. I'll get to that in a minute though. First, take a look:


Yep, I've fulfilled my obligations as a part of Sockapalooza 4, and then some. I was working on the socks and periodically checking my pal's blog, and then BAM! Out of nowhere, she had a baby. So, instead of doing important grad student type things, I made the baby booties. I finished them about a week and a half ago and mailed them a week ago. Here's the info for the socks and the booties:


Yarn - 1 skein Yarn Botanika Radiance (merino/tencel blend, 400 yards) in bluebells. My sockpal didn't give me any direction in terms of yarn or pattern, so I scoped out her blog to get a sense of the kinds of colors she likes. She seemed to gravitate towards sky blues and pale greens, so I went with this colorway. you can't tell because I took these pictures with my photobooth camera (my real one's back now! yay!), but it knit up in a mottled, not-pooling not-striping way that was just fantastic.
Needles - 32" size 2 addi turbos. This was the recommended needle size for the pattern, so I used it, but were I to knit with this yarn again, I'd probably go down a needle size. they turned out the right size for Sockpal's measurements, but I'm afraid they're not the most durable socks.
Pattern - Baudelaire from Knitty. I picked this because Sockpal said she was "adventurous" when it came to patterns and this one features lace and cables! Lace + cables + fancy shmancy merino/tencel yarn = adventurous, right? I hope so. As for the pattern, I followed it as written for the large size, plus an extra repeat on the leg.


Yarn - I had some aqua and gray Dale Baby Ull laying around, so I used that. I have no idea about the actual yardage, by roughly 6.5g of the aqua and 4.5g of the gray made this pair.
Needles - size 1 clover bamboo dpns
Pattern - Saartje's booties They came out absurdly tiny and cute. Now I kinda of want to knit a lot of them and scatter tham around my apartment so I can pretend helpful elves (who go about barefoot) secretly live in the cupboard.

Ok, so now that that's done. About the lack of blogging: I'm sorry. Besides my inherent sloth, the major culprits are 1) Harry Potter and 2)lack of knitting progress. I figure I get a free pass with Harry because, come on....last book! And the lack of knitting progress has gone a bit like this: I work on something, then look at it and realize it's waaaayyyyy too big/oops I changed needles and messed up my gauge in a totally noticeable way/is a hideous color for my skin...::facepalm:: Literally, all of those things have happened. I'll cover them one by one, but see? My knitting mojo got all wonky and unblogworthy. I think I have it fixed now, though, so no worries.

In other, more competent, non sockpal-related news, I fixed a sock!

See that? I brought it back from the dead, people! I'm pretty thrilled. They're my first pair.

And on the reality TV front, Bear Grylls is my new hero. Seriously, I have seen this man drink his own urine and sleep in a tent he made out of a dead reindeer. Bad ass mofo, that one.

Totally unrelated....

....but while anxiously awaiting the last Harry Potter book, I've started rereading the His Dark Materials trilogy (which if you haven't read, you totally should). I found this quiz you could take on the film's website that tells you what your daemon (for those of you who don't know, this is the physical manifestation of your soul in animal form) would be and ...... ta-dah!



Meet Erasmus the Chimp. How perfect is that? I really like Erasmus, so I chose to settle him into final form immediately, but you have the option of letting people who know you really well can take this quiz to see if your daemon really fits you. You have 12 days before it settles into it's final form, but I didn't want anyone messing with his chimp-ness. So there.

Surprise FO: One Skein Wonder

Look what I made on the sly:

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I know it's crafty (oops! no pun intended) to have made this entire thing without blogging about it once. Mostly it didn't get blogged about due to bad timing and it's inherent quickness. I started it the day before we left to go to the beach (you know, the beach house with no internet access) and finished it on the drive there.

Yarn - Now, this yarn is something special. It's handpainted, handspun yarn from Perchance to Knit in the Summer Heat colorway (100% South African wool, about 100g but I can't remember the yardage). The colors are so rich! It moves from a really bright, almost neon, yellow to a super-saturated pinkish red. My favorite thing about the yarn is the orange creamsicle color where the yellow changes to red. Here's a closeup of it's yummy goodness.

I've had this yarn for awhile and I've been sitting on it waiting for a really good project that would show it off. It ranges from lace to sportweight, so I considered socks but then thought it might be too nice to go on my feet. Even though I do love socks. I settled on this because there was just enough yarn to make it and the stockinette would show it off so well.

Funny story, though, I actually bought this yarn twice. It was listed on Kpixie and I bought last fall as an impulse buy. I got an email back saying they couldn't find it anywhere and that I could buy whatever I wanted instead. And then, a few months later, I was surfing the site and it had been found and relisted, so I snapped it up before anyone else could.

Oh yeah. The edging is about 20g of black Noro cash iroha (40% silk, 30% lambswool, 20% cashmere & 10% nylon) I had leftover from these armwarmers I made for my friend Jennie.

Needles - 29" Inox size 4 circulars

Pattern - the One Skein Wonder from Glampyre. I do seem to be knitting a lot of her stuff lately. I wasn't totally convinced that I would wear the teensy cap-sleeved version (Jon joked that everyone needs a toasty wool tattoo cover-up for the summer), so I wanted to eke out longer sleeves if possible, hence the black edging. Aside from that, and adjustments for a tighter gauge, I basically followed the pattern as written.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with it, especially the longer sleeves. I am seriously considering picking up another skein of the cash iroha and turning it into a modified version of the two-tone shrug from Fitted Knits. You know, since I'm making just about everything else from the book.

And that concludes the parade of FOs. Next time, I'll have knitting progress to report on.

FO: Puff-Sleeved Cardigan

Presenting the puff-sleeved cardigan:

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It's actually been finished for awhile, but I needed to block it and get buttons. I ended up ordering the buttons from earthenware studios and had to wait for them to make them and ship them. I blocked it and sewed the buttons on a couple of days after I got back from the beach.

All in all, I really like the way it turned out. It's kind of a departure from my usual style in color and shape, so I'm not sure how much wear I'll get out of it, but I love it anyway. I'm considering making a long-sleeved version for a winter jacket.

It was really fun to knit, as well. I've been in kind of a funk lately, with plenty of The Weirdness, and I'm finding myself more drawn to plain stockinette and ribbing than crazy textures and cables, so most of it was good mindless knitting. I also learned a lot about shaping, which was cool. What's especially great about this peice are the details. I really like the collar and buttons! And the puffed sleeves! And the peplum!

See what I mean? Ok, less rambling and more gory knitting details.
Yarn - about 7 skeins of Vermont Organic Fiber Co. O-Wool Balance (50% organic wool, 50% organic cotton, 130 yards) in Amethyst. This is really nice yarn with a lovely tweedy texture. I also like that it's half cotton, which makes a short-sleeved cardigan much more wearable than an all-wool one.
Needles - 29" Inox size 6 circulars. The pattern calls for smaller needles too, but I ended up not needing them.
Pattern - Puff-Sleeved Feminine Cardigan from Fitted Knits. I really like this pattern (again, all the little details!) and it's really what made me buy the book. The rest of the book is awesome too, and I've already cast on for a second project from it. But, as with any pattern, there were modifications:

• The biggest mod I made was reworking the length of the garment, because I'm really short, and really short people tend to have petite wee little torsos. I'll cover that in three sections:
• shoulder to bust: I separated the sleeves a bit sooner than the pattern and then added some extra increases along the sides to accommodate my boobs. I don't know about the rest of you, but the widest part of my bust isn't right up under my armpits. why are patterns always written like that?
• bust to waist: More than just being petite, I'm ridiculously short-waisted. I do have one, though, so I needed to cram a more waist shaping into a smaller space than called for in the pattern. I started them just under the bustline and continued right to the peplum, even though the pattern calls for you to knit an inch or so straight.

• Waist to hip: The hip increases in the peplum are made with the lace insets, which is really clever. I scoped out some of the finished cardigans on other knitblogs and saw that the peplum really flares out. Now, I'm more top-heavy than pear-shaped, and don't really need that much hip room, so I only worked 2 repeats of the lace pattern instead of the 6 or so called for in the pattern. I placed the lace right on the sides of the cardigan.
• I only worked one band of reverse stockinette on the sleeves, peplum, and hem. A big part of omitting the second reverse stockinette band had to do with the shortness of my torso.
• I knitted on the button bands as I went and made a 1-row 2-stitch-wide buttonhole every 15 rows. I did this so I wouldn't have to pick them up later and change ot smaller needles, because I am lazy.

I think that about covers it.

FO: Pomatomus Socks

Presenting the Pomatomus socks!

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Once again, my deepest apologies for the shoddy photos that were once again taken with the teeny camera on my macbook. They actually are very nice in person. I really, really like them.

Yarn - 2 skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock (75% wool, 25% nylon; 215 yards) in the black Pearl colorway. I luuuuuurve this yarn. I got it way back in January and have been sitting on it while I tried to find the right pattern. My one concern with the yarn is that it's not particularly soft, probably due to the nylon. I'm hoping that it will soften up after a few washes.

Needles - 47" size 0 Addi Turbo circs. These are becoming my go-to sock needles for skinny yarn like this. I have to watch it though, because I'm noticing that my freakishly strong hands (seriously, I have some mad hand strength. I always forget and shake hands way too firmly. I once screwed up a job interview that way because I scared the would-be employer.) are bending the wee needles.

Pattern - Pomatomus by Cookie A. for Knitty. I adore her sock patterns. Like most of her stuff, this pattern has the virtue of looking a lot harder and more intricate than it actually is. The only tricky part is the modified chart for the top of the foot, but I figured it out pretty quickly. Here are the modifications:

• I worked them toe-up using the figure-8 CO for the reasons described here. I also did the toe-up version of the heel flap (from Widdershins) with the twisted ribbing written into the pattern. Can I just say that ribbed heels rock for people with narrow feet? Cause they totally do. The nice thing about doing these toe-up is that I didn't have to rewrite the lace pattern since it looks the same right side up and upside down. See?

• Since the yarn kept going and going and going, making the socks taller and taller and taller, I added some calf shaping. I did it by adding and extra repeat of the lace pattern by working an extra YO without an accompanying decrease over 12 rounds, and working the stitches according the pattern. It fits well, but the extra stitches shifted the yarn from striping itself to spiraling.

The red arrows show where I added the extra panel. See what I mean about the spiral?

Hello again

I have oodles to share with you! Lots of new stuff I'm working on, some stuff I've finished, and even stuff that's not knitting-related. We'll start with the non-knitting stuff because it kinda leads right into the WIPs.

My computer's back! It's actually been back for awhile, but I went on vacation basically as soon as I got it. I went to my friend Tamar's beach house in Amagansett, which for those of you not born to the WASPish upper-crust, is in the Hamptons. Anyway, me and my grungy, dorktastic friends hung out there for the better part of last week, being loud and uncouth in ways that I'm sure pissed off the classy neighbors.

I have pictures and all, but at some point, my camera got messed up. Not seriously so, but enough that we're taking it in to get looked at. Some luck with electronics I have, huh? Kinda brings out the Luddite in me. Once it's fixed and all, I'll post them so that you can live vicariously through me. Anyway, that brings me to the knitting. Since my camera's out of commission, you'll have to suffer through the sub-par picture I took using the photobooth feature on my recently repaired Mac. On to the handiwork!

I. Sockpal news
Check it out! I started my pal's socks. I'm using the yarn I posted about before and I'm making her Baudelaire socks from Knitty. I'm about 1/3 of the way through the gusset so far.

I know that there's been a lot of Murphy's Law happening to me of late (arguably there's a bit going on in the start of this post), but these socks are positively serendipitous. I'm working the large size on 2's...which is exactly the right size for her feet! And the yarn isn't pooling or striping as I feared it would! Though I may have terrible luck with expensive electronic equipment, I take heart in the fact that my knitting mojo remains intact.

II. Beach knitting
I started the Summertime Tunic from the last issue of Interweave Knits while on vacation.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through. I have to say, it's perfect beach knitting what with it being mindless (just endless amounts of stockinette in the round) and cool to work with (I'm using a cotton blend, Knitpicks Shine Sport, so it's not unbearable to work with outside). Now that I'm back from the beach, I'm going to make it my movie theater project.

III. Craziness
I'm working on a sweater. I know that doesn't sound too crazy, but wait for it....the sweater is made from mohair and wool and is a densely cabled super-cozy winter sweater. See the crazy now? See how crazy it is that I'm working on it when I have the air conditioner going full blast and I'm still sitting around in my underwear? Yeah, thanks Muse of Badly Timed Inspiration.

But if you can get past the seasonal craziness of it, it's actually kind of cool. I decided I wasn't that happy with the mohair sweater after all and ripped it. I thought it might be cool if paired with the gray tweed I got on sale a few months ago and started swatching in the round...which turned into a sleeve. I basically made up the cable panel as I went along, but really liked it, and expanded and elaborated it to make the center panel of the body. Now I'm about halfway through the body.

Check out my guns!


I tell you, this baby has a life of it's own. I'm calling it the Eton pullover because the more I work on it the more it seems like the person wearing it should be a scrawny upper-class British boy playing cricket at an elite boy's school. Which, you know, means I'll be pretending I went to Eton whenever I wear it despite my gender/nationality/build/atheleticism.