Oh, for the love of sweet Moroccan mint tea...

Ok, first I'm really sorry about the delay, but let me tell you, grad school is hard. Not like oh-man-I-wish-I-didn't-have-to-study-for-this-midterm hard, but dear-god-in-heaven-why-can't-I-ever-finish-working-before-2AM hard. And I'm not good at existing on less than nine hours of sleep. So, I've essentially been a zombie for the last week or so. Zombies have no brains. And you can't write a knitting blog without brains, ask anyone.

Now back to the point. Why does my boyfriend pick the least attractive yarn in the store every single time!? Case in point, the local yarn store was having an awesome sale, so I forced Jon to drive me there. As a reward for the chauffering and waiting patiently as I browsed with glee, I let him pick out some yarn for himself. So, he grabs a couple of skeins of Rowan Harris tweed and demands a hat. This is as far as I got with it:
Now, it's clear from his deranged, unfocused grinning that he adores this yarn, but look at it! Look at those terrible colors! Does it remind you of something?
Vomit perhaps? Rowan refers to the colors as 'lewis grey' and 'thatch'. I refer to them as 'hideous sweatpant gray' and 'sick kitten.'

But, there is good news! Have y'all heard about the psychological concept of flow? Now, I try not to delve in to psychology too much since this is a knitting blog, but bear with me. Flow experiences are times when you're doing something you really enjoy and time disappears. We've all had this happen, right? You get really immersed in something and BOOM! It's an hour later.

Well (shockingly enough), I've had flow experiences with knitting. See?
Pretty! I finished up the Bayerische socks a couple of days ago. And I totally flowed right through the second one. I was just knitting and reading the chart and knitting and reading the chart and knitting....until the wee hours of the morning. But they are totally worth it. Check out this closeup:
And this one!
Yarn - Louet Gems Pearl (100% wool, 185 yards) in citrus orange
Pattern - Eunny's Bayerische socks. So much fun to knit, in a weirdly masochistic way.
Needles - 29" size 1 Susan Bates quicksilver circular. The only substantial modification I made to the pattern was going up a needle size, as the pattern is written for a size 6 foot and mine hovers somewhere between an 8 and 9 (but, curiously, not an 8 1/2...feet are strange).

You wanna know what else I have flow experiences with?
Statistics. Seriously. In the last weeks, I've been working on a couple of different projects that are in the data analysis stage. So, I'll head to the computer lab after class and plan to just run a couple of tests, shouldn't take me more than twenty minutes or so.....and realize that an hour and a half has just flown by and I've done maybe a half dozen MANOVAs complete with pairwise contrasts. And it's fun. As if there wasn't enough mounting evidence of my inherent, overwhelming dorkiness out there already.

Back to knitting. I've also started the socks for Tamar, my Other.
They're the Monkey socks from the current issue of Knitty. Since the yarn she picked out is just shy of sportweight and she has biggish feet for a girl, I'm knitting them on size 3's. And as glorious as knitting the Bayerische socks was, I'm enjoying the easy-to-memorize lace pattern and quick progress of the bigger gauge. I'm going to a psychology conference this weekend in Memphis, so I'll have some prime airplane knitting time to knock these little babies out.

I'll leave you with one more thing:
Moroccan mint tea! As many of you know, I studied abroad in Estonia and Morocco as an undergraduate, which fostered a love of tea. I got my taste in black teas from Eastern Europe and mint tea from Morocco. While in North Africa, I drank the mint tea at every meal, several times a day. For me, at least, it was an acquired taste because it's prepared with a truly amazing amount of sugar. Seriously, there's no sense of too sweet with this stuff, just not sweet enough.

I bought the teapot and dried mint and green tea for Jon. Despite the fact that the unmarked package of dried vegetable matter gave me some trouble going through customs, he never used it (bad taste in yarn and tea, that one), and I fell out of the habit of drinking it.

I've started drinking it again, though. Dani, Tamar, and I went to a hookah bar that served it at New Year's, which made me remember how good it was, and then I had it again at a tea party I went to last weekend. Jon also went to said tea party, and it was like he'd died and gone to heaven.

2 1/2 FO's

Check it out:
Jon's mom's scarf is done! We went to see Children of Men last Saturday (which I absolutely loved, by the by) and I finished it in the theater. Born in a movie, bound off in a movie, full cycle.
Yarn - 2 skeins of Patons Upcountry (100% wool, 78 yards) in deep steel blue. As a rule of thumb, I think that a good length for a scarf is roughly the height of the person who'll be wearing it. I used up both skeins with nothing left over, and it ended up being about 5' long (just a wee bit shorter than myself). As a general rule, I think that a good scarf length is roughly the height of the itended recipient (golden ration and all that), and Jon's mom is only a few inches taller than me, so it worked out ok.

Pattern - My own. Though, it's not exactly innovative or groundbreaking. It's a modified 2 x 2 rib with plain knit ribs alternating with twisted minicables. A left twist was made by knitting through the back of the second stitch, then knitting through the front of the first stitch, then pulling both of the needle together. A right twist (obviously enough) was made by knitting through the front of the second stitch, then through the back of the first stitch, and then pulling both off the needles together. So, I cast on 20 stitches and knit every row like this:

k2, p2, left twist, p2, k2, p2, right twist, p2, k2, p2

Needles - size 11 bamboo straights

In other news, I've completed one Bayerische sock and started the second:
I'm very attached to the completed one and have taken to wearing it around the apartment with my other foot bare and lonely.

And, I didn't post about this earlier, but guess what came in the mail last week...
....more sock yarn and knitting books! I got freaked out about the start of the new semester abd splurged. The take? Folk Shawls, the Vogue stitchionary of cables, 2 skeins of artyarns ultramerino 8 in various shades of red, 2 skeins lorna's laces in black pearl, 3 skeins of artyarns supermerino in various shades of green, and a skein of dk weight alpaca silk. Oh, retail therapy, how I love thee!

Free pattern is up!

The pattern for Mandy's bag is now available, totally free! To get to it, click the link on the sidebar under "Free for your needles." That will take you to the page the pattern is on. I've also converted the word document into a pdf file, but blogger is being kind of gunchly and won't let me upload it. So, if you'd prefer the printable PDF, Email me and I'll gladly send it to you.

In other news, I've started the Bayerische socks:
So pretty! I've been eyeing these socks for a while now, and was pretty daunted by them. But, Eunny in all her glory has written the clearest pattern ever, and they're actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

See? Even the fat, slow kitten can do it!