Bundles of Love

Guess what I got in the mail? A package from my sockpal! I confess that there might have been some giggling and jumping up and down when it arrived. So...here's what I got:


Socks (obviously), which I'll get to in a minute, a flower pin, and grape licorice from a winery. How cool is that? It's actually really tasty, like twizzlers, but less plastic-y and more fruity.


About the socks...they are awesome. They fit perfectly (which I'm really excited about because I'm still learning how to make mine the right size, much less a total stranger) and are lovely. I'm not sure what the pattern is, but it's kind of like a lacier version of the Monkey pattern. I really love the yarn. I'm not sure what it is, but it goes from gray to a bright pinkish-red, to black and back again. But my favorite thing about them? The picot edge.

So, basically, mad props to my (get from) sockpal! You know, in all the hurry to make/finish/send off socks to my (give to) sockpal, I kind of forgot that the whole thing was reciprocal. Literally, I forgot I was going to get a package until it showed up. And the main reason I signed up for sockapalooza was to get socks!

Anyway, that's most likely going to be the highlight of my week. Mittens got a bundle of love of her own:


Awhile back, I bought sock yarn for my friend Van, and in the process of rolling it, half of it was turned into smallish balls (as is right and proper) and the other half was turned into a huge, messy knot. After three of us tried to unravel it, I deemed it a knot of Gordian proportions and abandoned it. And then Mittens claimed it as her throne. So she's having a good week too.

In actual knitting news, I've been working on Rusted Root for awhile and I'm making good progress. I bought the pattern and yarn in a kit from kpixie because I was bored. It's really simple, so I've been using it as my in-between project for when I just want to veg out and knit while I'm watching America's Next Top Model marathons. Which are on all the time. Which may be why the Root is already to the waist decreases.


So far I have kind of a love-hate relationship with it. The yarn is Karabella zodiac, which is a mercerized cotton. I've never worked with it before and while I really like the color and sheen it has, I would have preferred the fluffyness of regular cotton. I think something about the firmness and the shine of the yarn made it look really weird in the lace stitch written in the pattern, so once again, I replaced it with a cable panel. Or maybe I just suck at lace knitting.

(On a side note, this picture of the cable was originally grass green! I had to spend a solid five minutes messing with the tone and saturation and the like to get it anywhere close to the actually color. Why do cameras do that? It's maddening.)

The other thing is that I love that the pattern is basically a cute, puffed-sleeve t-shirt, but I the specter of a baggy Root drooping under the weight of the aformentioned yarn that was haunting me. So I decided to throw in some heavy-duty shaping and rely on the Negative Ease Gods to keep it from stretching out into wonkiness. While this is great for me, it does make me kinda hate having even bought the pattern since I've now reworked, like, 89% of it. It's cool though.

And now, I'll bid you adieu so that I can keep working on my now very shapley Rusted Root and watch the first part of ANTM Cycle 5. I've seen the rest of this season, but not these first few episodes, and I must rectify that.

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.

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.

Updates

Sorry for the absence of late, the last week has been kinda weird. Despite the non-blogging weirdness, I do have some recent developments to report!

I: I'm a joiner

Well, I joined the Fitted Knits-Along. I'm making a lot of progress on the puff-sleeved cardigan, and you can see it here.

II: Sockpal Yarn!

After much deliberation, I orderd the yarn for my sockapalooza socks online last week, and it came in yesterday!




It's Yarn Botanika merino/tencel in the colorway bluebells. My pal really didn't give me much to go on in terms of pattern or colors, so I scoped out her blog and saw she tended to gravitate towards pale greens and sky blues. I think this yarn fits the bill. Now, I have to figure out what pattern to use.

III: Cat update



The fat one's still fat, and has taken to sleeping in strange locations of late. Which is really cute.