finally, a new project

i'm a little limited in what i can knit right now - all of my yarn and needles are stashed away at home and now trapped behind a wall of plastic while our kitchen gets worked on. pretty much everything in our house is inaccessible at the moment, which can be frustrating when you realize that something you need is not one of the things you thought to bring with you to the temporary digs! so while i would like to start a new sweater (no, i didn't finish brigitte yet...i haven't even touched it in over a week!), i have to make do with what i decided to bring with me. and what i brought with me is two skeins of socks that rock, in the watermelon tourmaline and farmhouse colorways to make...a chevron scarf, of course!

this has actually turned out to be a good project to work on while staying at what i am now calling 'the hotel,' - it's pretty mindless and easy, but really fun to watch the color combinations develop, and it's keeping me pretty entertained for the moment. plus, i want a long scarf so it should take me a while. i've set myself what should be a pretty easy goal - to have it done by the time we move back to our place, which should be in about a month. i have about a foot done so far:



i fell in love with this combo of yarns the first time i saw them together in a chevron scarf - i knew i had to make one myself. and now that i finally am, i still really love these colors together. i think my watermelon tourmaline is a little heavy on the light green, so that color is dominating a little more than i would like, but that's really my only complaint so far. that, and i wish there was more of the beautiful goldenrod and olive green in my skein of farmhouse! but i can already tell this will be a much-loved scarf. and i love the back as much as the front. it looks like pointillism!



and if i finish it up sooner than i expected, i have another scarf project ready in the wings. my clementing shawlette has languished at the bottom of my knitting bag for too long now, and i've decided i'm not in love with the project anymore, so away it goes! instead, i'm going to use the yarn, which is a lovely ivory skein of handmaiden sea silk, to make the montego bay scarf from the summer interweave knits. i like how slinky this scarf is, and i especially like the braided fringe. i think i will make this for my mom for christmas.

alrighty, i have to go back to my real house to pick up my mail now!

summer time and the living is easy

chaos is the only word to describe my life this past week...and i don't really have much to show for all that chaos either! is everyone like this during the summer? i feel like every year, knitting takes a back seat during the warmer months, just because i'm busier with social engagements, i spend more time outside, i don't know.

but this year, i have even more going on. a few months ago i mentioned that we were looking to buy our first home, and we did settle on a place a while ago but i hadn't mentioned it since, because there were various holdups. but now stuff is starting to happen with it, so here's a little update: we're buying our apartment! which sounds a little anti-climactic (it was for me at first), but really, i'm so, so excited. we've lived here for over two years now, and i love it. when the building was bought last year to be turned into condos, i was seriously sad about it. i didn't want to leave. but when they first offered the place to us at a 'reduced' price, as is, we weren't impressed with the amount it was being offered at. it seemed too high. however, when we started looking at other condos in the area, we realized what a great deal it really was. our place was built in 1928 and it's beautiful. what's more...it actually has quite a bit of storage, and is fairly large for the price. so in the end, it seemed like the smartest move to stay. plus, we don't have to pack all our stuff up and move!

anyway, even though we are basically buying our place as-is (as in, we're not paying to have them renovate our entire apartment like they are doing to the other units in the building), we did decide to have them redo our kitchen. soon, granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances will be mine! here's a 'before' picture that i took after we cleaned everything out:



in the meantime, we had to leave our apartment for a while so that those renovations could be done. so this weekend, we packed up our kitchen and some of our everyday stuff, and moved into another building that the company owns. ugh. for us only staying there for six or seven weeks, it was a lot of work. plus, the place we're staying in is a studio apartment, and basically looks like a cheap hotel room. it's kind of depressing. our clothes are scattered everywhere and there's not a whole lot to do there, since most of our stuff is still at our place. i'm trying to be upbeat about it, but it's already getting old. i'm already counting down the days til we can move back in!

i have done some knitting. here's brigitte:



i think i like her now. i'm not entirely sure it's going to fit well (i know i could take it off the needles and try it on, but i'm too lazy), and i'm also not sure if i'm going to have enough yarn! even though i'm using the called-for yarn, and i bought enough, i'm a little worried that this sweater is going to end at belly-button level, which is just way too short. i have two more balls of the yarn and a little bit of a third left. we will soon know for sure!

i've also done a tiny bit of sewing. a lot of friends have birthdays right around now, so i've been whipping up little sewing projects as mini gifts. i'm working on some more purl bee cocktail coasters, and i made these potholders, from the lotta jansdotter book:



and that's all i got for the moment! hopefully things will calm down now that we're settled into our temporary home, and i can finish brigitte and get going on a new sweater: i'm torn between starting the hourglass sweater from lmkg, or starting breton girl from the new knit scene. i have yarn for both. maybe i'll start them both!

breton girl

i picked up the new knitscene the other day, and even though i had already looked at the preview online, i was way impressed with this issue. is anyone else as obsessed with the breton girl pattern as i am?! i saw it and immediately knew i had to make it. i love boat necks, i love stripes...what's not to love? well, probably the millions of ends i'll have to weave in. oh yeah - and it's knit in acrylic. but besides that - nothing, right? i even ordered the called-for yarn already, because i'm actually oddly intrigued by this acrylic yarn. besides being cheap, it has elastic in it, and i don't know, it just sounds kinda cool. i had to order it from the uk, so shipping was really high, but hopefully it will be worth it. the pattern is cream with navy - i tried to think of a new combo to do, and in the end, i just decided to swap the colors: navy as my main color, and cream as the stripe. not too origina, but i just love the nautical look of this sweater too much to mess with it a whole lot.

i can also see myself making the teardrop scarf, the picot posey mittens, and maybe the ribby retro socks. all cute patterns! and the intricate stag bag? i'll probably never make it, but i love it so much.

in other news, i keep meaning to mention that i'm on ravelry now - have been for about a month actually, and loving it. so if you're on there too, let me know! it's kind of hard to know sometimes if someone is using their blog name or their real name or something else entirely on there.

snakes and owls

hey everyone! thanks for all the rusted root love. i am really enjoying it - it's a great summer sweater! and sorry for the extended break - it wasn't intentional. everyday stuff seems to have gotten in the way of both knitting and blogging lately, so i haven't had much to write about. i've been making minimal progress on my oak and apple socks, as well as the socks i restarted for my brother. i also started brigitte, and i'm completely unsure about it. i might hate the color, but i can't decide. i'm going to persevere with it for a while though - i figure there's nothing else really that i could do with that cotton braid i got to make with it! it's such a weird yarn. definitely in the novelty yarn category, and i think that fact is making me a little uneasy. i should just embrace it i guess. anyway, none of those projects are really photo-worthy at this point, but they should be soon.





i did finally make something from the lotta jansdotter book, simple sewing- a draft snake! this is the project that immediately captured my imagination when i first flipped through the book. i just think it's such a cute idea, and a great way to mix fabrics. and of course, it's a super easy project, so that adds to its appeal. i whipped this up in just about an hour, using some of the new katie jump rope fabric and a cute little bumblebee linen that i've had for a while. the funnest part was filling it with lentils. it's such a narrow little tube that i had to drop the lentils in with a tablespoon (i don't have a funnel but i certainly wished i did at the time). it was time-consuming but oddly relaxing. i think i overstuffed the snake a little though, because the seams look a little stretched now. oh well. anyway, i think it turned out very cute, and it's now sitting in one of the windows in our living room - not really doing its job at the moment, since there really aren't any drafts to speak of this time of year. but i'm sure it will work great in a few months! i can see myself making these for all our other windows too, and making them as gifts. i've already had one request for a draft snake as a birthday gift!



also, i just wanted to show off the most recent addition to my owl collection: little salt and pepper shakers! i love these. my friend jessica gave them to me recently, and they are cheering up our kitchen table now. they're so sweet!

hope you all have a good 4th of july (if you're celebrating). we're going to go see ratatouille here in a bit, then go find a place for a picnic and some fireworks-watching.