we love wee skeins

the other day i got some special mail: four wee skeins of vesper sock yarn from knitterly things! i'm so on this bandwagon. but i'm torn about what to do with it: make some toe-up socks (i was thinking of trying the two-at-once thing), or make a rainbow cowl of skinny stripes? there are pros and cons to both. socks: i would get to try a new skill, and they would be really pretty socks. i like striped socks. cowl: i don't think you can have too many, and this might be a more visible, more long-lasting use of some pretty yarn. i'm considering this an informal poll, so let me know your opinion!

here are the wee little babies, looking cute:


from top to bottom, build me up buttercup, muddy waters, sweet summer sky, and monet's garden.

yet another cowl

but i think that's a good thing!

i've had this one skein of blue sky alpacas royal in my stash for quite a while. it was beautiful. just beautiful. the color, spanish leather, was the perfect taupe, and the yarn itself was sooooooooo soft. luxury alpaca, people! but i didn't know what to do with it. i only had the one skein, and i felt like i needed to do something special with it. after lots of potential projects that never quite stuck, i finally, recently, struck upon the aspen neck cowl. such a simple pattern, but i felt like the pattern and yarn would be a good marriage - the alpaca would make a nice, drapey cowl, and the simplicity of the pattern would showcase the yarn's loveliness, with just a tiny bit of added interest with the reverse stockinette horizontal ribs. plus, it's reversible!

so, i cast on, knowing i really didn't have as much yarn as the pattern called for. in the end, it's not quite as long as specified in the pattern (it's probably 2/3 the size), so i can't use it pulled up over my head like a hood, but i probably wouldn't ever wear it that way anyway. it's pretty big anyway, and i can only imagine that the alpaca will grow with wear. this thing is so luxurious and beautiful and lovely! i can't wait til it's actually cool enough to wear it (that seems to be my blogging theme these days).

here's a modeled shot:


and the "right" side:


and inside out:


pattern: aspen neck cowl
yarn: blue sky alpacas royal, in spanish leather, almost one entire skein
needle: size 6 circular
mods: well, the pattern calls for purling ever row, with knit ribs every 9th and 10th row. this seemed silly, since knitting is so much easier and faster for me, so i basically knit it inside out. but i like how both sides look, so i'm considering it reversible.

i'm somewhat in between knitting projects right now...i'm not really sure what to start next, though i have some ideas. for now though, i'm busy cutting fabric for my first quilt!

mitered mittens

my mittens finally dried! i finished these mittens ages ago, but then i had a friend in town and i didn't have time to block them (which they definitely needed). then, they took a week to dry. finally, they are done. just in time for seattle to finally get warm weather. but as elizabeth zimmermann points out in the write-up of this pattern, they'll be all ready to go when it does get cold, right?


pattern: mitered mittens, knitter's almanac, by elizabeth zimmermann
yarn: folktale fibers, in sweet & sour, 1 skein
needles: size 6 circulars for magic loop

this project was all about the yarn. a few months ago i spotted folktale fibers on etsy, and instantly fell in love with her beautiful patchwork series of handspun yarns. i decided on a colorway called sweet & sour, and knew right away that i wanted some bright, cheerful, and stripy mittens.

i had a few issues getting yarn and pattern to work well together: the yarn was a very heavy worsted, and i had a difficult time getting the yarn to knit up to the right size. the fact that miters pull everything in tightly made it even harder to figure out exactly how many stitches to cast on. i started these three or four times before i felt happy with the stitch count, and even now, they are a tiny bit tight, though blocking loosened them up a bit. this yarn's gauge was so radically different to the original pattern that it made everything a little harder than it should have been, and my thumb turned out too big, because i increased too many stitches for the gusset (which is a mod i did, since i didn't want the thumb on the palm, as the pattern is written).


also...there were some colors in this skein that came as a bit of a surprise! in the skein, the yarn seemed to be predominantly orange/red/purple/brown, with a little yellow. knitted up, it looked way more like a 70s crocheted granny square afghan than i was expecting. some might even call it a bit gaudy. but i think in the end, the colors grew on me.

anyway, after all that, i think i like these mittens! the cuff is really long, and the fabric is really dense and warm. they will be perfect this winter, or who knows, maybe even next week. i don't think our current warm weather will last long.

flickr game

i have a project, a pair of mittens, that is blocking and refuses to dry (it's been a week now!), so while i wait for those to dry out and become bloggable, i guess i'll join in on the flickr meme that's going around.

the concept:
a. type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. using only the first page, pick an image.
c. copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

go to my flickr page for links to the photos.

autumn leaves in spring

i finally finished my embossed leaves socks! i love these socks. these are my final project for the earth segment of project spectrum, and i've loved knitting with these earthy colors these past few months.

pattern: embossed leaves, from favorite socks
yarn: socks that rock lightweight, in the beautiful oregon red clover honey colorway
needles: size 2 inox circular for magic loop
mods: i did an eye of partridge heel instead of the garter ridge heel in the pattern. this heel seems like a perfect match for the leaves pattern, and i really liked knitting it. it's just so visually pleasing and squishy/springy. pretty! i also, impulsively, decided not to do the toe in the pattern, but instead opted for a french toe (at least i think that's what i did!). i'm not really sure if this was the right decision or not, but i think it turned out ok.

this pattern knits up so fast! i knit socks slowly, and even though it still ended up taking me two months to finish these, it actually only took about two and half weeks of actual knitting time, with several weeks in between socks. not record time by any means, but fast for me. i think i definitely want to try some more lace sock patterns, and am thinking of meida's socks from the same favorite socks book next.

i'm glad to have these done and am eager to wear them. now, what to knit for air? i'm thinking more cowls!

eat your greens

hello! sorry for the long absence. i feel like i'm always saying that...maybe i should accept that i'm just a few-times-a-month blogger, huh?

anyway...here's a little something i've been working on the past week. my first attempt at gardening! i've been wanting to grow something for ages now (in fact, it's one of my goals for 2008), but we live in an apartment building that doesn't really have a yard to speak of. i've had my name on the waiting list for a p-patch plot for well over a year now as well, with no luck yet. so i figured i could wait around probably another year to get my plot, or i could just start with a little window box.

it's sad to admit, but i haven't grown anything since the little bean plants everyone does in first grade. but i grew up in phoenix, where it's not so easy to have a lush and green and fruitful garden. i attempted some basil on my patio once in college, and the plants died within a week. my mom (also from phoenix) lives here in the seattle area now too, and she has a new house, where is she is making good use of her extensive garden area this year. she said to me the other day, somewhat in awe, 'stuff just GROWS here!' i can understand her wonder at this! so i started to think that maybe i could actually have some success, despite my perceived black thumb.

so last weekend i got a window box, planted some seeds, and crossed my fingers. i've run to my kitchen window every day with the excitement of christmas morning, hoping to see some tiny green thing poking it's head out of the soil. and this weekend, my babies made their first appearance! i have since spent a lot of time looking out that window at my little sprouts, daydreaming of more window boxes, a real garden, warm soil between my fingers, and whole meals comprised of foods i had grown myself.

so these little sproutlets are not much to look at yet (so tiny!), but i guess everyone has to start small, right?

baby basil:



baby chives:



baby oregano:

may baby sweater

ok, i think this is my last green project, at least for now. but isn't it a cute one? it's elizabeth zimmermann's february baby sweater. i've wanted to make it for awhile, but didn't have any new babies to knit for, until now. luckily, my friend julia was kind enough to get pregnant (with a girl, no less!), so i got the chance. i am so smitten with this little sweater. it was a lot easier to make than i thought it would be - luckily, ravelry exists, where any questions you have about the weird, vague instructions for making the sleeves are explained. it was quick, too! i think this will be a go-to pattern for future baby girl gifts.


even before i went to buy the yarn to make it, i was picturing kind of a vintage-y color combination, and the second i saw the yarn, i knew i wanted to use it with red buttons. i think the two colors, though not a usual pairing, really work together. i love the little red apples (and you can see the trees outside my window in their reflection).

i gave this sweater to the mom-to-be at her shower yesterday, and it was well received. yay for new babies!

pattern details on ravelry (sorry, i know, that's so lazy, right?).

spring greens

after all my talk about browns, pinks, oranges, etc. being my version of 'earth,' i've turned around and made a bunch of green things for this month's installment of project spectrum. oh well. they can all be 'earth,' right?



anyway, a friend had a birthday coming up, and i thought that would be a good opportunity to make one of the string bags that were collecting in my ravelry queue. for this one, i chose the elisa's nest tote, from the purl bee. i knit this in the round, instead of dealing with a purl side and what looked to be pretty awful seaming. i'm glad i did that, but i wish i had split the front and back a few inches from the top - as it is, the opening of the bag is a little small, and i think this would have helped. something to remember next time! i also probably would make this a little wider and shorter - this bag stretches a LOT, and when there's stuff in the bag, it's really long and skinny. so a little width might improve it's in-use shape. but these are pretty small issues. overall, i think this bag turned out really well, and i would make it again. this was my first time using applied i-cord, and i'm happy with how professional it makes the bag look.

pattern: elisa's nest tote, purl bee
yarn: rowan 4-ply cotton, in fennel, almost exactly one ball
needles: size 9 for the bag itself, and size 3 for the i-cord handle

i've also been doing a little bit of sewing! a couple of weeks ago, carrie held a contest on her blog, with some vintage fabric and patterns as the prizes, and i won one of the prizes! this was all the inspiration i needed to break out my sewing machine, which had been collecting dust since christmas. look at all the pretties she sent me (plus some awesome vintage patterns):


i decided to use a couple of the fabrics to make another soft clutch from bend-the-rules sewing. i made a bunch of these as christmas gifts this year, but had yet to make myself one. time to remedy that!

front:


back:


and the cute umbrella fabric that i used as the lining:


thanks again carrie!

i'll be back soon with another green project that i'm really enjoying right now.

volunteer park cowl

i'm still working away on my sock, my endpaper mitt (well, not really, but i often think of it!) and my friend's b-day gift that i need to finish, but this week, i got a little bee in my bonnet and decided i HAD to make another cowl. like, right now.

cowl mania has set in in blog land, and i couldn't be happier about that. i made one last january, and i love it. i call it my handknit hug, because really, that's what it feels like when you wear it. who wouldn't love that? but i wanted a bigger, slouchier cowl. enter the dolores park cowl, which i've seen popping up all over blogs and ravelry. i was intrigued, but figured i'd make it some other time. i didn't really have the right yarn for it, and plus, well, i had lots of other things going, and it's spring....these excuses worked for about two days, but finally i decided to check out a yarn store that i hadn't been to before in seattle, and they had some malabrigo chunky in stock. i took this as a sign, and promptly bought a pretty, springy green skein. once i had the yarn, i quickly cast on while playing scrabble that evening, and about two and a half hours later, i had my cute new spring accessory. and the cowls win again! it's cute and warm, and i haven't taken it off since i finished.

a word about the yarn. i was a little dubious about trying the malabrigo chunky. i know everyone adores malabrigo, but i'm just not that into the worsted version. pilling is a big deal-breaker for me, and if there's one thing malabrigo worsted is good at, it's pilling. i'm not going to say this chunky version won't pill, but i have hopes (possibly misguided ones) that it won't pill quite as bad, since it is a 3-ply instead of a single. we'll see. it is wonderfully soft though, and for now, that's all that matters to me.


i took a little stroll yesterday to volunteer park, wearing my new cowl, so i'm dubbing this my volunteer park cowl. the details:

pattern: dolores park cowl, by six one seven
yarn: malabrigo chunky, in verde adriana, one skein
needles: denise size 13s. i used 15s to bind off.
mods: none, other than omitting one row, because i was afraid i would run out of yarn.

fire on earth

hello blog friends! it's been a while since i last posted, but i've been diligently working away on things. what things? well, as i mentioned in my last post, i started a project that, to me, fits in so perfectly with this new-ish round of project spectrum, earth. for most people, 'earth' probably suggests greens and browns, but to this arizona-raised girl, earth means yes, brown, but also gold, terra cotta, pink, red...basically, the colors of fire, the last round of ps, which i conveniently forgot to knit anything for. so i'm kind of combining the two rounds in one project, the embossed leaves socks (ravelry link).

i'm knitting these up with some str lightweight in oregon red clover honey. i can't say enough how lovely this yarn is. it's so rich and deep, and....accurate! it really looks like honey!

socks are a slow project for me, but i quickly knit up the first sock in a week, which for me, is a record.

see:


and here are a few more accurate shots of the color. i did my first eye of partridge heel for these, and i love it.



so my goal for this round of ps is to finish the pair (the second sock is already underway, though at a slightly slower pace as i struggle to get a birthday present done at the same time), and to also finish my second endpaper mitt, another good earthy project. i'm excited to get these beautiful projects done!

a gift for you

earlier this week, i signed up for jodi's pay it forward exchange. the idea is that she sends me, and two others, something in the next year, and in return, i pay it forward by doing the same. so here's the game:

“The idea of the exchange is I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on this blog post requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet, and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.”

so...anyone up for it? due to recent stress on my pocketbook, i'm going to limit this to u.s. people only. first three who speak up will get something fun from me!

as they say on ravelry...ugh!

here, finally, is my disaster of a back-to-school u-neck sweater. i started this all the way back in...october i think? and then promptly set it aside in favor of christmas knitting. i picked it back up in january, and finished it in february. it's been a roller coaster of emotions with this one...i started out very excited, thinking it was SO cute, then got bored by all that ribbing, then excited again because the waffle stitch was fun and quick, and then...i got to the neck band, got it all finished, tried it on, and it was way.too.floppy. a girl in my knitting group suggested i do a few decreases on the neck band to pull it in and make it lay flat, so i diligently ripped out my neck band and started it over. i think i took her advice too much to heart, because now instead of flopping, it puckers and pulls and is basically no longer a u-neck!


it probably doesn't look too bad here, and obviously, i could do the neck again and try to reach a happy medium on the floppiness scale, but for now, i'm considering it finished, and unwearable at that. at this point, i'm over the whole sweater in general. i feel like all of those horizontal rib bands just make the vest look fussy. and the band in the middle hits me mid-boob, instead of at the base of my rib cage, which is really, really unflattering. maybe someday i'll take the time to fix it, or maybe the yarn will get reporposed for something else. on a happier note, i have a new project on the needles, and it's beautiful, and perfect for the new round of project spectrum. more on that later!

cozy

thanks everyone, for the sweet comments on lu!

i was going to finally blog my failed u-neck vest today, but it's easter! i should focus on the good today, right? well, how about some cute, warm and functional leg warmers? last night i finished the super-easy legwarmers from last-minute knitted gifts, and here they are!

(i kind of tried to imitate the back cover of the book, but i didn't trust myself to photograph my own legs while standing on a chair!)

i had thought about making these for a while, but finally got the motivation to do so when i got that kidsilk haze in the fire sale i posted about earlier this month. the pattern calls for carrying a mohair yarn with cascade 220, and getting kidsilk haze for half off is pretty good inspiration, no? i also had filled up my punch card at my fave yarn store, and had $20 of free yarn coming my way, so i picked up a matching shade of cascade 220, and got to it! instead of costing, oh, $40, these cost me about $12, which makes them not quite so ridiculous i think.

anywho, it was my first time working with kidsilk haze, and while i don't think i would enjoy working with it quite so much on its own, it was absolutely lovely with the cascade 220. the yarn knit up in 1x1 rib created the SOFTEST and SQUISHIEST fabric you've ever felt. these babies are warm! and while they took considerable longer than the "2-4 hours" promised in the book, they still were pretty fast and nice and mindless. and i'm so happy with the end result! i will definitely be wearing these with skirts while it's still kind of chilly at night and in the morning, and i can see layering them under jeans in the winter.

pattern: super easy leg warmers, last minute knitted gifts
yarn: 2 balls cascade 220, in a teal color, and two balls of rowan kidsilk haze, in "trance"
needles: size 9 circular, for magic loop
mods: i went up a needle size and added a few extra stitches because i was afraid they would be too tight. i don't think it was really necessary in the end.

lovely lu

lu is finished and i couldn't be happier with it. so cute and springy! i bought the kit to make this at madrona and cast on as soon as i got home. it was quick and fun and just weird enough to keep me guessing and entertained throughout. lu is knit from side to side, all in one piece, with absolutely zero seaming. it was kind of an act of faith until i got through the first sleeve, because i just couldn't picture how it was going to work, and the pattern didn't include any sort of diagram. but it worked! the top is made using the same stitch pattern throughout and uses short-row shaping to create the sleeves. the unusual stitch pattern is called turkish stitch, and i swear it looks crocheted! in fact, when i saw the handmaiden herself wearing it at the village yarn and tea booth where i bought the kit, i didn't actually believe her when she said it was knitted.



pattern: lu, by perl grey
yarn: fleece artist scotian silk, 2 skeins, with about half a skein left over, in 'earth'
needles: size 10 1/2 denise needles
modifications: i added a pattern repeat to each front panel for a little more coverage. the pattern is one-size-fits-all, and it definitely would have fit, but i wanted it to fit more like how it does in the pattern picture, and my chest is just a little too big to manage that!

i should add that i really, really enjoyed working with the scotian silk. what beautiful yarn! it's a bulky yarn, 65% wool, 35% silk. it doesn't feel like a silk yarn, but the wool feels really soft and sleek. i would definitely use this yarn again.


oh! and i had to buy a little pin to close it up! i should probably get a real shawl pin, but this cute little birdy pin that i got on etsy will work for now.

yarn binge

i'm so glad we go on daylight savings this weekend (or are we going off? i can never remember how it works). the primary reason why i haven't been posting much lately is because i can't ever get good pictures during the work week, and then, during the weekends, i find myself too busy to blog. but i do have many things to blog about, to be sure! it's been a busy couple of weeks. i mentioned in my last post that i went to madrona, and i did finish the little wrap cardigan, lu, and it turned out very, very cute. i love it! i plan to get a good picture of me wearing it this weekend for sure. just to balance out the success of that project, i also have what turned out to be a disastrous finished object, my back-to-school u-neck vest. i'll post a pic of that later too, though not a modeled one. unless i do some serious reworking, that one is never, ever getting worn!


(you can see my cat sneaking into the picture in the top right corner!)

in the mean time, how about some stash enhancement? if you live in seattle, you no doubt heard about hilltop yarn and their recent electrical fire. no one was hurt, and in fact there really wasn't any damage to their stock either, but it was still considered damaged, so it couldn't be sold for full price. so last weekend, they had their fire sale, where everything in the store was half off. yes, half off! this sale reached epic and legendary proportions even before it started. everyone in my knitting group was talking about camping out a few hours before the doors opened in anticipation of a huge turnout. while i didn't resort to such drastic measures, i did make it to the sale, and i did pretty well, picking up a few balls of silk garden to try my hand at entrelac, some kidsilk haze to make the legwarmers from lmkg, and two balls of cashsoft dk to make minty's bainbridge scarf. plus a few pairs of addis in sizes i didn't have. all that for about $50! i was happy to do my part to help hilltop clear out their old stock to make room for the new.

as if that wasn't enough yarn excitement, i got an email saying that pureknits was having a closeout sale, and i finally bought the pear tree merino 4-ply that i've had my eye on for a long time (in a beautiful shade called 'turkey.'). so that's it--no more yarn buying for me for a while!

i'll really, truly be back very soon with pictures of some finished knitting!

merry christmas, mom!

how sad is it that i'm just now getting around to finishing up the last of my christmas knitting?! i guess the important thing is that it finally is really and truly done.

this is the montego bay scarf, from the the summer 2007 interweave knits. i used a skein of handmaiden sea silk, in a pretty ivory (with overtones of gold here and there), that i picked up at last year's madrona fiber festival. i wanted to use it for something special, and finally decided that my mom was a worthy recipient. i thought this pattern made for a simple but sophisticated scarf that would really suit my mom. so i cast on in OCTOBER (!) and still...i wasn't done by christmas. crazy, i know, but this scarf and i just never did get along. first off, i had a hard time with the slickness of the silk. that, paired with the mind-numbing boredom i experienced whenever i worked on the project, meant that i never worked on it for more than a few rows at a time. once i was done with the knitting, i still had to do the fringe! i actually enjoyed this part better, but it was still tedious: cutting over 200 pieces of the yarn, slipping the strands through the loops of the cast on and bind off edges, and then braiding each and every piece. i spent, in total, probably ten hours on the fringe alone over the course of january. that just seems insane! but now it really is done, and i feel such relief, as well as pride for the fact that it turned out great. and my mom loves it! still...i think next year, less christmas knitting for me.

speaking of madrona, i went this saturday with jenna and karma, and i had a great time. we all fell hard in the fleece artist/handmaiden section of the village yarn and tea booth. much damage was done to our wallets, but we all picked up something pretty. i got a kit for lu, which seems to have gotten me out of my knitting funk that i've been in for the past month. it's knitting up very fast, so pictures of a soon-to-be-done lu coming up!

baby legs

yikes! sorry for the long absence. not much knitting going on around here - or rather, i've been working on lots of projects, so progress seems slow. i've also been spending a lot of time focusing on the presidential election. i've become totally consumed with the whole process, and it's both exciting and totally draining/stressful. but i caucused today, for the first time. go obama!

anyway, i just wanted to pop my head in and say hi. i'll be back with some more knitting content soon. for now, here's one little project that i finished up last week: baby leg warmers! i used some crazy rainbow yarn that kristy gave me last year in a swap - the yarn is cleckheaton merino bambino, from australia. i figured if anyone can pull off rainbow leg warmers, it's a one-year-old, right?


i cast on 52 stitches, using size 1 addis for magic loop, and knit an inch of 2x2 ribbing, then knit till they looked about long enough, then did another inch of ribbing. i think they are slightly too small - i probably should have gone up to 56 or 60 stitches, but perhaps they can be worn as arm warmers when they get too small for legs. besides the pooling, which isn't so bad, i'm pretty happy with these. baby leg warmers! too cute!

blog land makes me happy

leah and jodi both made my friday with a 'you make my day' award. yay! leah, with her great taste in music (and a shared love of wes anderson), has been one of my favorite blogs to read from day 1. and jodi always posts great recipes and beautiful knitted projects, and is just lovely in general. thanks girls!

Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times.

so in addition to the above lovely ladies, i want to give the award to the following ten bloggers: people whose blogs i absolutely love, and always am inspired by. blogs that i rush to read when i see they have a new post in bloglines. this was such a hard choice! these ten are only a sample of my many, many favorites.

1. twinknit. i just love jennie! i've been reading her blog since i started reading blogs, and hers is still one of my favorites. i'm always inspired by her choice of projects, and i like hearing about her music studies. i miss all the posts about her life in rural appalachia though!

2. me, myself and kai. karen is so prolific in her crafting, and is talented at knitting, sewing, embroidering...plus i admire her frequency in blog posting, which is something i always strive to improve but never quite achieve. her star pillow pattern is on my to-make list. and her doggy is so darn cute!

3. brainylady. i just love her whole aesthetic--the yarn and fabric she chooses, the projects she makes...i'm always left feeling like, 'i want that!' i love hearing about her thrifting adventures as well.

4. carrie girl. one of my newer reads! carrie is a fellow gocco-er, and in addition is a talented seamstress and all-around crafter. plus she gets the coolest stuff at the midwest thrift stores she frequents.

5. chrysanthemum. a fellow seattle-ite, and we also have a shared love of trophy cupcakes (and, looking at her sidebar, eerily similar taste in books as well).

6. kitty genius. i have SUCH a crush on ashley's art, especially her little beardy men. plus, her success in making a living from doing what she loves is great to see, and reminds me that it can be done.

7. quelle erqsome. more than anything, emma's blog makes me laugh. her stories about work and home life are hilarious. and her zeal for buying new sock yarn is infectious. also a fellow cupcake lover!

8. knotty bits. i'm glad that maritza has taken up the knit blogging again, in addition to blogging about her cute, cute softies. her color choices leave me breathless--check out the daisy stitch hand warmers she's working on (and she's already inspired me to make at least one of her projects, same yarn choice and all: the chevron scarf).

9. knitting school dropout. melissa never fails to inspire me with her amazing, amazing sweaters. seriously, this girl has given me knitter's envy more times than i care to admit (and i dream of one day making her scottish tweed raglan sweater). plus, we have the same name!

10. zeitgeist. again with the pretty, pretty sweaters! kate doesn't just choose patterns that i also happen to like...she designs her own sweaters that i absolutely love. sweaters are not my strong suit...seeing sweaters like hers makes me want to get better.

that's it! thanks to you all for bringing a little cheer to my days.

a work in progress

thanks for all the kind words and support for my 2008 goals! though i have to admit...i'm failing somewhat already. i have done a terrible job of cutting back on sugar, and my first efforts at making jam...well let's just say i spent three hours yesterday making pink grapefruit marmalade, and instead ended up with two jars of hard candy that i'm pretty sure i will never be able to get out of the jars. good thing jars are cheap! (it's also worth noting that those two resolutions are in direct conflict with each other...there is a LOT of sugar in jam!) anyway, i will persevere with the jam-making efforts. i think next time i'll try some apple jelly.

one other thing i also want to be better about this year is showing more works-in-progress. i tend to only post about things when they're all done, which isn't much fun, and really, i think, not the point of blogging. so, seeing as i'm in the middle of quite a few projects at the moment and don't have any finished objects on the immediate horizon, i thought i'd show something i'm still working on. after making my raven mittens, i got the taste for doing some more color work. so i cast on for a project i've been dreaming of for some time, some endpaper mitts.



i struggled a bit with deciding on a color combination. i bought yarn for this project about a year ago: two skeins of louet gems in teal and green. but when i finally got around to starting the project, i decided the colors weren't contrast-y enough. so i decided i needed to buy more yarn! eventuallly i settled on some shibuiknits sock in bark, and some nature's palette in coral, both from the loopy ewe. perfect! i'm so in love with this combination, and i'm even more in love with the nature's palette yarn in general. the color is heartbreakingly beautiful, and the yarn is the perfect amount of squishy. so right away this project seems destined to be a winner. i'm almost done with the first mitt - i just need to do the ribbing around the top and the thumb. i can't wait to wear these!

looking forward, looking back

Knits of 2007
Originally uploaded by owlandacorn

here we are, well into january, but i'm still feeling reflective about the past year. craft-wise and otherwise, i did quite alot in 2007! it was also a pretty stressful year, with both good and bad stress: i lost a job and found a new one, i moved out of my house for two months while our kitchen was remodeled, we bought our first house (well, condo. but still!), and my brother moved from seattle to another country (sob!). i also made some great new friends, read 26 books, watched more movies than i could count, and completed 19 knitting projects (and failed to complete a few others).

i think my fave projects of the year were my silk garden socks, my le slouch, and my foliage. i learned this year that i'm a hat girl!

looking forward, i have quite a few goals for next year, all of which seem pretty attainable right now. my list:

1. take a spanish class (already signed up!).
2. bake bread in my new dutch oven.
3. beat the 26 books i read in 2007 - i'm aiming for 30. there was a time when i easily read twice that amount in any given year...now 30 will be a struggle, but i think i can do it.
4. learn to make jam.
5. learn more about food preserving in general, and preserve some food this summer for the winter.
6. eat something i've grown myself.
7. buy a real bed...our mattress is still just sitting on the floor. i'm not in college anymore! i think it's finally time.
8. knit at least one sweater.
9. sew some clothes, starting with a skirt.
10. try my hand at crewel.
11. make a small quilt.
12. the one that will definitely be hardest for me...eat less sugar!