Can you say "gung-ho"?

Last night I cast on for the hemlock ring blanket. I ventured into the land of magic loop (for the first time ever!) successfully on my shiny new 40" size 10 Inox needle. I am very happy with my purchase. It was very affordable and is doing an excellent job. I knit like I was possessed.

Today is day two of knitting, and I have passed 57 rounds on the blanket - 216 stitches currently on the needle. this is a very satisfying knit. I stopped just to take and edit a (crappy) photo and update on the progress. I'm going to have to wind up another ball here tonight!

I know that people who have knit this blanket have said that it goes fast, but I didn't imagine this. Once you get past the initial flower, there's one row of increases and decreases for the feather and fan pattern, and then 4 rows of plain knit. This makes for great T.V. knitting. I pay attention for one row out of 5 and it's flying by.

Because this is going by so much faster than I anticipated, I think I might cast on for my third pair of endpaper mitts sometime within the next two days. Those usually take a couple of weeks of non-diligent knitting to knock out, and they need to be done ASAP. One thumb on glove one (or three) for Nathan and that's done...and then the real challenge of the season will be to do the print 'o the wave stole for my grandparents.

Ever since I had my wonderfully quick repeat worked (12 rows) I haven't touched it. That's the next big thing on the list after the blankety goodness is done. Here I go to work on it! ...and then wind some more yarn! One skein in a day (ish?) I don't know what has gotten into me, but it feels great.

Involuntarily blocking my head pieces is un-fun.

I just rode my bike home in the midst of what felt like a small monsoon, but was really just boring old rain. I actually had to peel my pants off when I got home - I was that soaked. I had my 100% wool calorimetry on my head, though, and it seems to have stretched out a bit - it's been falling down my face for a few days, and now it's just flopping at me. Woe. But now I'm warm and dry and have fed my face and am ready to do some homework and some knitting, because my 40" needle came in the mail today!

So Nathan got me 3 skeins of cascade 220:

I was messing around with the image in photoshop in an attempt to make the webcam picture look less like crap, that's why it looks strange. In doing so, the picture is neat and all, but the color is waaaay off. Just pretend it's a nice burgundy. Yeah, see how nice it is?

Technically, I could have started working on the blanket with my size 10 dpn's a long time ago. But for whatever reason, I had it in my head that I couldn't start anything until I had a 40" circular. Oh well. Tonight it begins! Hooray! I've been wanting to cast on for this project forever!

...I get to do it right after I finish my physics homework.

Ah, post-holiday holiday knitting.

I have to apologize for the lack of posting. I promise it isn't from a lack of knitting, it's just that I think too many word-filled posts are boring, and since my digital camera takes really horrible pictures, I don't use it.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable thanksgiving experience. Mine was pretty nice, although a little more time visiting with my parents would have been nice. A full house makes one-on-one time kind of difficult when there are always people talking to you. But it was nice to have the time I did have.

Nathan and I ate two thanksgiving dinners - one at his family's house at 3, and one at my house at around 6. I didn't feel so good that night. Hehehehe.

But now that the feasting is finished, the knitting is looming before me. The list I have of the things I need to knit is taunting me, challenging me. This will be the biggest challenge for me yet as a knitter. I visited a local yarn shop a couple of days ago to stock up on a few things I needed:

• one ball of lamb's pride worsted weight wool/mohair in green, one ball a heathered brown
• one set of US 4 straight bamboo needles
• one set of US 2 DPNS

The lamb's pride is for gloves (round two!) for Nathan. He liked the ones I made him, and has been wearing them, but the fingers are too short. I made the fingers just a teeny tiny bit too short, so he's worried about them getting ripped up. But he has commented on how warm they keep his hands, which is what I was going for. So I've got a pair of green gloves in a thicker material with longer fingers going right now. Glove one needs 3 more fingers.

The bamboo needles are for the print 'o the wave stole. I was using some of my grandmother's metal needles, but the points were blunt, the needles were horrifically slippery, and I was almost to tears with frustration at how slow things were going by the time I finished the first pattern repeat. So I went out and bought some bamboo needles, and the first repeat went by in about a quarter of the time it took me to do on metal needles. Hooray, it suddenly seems like I might actually be able to finish the piece!

Lastly, the DPNS are for socks. I have some size twos (all of my needles were a gift from my grandmother. Her hands just don't have the capability to knit anymore, so when I picked up knitting, she walked into her office, rooted around for a while, and returned with a box marked "knitting needles" with old circular, plastic, and metal needles, along with a few vintage patterns. YAY.), but they're plastic and kind of bendy and I'm always afraid I'm going to break them, plus I just don't like the way they feel. I got metal DPN's...some for socks, and some for doing yet another set of Eunny Jang's endpaper mitts. This makes 3 pairs for me! Haha!

In other news, I finished my friend's hat. It was submitted to him for approval a few minutes ago, and he loves it! Pictures to follow tomorrow, provided I can find Nathan's camera. His room looks like a clothing bomb went off. Aaaah!

Hooray for updates, eh?

...got a fat head?

I'm not sure exactly where the line between "normal" and "fat" head is drawn, but I'm going to guess that 24" is probably a fairly large noggin. Why am I wondering about hat sizes? I've been starting, ripping, and reknitting a hat for a friend of mine for the last two weeks. Either I'm unhappy with the design, or I make it too small...or I just hate it in general. But now, I've decided on the design, I've been working on it, and I realized that I messed up in my gauge measurements.

This is helpful to illustrate with an image. Here is the previous incarnation of the hat:

I measured my gauge from this k1, p1 ribbing and determined I was getting 7 stitches to the inch. I made all of my calculations and looked at a few other men's beanie patterns and decided a 21.5" circumference would be good - enough room to fit, but fit snugly.

So I started knitting.

In stockinette.

...yeah...

I am now getting 6 stitches to the inch, and it appears as though hat is headed for a circumference of 24". I haven't ripped it yet, just because I am going to ambush the recipient with a tape measure either today or tomorrow. He's a rugby player, which, for some reason, makes me think he has kind of a big head. I'm not sure why I have that thought in my brain, though. Fingers crossed - let's hope his head is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25"-26". If not...I'll rip, and redo my math, and finally get the thing done for him.

Knitting would be so much easier if I took the time to do all the things I needed to do before starting! Heheh.

FINISHED: NATHAN'S SIMPLE GLOVES

Pattern: Knitty's Cigar.
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca, less than 1 skein
Yarn Source: The Knit Shop
Gauge: I dunno. Heheh.
Needles: US size 5 DPN's
Pattern modifications: I made the gloves a solid color, and continued all of the fingers rather than only knitting to the knuckle on three fingers, like the pattern does.

Notes:
He wanted some really simple, really warm gloves, so that's what he's getting! The colors seem to change every single time I look at this yarn...I hope he isn't too bothered by that. He said if I knit them, he would wear them, so I guess they'll work out. I'll give them to him on Saturday.

Also, these were super fast to knit. Although I know it took me somewhere around 2 weeks to do this, you could probably easily do these in a day, as long as doing all of those fingers doesn't drive you crazy first. I hate weaving in ends. But the end result looks pretty good. Hooray!

Holidays...what?

So I recently realized that it's November. And November is typically followed by December which means it's that time of year...and this year I'm knitting things. This is new for me. I knit a few things last year, but they weren't very well planned out, or the things I was going to try to make were rather unrealistic. This year, I've tried to stay on top of things. I bought some yarn (and a friend bought some yarn for me to make her something, too) last weekend.

There's some pink and pink yarn for yet another pair of endpaper mitts:

Gotta love the baby ull. Mmmmhmm.

Also, I picked up some really neat sock yarn that was on sale. I cannot resist le sale bins. I've never heard of it before. It's called Ditto, and it's a 75% superwash 25% polyamide, which is fine. I've started knitting with the more brightly colored of the two balls, and it looks REALLY neat. I'm looking forward to finishing a few pairs with this stuff.

Lastly, I grabbed a couple of balls of this really really nice 100% baby alpaca laceweight yarn. I asked the woman at the store where I could find lace or cobweb weights, and she said: "You're pretty brave!" I'm not quite sure what that's supposed to mean, but she was very friendly and showed me a few example pieces of the laceweight yarns she had available. This stuff isn't terribly fuzzy, which I like. It's a gorgeous deep reddish burgundy with a little bit of shine to it. This will definitely be a Christmas present/housewarming gift for my grandparents. Mmmhm. Print 'o the wave stole. I hope.

I have two more fingers and a thumb left to go on Nathan's gloves (by Saturday). No sweat there. I did rip and redesign (again) my friend's hat, but I think I've finally got something that'll work. I seem to recall having said something like this last time, but oh well.

Boring update I know, but since I'm doing knitterly things, I felt the need to share.

Dude.

I was browsing blogs just now, and I was reading over at dogged knits when I found a link to what is called Irish Cottage Knitting. In the link, the Yarn Harlot demonstrates this method of knitting. Check it out. Seriously, go now if you haven't already seen this.

Ok, watched it?

My God.

Now, I know I'm not a very fast knitter. But I can still make a fairly good amount of progress on a piece in a day, even knitting in my own weird little way (I have a bizarre purling method, but it works for me). But this method seems so unbelievably fast! I'm not really sure if I'm capable of learning it anytime soon, but maybe it'd be worth it to give it a shot the next time I'm making a plain old sock. I sure wouldn't mind being able to knit that fast! It'd definitely have an impact on how much faster projects get done, for me.

Whew.

Makes me wanna cast on for something else now, even though that probably isn't a good idea. At the moment, I have these things in progress:

• Gloves for Nathan (1 down, halfway there!)
• A hat for my friend which I keep ripping and redesigning because I'm masochistic or something
• The second of two swirly socks for me (am I ever going to finish it?)
• The variation of the Norwegian stockings by Nancy Bush (You know, the ones that sucked? And that I knit way too small for some reason?)
• My brother's Boston scarf, which needs to be ripped and re-knit.
  

I guess that's not actually as much as I thought. Huh. BUT! Next week I'll be getting the materials to start the Hemlock Ring Blanket for my parental units for the holiday season. I'm also really strongly considering knitting a throw or shawl or something as a housewarming present for my grandparents, who recently moved into a new house in southern california. While I was re-reading Eunny Jang's blog I noted a cobweb weight yarn she used for a few projects, and I think I might be in love. It's Merino Oro, and comes in skeins of around 1300 yards for $16.00. That's a college student deal if I ever heard one.

The drawback to this is kind of...icky.

I don't have a ball winder.

Ouch. We'll see. I'd love to do it, though.

Hooray holiday knitting, eh?

Getting organized

Yesterday when I came home, I walked in and one of the first things my lovely roomie said to me was: "Hey, do you think you can move your knitting stuff to the cupboard under the bar?"

I started nodding before I even looked at the mountain that had started to form around the chair I had been sitting in lately. I'd been meaning to take the stuff back upstairs or at least try to figure out a way to make some semblance of order out of all my knitting bags and baskets. Somehow about half of my stash (and my needle box) had managed to migrate downstairs. I brought down the remainder of my stash and started to sort. I found no less than 4 old acrylic, huge, giant, crappy beanies, a ton of acrylic yarn, and a bunch of stuff I had no idea what to do with.

So I sorted.

And sorted.

And ended up putting all 4 hats on my head at once, too.

I went from this:

to this:

No, all of the yarn did not get tossed. I sorted it. I can't believe I finally did it, but I sorted it. I now have bags in the aforementioned bar cupboard stuffed with yarn, and I have them categorized. There is a bag with really old acrylic stuff I'll likely never use. Maybe I can make some dishtowels out of it or something. There is a bag of stuff that an auntie brought me once - her twin daughters had a knitting fad...and then it wore off, and they had a ton of yarn lying around the house, so I got it. Most of it is either homespun or exciting novelty yarn - I might be able to use it someday. Then, there's the bag of things I should really rip out. This isn't a very big bag - just stuff that I need to take care of so that I can save the yarn and put it to good use somewhere else.

So, what's in the knitting bag now? I stuck my current projects there - they're small at the moment. I also included the yarn that I'll probably be using soonest in the future - the last of my rowanspun dk, some more silja sock yarn, and a few other miscellaneous bits. I feel so...organized.

Now there's just my room to tackle. Trust me, you don't wanna see pictures of that one.

Feeling grumbly...

Ever just have a day or two (or even a month or something) where you just feel grumpy, for not really any reason? I'm in a funk like this. It was worse yesterday, but it has kind of carried over into today. I'm not upset with anyone or anything, I'm just kind of..."eh" about things at the moment. I did have a few moments of sheer idiocy this week that may have contributed to this grumbly feeling, however.

• Upon arriving home monday morning and moving to make myself some coffee before work, I managed to peel back the lid of the tub 'o coffee, catch coffee grounds with the edge of the lid, and fling coffee grounds into a corner of my kitchen. Grumbling ensued, and I was 15 minutes late to work cleaning it up.
• This morning, after eating my breakfast and drinking my coffee before work, I stood up to leave the house when I checked my pocket and found my keys were missing. I ran upstairs to check my purse - nope. Ran back downstairs and checked around in all of my knitting stuff - nope. Checked my backpack - nope. I finally discovered the keys were already in the pocket of my sweatshirt, which I had on under my jacket. I am ten minutes late to work (I don't think anyone noticed).
• Upon arriving to work, I discover that I have completely forgotten to bring my usual can 'o soup lunch. I even have a can opener in my bag, but no soup. I do, however, have a granola bar. This probably will not sustain me until six, so after Japanese, I go to a place on campus to see what I can get a lot of for cheap. Panda express sells a pretty big box of fried rice for $2.85. Perfect, that'll do it. I order my rice, go to pay for it, and hand the girl my card. "EXPIRED!" she says! I want to slap myself in the face. I have the new one at home, I just completely forgot it. So I relinquish my treasured debit card and trundle on back to work.

I'm currently reporting from work, and I'm kind of afraid to move for fear that I will cause a small explosion, what with the luck I've been having. On the bright side of things, however, I have a bunch of yummy rice to eat, I have some homework to do so I can stay busy, and I only have one more day of "blah-ness" (that's a technical term) until the weekend is finally here. My goodness, it can't come fast enough.

Last night I took some pictures of things in the works. I bought some yarn yesterday for a friend who has asked for a hat:

This is one skein each of lamb's pride superwash in Lichen (the green) and Sable (the brown). 200 yards in each ball, and it's something that can be thrown in the washing machine without worry, which I figured was a good idea for something a college-age man is wearing. I just have to somehow get him to remember not to throw it in the dryer.

Next, I've nearly got the first of Nathan's gloves finished:

It would have been done a couple days ago, but I just typically don't have much time to sit and knit when I'm here at home. I hope to finish this off tonight - it'll give me a week to do glove number two. I like it when I don't have to rush projects.

Lastly, just for giggles, here's the sock that reminded me that I am perfectly capable of making stupid decisions for no apparent reason. It looks so pretty and innocent in its reds and whites...the cuff simply calls out: "try me on!"

So what can I do but listen to the sock? After all, I am merely a weak mortal, and this sock is too tempting to pass up. Of course, this is when I am slapped in the face:

I sigh, and repeat to myself slowly: "I like knitting. I like knitting. I like knitting" before reaching for that superwash beanie on the circular needle. Silly.

I am king.

I just had to notify the world that yes, indeed, I have moved to a blogging service that I am at long last happy with, and that functions PERFECTLY on both Internet Explorer and Firefox. Other browsers, I'm not so sure. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

New blog is pretty. New blog functions correctly and I actually know how to update it because all of the information I need is contained right there in one little HTML file. I couldn't be happier!

On the fiber front:

I've got some 50% alpaca, 50% wool gloves on the needles for Nathan for our third year anniversary. I swear, this yarn...(Berroco Ultra Alpaca) when I picked it out in the store, I saw reds and browns in it. It practically oozed manliness. When I wound the ball, it looked kind of brownish maroon. Yet, when I'm knitting it, depending on what light I'm in, it looks kind of purply-blue! Nathan has pointed out to me that these are rather unmanly colors. But he still smiled and said if I made them, he'd wear them. Aww.

I also spent several hours of my Saturday knitting a REALLY COOL sock that doesn't fit. I have no idea what I was thinking, seriously. I calculated my gauge, found a neato Fair isle pattern, and successfully knit the whole thing, then tried to stick it on my foot, and couldn't get it over my heel. Then I found out that I'm an idiot. I needed 8 inches around, I knit 6.6 inches. I think someone needs to slap me for that one. I honestly have no idea what I was thinking.

Good story, I know.

Lastly, Nathan has notified me that for our third year anniversary (as his gift to me), he wants to take me to a yarn shop and let! me! pick! out! something! for a project! Just as long as I promise not to like...leave him homeless or anything like that. He told me about this grand scheme because he wanted me to have time to think about a project I'd like to make and what I would need to make it. So, I think it'll have to be the Hemlock Ring Blanket by Jared Flood. I've wanted to make it for so so sooo long, and it'll make a great Christmas present.

I can't wait!

Ugh

So I'm really making an attempt to get the blog to do what I want, but greymatter just isn't powerful enough. There's just not the same features with greymatter as there are on say...movable type or wordpress. I'm toying around with wordpress now and I'm going to see if maybe I can convert the whole thing over...I'm slowly beginning to learn that my knowledge about HTML is horrifically outdated. And that validator button in the sidebar is terrifying.

I'm sorry!

On the bright side, I got some yarn. And I started knitting a new sock.

UPDATE: Okay, screw it. This blog functions correctly and I'm just too technologically stupid to figure out how to make everything work. So too bad. Bleh.

Goodbye

Today I finally made the decision. The pattern which I have abandoned and then returned to (and then messed up and thrown in a corner) is no longer of this world.

Goodbye, Shedir:

Instead, it'll be some (hopefully) really neato socks I'm trying to cook up.

We'll see!