Saturday, January 28, 2012

Knitting Observations

I often forget to change needle size after doing ribbing. That is a piss off.

More wine = slower knitting. Also a piss off.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Oh yeah!

I also did up a pair of SpillyMitts. They are from the brilliant Spilly Jane. If you are on twitter, she is one to follow. SO interesting and funny. And her stories about her bird Pooky are a riot. She's based in Windsor and does the most amazing mitten patterns. These ones are done in Patons Classic Tweed. Quick, easy & warm on the bum arm.


I pulled out my swift last night and started winding the Elspeth Lavold Silky Wool to start on the Honeycomb vest. Two observations: 1, that you know you have real wool when every once in a while you need to pull out some nature detrius, and 2, there's a surprising amount of yarn in these skeins! That's how the designers get you - you fall in love with their incredible fibre, then find that there's only 100m on the skein, so you need to buy 300 skeins (okay, slight exaggeration) to make your project, and each skein is $12 each (not much of an exaggeration there at all).

This swift is hilarious. Well, not the swift, but the cat's reactions to it. Bronte sat on the coffee table like Snoopy being a vulture, watching it spin. I kept expecting her to pounce, but she got tired of waiting for something more exciting to happen, I guess, so she went off to Rosebud's bed for a nap.

Sulis sat under the piano with huge eyes, watching it spin. I took a break for a bit to have a snack, and she came over & started batting it with her paws. I tried to play with her by making it spin, but as soon as it started turning on its own she freaked and ran away. It was quite cute.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Christmas is for Knitters!

There was stuff. There was food. There was finally some snow! And there was an adorable niece belting out karaoke songs much more advanced than should have been sung by a 4 year old (I'm looking at you, Katy Perrry) but fortunately she has her own interpretation of things like 'going all the way'. And she rocks at Gaga's Born This Way.

As for me & my needles, well, there wasn't much created this year. It's been such an appalling winter thus far. Rain, rain, and more rain. Did that require an Oxford comma? Are we doing away with the Oxford comma? Hmm...must look into it. Anyway, all the rain makes for a very damp atmosphere. And very damp atmospheres are very hard on the surgical steel-reinforced arms. I actually woke up from the pain one night. Had to dig out my electric heating pad, wrap it around my arm & attempt to go back to sleep. It hasn't been this bad in years, not since I lived in London.

So before the pain hit, this is what I knit my sister Deanna (excuse the horrible pics, please, they were supposed to just be 'place holders' on ravelry, until I took proper ones at Christmas, but I forgot to!). The pattern is Bronwyn. I saw something similar on the Miu Miu runways for spring, but tied off-centre around the shoulders instead of the neck like I have here. I liked it that way. Unfortunately, Deanna got a lot of scarves and shawlettes for Christmas! She had them all on at one point, and got a little overheated.


I started a pair of socks for my brother in law. He is huge. He's 7 feet tall and wears a size 14 shoe. Needless to say, finding a pattern to fit him was impossible. So I invented my own. But I didn't get very far before the pain in the arm hit, so I bought him another gift and whenever the socks get finished, I'll send them his way. But I really should ask Deanna to measure his foot for me. They just seem way huge to me. But I think I gave the pattern an appropriate name - Sasquatch Socks!


From my parents I got the wonderful Northern Knits book (already full of post-it notes for potential projects) and some patterns from Twist Collective that I told my mum I liked. Then, after Christmas, my mum & I made the trip down to St. Thomas to my favourite store, The Little Red Mitten. I picked up Brave New Knits - it's got some amazing patterns from bloggers in it, and I think there were maybe 2 things in the entire book that didn't appeal to me. That's a quality purchase!


My mum lent me this thingy (really, I don't know what to call it) that her physiotherapist had given her to wear on her bum knee to keep it warm. It didn't fit her, so she gave it to me for my arm. It really helped, so I got the brilliant idea of knitting myself some arm warmers! While at the store, I picked up a wack of yarn, totally blowing my budget of course. The koigu is for the Fallberry arm warmers, the Zitron unisono is for the Nereid ones, the Classic Elite Liberty Wool is for the Hawthorne hat & mitts from Twist, and that glorious green Elspeth Lavold Silky Wool is for the Honeycomb vest that I can't wait to work on!


But wait, there's more!

Between Michael's and Spinrite on the way home, I stocked up with good old reliable Patons Classic Wool - I love this stuff. It's cheap and it's good. So I bought enough for projects:

Soria Vest

Central Park Hoodie


While at Spinrite I made the mistake of touching this:


So I had to buy it. I don't quite know what it will be - socks? Armwarmers? I just had to have it. If you knit, you understand.

Oh and how could I forget? My new pride & joy - my namaste circular needle case. Now my needle roll actually rolls closed because there are no circulars in it!! Yay!!


And now? Back to my knitting.