Check It!

Lookie what came in the mail today!

BOOKS!

These are the s-m-r-t books about women's lives in Regency, Victorian, and Georgian England. I also got a couple of mass market fantasy novels to read while I'm in Mexico this month, season 6 of How I Met Your Mother, and season 1 of Big Bang Theory; but those aren't quite so important-looking so they didn't make it into the picture. They also already had places on my shelves, while these need a solid foot of room next to one another. Did I hear someone say "more bookshelves"?

I've been thinking more about knitting a sweater this month, and I've pretty much decided against it. I have a lot of knitting already going on that I'd like to finish in order to complete the 11-Mile Quest, and it's already the fourth of November! Plus there's the wedding coming up in early December that I'd like to knit a shawl for if possible. I've been on a finishing kick over the last couple of days; the nearly-finished items sitting on my coffee table finally banded together and glared at me hard enough that I pulled out my darning needle and went to town:

Day-Glo Socks, Regia and Araucania Solid, 263 yds.

Plain k3p1 rib socks over 56 stitches. How about that neon, huh? Wow.

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock "Chocolate" and Lisa Souza Hardtwist Merino Petite "South Pacific," 414 yds.
(Large white paperclip for scale)

This was an experiment that I'm quite pleased with! I held both yarns double throughout, and ended up with only 3g total left over. How's that for using up half-skeins of yarn!?! I got the idea from Brie, who regularly doubles up her huge Palette stash to make sweaters with unreal yardage and thus achieves her mileage goals much more often than I do.

Karabella Aurora 8 "Ocean," 159 yds.

I was tickled pink to find these wooden buttons in my button tin last night! I don't remember buying them or even whether I had a specific project in mind for them, but I'm thrilled with how they contrast with the blue of the cowl. They're anchored in the back with random 3/4" buttons so that they don't pull against the yarn itself.

I just realized that none of these 3 projects ever even made it to my Ravelry projects page. That's how scattershot my knitting has been lately! For the end of the year, I'd like to finish my Tide Pool Pi and Rosebud shawls, as well as the Verbena yarn and perhaps the Sacred Tempest if it can stop driving me crazy. I have an idea about re-knitting the sleeves from the shoulder down so I can try them on as I go that might make it worthwhile.

But first, a project I've been sitting on for FAR too long.

Decisions, Decisions

I don't know if you've looked around in the last day or so, but it's November, my poppets. Where I grew up, November would mean we'd had our winter clothes out for over a month already, that the air smelled like cold, and that five months of slush were about to fall out of the sky. Not enough to make a white Christmas, mind you. Just enough to be miserable and make the roads treacherous when it got dark - which was between about 3pm and 8am.

Here in California, however, the cooler weather (a predicted high of 75 today) means that my tomatoes have found a new lease on life:

I sometimes think that this is too far south for me. There is definitely sweater-and-scarf weather here, but true jacket weather is something I don't encounter unless I go up to Lake Tahoe. Speaking of which, that's happening this weekend and I've discovered that with the exception of Cute Fall Boots and one pair of running shoes, I have no footwear that covers both my toes and the tops of my feet. My "winter" shoes are Doc Marten's Mary Janes, for goodness sake!

Ahh, how far the Alaskan has fallen. Unlike the leaves on the trees outside my window.

My October knitting was somewhat lackluster, but I do have some almost-finished objects to show you! When I did my Great Stash Cataloguing of 2011, I pulled out a couple of skeins of yarn that could make some good quick knits. I got around to one of them in the form of this:

Lace Ribbon Cowl, Karabella Yarns

A simple pattern that looks pretty impressive when it's finished is always nice! I knitted it flat and it just needs the ends sewn in and buttons. I don't think I'll even bother with buttonholes; instead I'll just tuck the buttons into the lace wherever is appropriate!

This will eventually be a baby sweater:

Even though at the moment it looks like nothing whatever, all it needs are sleeves and blocking. I was originally going to knit matching baby sweaters for my friends Piper and Kelly, but since Kelly isn't finding out the sex of her baby until December when her husband comes home from Afghanistan and Piper isn't the sort of person to put her baby girl in blue, I instead promised them sweaters after Kelly knows what she's having. Plus, this "newborn sweater" would probably fit Evelyn. Who is two.

Coconuts not included.

In the mean time, the OTHER sweater attempts have become something I haven't knitted in quite awhile:

Socks!

I only have one skein of that striped stuff, so I'm combining it with some Arucania sock yarn I got cheap from WEBS last year. It's a cheerful combination, non? And there will be enough left over in the green to make a whole pair of socks later.

I've also come to the border of my Tide Pool Pi shawl with just over 25% of my yarn left to go - right on target! Now I just need a border pattern. I'm actually going to dig through my collection today and see if I can find something suitable.

And lastly, it's National Sweater Knitting Month, that offshoot of National Novel Writing Month in which knitters try to knit a whole sweater in - you guessed it - a month. I'm waffling on this one; should I really start a new project with the end of my 11-Mile Quest looming on the horizon? You've all seen how terrible I am at finishing fitted garments. Perhaps instead I should tackle the too-tight sleeves on my Sacred Tempest sweater and finish the damn thing. But then there's the Vivian sweater, and the Blackberry Cabled Cardigan, and of course the fabled Central Park Hoodie.

What's a girl to do?