.22 Down, 11.78 to Go!

The first knit of 2012 is complete! 

Austermann Step Yarn, 382 yds.

Late Christmas socks for my papa. Standard K3P1 rib with what I think is an Eye of the Partridge heel. My dad isn't really into crazy colors - and these qualify as "crazy colors" to that Federal employee - so I'll  over-dye them a little so the white places are also a shade of tan. I'm quite pleased with how well they matched up! 

Next up is a pair for my stepmother, Lisa. 

Seacoast Handpaints Panda Yarn, "Bee Balm"

This will end up being Thelonius socks. I spent a happy evening last night winding yarn at my coffee table and watching Leverage, then I cleaned out a random basket that was sitting around - how do I end up with random baskets? I never think of myself as a "basket person" (basket CASE, maybe...) and yet they're lying about - and put all my Late Christmas Pre-Knitting (aka yarn) into it. Efficiency! Focus! Late night caffeine! 

In keeping with my streak of not spending weekends at home since August, I'm heading down to San Jose on Friday to see a Tennessee Williams play with some friends and then attend Jasmin's baby shower. Little Genevieve made her debut yesterday at 4pm, adding the definite eventuality of baby-huffing to the enjoyment of seeing good friends and the wool fumes of a well-stocked yarn store!

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.

Like So Many Things...

I didn't succeed in finishing 7 miles of knitting by October first. I really like lofty goals, especially because when I don't meet them I'm not overly fussed. I really, really would like to finish the 11-Mile Quest by December 31, though. For reals.

I did manage to churn out a bunch of knits, stay project-focused (mostly), and rekindle my love of spinning. I also managed to not buy any more yarn.  I made a very successful Yarn Trade with Spilly Jane in which I gave her my poor unloved Kauni and she gave me some Mad Tosh Merino Light and some Knit Picks Shadow - I'm pretty sure I won that round, but shhh! The overall yardage in was higher than the yardage out, but at least it's yards I'll actually end up knitting. My last September finished knit is my Sacred Scarf, which I cast off and sewed the ends into almost exactly as my train from the Bay Area pulled in to Sacramento yesterday evening. I'm quite pleased with it and will not be giving it away no matter who asks. Unless it's The 4 Closer, because she's effing incredible and I would bribe her with knitting to be my friend if I thought she'd let me. 

Regia Silk/Wool and Cascade Heritage Silk, 652 yds. total

But anyway. 

I have a bunch of things with a good amount of yardage knitted into them already. My High Seas shawl has only 60 rows and the edging to be done, the Tide Pool Pi is less finished but it's been TV knitting, which has to share time with TV spinning (and you know how well that's been going! Yay!). My Rosebud Shawl hasn't seen much action, but a girl can only focus on so many things at once, right? Plus I haven't quite figured out Fleegle's no-purl garter stitch method, so there is a LOT of purling. Ick.

And then there are the bebehs. I'm going to a joint baby shower with two of my good friends on October 29th. They're besties and of course are due right around the same time, but in a fit of pique that can ONLY be aimed at me, one of them refuses to figure out the gender of her baby until it's born. I ask you, how am I supposed to knit matching baby outfits if I don't know whether or not I can make this adorable baby dress?

Evelyn thinks this is SO RUDE. 

And then there's a wedding on December 10th in Arizona that I have to go to, and my Awful Ex will be there so naturally I need to look smashing and have something I can throw over my shoulders that exactly matches my dress and I can say, "Oh, this old thing?" Because that's how you do when you see your Awful Ex at a wedding and you're the only single people there. My secret weapons are: a Groupon for 6 weeks of CrossFit and the 2 weeks I'll be spending in Mexico in November.  And some killer shoes.*

Well, it lacks 50 minutes to October first, so I think I'll plug myself back in to Pride and Prejudice and see if I can knock some of those rows out of the High Seas shawl. I could conceivably finish it tomorrow, and then there would be pictures! 

*Whether they slay him or kill me first is up for debate.

For Those Who...

The Rosebud Shawl is an "audiobook knit." That is to say, I can't knit on it and watch TV - no matter how cerebral (or not ::coughBuffycough::) that television may be - but I can listen to an audiobook and make fairly regular progress.

So for TV watching and mileage-increasing purposes, I pulled out the Moderne Baby Blanket (pdf link!) that I started back in 2009 when Evelyn was the size of a can of beans in her mother's womb. In true knitterly fashion, the blanket is finally finished in plenty of time for her second birthday!

Knit Picks Comfy yarn in Blackberry, Planetarium, Honeydew, and Cashew. 1603 yards.

I really liked not needing to block this or wash it or ANYTHING before it was considered finished! I'm toying with the idea of knitting another one; I've got 5 skeins each of off-white and chocolate brown Comfy in my stash, so it would only require two more colors (or 1.5 more colors since I have almost 2 skeins left of both the Blackberry and Planetarium). For those who care, I followed Kelly Petkun's advice of doing an applied i-cord edging instead of a garter stitch one. I like the finished look much better, although if (ok, when) I end up doing this again I'll probably do both a garter stitch border and an i-cord edging for extra contrast around the block pattern.

Alas, my Knitting Schedule has reared its ugly head and I don't have time before my deadlines to knit any more simple garter stitch projects. Or maybe I do... ::looks at the list of babies due in the next 6 months::

For those keeping track (me), there are 44 days left until October 1st, when I would like to have finished knitting and/or spinning 7 miles-worth of yarn. There are 5,558 yards left to complete, so that makes 126 yards per day. YIKES! I gotta go...

My Favorite Baby

I went to visit Jer and Eliz in San Francisco last week and took full advantage of the time to huff my favorite niece:

Now with more yogurt!

She's now just over 22 months old.

And obviously cute as a button. What does that even mean, anyway?

She's definitely still a tiny little thing.

But that little package holds a whole lot of hilarity.

And also teeth. 

Plus, I've finally graduated from being "N-T Kaka" to being TIKA!

Seeekrit Reveal!

My favorite part of making Seekrit Stuffs is the waiting for them to arrive.

I sent it on Monday!

In the mean time, this is my friend Dinah's blog. I met her through my equally cool (if much farther away) friend Kate, who is now in Prague. I am jealous. And this is her (Dinah's) also cool husband Mac's blog. Together, they are the kind of people I would like to be if I weren't, y'know, ME.

They have a pair of dogs named Miss Moneypenny and Captain Awesome, turned their back porch into a Tiki bar, listen to amazing music, have forgotten more about pop culture than you or I will ever know, and host an annual Oscars party that makes the actual Oscars look boooring.

If you look through Mac's previous posts, it becomes obvious that they not only made a baby, but that said baby might be the World-Dominating Overlord that only two such cool people could create. Therefore I felt it to be my knitterly duty to provide said Overlord with the proper accoutrements for the required lessons in Fort Creation, Cape Wearing (incl. Swooshing/Over-the-Shoulder Tossing), and Parent Snuggling:

Spider-man Blanket
1738 yds.

Yesterday, the Future arrived, and so did the welcome package - although both Dinah and Mac were a bit busy at the hospital to be home to receive it. Congratulations, you guys! There's love and good wishes in every stitch.


And all you knitters out there can thank me when he's old enough to take over.

Things To Do, 1/26

This is what my To Do list looked like today:


At 10 pm, I looked at it again and realized that if I were to blog, I would have done everything on my To Do list. Blogging doesn't take a whole lot of effort, per se, but sometimes setting up for it does, especially when it's dark and thus difficult to photograph finished knits. But more on that later!

This weekend it continued to rain in Roseville.
So THB and I decided to head down to Alameda to visit our Second Brother. We picked up a couple of friends on the way, namely That Sarah and Kai's roommate, and headed out for a fairly epic Bar Crawl. Now, I've never been one for bar crawls. Usually we pick a place and stay there all night. But this time, there was a double mission: to try all the bars in town (or as many as we could handle, which turned out to be quite a few), and to find The Birthday Guy. We accomplished the first goal admirably and to everyone's satisfaction, but unfortunately Birthday Guy didn't show up. I'm beginning to think he may have been a figment of my imagination. But I digress.

Here are four of us near the beginning of the night:

SB's Roommate, Me, THB, Second Brother
(That Sarah is missing because she's the photographer)

On Saturday we all woke up, staggered about for a bit, and then headed to a local diner for some greasy breakfast food. Later, my San Francisco friends showed up and we got to see Baby E, who is 3.5 months old and weighs a mere 9+ pounds. She's like a pocket baby!

And also super-cute to boot!

I, for one, am thrilled that she's a wee slip of a thing because it means that she can still wear the baby-sized things I made for her before she was born (that only took 6+ months to get to her parents ::cough::)!

Then THB and I went to the Oracle Arena to meet up with some friends and see EDDIE IZZARD!! This is the face I made pretty much the whole time:
Eddie is one of my very favorite comedians. He's smart, thinks about things, and his comedy is intelligent. He's also altruistic and freakin' adorable, which doesn't hurt. I should have taken my camera in - I was going to, but I didn't know if cameras were allowed and I didn't want to have to run back to the car. So no pictures of Eddie. Boo.

But there ARE finished knits! Awhile ago I promised That Sarah a pair of socks for her birthday. Her 2008 birthday. She has been patiently reminding me of this promise ever since, and I finally am ready to pay up. I actually wanted to finish the socks in time to give them to her this weekend, but I ended up about 1/2" plus the toe short, so I'll have to mail them. However, she's already seen them and approved, so I can show the rest of you as well:

Vanilla Rib Socks, 258 yds.
Fannie's Farmhouse Yarn, "Victoria"

The colors here are pretty accurate. My bedroom walls are not quite that radioactive green, but the socks at least are pretty vibrantly pink and black. AND I have another 150 yards to do something else fun with! But not right away...

I mentioned in this post that I needed to finish 2 projects before I would allow myself to start something new, and I did in fact stick to that (go me!). But the project I started was not the Stonington I had planned, despite the wicked-cool center I graphed out for said shawl and the beautiful silvery lace yarn all wound up and ready to go. Instead I started a [REDACTED] for [REDACTED], who I am pretty sure reads this blog at least occasionally, so until I'm done you're going to get only hints and snippets of information and some color-altered close-ups like this one:

I think that [REDACTED] will be tickled pink, don't you?

So I leave you now with some words of wisdom that I remembered over the weekend: don't try to finish the night with giant margaritas. It can only end in a desperate need for greasy breakfast the next day.

And possibly in some utterly hilarious pictures.

Bean Sprouts and Birthdays

I am officially an AuntieBean! My bestest friend evar had her Superhero Baby today. He arrived 3 weeks early and on what I believe was the day his mother and father were supposed to see RENT with the original Mark and Roger, so MamaBean will be able to hold that one over his head for at least the next 18 years.

Also, today is my Tiny Grandma's 84th birthday. Her knitting inspires me to create just as much as my mother's craftiness, so I am sending her the best gift I can think of for a wonderful knitter on a tight budget: a bag of Crystal Palace Creme yarn.

Welcome to the world, Little Sprout. I'm excited to meet you! And Happy Birthday to an adorable and loving Grandma. What a wonderful day the 28th of June turned out to be!

I'm Still. Big. Red.

La Girasole, she is finished!

Blocking

I really enjoyed knitting this. Jared's instructions are clear and simple to follow, and there isn't so much repetition of each motif that I got bored - except on the edging, which is to be expected. One can't expect much variation on the edging.

I ran out of T-pins on the edging, so it'll be a little scalloped. That's fine with me, but if I'm going to make more circular stuff I think I'll need more pins. Usually I can use my lace blocking wires, but with circular shawls, it's all geometry all the way.

Center

I should invent an umbrella-style blocking mechanism. Hmmmm..... that's a thought. But for now, here she is, and just in time to start baby knitting in earnest - the littlest Bean is coming this weekend!

I'm Still. Big. Red.
Pattern: Girasole by Jared Flood
Yarn: Frog Tree Alpaca, sport weight, 1250 yds

A Super Secret No Longer!

Today, I got a text message that said: "We just picked up your box at the post office! Can't wait to go home and open it!"

And then I lost all track of what I was doing because I was waiting to hear how the Super Secret Project was received.

Next came, "OMG I LOVE IT!" followed by a discussion of how the bebeh inside my best friend is indeed destined to be a super hero given the combined powers of the blanket now in his possession and the magnitude of his kicks.

So here it is, my friends. The Super Secret Project:

A nearly full-frame shot, pre-spokes

The biggest shot I could get, post-spokes and totally finished!

The stats: 1692 yards of Knit Picks Swish Bare yarn hand-dyed in scarlet and blue, and pre-dyed black. It's roughly 4 feet across and weighs almost 2 pounds.

May it spend many years serving as a blanket, a fort covering, a comfort, and a cape.

I love you, CoffeeBean.

Five Minute Blog Post

I know what you're thinking. "Stop whining, Tikabelle! Show us the pictures of yarn and stuff!"

Your wish is my command.

I finished the Baby Mama Shawl, but it's really just a Baby Shawl. Behold in all its tiny glory!


However, I did manage to finish some baby items for Mer's shower, and since Baby Cinnamon isn't due until the 9th of October, I've got some time for a do-over - I'm thinking a plain something from EZ's February Almanac. Here's my first BSJ:

It turned out pretty cute! I heart the buttons. Yardage to come soon.

I've been craving lace lately, and now that the Baby Shawl is done I can move on to a new project. Since my good friend Kate is moving to Prague in September, I found her a lovely red Zephyr yarn and it will become... something not what it is right now:

That, for the uninitiated plebeian population, is the beginnings of a Secret of Chrysopolis shawl. And while it's absolutely lovely, it's more lace than I can handle right now. I may make a Branching Out Stole (3 pattern repeats across), but it's TBD at the moment. Lordy, I do love that color - I think I may have found my eventual reward for the Social Pressure Experiment in a cone of this lovely Cinnabar from JaggerSpun.

Moving on! Only 2 minutes left!

I've repurposed the Panda Silk from Sock Madness into a pair of No-Purl Monkey Socks:
That's sock #1; school started on Monday and as a consequence I am mostly done with the foot of sock #2. Hurrah for knitting during lectures!

And this, my friends, is what I got in trade from Aija for my 6-ish balls of Lion's rand Chunky:
128 g of sparkly, silky Chai batts from Enchanted Knoll. Don't tell her, but I think I got the better end of the deal!

I also obtained some scraps of yarn from Jasmin to add to the Baby Yarn Collection, and yay! I won this in Omly's blog contest awhile ago. Getting pre-Social Pressure stuff in the mail is always a treat.

That's about it! I have to head out to work for the Refreshingly Normal family now, but as soon as I get into the swing of getting up at 7 instead of noon, life should iron out nicely. Insert blissful sigh of relief here.