malabrigo!

My So-Called Scarf: The First 5":



This is a very nice pattern, although you can't quite zone out and you definitely can't do it without looking. Which is to say, I can't. You might be able to, you knitting dog, you.

I'm enjoying the yarn, too. It's a bit uneven in terms of thickness and color saturation, and the shades remind me of clover. I like clover.

Mmm, kelp.

So how did I not know that Eden knits?

Recently I cannot get enough of the knitting content. I am devouring archives like a baby brontosaurus devours... kelp. Nyam nyam nyam. Good archives.

Sigh. Yeah. Anyway. I'm on to fun fur hat #4, which is not fun fur at all, but polarspun or something similar. Squishy, fuzzy, lashy, not kicking my ass. That fancy fur had my ass in a sling. It was a bad scene. I used almost two skeins of it, which sucks, because I bought three, and I am not buying any more (give me an oh hell no?) and am going to have to figure out how to squeeze a hat appropriate for a 10-16 y.o. out of one and one eightieth of a skein. Size 17 needles, anyone?

I have frogged the beginnings of wavy, and was all worried about finding a basketweave pattern, but came to my senses and realized that I can invent a basketweave pattern. I don't want to use the same one as in the SNB Nation 2 book, with the knit row between pattern rows that makes a front and a back side. So I just won't. There.

Also, I'm itching to cast on for My So-Called Scarf, but then I look at the stitch pattern and think eeehhhhh. Oh, and now I am also thinking, do I have size 11 needles? Maybe in dpns.

The x-treme! consumption of knitblog archives is also giving me a serious itch to actually knit (you know, instead of just buying yarn), so I'm getting lots of stuff done, such as a cuff and part of a leg for the Belize sock.

Oooh, and also my Ufsered kit shipped today. Just for fun, I tried feeding some Polarspun from my left hand and that did not go so well. This is going to be interesting.

Four FOs in One Week.

Look! There are two fetchings! On my monitor, which is older than the hills, you cannot really see the cables on the cuffs, which is too bad, because they are very pleasing.



And, two socks in Regia Surf, in the colorway Rosso. Summery, yes?


Three re-starts and four rows into my Wavy scarf, I'm thinking that this is not what I want to do. The pattern is very nice, and works with the yarn well, but I got it with a flatter stitch in mind, and this will end up being a bulky scarf. I'm thinking about just doing the same type of basketweave-y thing that worked so well for my brother's scarf.

watch me juggle bowling pins

Still knitting FFH #2, hope to finish it tonight. I'm into my third skein of the stuff, and bought one more skein of plain FF and three more skeins of Fancy Fur that I actually kind of like, don't tell anyone. It's in the colorway "sunrise."

I finished the other Fetching for me, and have worn them a couple of days now. There is a problem with the ends refusing to lay flat, which I'm considering dealing with using elastic. Dunno. Also, we took pictures but the detail didn't come out well so I'll try again tomorrow.

Apparently I'm on a green-and-white kick. The scarf yarn below is destined to become a white wavy scarf, and a green my so-called scarf.

And, apropos of nothing at all today, I sent away for (ordered on the internets) an Ufsered kit in green and white. Didn't know I wanted to do colorwork. Maybe I just want that hat. Maybe I've been reading too much Eunny and Wendy. Maybe I'm very lucky I didn't stumble across the link to Wendy's Bohus pattern source first. Maybe I'm not linking it here because I don't trust myself not to drop however much money on a kit and teeny needles and a sure knitting-time-vortex. Someday.

For the time being, I'm just very excited to be working on my knitting. I'm giving a lesson tomorrow and intend to cast on for Wavy then.

Fun Fur Hat #1

New yarn for scarves:




And my first finished Fun Fur hat:



It took a little over 2 days to knit. I got a total of 10 skeins, many of them this rainbow color and then singles of other colors. This took a bit more than one skein, so I'm going to go up a needle size in hopes of squeezing a whole hat out of a single skein, both so I won't have to buy more of it, and so I have as little left over as possible.

The Fun Fur itself isn't too bad, though it would be hellish to learn with and good luck to you if you drop a stitch. It's lovely going back to regular yarn after this stuff.

Holy cannoli, an FO

Finished: Fetchings con fingers

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran
Pattern: Fetching (from Knitty)
Needles: Susan Bates aluminum dpns, size 6
Color: Dark Grey from stash
Modification: extra cable repeat at cuff, co 50 st instead of 45 for an additional rib, added fingers, omitted picot bindoff

The best that - the best that I can

Yo ho*! Hey, note to self: if you ever decide to place an open call to knitters to knit things or give money or knit things in a certain time frame or whatever -- be prepared to be inundated, I mean take-a-couple-days-off-from-work-to-sort-the-e-mail swamped with the collective goodwill of the knitting community.

What I am talking about in this case is this: Mini Soup's Contest Wherein You Knit Hats for Children's Hospital (Made out of Fun Fur) and Can Also Win Stuff.

I bought fun fur! 10 skeins! And... I kind of hate fun fur a little on principle, but that's probably good because I will have strong motivation to knit it and get it out of the house! Woo!

While I've observed knitalongs involving socks, olympics, christmas gifts, &c., it is time I jumped into the fray. So I did.

*this is intended to be pirate-y, and not to imply that you are a whore.

Second Fetching Syndrome

Heee. This is a fetching for me. I didn't change the pattern a bit, other than to substitute DBC brown and red (the one that ends in 7). And carry the ribs up the thumb.

While I like how it's turned out, this red is not red. It is rust. To wit:

Me: [holding up yarn] What color is this?
Other: Hmm. Cranberry.
Me: It's not cranberry.
Other: It's light cranberry.
Me:[Pointing to book cover] That's light cranberry.
Other: Oh.
Me: Out of the eight basic colors, what color is it?
Other: Eight?
Me: Like, you know, Roy G. Biv. Six colors. Seven.
Other: Oh. It's red.
Me: No it's not! It's orange.
Other: No, it's not orange. Where's something orange in here? There, [pointing at sunbeams of Tree Quilt] that's orange.
Me: That's light orange. This is dark orange.
Other: No, that's dark red.
Me: No, [pointing at dark red fabric with black dots and small yellow chickens] that's dark red.
Other: That looks exactly alike!
Me: No, it doesn't!
Other: [Holding up orange pen cap next to yarn] This is orange. That's not orange.
Me: That's bright orange. This is dark orange.
Other: No it's not, it's red.
Me: It's rust.
Other: It IS rust!
Me: Rust is orange.
Other: Rust is red.
Me: Rust is dark orange.
Other: Rust is red.
Me: Rust is rust.
Other: Rust is rust.

There you have it, people. Rust is rust. Which is also dark orange. Which is what color this yarn is. Not that I don't like it. I do. I was just going for something more red.

Also, I have a very patient spouse.

Knitting Trauma:


Knitting Therapy:

The knitting trauma comes from the fact that I'm trying to knit a strand of yarn alongside a strand of thread with beads on it. And the strand of thread tangled into itself, and I'm pretty sure that if it weren't for the damned square sequin things that were interspersed with the beads, I would not have spent over an hour muttering to myself, growing increasingly frustrated, and missing my practical and then my impractical-but-better-than-later bedtime before chopping the thread to bits and yelling vengeful things at it.

Luckily, harrowed as I was first by the thread with the beads, then with work, I got home on my lunch break about 10 seconds after the UPS guy left me a package of some lovely lovely Debbie Bliss Cashmerino on our doorstep, and by about 10 minutes after that had cast on for a Fetching for myself.

Here is half of the Fetching I knit for my brother for Christmas:


If only I had ordered Debbie Bliss Cashmerino in silver gray before Christmas... This ended up being made with a bit of DBC in black as the cuff (which, yeah, I thought I was casting on the top cuff, but I was casting on the bottom cuff, which looks pretty weird because the first cable repeat is black and the rest of the glove is gray...) and Lang Zoom in gray. I called the yarn shop, and they told me on the phone that they had some Cashsoft Rowan and some Jo Sharp Something, but apparently they couldn't produce any when my ever-patient parents made the trip there. So it was this, Lang Zoom, a merino/cotton/nylon blend, not, in my opinion, strictly interchangeable with a merino/cashmere/nylon blend, but it worked. It's a perfectly nice yarn, cottony and soft. It's no cashmerino.

WHY I didn't order the yarn I actually wanted in time to make these is a long, pointless story.

Finally, here is a befingered Fetching for Other - one down, one to go: