Sweater the Second

I am working on Wicked in some Twisted, colorway Lunasea, which my mom got me for my birthday a few years ago.



While I like how the fit is coming out, and it's doing lovely-ly non-pooling things, I just feel like I'm going to run out of yarn. I'm horrible at eyeballing these things, but also have the bad habit of using denial as a handy tool to keep knitting when I really, really shouldn't. I can make the sleeves really short and leave off the kangaroo pocket (though I love kangaroo pockets) and maybe have enough.

I guess my next step here is to frog back to where I stopped decreasing and throw in a few more decrease rounds, which would help the fit a little and give me some more yarn to work with. But that involves finding a safety pin to mark the center with before I start frogging, and that hasn't really happened yet.

More gift yarn is at work here:



This is Firebird STR lightweight, pressed into service in a seed stitch scarf. CO 42 sts, slip the first st of every row, knit until you run out of yarn.

Firebird has got to be my most favorite-est colorway EVER. And I don't toss these designations around lightly. In the skein, I liked the light orange and light electric purple parts the absolute best, but knit up I like all of the colors, especially together. There's an electric red in there too, and wow, I am so happy when that comes up. I'm a bit burned out on socks at the moment, and didn't really want to hide this gorgeous yarn under shoes and pants, so the scarf was an obvious choice.

Looking at the blue moon page, there doesn't seem to even be any purple in that skein. Although the light is not nearly as good, here's my Rav stash picture of it. Glory be.

Oh yes, and I finally finished Ufserud.



And a closeup:



Blocking really does make a difference, thank goodness.

So, yo, happy Valentine's Day, and happy knitting!

a thrower, a flicker, and sometimes a picker

Let's start from the end, shall we?

Most recent FO: Ufserud. I know, right? Where the hell did that come from? Well, it came from my UFO pile, and the motivation for it came from a good solid two weeks with highs below freezing and reports of an upcoming low of -18F. -18! Foliage is lovely, yes, but wind cuts right through it, so yeowza, we need a wooly stranded hat, stat. I took pictures of it, but have no FO pics yet, as it's not quite finished blocking.

Holy cow, I haven't even written about Foliage yet. This is going to take awhile.

Leyburns

I flew back here on Christmas Day, and needed plane knitting desperately. I was the lucky recipient of three skeins of some BMFA lightweight, and cleverly used my Traditional One Present On Christmas Eve pick to select the most yarnly-shaped package available, so I was able to wind this up and have it ready to go for the plane.

Those crazy Ravelers in the Socks that Rawk group were just starting a Leyburn knitalong, handily saving me the need to make any kind of decision regarding what pattern to use. I hadn't intended to use my Highway 30 so quickly, but this just fell into place.

After knitting most of a cuff on the plane, I decided that the ribbing and pattern sections were both too big and pool-y, so I frogged the whole thing and started again. Oh well, at least it kept me from spending my time trying to smoke in the lavatory.

The KAL's open until the end of March, so if you have some STR and want to make Leyburns, get thee over there! It's a good read even if you don't want to play along.

Ruby Wristers



A classic from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, these were a very quick knit. I used my uber-score single skein of Road to China -- uber-score because I bought it on sale and with a store credit reward, paid like $6 for it -- it retails around $20. Unfortunately, getting the history-making discount was probably the most exciting part of this process. It feels great to knit with, and it's utterly gorgeous, but apparently the alpacas weren't baby enough to prevent the inclusion of guard hairs in the yarn. After spending more hours than I'd like to admit tweezing them out, these are definitely wearable, but man, these are a great reminder of the lesson I already knew: put down the alpaca. Just put it down. Stories with alpaca in them don't end well.

Oh, and the final nail in the coffin of this project was that after dividing the skein as evenly as I could, one mitt ended up half a 4-row repeat shorter than the other. Noticeably shorter. Doh.

Felt Clogs on Parade



This was my Felt Clog Christmas. You should have yourself a Felt Clog Christmas asap, because they are fun and awesome. Except the part where you spend Christmas day checking the washing machine and wrangling soggy lumps of wool in and out of pillow cases, but even that's not so terrible. I think the family likes them.

Oh, and also! If you are in possession of five skeins of Wool of the Andes in Blackberry and are kicking yourself because you really wanted Lullaby, pm me! Because I did the opposite thing of that! And would like me some Blackberry clogs.

Oh, yes, and my final comment about all of these is that I found WotA to felt slightly better than Cascade 220. Them's might be fightin' words over on Rav, but here I can say it with impunity. Ha.

Oh, yes, and a postscript to my final comment: WotA in Dove Heather, the light gray in the clogs second to the left is just lovely. It's certainly sweater-worthy. It's the only Heather I used, but boy is it soft and nice. Maybe the others are too.

Lace Ribbon Scarf

This sweet puppy is the Lace Ribbon Scarf in Sheep Shop 3. I cast on 35 sts (I think) after some kind Raveler who said she'd done the same thing and looked to have the size I was going for. I used basically the whole skein, and it's the perfect wearing-during-the-day length.

Sheep Shop 3 is just wonderful - it's got a great sheen, and the colors were very entertaining.

Foliage



There -- imagine that done, and you have the idea. The lace pattern is pretty strong, so you can kind of see the leafy shapes despite the crazy color changes. It turned out to fit me a little more loosely than most people find it, so the lace isn't pulled open when it's worn. I really, really like the way it looks, and am thinking over some sort of cowl-y deal with the leftover 37g.


Monkeys!!!


These were Mom's other Christmas present. Purple Rain STR lightweight. Made the cuffs shorter than I needed to because I was afraid of running out of yarn.

Invented Rib!



These were Mom's birthday socks. Knit Picks Risata, 60 sts, 2 1/2" or so of 3x2 ribbing and then alternating 2 rounds of 3x2 ribbing with 2 rounds of stockinette. Bingo bango!

Oh man there is yet more.

Rings o' Jupiter! Socks

More STR: lightweight, Space Dust, RPMs with the modification detailed in Stariel on Rav's project page. (You take out one stitch after the ribbing, if I remember correctly, and then you don't have to jog at all? Not jogging is better than jogging.)

To my pleasant surprise, this is my second most hearted project. Why? No idea. But I'm glad people like them.

There is more -- how have I not blogged about my sweater yet? -- but moan, groan, thrash, I am done for the evening. I hope all y'all's holidays were awesome-o and that you've settled happily into post-Christmas knitting.

It's faberdashulous

Still Christmas knitting away, but I've been meaning to post this forever and now I've finally remembered to do it at a time when actually doing it was convenient:

My mom and I have opened an Etsy Shop, called the Faberdashery (what else?) where we are selling hand-dyed baby clothes and bibs. Here's an example of one I just put up today:



They look much cuter when they're actually on children, and if anyone wants to volunteer a six-, twelve-, or eighteen-month-old to model, well, that would be great.

We've had reports from relatives that the bibs are extra-awesome because they go over the head like a t-shirt instead of velcro-ing on, which makes it much harder for contrary babies to remove.

So, yeah. Etsy shop. Woot!

Knitting Underground

Heyyo. Sorry for the radio silence, it's just that you're not going to hear about a lot of what my needles have been up to until about Dec. 26. That's right, I'm pretty on track for my Christmas knitting. Also, my computer monitor is on its way out after many years of dedicated and non-seasickness-inducing service. It has good hours and bad hours, and the bad hours are starting to seem like they might actually cause seizures, and wanting to post pictures of your knitting doesn't seem like a good reason to risk a brain disorder. I'll see if I can catch it on a good hour, though, and post pics of my new sweater (which can be found on Ravelry if your curiosity is insatiable). I owe my new cowl a love letter post as well, so I'll see if I can't get on that.

Right now I'm using Other's computer, to write a paper actually (hi!), so I should get back to that. Grumble.

lace literacy, secret socks

About six minutes before it became available through much easier means, I bought the back issue of IK with the Swallowtail Shawl pattern in it. In a moment of weakness a long while ago, I'd gotten a teeny, pretty little ball of Malabrigo lace in Emerald. I've been on a real sock tear, and noticed that I missed having bigger projects on the needles, so without really planning to, I sat down and cast this on.


The version in IK starts with a garter tab, which completely confounded me -- I couldn't conceptualize at all how this was going to work, but was eager to start. I had gotten the pattern for the Shetland Triangle a long time ago, and never cast it on because I couldn't understand how starting at the center neck worked. What did that mean? Huh? Who shot who in the what now?

So this is the part of knitting that is humbling but also completely awesome. You have no idea what it is that you're doing in the grander scheme of meaning, but following the directions step by step gives you what you're supposed to get. You have to just do it to see what it means. By the time I was to the end of the garter tab, I was with it enough to even make a modification and throw in an extra purl row in order to have the right-er-ish-looking side be the right side.

I'm enjoying the shawl at this point -- the emerald is mostly a nice medium green, but every once in a while will veer into an almost light-blue-ish light green or a dark, dark blue green. If the lace pattern weren't enough to keep me interested, that would definitely do it. The rows are feeling long now, and I still have at least three repeats of the first chart to go, so it may end up being a bit of a beast.




These are stockinette socks in Knit Picks Felici Firefighter (or -house or -dog, I can't remember). They are only being blogged now because they were a gift that has been given.


I am still completely in love with Felici -- it's soft, non-splitty, and very entertaining.

Christmas knitting has commenced, so a bunch of stuff will be under the radar for a while. I'll be sure to check in to moan about how I'm still working on the swallowtail every once in a while, though.

Oh yeah, knitting! I love knitting!

So. Hi. I moved across the country. Haven't sorted all of that out yet really, literally, existentially, metaphorically, whathaveyou. But! This is a knitting blog, and I can tell you the story of the knitting part of the moving across the country.

Apparently I was conceptualizing the actual trip as some kind of 18th Century sea voyage of many months, because that is how much knitting I pictured I would get done. I planned to do a great amount of the Woven Trellis Scarf. It is awesome looking but way boring with the small strips on dpns and six of them and they are long et cetera. So, I got in my head the crazy notion that the Soft Linen (Reynolds?) I was using would work up at a totally different gauge than the Classic Elite Lush called for in the pattern, so I selected two sets of dpns, each a size smaller than the ones called for in the pattern. But it turns out that a) the scarf is kind of on the small and narrow side as scarves go anyway, so going to a smaller gauge would be kind of stupid, b) the yarn I was using worked up to exactly exactly the gauge called for in the pattern, and c) oh but wait there's this thing you can do where you increase the number of stitches and therefore get a bigger object than you would with your current gauge! Genius! Sign me up!

And it's important to keep in mind here that my thinking at this point was a bit addled. I was on a many-month sea voyage on an average of about 4 hours of sleep a night for the three proceeding nights, all of which would culminate in a big, unfamiliar city with no established means of income and going into a new program that I was pretty sure was what I wanted to do and it god damn had better well be given the crazy debt and massive life-uprooting that was going into it -- which is relevant to the knitting in sheer terms of the amount of mental energy I had available for things like scarves on dpns. Which is to say, not much.

So all of this might have worked out with the thinking and misconceptions and linen, but I dropped one of the dpns of the first set and it fell into the crack between the foot-part of the floor (hey, so my vocabulary is returning slowly) and the kind-of-under-the-door-but-still-inside-the-truck part. Stopping to retrieve it was no kind of option, plus I had figured out the whole gauge issue, both the whoops, I have the wrong size needles issue and the hey I can add more stitches for bigger, woot! issue and also the bigger size that I had brought was actually the smaller size called for in the pattern, so I temporarily abandoned the smaller needle in the door crack, frogged, and cast on more stitches to bigger needles. (Rough, mind-addled math also indicated at this point that I had enough extra yarn that I could add stitches in terms of width and still end up with a scarf-length object rather than a potholder. I still think I'm right about this.)

We stopped for bagels, and as I was getting out of the truck, I heard the working dpn fall somewhere in the truck and after extensive, head-rush-inducing searching, could not turn it up. It is GONE. So I packed up the scarf and put it aside, because really, that was getting ridiculous.

I haven't unpacked it. It won't be terrible, it's not as if the yarn is in a monstrous tangle or anything is irreparable... I think... but I'm not ready to go back to it yet.

THIS pretty-pretty is a froot loop sock in Koigu. Haha funny story about the Koigu -- I originally planned to make this in a slightly darker shade but very similar KPPPM. My work buddy had admired said KPPPM in my stash photos on Ravelry, so as a goodbye gift, I stopped at the shop in my hometown where I'd gotten it, but of course neglected to write down which number it was. It's the purple stuff. Check.



So, at the shop I quickly discovered that there was an abundance of a darker shade (426? Still I can't be arsed to look it up) and only one of this lighter shade, 263 (or something)! So after much scrounging and about 3 false alarms involving whatever the much more expensive part-silk or -vicuna or -whateverthehell Koigu, I found another skein of the lighter stuff! Yay!

And of course I get home and realize that what she originally admired was the darker stuff. So I gave her the darker stuff from my stash and am using the lighter stuff myself. It too is gorgeous, and after some frogging and cursing of dyelots (one sock has more of a grayish tint and is slightly less variegated), I'm to the heels. And since I screwed with the cast-on count, and the heel is carefully worked over a certain number of repeats, I haven't summoned the mental resources to deal with the heel yet.

Aaanyway, zomg I'm still typing, I finished a pair of plain socks during the voyage (I think, who knows, maybe they were done before. Oh yeah, they were, because they would have qualified for Summer of Socks but I didn't get around to posting them) or something blah blah blah. More knitting has happened but I don't have pictures and it might be done tomorrow anyway and I still need to shower tonight and have I mentioned the tired? It is big and heavy.

Acorn Stash Socks, FO'd!!

Done! I was not actually so wild about the Oregon Red Clover Honey STR -- I was expecting something very different based on the pictures from the Blue Moon site, more like separated red and yellow.



But, I do love how acorn-y the color is, and the gradation in color is just lovely. This colorway also looks awesome in Twisted, if the various photos on Ravelry are to be believed.

These were probably the hardest socks I've knit, mostly because of the insane number of stitches-into-one that forms the tops of the acorns. These became much more do-able when I realized that what mattered was pulling each new stitch out as far as I could, rather than starting with a really big stitch to make the other stitches into. That was a very good lesson.

And even though the stitch count varies from row to row, it's not actually that difficult to keep track of. I was paying tons of attention anyway, so if I needed a stitch that wasn't there, I knew about it right away.

The pattern was great, well-written and clear and way more complicated than anything I could come up with on my own. Oh, but if you're going to do all the repeats that are called for with STR, you'll need more than one skein. I think I did five cuff repeats, and didn't have enough left over for any more, but the socks are plenty tall.

And now I have spent way too much time playing on the internets and must get back to packing.

Can't blog.

Acorning.

Birthday Yarn

Woot!

Hedwig!!

Here are the next socks. Meet the new socks, same as the old socks. Insofar as it's from an indie dyer (Sunshine Yarns) and the yarn overs, they are plotting against me.

I spend a lot of mental energy on pairing socks with patterns, which is especially given my penchant for colorways with serious internal contrast. But sometimes I'll quickly and easily become fixated on one decision and that'll be it. The yarn that became the crosshatch lace socks could have been 15 other things, but this one was going to be waving lace from the beginning. My Smooshy Giant Peach Charades were the same way.

Anyhow, these are flowing nicely and I'm liking the feel of the yarn (Sunshine Yarns Twist). It's almost cottony or papery or something. If it wears well, I will definitely use it again.

effo: Crosshatch Lace Socks (24 hours early, too)

I've got to say, if I saw a thread on Ravelry dedicated to laughing at the accidentally-phallic nature of one of my designs, I'd be sick with embarrassment. Oh, Ravelry.



Aaaanyway, here are some socks! I have apparently taken it upon myself to knit socks that are bulletproof, and with these suckers got 9.5 spi (on the stockinette soles). On the one hand they probably won't wear through anytime soon, and on the other hand they might because that's some serious negative ease. They fit, they're fine, really, but I need to chill the hell out with the knitting.



I really like the crosshatch lace pattern, although I'll cry if I recall the number of times that I missed a yo or some other kind of stitch count screwery and had to tink. Crazy tension + time constraints + general distractability = serious knitting frustration. Oh, and I don't know wtf happened with the toes, but for the feet I had 36 on the top and 30 on the bottom (as a result of a serious lack of planning going into the heel). On the first sock I actually remembered to put stitches from the top onto the bottom so the toe would be even (but ended up fudging something anyway, I know not what), and on the second I didn't and was at the end with a whopping six stitches more on top than on the bottom. Over sixty that's not so many stitches; over twelve it really, really is. I'd love to say that I frogged the toe and fixed it from the beginning, but it just wasn't that kind of week.

Onward through the sock stash! Up next: Sunshine Yarns in Hedwig, Waving Lace. I cast on tonight. And it's 11:30, zomg, what happened to the evening?

ETA: Flickr, why must you default to the Original size? Who uses the original size? Sorry if I 'sploded your-all's feed reader things.

Mostly words this time

Okay, all words. I have nothing picture-worthy, sorry to say. Or maybe they're picture-worthy but I just don't feel like taking their pictures, *I* don't know, hell, blah blah blah.

The crosshatch lace socks are coming along. I bit the shortrow-heel bullet and got the second one done (in a not-quite-identical way to the first) on Sunday and am making good progress on the feet. I'm realizing that I should have made the cuffs about an inch longer than I did, even though six cuff repeats felt like a lot.

My evenings are once again freed up, so progress should pick up. I've been foolishly splitting time over three different pairs of socks, but am now all crosshatch all the time until they're done.

Wow, that came out a lot more boring than I'd intended. More vim and just... more, tomorrow.

if I knit any tighter, my elbow will burst into flames

ITEM 1: Summer of Socks Summer Socks.



These are the Summer of Socks 08 socks in Maizy, colorway Hibiscus. The Maizy was interesting to work with -- it's not wool, so it should be cooler than wool (one would think) in the summers, but to me it ended up actually seeming kind of bulky. Or at least not as relenting as wool is. Does that make sense? I don't know.

At any rate, these socks were kind of a disaster. The cuff is downright baggy, although it wouldn't be if they would stay up, stretched all the way, but they're just not going to do that. I added a crochet chain right above the heel, which minimized bagging when the cuff is slouching down a little, but which ends up buckling the cuff when it's slouching altogether. Which in the grand scheme of things doesn't really matter much. And on top of all of this, they're incredibly, incredibly biased. So. I'll probably wear them, but blegh.

ITEM 2: Crosshatch Lace Socks.



I've been looking forward to these ever since I decided to put this yarn with this pattern, and I love how they're coming out so far. The yarn is Sunnyside Ellen (on Etsy) Louet Gems Fingering Something or Whatever, in the Kaleidoscope colorway. They're looking different than I'd imagined, because I was thinking that there was much more of the lighter minty color, but this is good too.

Hooray for Crochet! Partly because that rhymes, and partly because it's awesome.

So me and a couple buddies learned how to crochet yesterday. I've just gone through the rigmarole of photographing and posting my socks, so I won't show you my O HAI IM A NOOB swatch, but it is cute and awesome and I am proud of it. I also went on a queueing amigurumi projects tear this morning, and you really really should check out the projects tagged with "amigurumi" on Ravelry. WOW.

I seem to have added yet another job to the schedule, which blows my plans for Summer of Socks all to hell*. I'll keep my goal of finishing at least (ahahaha) a pair of socks every two weeks, to be eligible for those drawings, because winning sockyarn represents about 70% of my sockyarn acquiring possibilities these days. But finishing a pair every two weeks just got more difficult.

Here is Maizy in Wendy's Summer of Socks 08 pattern:



Going good so far, but the ssks are annoyingly easy to split the yarn on.

Did I show you these?



Monkabiddies, I love them.

Flickr embed!



Did it work? These are the Earl Grays that it took me forever and ever to finish. And of course I way overshot the second toe and could have finished them much sooner if I avoided knitting and then frogging an extra inch and a half. Other seems to like them and doesn't seem to have keeled over from an allergic reaction to the wool content: double win!

And finally, in contrast, the fastest socks ever:



Sportweight. My secret weapon in SoS 08. Now if I can avoid finishing the two socks 10 months apart, we'll be in good shape.

*but it does wonders for my "eating and being in graduate school at the same time" plans, which I will grudgingly admit may take precedence here

exacerbating sleep deprivation to remedy yarn and sock deprivation

I have been in distant lands, exploring the deep mysteries of the evening shift and conquering WIPs at every turn, except for my sweater's sleeves, which turned out to be completely the wrong shape and it may have had a lot in fact to do with the fact that I put the word "each" in the wrong place in the sentence and lo 90 rows of sweater sleeve later, in a few-minute break between training sessions, a little tiny slip of time that is not nearly enough to behold the fact that you've just completely effed both the sleeves and the plan to have the whole shebang seamed and steamed and ready mere hours after summer of socks 2008 started, it was exactly that that I had to behold, which really really sucked.

Socks. FOs. Maybe some crochet. These are the things that I will tell you about when I remember how to end sentences and fix on the sock knitting, which I have missed terribly.

sock sock funtime

This:



is monkabiddy - Monkey in Chickabiddy. It did that thing that I love in the twisted ribbing, alternating the same colors over two rows, which I believe also happened in my Dreidel Pomatomi. Love that STR + Cookie.

Also, how is it that Monkey socks seem to knit up faster than plain stockinette?

I abandoned the Quill Lace in Maizy socks. After finally getting the pattern going, it was biasing like crazy and looking otherwise unhealthy



-- I think the pattern might be better suited to a slightly more wimpy/relaxed/something like that yarn. I had been pretty determined to get those done before Summer of Socks starts 6/21, and found another pair with lots of holes to try out, but then came upon this perfect solution -- the Summer 2008 Socks that Wendy is designing for SoS 2008. So I'll wait until then. Signups are open until May 15, so if you've been meaning to sign up and also want a really really holey sock pattern, get thee over there!

the quill lace, it is killing me.

Hey, guess what kind of sucks? Casting on in Maizy. Also, casting on in Maizy for the fourth time sucks even worse. Also, I have just learned, does the fifth time.

I'm on try #5 for Quill Lace, and while each frogging after #2 has me deciding to use a different pattern, or start a completely different project instead, I keep coming back. This is one of the simpler lace patterns I've ever tried. It's a centered decrease, 2 yos, and 3 knit stitches. I should be able to handle this, so by God I'm going to handle it.

LOST: Month, 30 days. Responds to "April," white star on its forehead.

Hey yo. What happened? My head is still spinning. In four-ish months, we will move to a city that before two weekends ago, I had never seen. Where things cost double what they cost here. In related news, I haven't bought yarn for over a month. But that is neither here nor there, this here is a knitting weblog, and there has been knitting.

My sweater has been resurrected, and the back is done, and I'm partway through the cabling on the front.



I worked on it in the back of the rental car as we drove all over tarnation looking for an apartment to rent. Here are the ways in which I screwed it up:

1) I placed the first of the three cables wrong. Frogged: about 15 rows.
2) I skipped a couple rows, thereby making the cable circles too squat. Frogged: about 24 rows.
3) I BO on the wrong row, then the wrong row again, then too many, then switched the cables around, then etc. Over and over. Tink tink tink.

The mitered squares are coming along. Have I mentioned this here yet? I'm going to make a big snuggly sockyarn afghan from leftovers, a la everyone else in the universe, and yay is it fun. It's not especially attractive at this point, but I'm planning on lining all the squares with black, and in refusing to plan ahead this will probably take a crochet hook, an undetermined amount of black sock yarn, lots of creative swearing, hours of frustration, and the invention of a new kind of stitch/join that hasn't ever been invented for a reason.



I'm excited.

Finally, the Embossed Leaves are coming along slowly but surely. Counts against them are that I need to concentrate on the pattern, I like to work on them with enough time to complete an entire chart repeat, preferably for both socks, and that the 2.75s I'm using are Knit Picks metal and thus clinkey as hell, which drives Other shouty crackers. So it's a miracle I'm making any progress at all, and I am itching to get them off the needles so I can cast on some summer socks.

Oh, and I signed up for Summer of Socks, because summer is coming and I will be knitting socks. Woot!

Je suis belle et ça ne demande aucun effort.

A lot of people have said a lot of things about the Clapotis. And sometimes people can say that they do not like something while simultaneously implying that everyone who does is a simpleton with poor taste. The Clapotis is popular, and inevitably with things that are popular, a percentage of people will sniffily say that they don't get what all the fuss is about; they don't knit things just because those things are popular.

Really, does anybody choose to knit something they don't genuinely like just because it's popular? I don't know anybody who does that. (Um, I mean, I do spend a lot of time alone, so a survey of my knitting buddies does not a good sample make.) People might take a second look at something because it's popular, wondering what attraction they missed the first time around, but I can't even imagine someone picking out yarn and casting on something, saying "Well, gosh, I hate wool-silk blends and wrappy scarf things, but it's popular, so..." It seems just as silly to refuse to knit something you genuinely like just because lots of other people have.

So, jeez, anyway, here's my Clapotis:



I really like it. News flash: shawls are warm in a different way that scarves are warm! And once again I need to learn from experience something that women have known for hundreds of years.



When I first saw this pattern, which must have been pretty early in my knitting career, I thought it looked nice but had no desire for a massive worsted-weight wool scarffy-wrap thing. This feeling persisted until it started to get chilly in the fall, and on my way out the door one evening I found myself wishing I had a Clapotis to grab. That was all the incentive I needed for this puppy.

Midway through it, I wanted nothing but to be done with it, and now all I want is to cast on another. Luckily I don't have 3-4 skeins of any yarn that would be remotely appropriate, so I can turn to other things.

FO: Super Easy Totally Soft and Warm Legwarmers

Yarn: Cascade 220 Quatro and Crystal Palace Yarns Kid Merino
Pattern: Super Easy Legwarmers from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
Needles: Size 8 dpns
Modifications: None whatsoever. Oh, except I made them shorter.

Turns out when you make these 15 3/4" long, you can get a full pair out of one skein of the Quatro with about a foot of yarn left over. That was an exciting finish, made slightly less exciting by the fact that I'd gotten two skeins of it. I'd been hoping to make the Mrs. Beetons out of my leftovers, but it seems silly to break into a skein for them, so that's on hold for now.

In other news, I cast on for a Clap-oh-sweet-Jeebus-is-this-thing-seriously-not-finished-yet? and it's coming along nicely. If slowly. It's currently about 50" long from the end to the middle of the (slanted) working row. Here are the specs:

Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy, colorway Deep Seaflower
Pattern: Clapotis
Needles: size 4 Addi Lace
Modifications: yarn sub, shooting to meet pattern schematics with a different gauge



This is the same Smooshy that my Endpaper Mitts are made out of, and it is very, very ocean-y, blue with hints of purple and green.



And, finally: the Sundara poll. I had actually been pulling for the scarf, but the socks took the early lead. So, I figured, hey, the internets knows what it's talking about -- socks it is. There's a decent chance that that particular color should not even be coming within five feet of my face anyway, because warm yellows tend to make me look like microwaved death. (I'm a Fall. Or Summer. Or whichever one can basically only wear dark blue.) But now, scarf is even with socks at three votes. Hmm. Maybe the microwaved death question will be the tiebreaker.