All I Wanna do is Play With Yarn

It's spring break right now and what I really should do is start some outlines for class and go to my externship this afternoon.  But its just so tempting to sit around, knit, and relax.  Earlier this week the boy and I spent a few days in Vermont.  We visited some of his friends in Burlington and then drove to Okemo for a few days of skiing.  Which was awesome because it snowed Monday and the mountain was virtually empty.

On Sunday, we lesiruely made our way down to Okemo via Route 7.  Its a pretty drive and I highly recommend it to anyone in the area and with some extra time.  Along the way Robert basically made it his mission to find an open yarn store for me to visit.  We eventually found Vermont Beads and Fiber in Middlebury.  A very cute little store where I got this pretty skien of sock yarn.  

The socks for my boy are coming along nicely.  I will soon be starting the heel of the second sock so its possible that I may actually be able to give him the socks on his birthday or our anniversary.  

Since I'm so close to finishing the socks I've started to contmeplate what my next project should be.  I'm a little socked out right now so my new pink yarn will have to wait.  I'm considering the Eyelet Cardigan from Blue Skys Alpaca.  I already have the yarn for this and it would make a cute little spring cardigan.  I could also make Icarus out of some pretty light blue Malabrigo lace weight yarn I have in my stasth.  There are other options too but these two are the most appealing to me right now.  Any thoughts or suggestions for making this choice? Or maybe even another option entirely?

On Snow Days and Self Protraits

Wow did it snow yesterday! As a result of this late season storm I didn't have work in the morning or class in the afternoon.  I did decidate a little bit of this newly found free time to studying but I also managed to finish my handspun mohair scarf.  It turned out cute and is of course super soft and warm.  I'm not used to handspun yarn so this was a little hard for me to work with, but I am pleased with the result.

This is not the most inspring photo ever I know.  I spent a few minutes trying to take a photo of me wearing it but I ran into a problem I imagine many a knitter has: trying to take a decent picture of your self.  I love my little camera but since I can't see the screen and take the photo at the same time I usually have a wierd look on my face or something.  Here are some photos that could have been good but just didn't come out quiet right...

The first one is too dark to actually see the scraf.  In the second I have more hair than face which makes me look like a Cousin It wannabe, and the last one is blurry and washed out.  I really should just make the boy my photographer but he's at work right now.

Speaking of pretty yarn from small producers, the Twist Collective has an article written by a yarn farmer in their new issue, which I found to be very interesting.  

FO: Blueberry Socks

Next to my family's house in Georgia there was a blueberry bush that seperate our yard from the neighbors.  I always liked to pick the blueberries during the summer.  They were a beautiful deep blue and it fasniated me that the juice was purple.  My mom would often make muffins using what I picked.

The entire time that I was making these socks the color reminded of blueberries.  The yarn just has the prettist variation between deep blues and purples like the berries I picked when I was a kid.  I am quite pleased with them, they're simple, warm, and cozy.  I thought about using some sort of pretty pattern but I started these just after finals so I wanted something simple to work on. 

Next up, I know I should start Robert's socks but I'm feeling a little tired of tiny needles.  Instead I'm going to make something using this handspun yarn that his mom gave me for Christmas, possibly Glampyre's new Reclamation Scraf.  

The yarn it from a family friend who owns alpacas and spins and sells her own yarn under the label Cold Spring Alpaca. This is a woman that I definately would like to meet sometime (I'd also love to meet the alpacas) but for now I'm just happy to have some of her beautiful yarn.   

In Need of a Good Home

So that hat I mentioned recently is now complete! Yay! That's one project off my incomplete list.  It's a modified turn a square.  I cast on fewer stitiches and did not increases after the ribbing. But I currently have no idea what to do with it.  I perfer things that are more girly and the boy's head is a little too big for it so the poor little hat is just going to have to hang out until I either remember to give it to its original intended recipient or think of someone else.

Next up are my blue socks, which only need to graft together to make them complete. I always forgot how to do it though so I need to look up kitchener stitch again before I do it.  (I really like the tutorial they have of it on knitty if anyone else has this problem.)

Recently, I did something that was not in keeping with my goal of reducing the amount of yarn I have, but was necessary for another purpose.  I bought yarn,

The boy's birthday is in March and I really want to make him a pair of socks.  He loves toe socks so I may try to make those for him, but I am a little concerned about that prospect.  I want these to be finished on time and I'm afaird that knitting toes may be a stumbling block.  So I may knit him a pair of daigonal cross rib socks from Favorite Socks instead. 

In Defense of Knitting: Why Knitting Really is a Habit for the Frugal

This past New Years Eve I spent with my boyfriend at his father's house.  It was a nice relaxed evening, complete with a fire while it snowed.  We made a big dinner, hung out with his family and then went for atv ride in the freezing cold.  In the boy's family it is well known that I knit, and at one point during an overall pleasant evening I got into a rather heated debate with his father's girlfriend.  

Beth was asking me about knitting and how could I make myself things, isn't it cheaper just to buy them, how do I have time, wouldn't my time be better spent studying, etc.  I may be in law school but its still hard to argue with someone who's feeling the effects of multiple champagne cocktails.  This discussion bothered me.  Yes I may spend more money on yarn for a sweater than I would on a sweater that I buy at the mall, but I still consider the yarn to be a better investment.  There are a couple of reasons for this, and I just want to lay them out for all those naysayers out there.

1. Better Quality

Comparing a hand knit item to something you buy at Marshalls is like comparing apples and oranges.  They're both knits but they are in entirely different categories.  The clothing that I buy is no where as nice as what I make.  That sweater from Ann Taylor Loft may have cost only $30 but its not 100% wool.  At best its a wool synthetic blend and it was probably made in a sweatshop in Thailand.  

The proper comparison to make would be items from upscale brands that are made of natural fibers.  A sweater from Banana Republic can easily cost $100, but I can make a very similar sweater out of wool or another natural fiber for half that. To me this is frugal because it can save money to have nice clothes that will last a long time rather than having to replace them every year.  And I know that my sweater wasn't made by exploiting people as an added bonus. 

2.  Better Gifts

We all know someone that is really hard to shop for.  One such person would be my brother.  He has everything, and what he wants I generally cannot afford.  So to spare my wallet and still give my brother something nice I like to knit gifts for him.  Knitting gifts is time consuming and its best to make sure you're giving to someone who will appreciate your work.  But with proper planning you can give that hard to shop for person a special gift for under $25.  For my brother I tend to go with socks, a nice skein of superwash yarn costs me $20 and my brother has warm feet for the winter.  It's win-win. 

3. Income Potential

Most people don't use their knitting skills to make income, but it is possible.  There are many knitter who design and sell patterns and other who sell their work on sites like etsy.  I realize that doing these things will not make me or most other knitters rich, but it could help offset the cost of yarn and needles.  And it's good to remind those "Beths" out there that knitting is a skill that has money making potential.

4. Enjoyment

This is the most important one as far as I'm concerned.  I'll concede that it is significantly less time consuming to buy a sweater than to make one, and maybe I would have done better in my Business Organizations class if I didn't knit during it.  But the time commitment is really not an issue for me because I enjoy knitting.  Its relaxing and gives me something to do with my hands when I'm feeling fidgety.  I honestly do not think that I would work or study more if I gave up knitting.  No one can study all the time but at least when I'm knitting I'm being productive.  I'm making something useful rather than bumming around the Internet watching videos on youtube.  And being productive even in this small way and the enjoyment knitting brings makes it a worthwhile use of time and money.

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Sock Knitting

I have a conflicted relationship with sock knitting.  Much like fellow knitting law student Emilee, I'm not really a huge fan of knitting socks.  I find them to be fiddely.  Sure its easy enough to make the cuff and then flap but then you need to remember the proper way to turn a heel and pick up stitches and then decrease those extra stitiched you just picked up.  Now I'm not saying that knitting a sweater is straight forward either but at least the needles aren't so darn tiny and fragile.  I know I've bent several sets of DPNs out of shape.

But then you know wool socks and are just so nice.  They're cozy and warm.  I have one pair of socks I made that actually fits, the others suffer from gauge issues and picking up too many stitches, and I wear those socks all the time.  I'd wear them everyday if it was socially acceptable to do such a thing.  I sincerely believe that the key to happiness in a New England winter is wool socks and a good pair of boots. 

So how do I deal with my dislike of sock knitting but love of the end product?  I knit them anyway and hope that I'll learn to love the process.  I do think its growing on me.

But more importantly, does one sock count as an FO? 

Varied Interests

If you looked at my Google Reader you'd see that I have a wide variety of interests.  I have the usual assortment of news and cute baby animals.  It all started with knitting blogs of course.  That's where my true love lied.  When I started law school I decided I should start following some legal news too. But then I started to add some baking and cooking blogs.  And most recently I've started adding some personal fianance blogs.

Finanance was never really my thing.  I was raised to live frugally thanks to my mom.  But I was a history major and minored in women's students and was fortunate enough to have parents who paid for university.  I made sure to pay off my credit card each month because that's what my parents always told me too, and that was the extent of my financial know how. So I didn't really give much thought to money until recently.  The prospect of graduating law school with about $80,000 in debt made me start to think about money a bit more.  But then my boyfriend suggested that we look into buying a condo together.  And as excited as I am about this prospect it also made me realize that I needed to get my fianances together and get an idea as to what the hell is going on if we were really going to do that.  Thanks to some help from aforementioned blogs (Get Rich Slowly mostly) Im getting myself together.  I'm working towards simplifying my life by getting rid of things that I don't need and saving up for when the boy and I are ready to get a place of our own.

So in the interest of furthering these goals I'm now going to focus on finishing up projects in progress and working on things that I already have yarn for.  I don't have a huge statsh but I have enough to keep me busy for a while.  First project to tackle, that darn red and gray hat I was going to give to the boy's brother for Christmas.