what the snowman learned

You probably can't tell from this picture but its snowing a bit here. Honestly, I love the snow and can never understand why everyone moans and groans when a snow storm comes this way. I think they're beautiful and could sit around watching the snow fall for hours if I didn't have a mountain of homework to do. Maybe its because I spent a good part of my childhood down south where I think it snowed about twice before we moved northward that I love it so much. Having grown up without snow makes it seem so much more special and magical to me when it happens. Or maybe I just love the opportunity to cuddle up in warm woolen knitwear that snow provides. If its the later then the snow has perfect timing because I now have some new FOs to keep warm in.

This shot shows both my new foliage and wicked. As so many have already discovered Wicked is a super cute and easy pattern. I made the second smallest size, though I probably could have made it the smallest since the sweater came out a little roomy. Yet its exactly what I wanted: cute, warm, and cozy. This is partially thanks to the Nashua Creative Focus I used which is 25% aplaca. The yarn is a touch itchy but with a cami underneath its fine.

I would recommend that for this this size you do one less increase round before separating the sleeves. The number of stitches I had for the sleeves and body were what they were suppose to be. However, these numbers didn't work as nicely they should have for the crossover rib at the end. Its a minor problem so I didn't go back and rib everything out just to fix this. But if I make another one I'll keep in mind that the math might not work out exactly as I like and will have to double check it.

Foliage though came out great. I do have one word of caution and have adopted a new rule: do not drink and knit. Especially if working on lace. Thursday night I went out, had a couple beers and somehow convinced myself that a shot of tequila was a good idea, possibly because a cute boy was buying. Another good rule would be to not let cute boys influence my alcohol intake but I doubt I'd actually pay attention to that one. Rather than crawling into bed and hoping for the best in the morning I decided to stay up, knit, and drink water. I'm too embarrassed to show what I did, but when I picked up my knitting the next day I was rather confused. I had to rip out a couple of rows to avoid some wonky looking lace.

And now I'm going to steal an idea from Green Apples, a blog that I just love and read all the time. Recently, Jess was explaining that one of the advantages of always posting about her swatches is that she can easily look up the information later on, which is truly an excellent point. So here goes...Yarn: Queensland Kathmandu Aran
Colorway: 146
Needle: 7
Gauge: 4.5 sts/ 1in

I feel in love with this yarn when I made a hat with it for my mom. Its very soft and squishy, not the least bit itchy or scratchy. My mom reports that her hat is super warm and wearing well. So really this stuff is pretty much awesome, which is why I had to snatch some up when WEBs was having a sale on it recently. The swatch did grow a bit when I washed it. I believe it had originally knit up to 5sts/1in so it expanded just a bit. I purchased enough to make a sweater so I think I'm going to make the Central Park Hoodie. I've always loved the pattern but was just waiting for the perfect yarn to come my way and now here it is!

pink

As I turn out projects it gets harder and harder to deny that pink is my favorite color. I'm actually not sure if I bother to deny this since I'm not 12 and trying to be a tomboy anymore but that's besides the point.

What is the point? That I have new pink mittens. My favorite pink gloves are developing holes in the fingers, probably because I got them two years ago while I was London and have worn them nonstop ever since. So I decided it was time to figure out how to make mittens. I didn't really use a pattern so I messed up a little bit. The thumb either needs to be lower or the hand should be longer. But they'll do the job of keeping my hand warm when walking to and from school.

Also in the interest of keeping my extremities warm I decided to cast on for a pair of socks. Normally I don't do socks, but while picking out yarn with my mom we were both rather taken with SWTC's tofutsies. She offered to buy me a skien and who am I to turn down yarn? So now I'm knitting it and can't help but think that red, orange, and purple is kind of a bizarre color combination.

Seriously, who came up with it? I'm not entirely sure I like it. I like fun colors and all but this might be a little too fun. And it begs the very important question: who's crazier SWTC for dreaming it up and making it or me for picking it out?

Happy (late) New Year!!

Christmas was a success everyone liked their hand knit presents. Although I did decide to recall my brother's hat to add an extra 2 inches. Apparently he has a bigger than me (what a surprise ;).

With all the presents out of the way I'm back to making stuff for myself. Right now I'm working on a pair of mittens in SWS and a pink wicked, which is coming along nicely and a bit further than this shows. And of course I'm using my pretty new knitpicks options, which were a gift from my brother. I'm totally in love with them. I actually think that I'm knitting faster than I did with my old needles.




It seems to be the general custom around knitting blogs to make a list of accomplishments from the past year. I kind of like that idea. I don't feel like I've really I've accomplished all that much in the past year, but I did try and learn new things. So here we go...

Accomplishments of 2007
*completed my first patternless sweater
*learned short rows
*made my first lace project
*made my first sweater that I really love

What I hope to do in 2008
*conquer colorwork (or at least give it a try)
*make a larger lace project
*learn magic loop
*give socks another chance

balls

My roommates in college were incredibly attached to a particular video game. They played it obsessively and often a good time on Saturday night meant having a few drinks and playing Dr. Robotnic's, or as my friends liked to call it: balls.

Today I finished my torts my final. It is an absolutely wonderful feeling, even though I have no idea what sort of grade I'll get. But to celebrate I made balls.


A different sort of balls than my friends, but way more to my liking since I was never any good at video games, except for Mario 3. But aren't the balls pretty? On the left is Ultra Alpaca and on the right is Knitpicks Shimmer in Happy Dance. It took me three episodes of Grey's Anatomy to do them both. Most of the time though was devoted to the Shimmer, since hand winding 440 yards of lace weight yarn apparently takes a while.

A Christmas Story

You know what? I had absolutely no intention of knitting Christmas gifts for anyone this year. Everyone was going to get UConn law gear and that was that.

But then I remembered that sweater I had started for my sister and still hadn't finished. I felt bad, not bad enough to try and figure out the sweater, but bad none the less. So I made her a scraf out of some purple mystery yarn I had. I made the scarf and I thought I had used up all the yarn, but then I discovered more of the mystery yarn. So now I feel compelled to make a set of matching hand warmers.

Then I was ordering some new needles off of knitpicks, and they were having a sale. I just couldn't resist a couple of hanks of lace weight yarn. "I'll makes scarves," I thought "One for me and one for Mom." Perfect.

But then I went home for Thanksgiving. I wanted to make sure that my mom would want a scarf. In my mind the conversation we would have went something like this...

Me: I should make you something. I haven't knit you anything in a while.
Mom: Oh that would be lovely.
Me: Anything, in particular you'd like?
Mom: Oh no, I'd love anything you make me.

The actual conversation was remarkably similar, which is odd since my imaginary conversation generally bare no resemblance to realisty. However, there was a key difference. Mom said she wanted a hat. A hat. Ok I love knitting hats, I can handle that I said. It was then decided that we need to head to the LYS to get yarn for said hat, and as a bonus they were having a sale over Thanksgiving weekend. All the more reason to go.

But my brother was home for the holiday and rather than sit at home and try to will all those leftovers to go away he decided to come along too. And while we were there wondering around I was seized by an explicable urge to ask him if he wanted me to make him something. It was probably being surronded by all that yarn, it does funny things to the head. Rob decided that he would also like a hat so he picked out yarn too.

So here I am in the midst of finals and somehow I decided that making everyone gifts was a good idea. You know how much I have done?

About this much:


I have half a hat, a torts outline, and half a contracts outline.

Everything will be fine. I will not panic...

a sentance of sorts

Look at this! Who wouldn't want to go to school here?!

But the beauty of campus aside, its been pretty busy. Silly law school professors want to make me learn things and this has cut into my knitting time.

Luckily, I am a master procrastinator. For the past couple days my method of choice has been watching "Chuck" online and working on a new pair of fuzzy feet. My old pair have a giant hole in the toe. They've been well loved and I still do love them. However, since I now have to pay my own heating bill holey slipper socks simply aren't going to cut it. I've just started the toe decreases on the first one. Hopefully I'll be done soon because my place is pretty chilly.

shippin out to boston

Yay my beloved Sox won the World Series!

In celebration I'm considering knitting a pair of red socks.