happy halloween!

Running around getting ready for a friend's wedding later today, so creepy LG is here to hold down the blog and wish you all a Happy Halloween! Have a great one, folks!

stripey smiley

pattern: a super simple basic sock in stockinette with a k1p1 cuff knit over 64 stitches with a short-row heel and wedge toe, alternating colors every 3 rows
designer: anyone who has ever knit a sock
yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock in a colorway I would highly recommend and gladly share with you all if I had bothered to save the ball band (DOH!)
needles: Addi Turbos US size#1

They're stripey, and I'm smiley. I had a modest goal this Socktoberfest, if I even considered it a goal, and that was to finish one pair of socks. I cast on for these two weeks ago while visiting Webs with some friends (more specifically while sitting outside waiting for everyone and hoping that the monster headache that was kicking my ass from drinking a beer before lunch would go away, day-dreaming of drowning it with a Coke and some aspirin). Suffice to say, I set these rainbow-colored puppies down for a good bit this week as there's been a lot of other crafty stuff keeping my hands busy. I wasn't sure if I would even finish them before the 31st, but lo and behold, they're done. Whew! And yay!

Funny how the colors go in opposite directions. The stripey rainbow is inverted from one sock to the other. You see how the stripes get a bit muddy in parts? Yeah, I had to cheat a little to get them to stop doing that; I pulled a bit of one color until we got to a contrasting color again, cut all that yarn off, and started knitting again with the contrasting yarn so that the stripes resumed and the muddiness was no more. I repeated it in the second sock, allowing some of the same feathering for an intentional copy of the first sock. I am going to avoid this altogether in my second pair of stripey Noro socks by starting at a different point/color but allowing the colors to go in the same direction (if that makes any sense). Also, for my next pair of stripey Noro socks, I have re-skeined the ball into two separate yarn cakes to avoid the tangliness (and the ensuing exasperation) that I experienced while knitting these (I used different ends of the same skein). Ahem... I may have already started the next pair. What can I say? Maryse got me hooked on Noro!

not to be a self-promoting cross-poster...

...but I am totally going to be a self-promoting cross-poster and suggest you guys take a peek at a tutorial I put up on my softie blog for making a trick-or-treating tote bag. Enjoy!

oh so new england

While we weren't able to go to Rhinebeck this year (poor planning and lack of funds), we did get to spend a beautiful day out and about taking in the gorgeous New England fall foliage:

Hope everyone who went had an awesome time!

inspiration from the garden

Can I tell you how much I am loving this color combination? I am totally smitten with it, which is funny because I don't think I would ever list yellow and purple as my favorite colors. Yet seeing them together like this makes me appreciate them both individually and as a combo.

On a related note, man, I hope it rains a lot next summer too so that we have another crop of pretty-pretty dahlias again.

and how is your socktoberfest coming along?

Mine is going swimmingly! I started these on Saturday during a trip to Webs with some friends. I didn't bring a knitting project with me, so I grabbed some Noro Sock because I wanted to start something then and there. Besides, after seeing these and these and these and these on ravelry, I have been wanting to make myself a pair of the stripey Noro socks for a while now. I actually bought two skeins thinking I would stripe them that way, but the colors didn't work out so well together. So I took a cue from Caro and used different ends of the same skein. Now to cast on for the second. I am hoping to have a finished pair come Monday. *gasp!* Does this mean I will have met my very modest Socktoberfest goal of finishing at least one pair of socks? We'll see, Wabbit, we'll see....

you know what's insane?

Knitting a light worsted yarn on US size 0 needles for a colorwork project - that's insane. Originally, I was going to knit Minty a pair of Gotland Island Mittens from Folk Mittens using some Malabrigo Silky Merino. Since NYC never gets that cold in the winter (well, compared to New England, at least), I figured the yarn would be perfect for some light yet warm mittens. Hah! Light mittens my ass! At this gauge the yarn knit up into a super-dense impenetrable fabric, and honestly, it hurt my fingers to knit. Now, I am not sure if I am going to finish these. I think I'm gonna frog 'em and use the yarn for something else because after stuffing teeny-tiny softie parts all day, the strain of knitting this is really too much for my wrists and fingers.

mittens for minty

pattern: Chapter 5, Pattern 1 from Magnificent Mittens
designer: Anna Zilboorg
yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca in colorways I can't recall and whose bands I threw away because clearly I am smart like that (less than one skein of each color)
needles: Addi Turbos US size#1
modifications: I did a slightly different cast on, and I knit a 1x1 ribbed colorwork cuff

For the swap I mentioned yesterday, I had to knit a pair of mittens for Minty. To be perfectly honest with you, I was more than a little intimidated knitting for someone who has the designing skills and knit-blog clout that Minty has. I probably took too long to choose a pattern because I didn't trust myself to design anything (and didn't have time to do so with my current work load - with Halloween right around the corner I am trying to churn out bats for my shop on top of everything else). I had been ogling these on ravelry for some time and finally decided to just go for it. The only problem was that I didn't have the pattern. No problem, right? Just buy the book! Yeah, that wasn't really an option with the book out of print and selling for upwards of $149 used on amazon. I ended up blowing up some photos of the mittens and charting the pattern myself. I also did some research on the rav and thanks to someone from my old stitch-n-bitch who explained Anna Zilboorg's cast on pretty clearly, I was able to cast on in that manner and knit the mittens from the fingertips down. Thanks to someone from a local knitnight who was kind enough to let me peek at her book, I realized that I had not done this exactly as Anna had explained (I knit the band in the wrong direction), but it looked good regardless so I kept going instead of ripping the whole thing out.

My favorite part of this specific pattern is the thumb. I love the way it goes with the rest of the pattern so that it is an "invisible thumb." And the construction method was pretty neat, too. I have never knit a thumb seperately and attached it as I was knitting the mitten. Thumbs are always an afterthought, in a sense. My only problem with this is that perhaps I should have knit the thumbs a little looser because they are very snug, even on Minty's wee hands. I also have a problem with the way that peasant thumbs distort the pattern on the palm because they fit so snugly across the palm:

I think if I knit these again, I might knit a gussetted thumb instead of this type despite how enamored I was the thumb construction. What am I talking about "if?" "When?" is more appropriate here because I definitely want to knit myself a pair of these, maybe with a self-striping yarn so that it imitates the Fiddlehead pattern, which is yet another mitten pattern that I want to knit for myself. (Actually, I have three of Adrian's patterns in my queue, and I'll be amazed with myself if I can resist the temptation to cast on for the Entomology Mittens before the end of the week.) Gah! I think mittens have become the new sock for me. I can't knit enough of 'em!

so lucky

I may not be the most outgoing gal at the party, but I am certainly the luckiest. In a recent swap some friends and I put together, I walked away with these beauties designed and knit by the freaking fabulously talented and so very lovely Julia Vesper in yarn that she handspun and dyed just for this. Seriously, how ridiculously lucky did I get? Thanks again, Julia! I love these so much! Knowing how cold it gets up here (and taking into account what a wuss I am about the cold), I will be wearing these A LOT this winter. And they fit beautifully!

Did I mention they're lined? She lined them in Kid Silk Haze in a fantastic shade of purple. I am beyond wowed by these. Also, she gave me the leftover yarn, and it looks like there's enough in there for a hat, like maybe the gorgeous chevron hat that she designed not too long ago. Guess what I'll be casting on for in the next week or so.

In short, Julia Vesper rocks big time! I believe tomorrow is her birthday so please do drop by her blog and wish her a great one.

bottle blockers

Why, yes! I use beer bottles as blockers. They're thoroughly washed out, of course, and I scrubbed the labels off completely for a nice clean & clear surface. When faced with the task of blocking some mittens, I considered my blocking options - should I cut some plastic into mitten-like shapes? Should I have Matt cut mitten-like shapes for me on the saw at work? Would he be able to access said saw? How much time do I have to spare on working out this solution when I have butt-loads of stuff to get done in the next 24 hours? The answer hit me while I was washing dishes this morning. In the words of Homer Simpson: "Ahhhh, beer, is there anything you can't do?"

posted for posterity?

Remember these?

I knit them as a Christmas present for my father-in-law almost two years ago. All I remember about the project itself is that I knit them over 4 days, that I used Socks That Rock in a mediumweight, and that, according to my Flickr info, the colorway was called Puck's Mischief and I used Addi Turbos in a US size2. I don't remember how many stitches I cast on, nor do I recall the exact stitch pattern (it's some variation of a twisted rib). I think I can figure it out based on this photo, but dude, I am kicking myself for not saving that info. You see, now I want to knit them again but all of the details are gone. This is one of the millions of reasons why ravelry is so awesome - because if the rav had been around then, surely I would have made a note of that info there on my project page. (And yes, I know that if I hadn't deleted my old blog I would have that info now. DOH! I was hasty, but I am still kinda glad I did that. For catharsis and all....)

I realized the other day that it is already October (!!!), which of course means it's time for Socktoberfest! And I want to take this:

and turn it into a pair of those. I think that might be a great pattern/yarn combo. And I'm also looking for a quick, fun knit. (As I am always.) So off I go to count stitches and figure this out. Looks like it's knit over 64 stitches, 1 x 1 ribbing on the cuff, 2 x 2 twisted ribbing with the twist every 3rd row with a standard heel & rounded toe. Does that sound about right? Or is it 3 x 2 ribbing over 60 stitches with enough gusset decreases to turn it to 56 stitches at the foot and make for a perfect round toe? Hmmmmmm....

and perhaps I spoke too soon

Today when I went out to run my errands, I saw that the strong winds we had all morning had knocked down and broken several of the dahlias. The white ones were all snapped, which was fine because I just made a bouquet for my mother-in-law with them. I guess I should have gotten longer stakes, since they were taller than me at that point. Oh well, at least the purple ones are blooming. Also, the upshot of all this weird weather?