Green Shawl of Woe

There have been several moments over the past few weeks where I've felt sure that the green shawl would be done that day. For the most part, this has been a total joy to knit. The yarn is delightful, the colors charming, and the first 3/4ths of this shawl went exactly as planned.

But the border's been a bit tricky. I've ended up having to rip it out four times, for a mix of careless mistakes and poor math. I sat outside all yesterday afternoon and finally tinked it back for the last time, actually swatched for the border (yes, I did an initial swatch, but apparently if you change things you need to swatch again), and worked out an excellent final plan that will absolutely work and be done in just a few hours.

And then this happened. I knew I had one other US5 needle around, so I found it and started again, until I remembered that this set had split at one tip and was unusable and I hadn't remembered to throw it away yet. So this will have to wait until my new needle gets here-I've ordered one and hopefully it will get here this week.

But until then, it's not like I don't have other stuff to work on.

Epic Weekend with Anemone, Part Two

Okay, I realize that it may have been cruel of me to leave you hanging without even a peek at my yarn store scores from last weekend. But these really needed their own post.

First up, I made my way to The Yarnery, which is absolutely delightful. Everything is organized by weight and is clearly labeled, and the staff there is fantastic. They had a really nice selection of Malabrigo's new yarn, Mechita, so I had to grab a couple of skeins in Marte.

I also got a skein of Berroco Ultra Alpaca in color 6291, Nancy Bush's amazing book, Folk Socks, which I've been wanting for a few years, and a darning egg (for some reason I didn't have a darning egg before now).

Next up, I went to Linden Yarn & Textiles which is another fun little shop. I showed a little more restraint there, and ended up with two skeins of Malabrigo Rasta in Arco Iris, plus one skein of Madalintosh Tosh DK, in the fantastically bright Neon Peach. I've been wanting to try out Tosh DK for a while, and I love the colors in this skein so much-it's super fluorescent and has the perfect balance of pink and orange.

Also, unrelated to yarn shops, I am now the proud owner of 400g of Donegal Tweed that my friends brought me back from Ireland. This stuff is incredibly special, and I can't wait to find out what it wants to be.

I knew I was going to go a little overboard last weekend, and I'm super happy with everything I got. I have plans (or at least vague ideas) for all this yarn, and I'm crazy excited to start reading through Folk Socks (I'm also kind of excited to be able to darn socks without trying to keep the tension even while stretching the hole awkwardly over my hand).

Epic Weekend with Anemone, Part One

Where do I begin? I had a fantastic extra-long weekend away with Anemone, I got to see my best friends, and I ate several pizzas. I took Anemone to visit her top choice for graduate school this past weekend, and it happens to be in the city where my two best friends from college ended up. It was great to get to catch up with people, it was great to do something special with Anemone for her birthday weekend, and it was nice to just get away for a few days.

 We drove out Friday and didn't get to my friends' house until pretty late. Saturday was the only day Anemone didn't have stuff at the university, so we went to Ikea in the morning, had amazing pizza for lunch, and we bummed around a couple of neighborhoods before heading back to the house. Saturday night was for Mexican food and margaritas, then watching Game of Thrones until some vague hour Sunday morning.

(Funny story about lunch on Saturday: we went there because they have great gluten-free food, and I ordered my own pizza. Food comes out, we dig in, and I'm halfway through my first slice when the waitress comes by the table and says, "I'm so sorry, but I brought you the wrong pizza." If you have any dietary limitations at all, you can understand the level of sheer panic that I felt for half a second before she continued, "This one is still gluten-free, absolutely for sure, so would you like me to bring the other one out in a box for you?" So I ended up with two pizzas. Now, how do I order a sausage and garlic pizza and then happily start eating a pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, olive, and green pepper pizza without questioning it? I must have been really tired, and I really lucked out that it was still a gluten-free pizza.)

Sunday we bummed around all morning until Anemone had a university tour, and I visited another friend in the area. Monday she was busy all day, so I'd planned from the beginning to use that as my yarn store exploration day, and boy was I not disappointed. But I'll save those goodies for Friday.

(Oh, and for the curious, I ended up bringing my Cinema Socks and Come Along, Pond as my travel knitting, and they worked out very nicely.)

Trouble With Travel Knitting

I'm leaving soon, for my long weekend with Anemone, and I still haven't quite decided what knitting to bring. I definitely don't want to bring work knitting, because I don't want to risk losing the paper that I write the pattern on as I knit it. I don't want to bring something too boring, and I don't want to bring something too complicated. I need something small, so it will fit in my purse easily, but not so small that I'll finish it an run out of knitting to do.

I always realize that the knitting is the part of a trip that stresses me out the most, but I'm never actually prepared for it when it happens. I haven't packed clothes yet either, but that's not stressing me out at all (part of that may be due to the fact that I still only own one pair of jeans, so there's not really much to stress over).

To be fair, I've gotten burned by travel knitting before. I've run out, or I got cross with a project, or I ended up only having a beaded lace stole to work on while watching scary movies in the dark and drinking wine (um, just don't ask how that ended).

Part of it too is that travel is fun, and feels like a fantastic opportunity to start a new project for the trip. I'm not letting myself do that this time because I have an awful lot of WIPs right now, and I feel bad enough about letting those ones languish without adding to their number. It feels like I haven't started a new project in forever, which is totally ridiculous, since in the last month alone I started and finished six whole projects (there's just a few you haven't seen, including Top Sekrit). So clearly I need to get a hold of myself.

Whatever i figure out, I had better do it soon. As per usual, Twitter and Instagram are the places to be if you want to know what I get up to in real-time. Otherwise, I'll see you on the other side, with a full recap.

FO: Henslowe

I'm gearing up for a big weekend with Anemone, but I have one quick FO for you all. A couple weeks ago I took a break from most of my other projects and knit a quick shawl for my mum. The yarn is one of my skeins from the dyeing workshops at my knitting retreat last month-it's the Divinity base from The Dyeing Arts, and it was beautiful to work with. The bamboo content makes it just shiny enough, and I can tell that this yarn is going to hold up pretty well.

I've seen this pattern around Ravelry, and I've always thought it was gorgeous, but I never really got around to knitting it. When I decided I was going to make a shawl out of this yarn, I looked through pretty much the entire database for the right pattern. I wanted to get the most out of this yarn, but I knew I had nothing in my stash to match in case I did run out halfway through the border. I also didn't want anything too complicated. This pattern fit the bill exactly, and from cast-on to bind-off it took less than a week.

 Ravelry Page: Henslowe

Pattern: Henslowe, by Beth Kling

Yarn: The Dyeing Arts Divinity, dyed by me

(For those of you keeping track, you will be pleased to hear that Top Sekrit is indeed finished and currently blocking. You'll get pictures after this weekend, once Anemone's received it and we've taken care of the whole photoshoot thing.)

Now We Are One, and Some Mitts

Yesterday was my one-year blogiversary. It feels weird to think about, because even though I've accomplished several of the goals I set for myself when I started this blog, I am constantly surprised by how things are turning out. All in good ways, I promise. I've made wonderful blog friends, and it feels strange to think back to a year ago and how different I was. I wasn't really sure, going into this post, what I was going to say about this milestone, but I'm so glad I've reached it, and I'm looking forward to spending many more years in this space.

Anyway. I don't know if I'm coming down with something or just stressed (or even if I just haven't been drinking enough coffee), but I ended up sleeping a lot this weekend. Hopefully that's all out of my system now, though. Yesterday I made an amazingly delicious batch of snack mix that I'm really looking forward to munching on this week: Kind Healthy Grains Oats & Honey Clusters with Toasted Coconut as the base, with dried cranberries, raw almonds, and golden raisins thrown in. 

On the knitting side of things, I got probably 3/4 of the way through the second part of Anemone's Top Sekrit project and then had to rip most of it out. I'd made a "design element" early on, and I thought I could keep it and be fine, but it ended up throwing off the proportions in a way that I just wasn't happy with. I managed to get caught up to where I was, and I'm on track to get it done tonight, barring any unforeseen circumstances.

Slightly more productively, I made good progress on the green shawl, but it's at the stage where it still looks the same, even though I knit on it for at least three hours. I also got photos of these new mitts that I am completely in love with. The yarn's been in my stash for almost five years, so it was very gratifying to finally find the right pattern for it. I'm so pleased with how they came out, and they were very fun to knit.

Ravelry Page: Tauremorna

Pattern: Tauremorna Mitts, by Amora Designs

Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock Multi, "609 Fiddlehead" 

(this is one of the old skeins, so it was only 57g/215yds)

Several Not Done Things

I hope you all have been keeping warm this week! I've worn fleece-lined leggings under maxi skirts more days than I haven't, accompanied of course by an endless parade of handknit socks, scarves, and shawls.

I took a bit of a knitting break last week, so while there is knitting going on, there's not much knitting progress (at least on the stuff you know about). I put aside the yellow and green shawls last week to knit a shawl for my mother, which is blocking on the futon now and will get photos this weekend. So now I feel a bit behind, since those are my big work projects right now, and I'm trying to get to a point where I feel caught up.

Top Sekrit is progressing well. I finally started on the second part earlier this week, and I think I'll make good time on that. Anemone also wants her Shrowl done by her birthday too, since we have a big weekend planned and she wants to wear it. I'm really enjoying knitting this one-I love the garter rib, and I actually might make myself an oversize scarf out of it.

I have a pair of fingerless gloves blocking right now, too. They're the ones you got peeks of here and here, but I never really talked about them. They were my purse knitting in January, and they've been sitting in the to-block pile for a couple weeks. So I'll talk more about those later. I also got a big box from KnitPicks this week that has the yarn for a summer sweater I'm planning, but that can't get started until I finish the shawls. 

Hope you all have a good weekend ahead of you, I know I'm looking forward to it. I have a healthy knitting to-do list drawn up, and it will be nice to plunk down in front of some Netflix and get stuff done.

New Pattern: Inter-Cardinal

It feels like I've been waiting to release this pattern forever, and I'm so glad to finally have it out in the world. Inter-Cardinal is a light cowl worked in four different textural patterns. I absolutely love it in this yarn-Malabrigo Rastita-but the stitches would definitely liven up a less variegated yarn as well. Each stitch pattern works over a repeat of four stitches and four rows, making it easy to adjust the cowl for different sizes or amounts of yarn.

It's available for $5 on Ravelry now.

In other news, the blog got a bit of a facelift! I didn't want to change too much, just spruce up a few things and fix the header. I am so pleased with how it looks now, hope you all like it as well!

Friend Knitting

Thank you all for your understanding this past week. I'm back to my regular blogging schedule, and I have a bunch of stuff waiting to share with you (including a new pattern on Wednesday, and my blogiversary in five days!).

One of my intentions for this year was to knit more for other people. I've always been a selfish knitter, but I've finally reached a point where if I continue to knit only for myself, I'll never be able to enjoy most of the things that I make. Along with that, there are a lot of patterns I'm drawn to, but won't wear myself, and I feel a lot better  about knitting them if I know someone will use and enjoy them. Both of these projects were knit while I was at my knitting retreat a few weeks ago, for two of my best friends from college.

Up first is the Lowbrow Cowl. I liked this pattern the moment I saw it, and then when I found this yarn in the exact perfect colors for my friend Caitlin, I knew it was meant to be. This took two marathon days of knitting-I got through one skein each day, and it was intense. It's absolutely gorgeous, and so soft, and I'm almost sad to see it go. But it has a fantastic home waiting for it, and I couldn't be more pleased about that.

Ravelry Page: Lowbrow

Pattern: Lowbrow Cowl, by Thao Nguyen

Yarn: Misti Alpaca Tonos Worsted, "Tealing Blue"

Up next we have the Cosmopolitan Hat. I've had this skein in my stash for years, and when I came across it during my regular stash tossing last month I knew it was time to finally knit it up. My friend Marin likes red and slouchy hats, so off I went on a pattern hunt. I did modify this a little bit-I took out one ribbing repeat between each cable section, and I modified the brim so that I didn't increase my stitch count when I changed needles. I'm really pleased with how it came out, and I think she's going to love it.

Ravelry Page: Cosmopolitan Hat

Pattern: Cosmopolitan Hat, but Glenna C

Yarn: Misti Alpaca Chunky, "215 Red"

Taking a Break

I don't know how to say this, and I don't want to disrespect anyone's privacy. But right now I feel that my focus needs to be here, in person, and not on the blog.

So I'm taking a short break. I plan to be back sometime next week.