Finally Finished

The socks are done! Mock Crocs knit with Knit Picks Essential (which I guess is now called Stroll) on Japanese #0’s (2.1mm). They fit perfectly, and I am unreasonably happy to have them finished after all this time.  Now I can concentrate on whatever WIP is next in line. Or I may take a break and work on something fun over the holidays, like a felted hat. Something quick and cheerful for the cold, grey days I know are coming.

Speaking of cheerful, how adorable is this:

This is the ornament I made for my Tuesday night knitting group ornament swap. I think he turned out pretty cute. I may have to make another one for my tree.

Not a Real Knitter

Sometimes I feel like I’m not a real knitter (clearly, I’m not a real blogger. Has it really been over a month since I posted anything?). Mostly I feel like this because I’m very, very slow, and easily distracted. It takes me forever to finish anything, and half of what I start ends up being a permanent WIP. These socks (Knit Picks Mock Crocs) have been on the needles for a really embarrassing amount of time. I know people who can finish a pair of socks in a week. I’d be happy if I could get a pair done a month. These have taken over 2 years. This seems to happen a lot with me and socks. I think in my mind I think of them as a quick project, so they’re the first thing I set aside “just for a little while” when a new project comes along. Eventually, “just a little while” turns into, well, a really embarrassing amount of time. I suppose at this point this pair of socks falls more into the WIP-busting category than current-project-finishing, but I am almost done with them. Maybe my next pair will go faster.

Rhinebeck 2009

I’m back from Rhinebeck, and trying to recover from two days of yarn-partying. I don’t think I can even begin to convey how much fun this year was despite the frigid temperature (and driving home in the snow. In October.) I’ve had a great time the last two years I’ve gone, but going with knitting friends (people who really get it) puts the whole thing over the top. We barely slept, we petted yarn, we ate festival food (fried artichokes, yum), we talked to sheep. No one thought it was a crazy idea to buy sock yarn with cashmere in it. And to actually think about making socks with it.

We went to the Ravelry party:

 

I picked up Clara Parkes new book (which looks great), and got her to sign my copy of the first one and the new one.

 

Of course, I shopped a little, too:

 

As usual, I have projects in mind for most of this, but I’ll still need to search patterns on ravelry for one or two of the skeins. And do the knitting, of course.

Clapotis the Second

I finally finished Clapotis, and love how it turned out. There’s a reason this pattern has been knit a million times: the finished object is fantastic. It has a wonderful drape to it, and works as either a wrap or a scarf. I used Misti Alpaca Pima Silk Handpaint yarn which is unbelievably soft. I know I’m going to end up wearing this a lot.

Next up is going to be Carmelo, the pattern on the cover of Malabrigo Book One. I’m using this lovely shade (Purple Mystery) of Malabrigo:

 

I even have a couple of cool shawl pins to use with it.  Hopefully this won’t take me too long to finish.

I also started another Chevron Scarf, which I do expect to take me a long time to knit.  It’s on small needles and it’s really long, but I just love how they turn out. I look at all the finished ones on Ravelry, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ugly one.

 

I’m headed to Rhinebeck on Friday. I’ll be going with a group of ladies from the Knitaholics group. This will be my 3rd year at Rhinebeck, but the first time I’ve gone with people who actually knit and spin. I expect to get no sleep and totally blow my budget. The fact that I haven’t knit one thing from the stash I bought last year will absolutely not deter me.

Summer Slacking

L to R:  Ilene Bag (ravelry link), Basketweave Headband, Texas Longhorn Dishcloth.

Summer’s almost over, and as usual the knitting was light. In my never-ending quest to use up some of my kitchen cotton stash, I branched out a bit from the usual dishcloths (OK, not completely). I loved how the Ilene  Bag turned out. It was very easy to knit, and stretches to hold a ton of stuff. I’ll probably end up knitting more of these. The headband is pretty cute, but since I hardly ever wear headbands (they never stay on) I don’t really know what posessed me to knit it. And the dishcloth I did for Son #2, who started his freshman year at the University of Texas in Austin (oh, so far away). I don’t know what he’ll do with it, but I couldn’t resist. I now have two of my three boys out of the house (Son #1 also left home this summer to move into a house with 5 other kids nearer to the University he attends. No, I haven’t found a URI dishcloth pattern yet). I’m not sure how I feel about an almost-empty nest other than it’s very weird so far.

I also worked on and off on my second Clapotis:

 

I only have a few more inches to go, so naturally I’ve made a mistake that I’ll now have to fix. This one has taken forever to get through. I guess without any Olympics to watch, I just can’t knit as fast. Thank God football season has started.

MA Sheep & Wool

Another MA Sheep & Wool Fair has come and gone. I love this fair. It isn’t very large (compared to Rhinebeck, it’s tiny), but it has everything a good sheep and wool fair should have: sheep and llamas and bunnies, sheepdog trials, knitters and spinners and weavers, and plenty of opportunities for stash enhancement. It may not be one of the bigger events, but the vendors who come bring the most amazing fiber, and I always manage to find one or two things I can’t live without.  This year was no exception.  I may have to make a rule that I have to knit everything from this year before I go to next year’s, but I think I’m already too far behind.  I still have yarn from 2 fairs ago. I guess it’s stashbusting time.

Dead Blog?

OK, so I’m not coming around as much as I thought I was in my last post. My knitting time has been drastically reduced the last few weeks, not for any catastrophic reason, just life in general being busy. There hasn’t been a whole lot of blog-worthy knitting going on. I do finally, however, have a couple small finished objects to show off.

This is the Knit-round Scarf from Sally Melville’s Knitting Experience Book 1: The Knit Stitch:

I have had this project on the needles for over 4 years.  I started it while I was living in Japan (and the yarn is a very Noro-esque yarn called Diadomina.  I wish I had bought boatloads more).  I’m not sure why it ended up hibernating so long, it really is an easy knit, and the yarn is wonderful, and I’m very happy with the finished object.  I think the endless rounds just got a little boring there, and it got pushed aside.

I also knit up a Mitered Dishtowel from the 2nd Mason Dixon book, in keeping with my dishcloth addiction:

There are a couple ladies from my LYS who are knitting Clapotis as a KAL.  The idea is we’ll all knit one and then go out to eat croissants somewhere wearing them.  I really enjoyed knitting the first one, so I’ve decided to join them.

I’m also still working on the Jane Thornley Feather-n-Fan wrap, which means I now have a small pile of WIP’s all within easy reach of my corner of the sofa.  Not to mention the days are getting longer, and I have a bunch of DVRed House episodes to watch, so the knitting should be good.  Plus the MA Sheep & Wool Festival  is this weekend, which always improves my knitting energy.

Hibernating

Has it really been over five weeks since I last posted? I guess I’ve been in winter hibernation mode. It’s been a very long, very cold winter, and even my urge to knit has refused to come out from under the covers.

I think I’m coming around though. A new round of Project Spectrum has started, and I always find it inspiring.  I love seeing how other people interpret the themes (and this years incarnation leaves plenty of room for interpretaion), and playing with color. The Flickr group has some great projects up already (and of course there is a ravelry group). I was motivated enough to cast on yesterday for a Jane Thornley wrap. What better way to get the knitting mojo back than pulling a pile of yarn from the stash and casting on for something fun?

 

Blog Award

This little surprise was left for me in the comments to my Frivolity post by Valeria.  I have to say, I am unreasonably happy about it.  This blog doesn’t get a ton of traffic outside of family and friends, so it was quite exciting to be recognized by someone outside that group.  So now I get to pass it along to seven other “Kreativ Bloggers”.

In no particular order, my nominations are as follows:

Lolly  always has great projects going, and beautiful photography.  She is the creative mind behind Project Spectrum, and this year’s incarnation is fantastic.

Claudia is another great knitter/photographer. Hers is one of the first blogs I ever stumbled across when I was new to knitting and living in Japan, where help was difficult to come by. If it weren’t for bloggers like Claudia (and others) I might never have realized that frogging is part of the knitting process, and might never have progressed much past the garter-stitch-scarf phase.

Jane’s website is an open invitation to creativity.  Her free-range approach to knitting, and her wonderful use of color and yarn make for knitting that is a work of art.

Jen dyes gorgeous yarns, bakes yummy things (I’m always hungry after reading her blog), and knits cool things.  She’s also the founder of the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary group on Ravelry, which is one of my favorites even if  (especially if?) it gets a little bizarre and off-color at times.

I found Janet’s blog on the Tawashi group on Ravelry.  She’s a bi-crafter who crochets cupcakes (and crochets/knits other lovely things) and lives in Texas.  I liked her immediately (hubby is from Texas and we lived there for a few years.  I really loved it).

Christine is another fellow raveler whose blog I ran across while avoiding housework admiring projects.  Her blog is full of gorgeous socks (and other knits) plus other creative craftiness.  She also likes knitting dishcloths, which clinched it for me.

Chris’s dynamite cowl was what  first caught my eye (I’ve been thinking of making that pattern one of these days). When I also realized she has WIP’s (and posts about them) that have been on the needles for a long time, I knew she was my kind of knitter.

Tawashi

 

I’m still busy knitting mindless, fun things. As I was browsing Ravelry looking for fun dishcloth patterns, I stumbled across a couple of tawashi patterns. Tawashi essentially means scrubber in Japanese. Now, I lived in Japan for a couple of years, so I’m very familiar with both the diversity of their cleaning products (seriously, they have a separate brush or sponge for everything), and their craftiness. I spent many hours in Japanese bookstores admiring their knitting and quilting books. I have no idea how the tawashi patterns escaped my notice. Maybe because they are mostly crochet; which I don’t know how to do, but am becoming crazily motivated to figure out due to the cuteness of the patterns. The first one I tried is a knit pattern called Tawashi Blossoms (ravelry link), and I used Peaches & Creme yarn for it. Apparently  inexpensive acrylic yarn makes for some of the best tawashi for cleaning dishes and things because of the scratchiness of it, but I have miles and miles of dishcloth cotton, so I just used that. There are quite a few other patterns that I want to try, and it seems that these fit in nicely with my dishcloth obsession.

Just in case anyone is worried that I’ve abandoned all “normal” knitting, I did finish these:

This is the Sherbrooke Cowl, knitted with Moda Dea Vision, and I really like how it turned out. It’s a nice fit, not too loose and not too “chokey”.

This is the Child’s Rainbow Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, knitted in Kathmandu Aran, and Noro Silk Garden. It’s been on the needles for a long time, so I’m happy to have it done. I’m contemplating knitting a matching hat, and I think I have enough yarn left, so we’ll see.